Pardon the stupid question, but this won't work with a bog standard 1997 era VGA monitor?

sirlemonhead wrote:

Pardon the stupid question, but this won't work with a bog standard 1997 era VGA monitor?

It willl work even with a modern LCD as long as I can source a VGA card that function in an 8 bit slot. However I plan to eventually use an EGA card, and for this you need a suitable monitor that accept a 9pin digital signal.

What happens if you plug in a monitor to it as is, into the Hercules card? I'm clueless about anything that exists before my 386 VGA PC to be honest..

sirlemonhead wrote:

What happens if you plug in a monitor to it as is, into the Hercules card? I'm clueless about anything that exists before my 386 VGA PC to be honest..

You would need to use alot of force as the connector dosn't fit. 😉 It won't work at all is the correct answer.

Many 16 bit ISA video cards can be configured to work in 8 bit slots so finding a video card should not be that hard and 8 bit ISA VGA cards are not that rare anyhow.

Thanks! I have to admit I'm tempted...

Skyscraper wrote:

sirlemonhead wrote:

What happens if you plug in a monitor to it as is, into the Hercules card? I'm clueless about anything that exists before my 386 VGA PC to be honest..

You would need to use alot of force as the connector dosn't fit. 😉 It won't work at all is the correct answer.

Many 16 bit ISA video cards can be configured to work in 8 bit slots so finding a video card should not be that hard and 8 bit ISA VGA cards are not that rare anyhow.

I know the Pine PT-505S Realtek RTG3105iEH 256K VGA card work in 8-Bit mode, in fact it can't do anything else despite being on a 16-bit card, those 16-bit traces go nowhere! For a 486 or above it is a dreadfully slow card, but I'm sure it would be fine for a XT or 286 or even 386SX(my SX25 wouldn't play, but that's a IBM thing) They should also be really cheap on ebay and are very common too.
Picture here on my 386 thread My new IBM 386 build

Look what you've done. Now I crave another XT.

I wonder if he ships to the US.

Seller has a lot of random stuff listed. Looks like a clearance house, wonder what else was wherever in that long forgotten storeroom?
Think its a very fair price and love the fake 3.5 FDD, just to old for my interests. Looking forward to the unboxing though!! 😀 😀

BSA Starfire wrote:

I know the Pine PT-505S Realtek RTG3105iEH 256K VGA card work in 8-Bit mode, in fact it can't do anything else despite being on a 16-bit card, those 16-bit traces go nowhere! For a 486 or above it is a dreadfully slow card, but I'm sure it would be fine for a XT or 286 or even 386SX(my SX25 wouldn't play, but that's a IBM thing) They should also be really cheap on ebay and are very common too.
Picture here on my 386 thread My new IBM 386 build

I can confirm that these Realtek cards work fine in an 8bit slot , I have tested one with my XT as well:

also this one:

Both are slow , I wouldn't use them in anything more than a 10mhz 286.
An interesting fact on the realtek card is that it has a VBE1.2 BIOS, could prove useful though 🤣 Max vram is 512kb

XT machines are truly special. I've been diving a lot in XT class system intrincacies, building custom boards that enhance XT functionality. Just recently me and my soldering station went on a date and we produced 5 babies:

From left to right: twin XT IDE CF cards, a 1MB RAM board on the middle and on the right another twin pair, AT2XT keyboard converters.

The XT ide cards are super nice. I haven't done my 1mb or 2mb EMS cards though.

Time to update this thread as I've just been able to open the package from the seller. I can confirm that everything seems to work, which is really amazing considering how long this machine has been kept in storage 😀

There is a coin cell battery in the I/O expansion board but it's fine and hasn't leaked. Only dust there was inside the machine was from the foam used in the packaging, apart from that the insides are spotless and the thing looks like it's never been used before.

I removed the monochrome card and put a VGA/EGA combo card just bought on Ebay. Was initially looking for a PT-505 as per the recommendations on this thread but none was available fast enough so I took the plunge on the more expensive Oak. Anyway it works fine so I'm happy about that too. I've also tried the system with the EGA card I bought on Ebay recently and it works in composite mode when hooked to a TV, so I'm excited about trying some composite old-school DOS games, provided they work with an EGA card.

The only thing is that of course I don't have a DOS in a 5.25" floppy... so the machine boots, the drive seems to work but I cannot load an OS. I only have a handful of 5.25" floppies anyway as sadly I gave them all away a few years ago 🙁 The user manual for the I/O card says it can deal with two DS/DD drives, so I suppose hooking up a 1.44mb 3.5" drive wouldn't work. Another option would be to plug the 5.25" drive in my Pentium machine and try to copy a DOS on a spare floppy (not even knowing if the disks are still ok).

Carlostex, I saw your amibay sales thread at the time but I needed to check that the machine worked before committing. Anyway, I'm definitely interested by the XT-IDE card now as it will make the machine far easier to use.

Will try to post pics shortly.

MMaximus wrote:

sirlemonhead wrote:

Pardon the stupid question, but this won't work with a bog standard 1997 era VGA monitor?

