VOGONS


NEC V33/V33A

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First post, by Jo22

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Good morning,

Just found another interesting member of the NEC V family. The NEC V33 / V33A.

It looks like it was some sort of competitor of the IAPX286.

Among other things, it had hard-wired instructions (no micro code) that made it four times faster than the original V30.

http://elm-chan.org/docs/dev/v53_e.html

Some old news papers even went so far saying that it outperformed the i80386 (if its time).

Google Books

Makes me wonder if that processor wouls have turned Turbo XTs into PCs more powerful than the PC/ATs with 80286 processors.

I mean, the specs are surely impressive.
The 16MB address space really rivals the 286.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 1 of 9, by c59862143

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I am also interested in this chip, and I'm lucky enough to get 3 pieces of V53A in PGA package. After confirming that the chips are usable, I just stopped testing them because of the cost of the PCBs. However, after watching a video about a self-made 8088 laptop, and many people suggests the uploader to add a 8087 coprocessor, I decided to find out if the V53A supports a 80287XL coprocessor.

Answering the question doesn't seem to be easy, because the method of the connection between the CPU and the FPU isn't available on the Internet. NEC may have published it in the V33 and V53 user manual, but unfortunately, the manual seems only have Japanese version, and NEC hasn't uploaded the manual to their website. Thanks to the Renesas Japanese website, some hardware manuals and application notes about V53A are available in Japanese version. Though the extra information doesn't help much, it's still useful for on-chip peripherals interface design.

I'm lucky enough that I didn't make many mistakes on this. Decoding the NPCS, NPWR and NPRD signal of 80287XL using the V53A bus status signals, and then the 80287 will work. I found this correct solution in my second attempt, and then I'll get a working board, right? Unfortunately, the answer is no. I always get the wrong answer from the 80287XL no matter what instruction I wrote. At first I thought the coprocessor requires 16-bit memory, so I spent some time to get a memory module. But things get even worse, the program can't run at all, the CPU immediately cracked and switched to halt mode. So I have to debug the whole circuit. Finally I find something unexcepted, and I'm sure that causes the problem. I used a 74LVC1G125 for every 16-bit module, indicating a 16-bit operation. However, the '1G125 brings propagation delay as long as 900 nanoseconds, making it unable to read from 8-bit devices. I'm not sure if the '1G125 is fake, or my circuit went wrong, but when I desoldered all the '1G125s and used my 8-bit memory back, everything seems to be solved. The 80287XL starts to output the correct calculation result.

So from the start to now, I'm always focusing on how V53A can be used, instead of its performance compared with 80286 or something else. The performance is still the least important thing I should focus on, since the bus sizing is still a problem. Also it's irresponsible to claim my discovery before confirming everything is correct. However, if someone is interested in designing a PC compatible using V53A, I can say it is totally doable and worth a try.

Reply 2 of 9, by rmay635703

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Did any IBM PC compatibles use the v33?

I always thought it sort of pointless as it wasn’t pin compatible or bus compatible and was like a 286 without protected mode

Wonder if the extra memory would work with himem and if a20 and the high irqs/ dam worked?

Reply 3 of 9, by aazard

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rmay635703 wrote on 2022-10-28, 22:44:

Did any IBM PC compatibles use the v33?

I always thought it sort of pointless as it wasn’t pin compatible or bus compatible and was like a 286 without protected mode

Wonder if the extra memory would work with himem and if a20 and the high irqs/ dam worked?

NEC Notebook PC-9801NV of November 1990
V33 μPD70136

NEC PC-98DO+ of October 1990
V40 μPD70208

Olivetti Prodest PC1 in stores in Italy in Summer 1988 (IIRC August)
Mentioned in June 1988 issue of UK Personal Computer World
Mentioned in the 12/1989 Byte issue, in a "EarthStation I" diskless PC, and a "Quark/PC+" from "megatel".
V50 μPD70216

NEC Laptop PC98LT of October 1986
Byte 12/1989 issues also brings a mention of the NEC V50 in a ROM based machine from Kila Systems in Boulder, CO.
V50HL μPD70216H

NEC HANDY98 Palmtop in 1990
V51 μPD70280

Olivetti Quaderno 20 (PT-XT-20) in 1992
V53 μPD70236

The 12/1991 Byte issue has a machine from Kila Systems using the NEC V53.

Aazard -
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Reply 4 of 9, by aazard

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Olivetti Quaderno 20 (PT-XT-20) seems "king of XT's"
here is a video: Olivetti Quaderno PT XT 20 Quick look, demo and some rambling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw70SnHpH9U

Aazard -
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Retro Enthusiast & L3 Trouble Shooter
.... Getting old

Reply 5 of 9, by bakemono

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rmay635703 wrote:

Wonder if the extra memory would work with himem and if a20 and the high irqs/ dam worked?

