VOGONS


First post, by Miphee

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Hi, I lost the manual of this diagnostic card and I can't find it online.
Please help!

Reply 1 of 19, by derSammler

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

A manual for what? You just plug it in and read the code it shows.

Reply 3 of 19, by Miphee

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Got it and it's similar to yours but mine has fewer LEDs, buttons and connectors.
http://web.impakt.com.pl/Z10476_7731.pdf
It's not working with 286-386 type computers in ISA slots though so it's pretty much useless for me.
Thanks anyway.

Reply 4 of 19, by Horun

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
Miphee wrote on 2020-05-08, 18:14:
Got it and it's similar to yours but mine has fewer LEDs, buttons and connectors. http://web.impakt.com.pl/Z10476_7731.pdf It's […]
Show full quote

Got it and it's similar to yours but mine has fewer LEDs, buttons and connectors.
http://web.impakt.com.pl/Z10476_7731.pdf
It's not working with 286-386 type computers in ISA slots though so it's pretty much useless for me.
Thanks anyway.

Ok good book ! looks almost same except for a couple missing LED's and yes the external LED panel connector mine has.
Good !
I found that the ISA on mine will work in 286 and 386 but is somewhat slot picky. Seems to work best in one of the slots closest to KB connector, not those farthest from. Also on a PCI + ISA board like Pentium it rarely works in ISA slot mode, but the PCI mode works fine.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 5 of 19, by Miphee

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Horun wrote on 2020-05-09, 01:14:

I found that the ISA on mine will work in 286 and 386 but is somewhat slot picky. Seems to work best in one of the slots closest to KB connector, not those farthest from. Also on a PCI + ISA board like Pentium it rarely works in ISA slot mode, but the PCI mode works fine.

Mine could be faulty. LEDs never show correct values in any ISA slots: missing supply rails, LED display not showing anything, some boards won't even start with this card installed. When I use it with a PCI slot it's fine. I only wanted to use it to diagnose acid damaged boards to know what components fail to initialize on startup and most of those boards only have ISA slots. Checking continuity is not always an option.
Well, I expected too much from a $5 card.

Reply 6 of 19, by Deunan

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
Miphee wrote on 2020-05-09, 04:36:

Mine could be faulty. LEDs never show correct values in any ISA slots: missing supply rails, LED display not showing anything, some boards won't even start with this card installed.

Er, are you sure you put it into the ISA slot in correct orientation? I have a card like on your photo, works with all the mobos I've tried so far and I mostly deal with 386 ones, some 486 and 286 as well.

When you put it in, the LEDs should be near the mobo edge, and the PCI connector hanging towards the mobo center.

Reply 7 of 19, by Miphee

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Deunan wrote on 2020-05-09, 10:09:

Er, are you sure you put it into the ISA slot in correct orientation?

Yes, I always check before installing it. I just tested it with a QDI V4S471 VESA board and it didn't work. 1 LED lit up: +12V and nothing else. I tested all ISA slots and nothing. Maybe one of the chips responsible for the ISA part is faulty.
Now I need a diagnostic card for the diagnostic card as well. 😁

Reply 8 of 19, by Deunan

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
Miphee wrote on 2020-05-09, 10:52:

I just tested it with a QDI V4S471 VESA board and it didn't work. 1 LED lit up: +12V and nothing else. I tested all ISA slots and nothing. Maybe one of the chips responsible for the ISA part is faulty.

Okay, to make sure, you have a card that looks exactly like the photo in the first post? 8 LEDs, 2x2 digit display, one button? ISA+PCI?

I just double-checked to make sure and the voltage indicator LEDs don't go to any chips, these are directly tied to the edge connectors. Both ISA and PCI at the same time. If it works on PCI it must also work on ISA. So I don't see how you can have only the 12V LED come up but not +5V or the -12V - unless the PCB itself is faulty. Here's the ISA pinout, you can trace the connection yourself since this is just 2-layer mobo and nothing is hidden in the innery layers: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common … SA_Bus_pins.svg

Reply 9 of 19, by Miphee

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Deunan wrote on 2020-05-09, 11:10:

Okay, to make sure, you have a card that looks exactly like the photo in the first post?

