sardaukar wrote on 2025-04-12, 16:34:

I'm going with a Radeon 9200 myself

Are you going to play games? That should be good for games from 1991-1997, yes?

Of course I'll be playing games 😃 and yeah, I hope it's good for all games the CPU can handle

I'm using a Radeon 9200 SE, and of the games I've tried so far, pretty much everything's running fine except for Age of Empires. (I've not tried too many 3D accelerated games yet, but LEGO Island and LEGO Racers both work fine, as do a smattering of other D3D and OpenGL titles.)

Age of Empires is crashing after the intro videos with some serious graphics corruption at the menu. Interestingly, it does work if DirectDraw or GDI acceleration is disabled (either in dxdiag or the system properties) ­— at which point the game runs playably, though not brilliantly (and no 3D titles can be run at all without a reboot) — or by using the undocumented SYSTEM_MEMORY command-line argument for the game, which lets the game run, but with a huge amount of latency. This happens both with Age of Empires I & II, with and without their expansion packs. Other DirectDraw games seem fine.

My assumption had been that this was to do with the Catalyst drivers, but I've tried several different versions of them, as well as DirectX 7, 8.1, and 9.0c, with the same outcome. And it looks like this affects Voodoo cards, too, if Phil's video is anything to go by.

Now, my best guess is that there's an issue with having GDI access a video-memory Primary Surface: Age of Empires does this for font rendering, which other, working games use their own bitmap fonts. _Maybe_ the whole PCIe→PCI→AGP thing is confusing drivers or common GDI/DirectDraw code?

Has anyone else encountered this / managed to get Age of Empires working (ideally without totally disabling acceleration)?

I have the weirdest issue with my board - the keyboard's shift key doesn't work? So it's hard to type `c:` because all I get out of it is `c;`. The keyboard (USB) works fine on my PC, and I've tried a second one now too, same issue. I suppose it's an issue with the boot disks in the bios, but you can't edit the `autoexec.bat` file in them because it's restored to the bios embedded version on boot, so I have to somehow install DOS or Windows on my PC and transfer over the files to the microSD card I'm using.

Gotta be honest, for what it costs, this issue plus the fact the BIOS version is newer than the ones on the Github page (https://github.com/eivindbohler/itxllama-bios/releases), the gamepad issue and the fact I have to cut a trace on the PCB to get stereo output working is giving me a little bit of buyer's remorse.

OK, so my USB Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 v1.0 and my Rapoo E2700 (https://www.techspot.com/products/keyboards/r … oo-e2700.90712/) don't work but my ZSA Moonlander (https://www.zsa.io/moonlander) DOES let me input `:` with shift.

Man, this really is a product for rich people 😁

sardaukar wrote on 2025-04-19, 13:21:

Man, this really is a product for rich people 😁

You're right. This is a project for people rich with a love for tinkering and nostalgia as well as a positive spirit of community and understanding. The DOS / Win9x era was a wild time full of tricks and experiments to find your desired experience. 🫡

I meant it as a joke, but it's funny the more recent (and complex) keeb worked but not a bog standard one from 20 years ago

Wrote a blog post about my impressions with the Llama https://blog.nootch.net/post/the-promise-of-a … new-vintage-pc/

is anyone selling these? I know the creator was doing group buys but that doesn't seem to be happening anymore? if not where is the cheapest place I can have this made?

markboston38 wrote on 2025-05-20, 22:27:

is anyone selling these? I know the creator was doing group buys but that doesn't seem to be happening anymore? if not where is the cheapest place I can have this made?

Only place I know that is selling these at the moment is retrodreams.ca, but seems to be sold out currently: https://retrodreams.ca/products/itx-llama-mainboard

markboston38 wrote on 2025-05-20, 22:27:

is anyone selling these? I know the creator was doing group buys but that doesn't seem to be happening anymore? if not where is the cheapest place I can have this made?

We are finalizing batch 2 and getting ready to accept pre-orders for batch3.

Please join our discord for updates and if you like to join the waitlist, you can find the link in Eivind's post in the first page.

I tried joining the discord it said I could not accept the invite.

markboston38 wrote on 2025-05-22, 19:20:

I tried joining the discord it said I could not accept the invite.

https://discord.gg/YN3XkycAXG <= this one is still valid

I just got a Radeon 9800pro to post on the Llama . I'll try to load 98 tomorrow to check 0ut its performance.