I saw somewhere that the V33/V53 are able to access additional memory by switching 16KB banks. My guess is that would work for implementing EMS without extra hardware. Not sure about a20/HMA. The real mode XMS interface could probably be provided with a special driver. IRQ/DMA would depend on external hardware with the V33. The V53 has the integrated peripherals, which I guess are not AT compatible?

aazard wrote on 2024-08-08, 20:00:

Olivetti Quaderno 20 (PT-XT-20) seems "king of XT's"
here is a video: Olivetti Quaderno PT XT 20 Quick look, demo and some rambling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw70SnHpH9U

Hopefully you can repair the floppy or get connected somehow with serial/parallel to transfer more programs over. Run SNOOPER on there and see how the CPU benches... 😀

On the topic of unusual NEC hardware, they apparently rolled their own FPU as well: https://www.cpushack.com/2021/09/01/necs-forgotten-fpus/

GBAJAM 2024 submission on itch: https://90soft90.itch.io/wreckage

Reply 6 of 9, by aazard

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bakemono wrote on 2024-08-09, 20:05:
I saw somewhere that the V33/V53 are able to access additional memory by switching 16KB banks. My guess is that would work for i […]
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rmay635703 wrote:

Wonder if the extra memory would work with himem and if a20 and the high irqs/ dam worked?

I saw somewhere that the V33/V53 are able to access additional memory by switching 16KB banks. My guess is that would work for implementing EMS without extra hardware. Not sure about a20/HMA. The real mode XMS interface could probably be provided with a special driver. IRQ/DMA would depend on external hardware with the V33. The V53 has the integrated peripherals, which I guess are not AT compatible?

aazard wrote on 2024-08-08, 20:00:

Olivetti Quaderno 20 (PT-XT-20) seems "king of XT's"
here is a video: Olivetti Quaderno PT XT 20 Quick look, demo and some rambling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw70SnHpH9U

Hopefully you can repair the floppy or get connected somehow with serial/parallel to transfer more programs over. Run SNOOPER on there and see how the CPU benches... 😀

On the topic of unusual NEC hardware, they apparently rolled their own FPU as well: https://www.cpushack.com/2021/09/01/necs-forgotten-fpus/

this one 😉 ??
fastest-xt-8086-16mhz-nec-cpu-fpu-1mb-ram-4mb-ems-1mb-vga-v0-ubjn201l6bgd1.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=ad762d0753fa4ea99dc7150f4507b34a477ec895

Aazard -
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Retro Enthusiast & L3 Trouble Shooter
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Reply 7 of 9, by aazard

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its a NEC D9008D 16mhz - 8087 FPU Drop-in Replacement, it will run as high as 16mhz, at least when paired with a NEC V30HL 16mhz and correct oscillator crystal(s).

I believe NEC v20/v30 (& "better") can at the very least "disk swap/page" to disk (at least in New Deal Office 3.2a/2000, as I have seen...and heard... it do so), see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcaAGQohIEM&list=WL&index=1

Olivetti M24 / Persona 1600 / AT&T 6300 with 1MB conventional RAM (with the W. Allen Associates Buss Correction Kit & Video replaced with an ATI VGA Wonder XL24 1MB) would be the ideal candidate (or a NEC PC98) as they have separate crystals for their busses.

To save further "bit by bit" necro run on...... I'll spill my mind on "the fastest XT" ideas:

Pump into that Olivetti M24 / Persona 1600 / AT&T 6300 board (at this point your likely better off building an AT or other 286):

  • NEC V30HL + NEC D9008D @ 16mhz
  • The W. Allen Associates Buss Correction Kit
  • 8-Bit ISA IDE to SD Adapter Card (XT-IDE)
  • PicoMEM 8-Bit ISA Card - (1MB RAM + 4MB EMS/XMS RAM[5MB total] + USB Support + NE2000 Network + Wifi)
  • ATI VGA Wonder XL24 1MB (8-Bit ISA compatible)
  • Creative Sound Blaster AWE32 + Roland SCB-7 MIDI + 32MB (8-Bit ISA compatible)
  • 8-BIt ISA I/O card (ideally with a 3rd floppy drive, 3.5" 1.44mb, external cable pass-thru)
  • The needed/correct oscillator crystal(s)
  • Ideally, wire an adaptor to the "Proprietary" keyboard connector to an AT keyboard connector (its pin compatible, just the wrong order/shape)

You'll end up with 6MB system RAM total (1MB conventional + 5MB EMS/XMS) as well.
I believe 4MB can be "stolen" from the AWE32 as it only uses 28MB of its 32MB capacity (if so thats 10MB total system ram, on an XT!)

