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TinyLlama (Vortex86EX SBC)

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Reply 580 of 667, by Eivind

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ahmadexp wrote on 2023-06-17, 02:49:
I tried the Silicon Motion SM750 with HDMI output on my device and was unable to get any video output. Here is the link to where […]
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I tried the Silicon Motion SM750 with HDMI output on my device and was unable to get any video output.
Here is the link to where I bought it from
https://www.ebay.com/itm/295434434943
Any suggestion helps

The SM750 is solid, we've had several cards from various manufacturers with this chip working flawlessly. They've all had a VGA output though, afaik.
Maybe this is a question of resolution? Might be that this particular card can't output the VGA text mode of 720x400@70Hz over HDMI and doesn't try or know how to upscale it either?

TinyLlama 3
ITX-Llama motherboard
TinyLlama SBC

Reply 583 of 667, by ahmadexp

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Just tested the dual VGA output sm750 and unfortunately it does not work on TL2

Reply 584 of 667, by JonathanM

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Has anyone had issues with microSD where if you delete partitions with fdisk and add a new FAT16 partition, after reboot the original partitions are back? I've tried two different SD cards both SDHC (wondering if this is the issue). I can partition and format the cards fine in my laptop so know the cards work.

Reply 585 of 667, by Eivind

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JonathanM wrote on 2023-06-28, 12:37:

Has anyone had issues with microSD where if you delete partitions with fdisk and add a new FAT16 partition, after reboot the original partitions are back? I've tried two different SD cards both SDHC (wondering if this is the issue). I can partition and format the cards fine in my laptop so know the cards work.

I don't think I've seen that issue myself. It's kinda hard to know what would cause this without more details. Like which version of fdisk you're using and what kinds of partitions were there before.
I would start by doing an "FDISK /MBR" to rebuild the partition table and master boot record after the partitioning and see if that helps?

SDHC cards in general should work fine, as should SDXC cards. Have you tried other microSD cards and do they work with the system?

TinyLlama 3
ITX-Llama motherboard
TinyLlama SBC

Reply 586 of 667, by rasteri

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I've seen weird issues when creating partitions from DOS on an existing partition table, yeah.

I've fixed it by completely wiping the first few megabytes of the SD card using the DD command in linux, then creating the partition table from scratch in DOS.

Dunno how you'd do that in Windows...

Reply 587 of 667, by ahmadexp

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Just a thought provoking idea to Eivind, Rastri and everyone. What would you consider to add/change if you decide to build the Tinyllama III?
For instance, can we consider the VortexEX2, getting the SM750 with HDMI? Just wondering.
PS: I love the Tinyllama II a lot that I hand soldered two of them.

Reply 588 of 667, by Eivind

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ahmadexp wrote on 2023-07-02, 04:43:

Just a thought provoking idea to Eivind, Rastri and everyone. What would you consider to add/change if you decide to build the Tinyllama III?
For instance, can we consider the VortexEX2, getting the SM750 with HDMI? Just wondering.
PS: I love the Tinyllama II a lot that I hand soldered two of them.

Let me try to sum up my thoughts about the TinyLlama!

I've considered your question many many times - and what I always keep coming back to is another question: "What do I want from this system?"
Another way to look at this is "from which time period do I want this system to be?"
I think most people would answer either early 90s or mid/late 90s.
For early 90s DOS usage and, obviously, games (and, really, 80s games as well), I believe the TinyLlama as it stands hits the mark pretty well. I'm sure there could be various smaller fixes and tweaks people would be interested in, and if we figure out something that's important enough, I might do another revision.

BUT: what most of us really want is a mid/late-90s gaming system, right? I know I do! 😀
Unfortunately, there's one main challenge with this - and it isn't the Vortex86EX, it's the graphics card. Given a sufficiently powerful CPU, one could always do software rendering in games, and rasteri's weeCee with its DX CPU tackles this way better than what can be done with the EX.
I've had extensive talks with people from DMP, and the EX2 won't really fit the bill for reasons I don't want to get into because I assume they were given to me in confidentiality. They have an EX3 coming up in the future though, that might be something to look into.