Confirmed.
I tried with 2x 286 and 1x 386 boards, you can see the results.

When I try with the board with PCI it works in the PCI slot but not in the ISA slot.

Reply 10 of 19, by Deunan

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Yup. You put in the card wrong in the ISA slot. I suppose it doesn't help that the PCI orientation ends up with the display to the back, rather then to the front.

So, again: Put the card in the ISA slot so that the LEDs face the edge of the mobo, and the PCI slot is towards the center. Then I'm sure it'll work. Hopefully you didn't fry anything with the 12V/-12V on the wrong card contacts...

Reply 11 of 19, by Miphee

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

How embarassing. Good thing it is foolproof, it's working now. I never thought I have to turn the card 180° in ISA to get it to work.
Even the ISA pinouts start from A/B 1-31 so "rear" would be in the position I originally tried.
They meant the rear of the computer.
Thank you! I didn't want to try to turn the card but it was exactly what I needed to do.

Reply 12 of 19, by aha2940

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
Miphee wrote on 2020-05-09, 12:46:
How embarassing. Good thing it is foolproof, it's working now. I never thought I have to turn the card 180° in ISA to get it to […]
Show full quote

How embarassing. Good thing it is foolproof, it's working now. I never thought I have to turn the card 180° in ISA to get it to work.
Even the ISA pinouts start from A/B 1-31 so "rear" would be in the position I originally tried.
They meant the rear of the computer.
Thank you! I didn't want to try to turn the card but it was exactly what I needed to do.

Well, if you think about it, ISA cards are always turned 180° when compared to PCI ones. When installed, PCI cards always have the components on the lower side, ISA cards always have the components on the upper side 😉

Reply 13 of 19, by Miphee

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
aha2940 wrote on 2020-05-09, 23:11:

Well, if you think about it, ISA cards are always turned 180° when compared to PCI ones. When installed, PCI cards always have the components on the lower side, ISA cards always have the components on the upper side 😉

True, I just screwed up. 😀 Luckily no harm done.

Reply 14 of 19, by migry

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

I very recently bought four of these cards via AliExpress. I asked for them to be shipped from the UK (to the UK), to avoid issues with import duties. They arrived after about a week, so I assume that they already had stock in their UK warehouse. The cost was higher than I expected from searches some time ago. I thouight that I might be able to salvage some parts from the ones I didn't use. In fact I thought or assumed that the big chip was (or used to be) a EPM7032. The cards which I received seem to be a newer version with four digits. There is a switch which allows you to scroll through the remembered POST numbers. I am pretty sure that it is identical to the one pictured at the start of this thread, apart from the package style of the larger part.

The large part is not an EPM7032 CPLD, but it is a 8051 microcontroller (SM2965). Use of a microcontroller explains why a recall function can be implemented.

It was interesting to compare all four boards. The 74F74 and SM2965 all appear to be new parts with identical date codes. The GALs have clearly been recycled/harvested/re-used because they are from different manufacturers and have "witness marks" such as the remains of glue from stickers and colouring which must have come from the initial use. The 74HC374 also appear to be recycled/harvested. The latter is interesting. I posted on another forum about fake parts from China, and someone commented about a 8255 PIO, that they couldn't see why anyone would be interested to fake/re-cycle these cheap parts. Well looks like they even re-cycle common or garden TTL! Just of anyone is interested in this issue, a few videos on YouTube by DiodeGoneWild clearly shows that large electrolytic capacitors are being re-cycled and used in high power PSUs (OMG!). They have witness marks of dents in the metal case where pliers must have been used to yank them from the original PCBs. Wax (!) has been used to try to fill the dents. Also they have been re-wrapped in plastic to try to make them appear to be Nippon-Chemicon (sp?) brand which I understand is a high quality manufacturer of capacitors.

To answer the original question, I just did a search and found a PDF scan of the booklet which came with my board. I have to admit that the booklet is full of very useful information.

I will be confirming the use of port address 0x80 to write a hex value, and I will then use it in my software to aid debug. I am keen to experiment with assembly code using Borland TASM.