Note: GeoWorks Pro 1.2, New Deal Office 3.2a/2000 & Windows 3.1 Build 034f can all run on 8088/8086 class CPU's & address EMS memory. IBM PC-DOS 7.1 BLD134 will also.

Aazard -
Mono Planar Mortal & Unascended Master
Retro Enthusiast & L3 Trouble Shooter
.... Getting old

Reply 8 of 9, by c59862143

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bakemono wrote on 2024-08-09, 20:05:

The V53 has the integrated peripherals, which I guess are not AT compatible?

The address of the integrated peripherals are fully configurable, so it could be XT compatible. If you need AT compatible peripherals, you need to add an another interrupt controller and a pair of DMA controllers. Or you can cascade a 8237 to the integrated one and simply not to use DMA channel 0.

The integrated 8254 can accept a input frequency up to 16 or 20Mhz depending on the speed grade. So you may take advantage of this if you need a timer with higher input frequency while there's no 8253 or 8254 chip that accepts this input.

Reply 9 of 9, by kool kitty89

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I picked up what appeared to be genuine ones of these off ebay a few years ago with the eventual intent of wiring up a pin adapter to a 286 socket. (ie use a 68-pin PGA socket in a 286 motherboard, either stock or modified, wire up an adapter board with a PLLC68 socket in it and install the V33) But I haven't done anything of the sort yet.

They don't use the 286 pinout for some reason, even though they easily could, maybe it was paranoia over the lawsuit over the V20/V30, but that seems excessive given it was over microcode copyright and not CPU or pin compatibility. (it also wasn't really used outside of Japan, except maybe in its microcontroller variants)

It's just my own scrutiny of the chips that I'm fairly confident they haven't been relabeled random crap (as they came from China as old surplus). There's a variety of obvious and subtle details that point to re-marking (including re-marking chips that are at least the correct type ... also re-tinning pins: the latter sometimes weakens them due to solder migration into the copper legs), including numerous cases that pass the "acetone test" and these look legit to me. (they also looked like old stock, not super cleaned up or retinned)

I also found more info via some of NEC's old databooks on bitsavers or archive.org ... I worked out the release date (for commercial availability) that way, too, though I forget if it was '89 or 90.

One thing I'm not sure of is the high memory area is accessible or not. It definitely doesn't do protected mode, but does have a 24 bit external address space, so that quirk of the 8086's addressing is a bit of an unknown.

What is quite interesting is what it does actually do with its 24-bit address space: it's got built-in LIM EMS 4.0 compatible memory paging (EMS bank-switching), so it hypothetically could be plugged into a 286 motherboard with chipset lacking EMS support (only 286 extended memory support) and use compatible drivers to implement EMS. (not sure of any drivers out there, but ... it's hypothetically possible)

Otherwise it's faster on a few instructions than the 286 (though the 286 already does a lot in just 3 cycles, and I think very few things in just 2 cycles ... the latter is a sore spot for achieving true 0ws memory), but among those is a fast hardware multiplier with 8 cycle 8-bit multiply and 12 cycle 16-bit multiply ... I thin divide is 24 cycles. (I'd have to find the document again to be sure, but they're definitely all fixed cycle times via a hardware multiply and divide implementation)

It would be relatively fast for software rendered 3D or anything else mul/div heavy that actually uses multiply and divide instructions rather than shifts and adds or look-up tables. I'm not sure how common the former case is since the 286 has both pretty decent hardware multiply and divide times for its day, but also a barrel shifter and fast memory access, so all three options are possible. (though given the wait states many 286 systems had, and lack of cache except for extremely unusual cases, the look-up table option has significant drawbacks)

On a side-note, the 2 cycle vs 3 cycle instruction execution times of the 286 (and 2 cycle memory time at true 0ws) is probably why some motherboards/chipsets give intermittent or inconsistent results for wait-state benchmarks, particularly the PCChips/Hedaka/Citygate one that will randomly give 0 vs 1 ws if you try it multiple times. I'm assuming that chipset manages to have a 2-clock-tick access time (so 0ws access) but 3-tick minimum memory cycle time, and is basic with only random read/write cycle and no page-mode or bank interleave support. So it would appear as 0ws in all cases except for the fastest instructions and a few cases of allignment overhead.

Either that, or I'm overthinking it, and that chipset just has a lot of overhead for refresh time, so most of the 1ws cases are for refresh cycles. (since it almost certainly doesn't have fast, smart, or hidden refresh)

It does very, very clearly tolerate slower rated DRAM chips at a given clock speed, but run faster than true 1ws options on other chipsets.