stamasd wrote on 2024-10-06, 01:40:

Yeah I have a s7 motherboard (PCChips something-or-other can't remember the model) with that kind of USB header. I ended up taking a standard 2xUSB bracket, and pulled the pins out of the plug on one side and inserted them in reverse order. It was pretty fiddly because they were hard to extract, but in the end it worked without breaking anything.
(... and once I had it working, I actually glued it in place to the motherboard so I'm not tempted to pull it out and reuse by accident in a standard pinout header 😀 )

It's easier when you have the two five pin style USB dongle. I believe those were once common for this very reason.

Yeah, I have exactly the same thing, but it's all in one block. I just moved the pins around, but that one you pictured would have been a lot nicer. 😀

MeatballB wrote on 2024-10-05, 16:12:

VGA Port Adapter I got on eBay. Well, for the first time since I've had it, I got video out

Nice and lucky!
So AZZA 810DTA / 810DTC VGA dongle pinout is straight 1 to 1 connections:

1IDC16-Female   HDDB15-Female
21               1
32               2
43               3
54               4
65               5
76               6
87               7
98               8
109               9  (Sometimes Blocked)        
1110              10
1211              11
1312              12
1413              13
1514              14
1615              15
1716              Open

Would be nice if theretroweb got this info somewhere on https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/azza-810dtc-pt-810dtc and info about DTA being same board with onboard sound, and your picture https://i.ibb.co/9N2KRWf/azza-810dta.jpg

stamasd wrote on 2024-10-05, 17:07:

proprietary connector "AIR bus" into which some device they call "keybios" can be inserted and allows manipulation of the BIOS.
(proprietary hardware sucks)

BIOS is Firmware Hub type so this is a FWH header. Think XBOX modchips and LPC.

>"Advanced bye-bye warranty"

If you just want a working board I would send it back. If you want a toy to play with this is fascinating :]

>What I thought was artifacts at the top of the screen is actually the screen, just shrunk down to a small size and duplicated across the top. You can see a bunch of mini Win98 Boot Disk images up top here.

Most likely Bios forces video timings to NTSC because this thing was supposed to be connected to a TV thru CN23 header dongle.

AT keyboard still not working and still beeping after successfully flashing 810dtc bios means this board was hardware modified by Request. My guess would be they broke or bridged a track on keyboard connector to block users from plugging their own Keyboards and messing with the thing. Bridging one of the lines low would also explain constant beeping - hardware thinks keyboard is constantly trying to send keystrokes.

Did you save this weird bios by any chnce?

There's a ps2 header on the board
Pinouts in manual.

But take a high res pic of the kb area.
If it's still beeping the hardware mod might be right.

The other option is to use the award bios modding tool to set the usb kb defaults permanently and reflash it with autoexec. I had some issues with that in the past. So I'd call it a last resort

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-10-06, 02:38:

Would be nice if theretroweb got this info somewhere on https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/azza-810dtc-pt-810dtc and info about DTA being same board with onboard sound, and your picture https://i.ibb.co/9N2KRWf/azza-810dta.jpg

I sent all the information in with pictures on Friday to them, so hopefully it gets updated at some point.

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-10-06, 02:38:

Did you save this weird bios by any chnce?

I did. I'll post it up here when I get a chance. With a big warning for noone to use it...

As for the close up pics of the AT connector, will do, but the board is currently in the dishwasher. :p I'll snap some later today of the connector and backside of the board.

No soap, I hope.

No soap. Did one quick few minute rinse, and then turned the board and put it on a 30'ish minute light cycle.

Hmm, what's a simple way for me to upload/share that crazy BIOS I found on the board? Board doesn't like the File extension to be uploaded as an attachment.

I think you all might be right and they futzed with the board / AT port. Here's some pictures of both sides. Even me being a newbie when it comes to soldering, that backside picture looks pretty suspect, like they melted the solder on all those connectors so they'd run together and short out. Or maybe that's how it's supposed to look, because now that I look at the 486 board I have, it looks the same.

r15 missing is a bit sus. It's clearly an earth. Where does it go?

How'd you dry it so fast?

Sadly it all looks ordinary 🙁
Next step would be tracking Keyboard data and clock signal to the Winbond w83627hf I/O chip https://theretroweb.com/chip/documentation/w8 … 4a701144552.pdf
KCLK 62, KDAT 63. KBLOCK# 58 and KBRST 60 might also be interesting.