However - for 3D games, we're still stuck in a place where the 2D-only Vortex86VGA and SM750 will always be the bottleneck. I'm quite sure Mini-PCIe or Mini-PCI graphics cards with 3D acceleration don't exist. And even if they did, they wouldn't have driver support for Windows 98.

Therefore, going down the route of using a 3D accelerator, it's either using a real PCI(e) card or creating one. That last option is orders of magnitude more challenging than anything I've ever done and I don't really consider it viable. The only thing I can think of as prior work is zx-c64 / Anthony's modern Voodoo 4 and 5 recreations (google it!). His cards use the VSA-100 chip which is, surprisingly, still easy to get hold of new-old-stock. The card design and layout is something else, though. We're talking 12-layer boards and R&D and production costs at another level.

If we abandon the wet dream of making a small VSA-100 card, we're back to real cards from the 90s or early 2000s.

...and that's basically where I am with my ongoing ITX-Llama project.
Trying to keep the form factor small-ish, adding all peripherals I want, using the EX chip which gives me complete BIOS freedom, etc.
I'm still tweaking, testing and updating BIOS code for that one, please feel free to drop me suggestions and feedback if you have in that thread!

As for the Raspberry Pi-sized TinyLlama, like I said, I'm still open to feedback on what could go into a potential version 3, but I don't see how we could meaningfully improve it in major ways in terms of speed or features.
If you think I'm wrong, let me know! 😉

TinyLlama 3
ITX-Llama motherboard
TinyLlama SBC

Reply 589 of 667, by ahmadexp

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I had no idea about the ITX-Llama project. To me the ITX-Llama is everything I am looking for.
You are absolutely right and on point with all your explanation about the TL2.
The thing is, TL2 is so beautiful and elegant that makes me want to develop more on it, without I forget about all the logical explanations you brought up.

Reply 590 of 667, by JonathanM

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Eivind wrote on 2023-06-28, 13:46:
I don't think I've seen that issue myself. It's kinda hard to know what would cause this without more details. Like which versio […]
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JonathanM wrote on 2023-06-28, 12:37:

Has anyone had issues with microSD where if you delete partitions with fdisk and add a new FAT16 partition, after reboot the original partitions are back? I've tried two different SD cards both SDHC (wondering if this is the issue). I can partition and format the cards fine in my laptop so know the cards work.

I don't think I've seen that issue myself. It's kinda hard to know what would cause this without more details. Like which version of fdisk you're using and what kinds of partitions were there before.
I would start by doing an "FDISK /MBR" to rebuild the partition table and master boot record after the partitioning and see if that helps?

SDHC cards in general should work fine, as should SDXC cards. Have you tried other microSD cards and do they work with the system?

Sorry for the radio silence it's taken me some time to be able to look at this.
I've tried the above and what @rasteri suggested it didn't help.
Long story short it was a bad solder joint on the SD Read-only pin. I can now successfully partition and format the SD card.

Reply 591 of 667, by Eivind

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JonathanM wrote on 2023-07-05, 16:56:

Sorry for the radio silence it's taken me some time to be able to look at this.
I've tried the above and what @rasteri suggested it didn't help.
Long story short it was a bad solder joint on the SD Read-only pin. I can now successfully partition and format the SD card.

You're saying there was a bad solder joint between the board and pin A64 on the SOM connector (which is where the SD write-protect is)?
In that case, I'm very sorry - guess I'll have to add writing and verifying data to the SD card as part of my test when assembling! 🙁

TinyLlama 3
ITX-Llama motherboard
TinyLlama SBC

Reply 592 of 667, by JonathanM

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Eivind wrote on 2023-07-05, 17:04:

You're saying there was a bad solder joint between the board and pin A64 on the SOM connector (which is where the SD write-protect is)?
In that case, I'm very sorry - guess I'll have to add writing and verifying data to the SD card as part of my test when assembling! 🙁

That's correct, it took very little time to fix so don't worry, mistakes happen. I'm just happy its now working and it wasn't something more complicated to fix.😅

Reply 593 of 667, by Eivind

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JonathanM wrote on 2023-07-05, 19:44:
Eivind wrote on 2023-07-05, 17:04:

You're saying there was a bad solder joint between the board and pin A64 on the SOM connector (which is where the SD write-protect is)?
In that case, I'm very sorry - guess I'll have to add writing and verifying data to the SD card as part of my test when assembling! 🙁

That's correct, it took very little time to fix so don't worry, mistakes happen. I'm just happy its now working and it wasn't something more complicated to fix.😅

Appreciate it, and thanks for bringing it to my attention! 😀
Hope you enjoy the board now that it's working!!