I did wonder if the board could be re-purposed. The GALs simply decode the address lines from either the ISA or PCI busses. Gnd and Vcc pins on each bus are used to indicate to the GALs which type of slot it is plugged into. The design is a bit strange. Some inputs to the GAL have small value resistors, and some don't. There seems no rhyme or reason for their use. The GALs (at least on my boards) are a mixture of 5V and 3.3V types. Use of the 3.3V types is clearly very bad design, but as mentioned these GALs are salvaged parts, and I assume no-one gives a **** about using the right 5V devices. On the ISA side ~IOW and ~SMEMR connect to the GALs. I have no idea why ~SMEMR (memory read) is used. On the PCI side the four byte enables go to the GALs. As inputs the microcontroller simply connects to the push switch and to the 8 outputs from the 8 bit '374 register. Apparently the microcontroller is flash based, so it may be possible to re-program, but getting information on this is likely impossible, since I have found Chinese IC vendors are not wanting to share/publish this information (not really a surprise since many Western IC manufacturers have the same policy). Seems a waste of a reasonably powerful processor. I am pretty sure that if the GALs are desoldered it shouldn't be too difficult to reverse engineer the equations, after all they are used for address decode. GAL U1 connects to both ISA CLK and PCI CLK (obviously not both at once!) but I suspect this is used for simply latching and does not implement a complicated state machine. So at the very least you could re-program the GALs and get an 8 bit port at a user defined port address.

Reply 15 of 19, by mkarcher

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
migry wrote on 2021-09-05, 12:53:

On the ISA side ~IOW and ~SMEMR connect to the GALs. I have no idea why ~SMEMR (memory read) is used.

There are those four bus status LEDs: CLK, TRDY, FRAME and RESET. CLK and RESET make sense on ISA, too. I can confirm that RESET works as expected in both ISA and PCI slots. On the other hand, TRDY and FRAME are PCI signals that don't have similar signals on the ISA bus. I guess SMEMR is used to drive one of these LEDs, and it can be used as indicator that code from chips available on the ISA bus is executed. Depending on mainboard desing, SMEMR may be inactive for system memory and system BIOS, but SMEMR is surely active for option ROM code - unless the option ROM is already shadowed.

I never explicitly tested what the TRDY and FRAME LEDs mean if you plug the card into an ISA slot, but having those LEDs indicate IOW and SMEMR would make some sense.

Reply 16 of 19, by migry

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

PCI CLK connects to ISA CLK via a 75 ohm resistor and connects to the 74F74 clock and also to the CLK LED.

PCI FRAME connects directly to ISA OSC and also connects to the FRAME LED.

PCI RESET connects directly to ISA RESET and goes into GAL U1. One output of GAL U1 goes to the RESET LED. I get the impression that both resets might be different polarities, so the GAL can correct this so that the RESET LED lights the same way regardless of whether the PCI or ISA slot is being used. The GAL has one input which is '1' when plugged into an ISA slot and '0' when plugged into a PCI slot.

PCI IRDY goes into GAL U1. One output of GAL U1 goes to the IRDY LED. The same GAL has ISA IOW and ISA MEMR as inputs, so in ISA mode these might be used in some way to make the IRDY LED flash.

Reply 17 of 19, by srmeister

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Anyone knows what the button is for? it didnt do anything on the 286 ISA board i tested the card on.
Also, this card seems to react to any IOW command, regardless of the port address issued. I thought the POST code is always on port 80h but this card picks up everything, which is annoying in my case.

Reply 18 of 19, by Zerthimon

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
srmeister wrote on 2021-10-30, 22:12:

Anyone knows what the button is for? it didnt do anything on the 286 ISA board i tested the card on.
Also, this card seems to react to any IOW command, regardless of the port address issued. I thought the POST code is always on port 80h but this card picks up everything, which is annoying in my case.

The button actually works - you have to "press and hold" the button for a few seconds to enter the command mode. From there you can "browse" through the sequence of the POST codes recorded since powering on the system. There are some other options there but I don't know their purpose.

Reply 19 of 19, by srmeister

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

@Zerthimon: thank you it actually works. I think it can only display last 4 codes but better than nothing