With turned off computer both 62 and 63 should have couple Kohm resistance to 5V, very high resistance to ground and between each other. there should be no resistance between 62 63 and their respective pins on keyboard connector.

myne wrote on 2024-10-06, 14:10:

How'd you dry it so fast?

I didn't really. Shook it out real well, ran a hair dryer over it for 5 minutes or so, but going to let it sit and air dry for a while.

By the way, if anyone wants to mess with the funky BIOS that originally came on the board, I uploaded over here.

810DTA-MOD-BIOS-HARMONY-DO-NOT-USE.BIN

If someone finds this sometime in the future, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, flash your 810DTA with this BIOS. It is a modified BIOS built by a company that used the motherboard for something called 'Harmony by Request' which is/was a Background Music/Digital Sign-Image machine for commercial customers (like Dentists, Restaurants, etc.) The BIOS will bork up your system and has a lot of core features removed/stripped from it. I'm just posting it in case anyone wants to examine it, but you have been warned. 😀

Once again, one step forward, but no joy. 😀 The 'wash' seems to have 'washed away' the crazy beep codes. I get one normal beep at the start, one quick chirp after the mem test, but no more crazy machinegun beep code. Yay! Of course, I'm still stuck with the AT keyboard not working, so I can't get past the Keyboard error to do anything. I've tried two different AT/PS2 Adapters, but only have one PS2 Keyboard to use, but I know it works, as I've hooked it up with both the different adapters to my 486 board and it's recognized. I do have a 'real' AT keyboard on the way, so maybe that does the trick, but I'm not optimistic.

@rasz_pl - I read what you said about the testing, and I half understand it, I even have a multimeter (that I've never used), but what you're asking is clearly beyond me at this point. 😀 I'll look up some tutorials on multimeters and testing, but the probes on the ones I have are wide enough to touch 2-3 legs of the Winbond chip.

Seems like it might actually be the AT connector, and if that's the case, I might be stuck until I can figure out how to test. There is that PS/2 port on the board, which I'm going to try next, but I don't think it'll work. 1) It's for a PS/2 Mouse, so doubt it'll recognize the keyboard and 2) I'm going to need to repin the one adapter I have to make it work and not sure I can pull that off.

Dupe post.

This bios dump wasnt done using awardflash nor uniflash? It looks like ram contents, so the weird bios is lost forever 🙁 edit: might be awdflash proprietary format ?

PS2 header is for a mouse for sure, easy to check - does it connect to pins 65 66 of Winbond chip? keyboard wont work on it.
Really REALLY weird that beeping went away after wash 😮

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-10-06, 22:47:

This bios dump wasnt done using awardflash nor uniflash? It looks like ram contents, so the weird bios is lost forever :( Bad d […]
Show full quote

This bios dump wasnt done using awardflash nor uniflash? It looks like ram contents, so the weird bios is lost forever 🙁
Bad dump repacked:

The attachment 810DTA-MOD-BIOS-HARMONY-DO-NOT-USE.zip is no longer available

PS2 header is for a mouse for sure, easy to check - does it connect to pins 65 66 of Winbond chip? keyboard wont work on it.
Really REALLY weird that beeping went away after wash 😮

Ah dang. I did use awdflash708 to do both the Read/Write of the BIOS at the same time with the following command, "awdflash.exe 810DTC.BIN /Py OLDBIOS.BIN /Sy".

My bad, I thought that would have done it and when it saved the file, I thought I was good.

MeatballB wrote on 2024-10-06, 22:52:

My bad, I thought that would have done it and when it saved the file, I thought I was good.

hmm, maybe its packed in some weird proprietary awdflash format? Its possible this file can be flashed back fine using awdflash

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-10-06, 22:47:

Really REALLY weird that beeping went away after wash 😮

I kinda expected it.

Kb port getting power? Got a multimeter? Or some wire and an led?

USB does absolutely nothing? I thought most of those old boards at least had it enabled enough to get to bios.

https://awdbedit.sourceforge.net/
You could attempt setting usb legacy mode on and autoflashing it with autoexec on your floppy. Just make sure it saves properly first by reopening it.

I'm not responsible if it fails

Yeah, I would try that awdbedit at this point if I could, but I'm somewhat stuck behind the fact I can't get into the BIOS to actually configure the Floppy drives properly. I'll see if I can figure out the KB power or try a real AT keyboard, but past that, I may just have to start exploring other motherboards. This one has taken up way too much of my life already. 😀