Does the ITX-Llama have the same limitation as the Orpheus I, where Windows 9x can only access the internal Crystal FM synthesizer?

Made two low profile S3 Savage4 Pro cards (32MB SDRAM, VGA and HDMI outputs), as there are plans to integrate the S3 in the next ITX Llama MB revision (among other upgrades).

The PCI card is more for easily testing the S3, while the "AGP" card is for testing with the existing Llama MB (and for owners of the AGP revision, as the new revision will have PCI).
I say "AGP", as while it has an AGP connector, it is purely a PCI device. Only the PCI bus is routed, the S3 AGP signals are terminated on the card, also the S3 is strapped and configured for PCI operation, as well as the VBIOS. It is as much AGP as the ITX Llama is.

Tested the cards in a 3770K system with Windows XP. Everything worked fine, changing desktop resolution/color depth as well as OpenGL/D3D, VGA output and HDMI output (the photos are with an HDMI display connected).

The assumption (at least mine) until now with the AGP cards & Llama issues (like Nvidia cards not working) was that they were AGP devices sitting on a PCI bus, and the card/driver expects AGP features that are not there, and that's why it didn't work.

So does the S3 "AGP" work with the Llama? Eh.. yes and no.

The Llama boots with it just fine, VGA and HDMI both work, however, in Windows98, when a driver is installed it results in one of the following:
-black screen
-black screen with mouser cursor (system frozen)
-640x480@4 colors, changing this results in one of the above.

Tried different VBIOS-es, different drivers, nothing really helped. There are no resource conflicts for the S3, however, something is missing. There is no IRQ assigned to the S3 card.
Tried with a 3dfx card, which worked fine in the system under W98. Some cards, as 3dfx and some ATI ones, don't actually need an assigned IRQ to work, while others do (like Nvidia cards). In this case, there was no IRQ assigned to the 3dfx card.

Booted TinyCoreLinux to get more info. No resource issues/conflicts etc, however:

"Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 0"

In an x86 system, assigning IRQ0 to a PCI device is very illegal . IRQ0 is reserved for the system timer.

This indicates a problem with the Llama BIOS, as it never assigns a correct IRQ for devices sitting on the external PCIe to PCI bridge (there are actually two bridges, a PCI to PCIe one in the Vortex86EX SoC and the external Pericom one on the ITX Llama).

This is something that coreboot (not SeaBIOS) should handle. So I went diggig and fixed the PIRQ routing for devices that sit on the PCIe to PCI bridge. Also moved some IRQs, so that the video card, PCI->PCIe and PCIe->PCI bridges have their own IRQ that is not shared with other devices (I chose IRQ5).

Now, the S3 has actually a valid IRQ assigned (which is also exclusive).

Did this actually fix the issue for the S3? Not quite. It does behave a bit different though. Now, when the system freezes with just the mouse cursor on a black screen, the screen is actually set to a higher resolution.

However, it did fix it for other cards. Here is an unmodified AGP Nvidia Geforce FX5200 plugged into the Llama:

Both VGA and HDMI outputs work, as well as OpenGL and D3D:

Of course, more testing is needed (also need to ensure it doesn't break other things).

@sdz

Nicely done!
I'm sure there will be many ITX llama users delighted that they can use Nvidia cards on their builds now.

On a topic of Nvidia cards - I have a Vortex86DX3 build of mine (using an ETX module and IP412 carier board), whenever I've tried to run an Nvidia Geforce FX 5500 PCI (no AGP on carrier board) and, even though I assign an IRQ to the card. I always got these strange artifacts when I tried to boot 98SE on it (after the nvidia driver install, the basic 16 color VGA driver still works).

Did you ever encounter this kind of visual artifacting during your testing?

sdz wrote on Today, 09:24:

However, it did fix it for other cards. Here is an unmodified AGP Nvidia Geforce FX5200 plugged into the Llama: […]
Show full quote

However, it did fix it for other cards. Here is an unmodified AGP Nvidia Geforce FX5200 plugged into the Llama:

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Both VGA and HDMI outputs work, as well as OpenGL and D3D:

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Of course, more testing is needed (also need to ensure it doesn't break other things).

WOW! what a huge breakthrough SDZ. I'm huge nvidiot and was a little disappointed when the Llama wouldn't work with my GeForces.