TinyLlama 3
ITX-Llama motherboard
TinyLlama SBC

Reply 594 of 667, by ExplodingLemur

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Hm I'm running into a problem when booting. I installed DOS 7.1 (from Win98) (because who wants to deal with multiple 2GB partitions these days) and QEMM386 seems to freeze after scanning memory.
I took a picture of the screen, and am attaching my autoexec.bat, config.sys, and msdos.sys (renamed to .txt so they'll attach).

Reply 595 of 667, by Eivind

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ExplodingLemur wrote on 2023-07-07, 05:12:

Hm I'm running into a problem when booting. I installed DOS 7.1 (from Win98) (because who wants to deal with multiple 2GB partitions these days) and QEMM386 seems to freeze after scanning memory.
I took a picture of the screen, and am attaching my autoexec.bat, config.sys, and msdos.sys (renamed to .txt so they'll attach).

Are these startup files unchanged from the ones I provided for MS-DOS 6.22? If that's the case, then that's your answer right there. 😉
QEMM will definitely crash your system if making the wrong assumptions about the current OS memory setup.
You could try recreating the startup files by using the tools in the QEMM directory, I think you run OPTIMIZE (it's been I while since I did this).

Alternatively, it's probably easier to use JEMMEX if you don't need SOFTMPU (which is incompatible, sadly) or even the good old EMM386. As I've said before, it all depends on your needs - do you want max conventional memory? Extended memory? Expanded memory? The more "greedy" you are in terms of squeezing the absolute max out of your memory in DOS, the harder it gets to get it just right. This has been the case for decades, continues to be the case, and unfortunately it requires a good bit of experimenting yourself! 😀

Right now I'm focused on gettin the ITX-Llama project up and running, with Windows 98. When I'm done with the hardware and Win98 setup, I'll take a look at how to get the best DOS 7.1 setup. Until then, feel free to tweak and turn the knobs yourself and report back with your results! 👍

TinyLlama 3
ITX-Llama motherboard
TinyLlama SBC

Reply 596 of 667, by ExplodingLemur

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Eivind wrote on 2023-07-07, 07:04:

Are these startup files unchanged from the ones I provided for MS-DOS 6.22? If that's the case, then that's your answer right there. 😉
QEMM will definitely crash your system if making the wrong assumptions about the current OS memory setup.
You could try recreating the startup files by using the tools in the QEMM directory, I think you run OPTIMIZE (it's been I while since I did this).

Aha, I didn't realize QEMM386 had any sort of persistent configuration. I only ever used plain EMM386 back in the day. I'll poke around there and see what's up, otherwise I'll drop back to the classic HIMEM/EMM386 combo. Thanks!

Reply 597 of 667, by ExplodingLemur

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Ok, now this is weird. I think my SD card socket has gone bad! If I boot with any SD card inserted (even a blank one) it freezes at "Booting from Hard Disk..." and also freezes after launching the BIOS config or boot menu. If I hold the card all the way in (past the point where it clicks into place) then it boots. Wheee...

Reply 598 of 667, by Eivind

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ExplodingLemur wrote on 2023-07-07, 21:10:

Ok, now this is weird. I think my SD card socket has gone bad! If I boot with any SD card inserted (even a blank one) it freezes at "Booting from Hard Disk..." and also freezes after launching the BIOS config or boot menu. If I hold the card all the way in (past the point where it clicks into place) then it boots. Wheee...

My bet is on a (semi)loose soldering point! Try reflowing all the contacts on the card connector?

TinyLlama 3
ITX-Llama motherboard
TinyLlama SBC

Reply 599 of 667, by ExplodingLemur

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Tried with my iron but I kept flowing solder onto the metal cage of the slot instead of the pins, it's a bit tight in there. I'll dab a bit of solder paste onto each pin and break out the hot air.