It willl work even with a modern LCD as long as I can source a VGA card that function in an 8 bit slot. However I plan to eventually use an EGA card, and for this you need a suitable monitor that accept a 9pin digital signal.

And those 9pin digital monitors are very hard to obtain..

MMaximus wrote:

Carlostex, I saw your amibay sales thread at the time but I needed to check that the machine worked before committing. Anyway, I'm definitely interested by the XT-IDE card now as it will make the machine far easier to use.

Will try to post pics shortly.

We'll talk on amibay then! And no doubt the XT-IDE card is very convenient. The XT-IDE CF card is supposed to work with ATA-2 compliant hard disks although i never tried it.

And yes please...pics, pics, pics!!! 😀

Until you get your XT-IDE card you can boot the system with a 1.44M floppy drive and a 720KB floppy (1.44MB floppy + tape). 😀

I did this with the exact same system so I know for sure that it works.

Be sure to have a 16bit ISA I/O card ready when you get the XT-IDE card as the 1.44M floppy drive will stop working with the included I/O card as soon as the motherboard gets BIOS support for 1.44M drives. The included 8bit card do not like the higher spindle speed of a 1.44M drive actually working as a 1.44M drive but using a 16 bit I/O card with everything except needed ports and the floppy controller disabled is an easy fix.

When it comes to hard disks I did test if I could get one running with this XT-IDE card for Compact Flash and none of my drives from ~1990 - ~2000 worked, A 4GB Compact Flash card worked at once. Finding an ATA-2 compliant HDD is not very easy it seems.

Skyscraper wrote:

Be sure to have a 16bit ISA I/O card ready when you get the XT-IDE card as the 1.44M floppy drive will stop working with the included I/O card as soon as the motherboard gets BIOS support for 1.44M drives. The included 8bit card do not like the higher spindle speed of a 1.44M drive actually working as a 1.44M drive but using a 16 bit I/O card with everything except needed ports and the floppy controller disabled is an easy fix.

That's only an issue if he decides to get the HD Floppy BIOS extensions. It's totally independant from the XT-IDE BIOS.

Skyscraper wrote:

When it comes to hard disks I did test if I could get one running with this XT-IDE card for Compact Flash and none of my drives from ~1990 - ~2000 worked, A 4GB Compact Flash card worked at once. Finding an ATA-2 compliant HDD is not very easy it seems.

It would be a good idea to compile a list of Hard Drives that do work with the XT-IDE card...when we find them.

carlostex wrote:

That's only an issue if he decides to get the HD Floppy BIOS extensions. It's totally independant from the XT-IDE BIOS. […]
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Skyscraper wrote:

Be sure to have a 16bit ISA I/O card ready when you get the XT-IDE card as the 1.44M floppy drive will stop working with the included I/O card as soon as the motherboard gets BIOS support for 1.44M drives. The included 8bit card do not like the higher spindle speed of a 1.44M drive actually working as a 1.44M drive but using a 16 bit I/O card with everything except needed ports and the floppy controller disabled is an easy fix.

That's only an issue if he decides to get the HD Floppy BIOS extensions. It's totally independant from the XT-IDE BIOS.

Skyscraper wrote:

When it comes to hard disks I did test if I could get one running with this XT-IDE card for Compact Flash and none of my drives from ~1990 - ~2000 worked, A 4GB Compact Flash card worked at once. Finding an ATA-2 compliant HDD is not very easy it seems.

It would be a good idea to compile a list of Hard Drives that do work with the XT-IDE card...when we find them.

I know, but 1.44M floppy drive support is really nice to have. 😀

I agree on the hard disk list.

In theory if a drive supports natively PIO modes 3 and 4 then it should work. In theory... I'm not sure exaactly about the time frame though. It seems that between 1996 and 1998 is a safe bet.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/std_ATA2.htm

So, I plugged the 5.25" floppy drive on my Pentium 4 machine, tried with a spare cable, didn't work, then noticed that the cable from the XT machine has a twist on the second connector so tried with that but didn't work either - Windows XP tells me something about an E/S error, it can see the drive in the file explorer but not access it. Also my P4C800-ED board doesn't even try to access the floppy drive on boot despite having the correct "360k" setting in the bios. Couldn't figure out what the problem was so I gave up.

I then tried the same thing with my Socket 7 build (ASUS VX-97) and I was able to access the floppy drive in DOS. I made a DOS 6.22 boot disk and used it with the XT. On the only spare working floppy disk I had I copied Arkanoid and had a quick play, I forgot how fun playing on an XT is - the PC speaker sounds so different than in modern cases, much fuller and louder 😀

Don't forget that you can build a complete V20/8088 XT-class computer from scratch.

http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects

You can buy blank PCBs for floppy controller, IDE controller, video controller, Adlib-compatible music card, along with ISA backplane and processor board.

It's almost entirely through-hole soldering. The motherboard is micro-ATX compatible, so it'll work with ATX power supplies and cases.

I'll probably make this my XT PC of choice once mine is complete.

The floppy controller specifically is very interesting, as it can support 2.88mb floppy drives and tape drives on XT class systems...