Michael Lee wrote:
>
>As for books, just an old copy of Upgrading and Repairing PCs is a great
>reference in my opinion.
>
>
Thanks, Michael. I'll look for a copy of it.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
>
>Given that this is a 486, I don't think that the BIOS is your
>problem. I've used OPTI chipset 486s with two drives with no
>problem.
>
>What kind of IDE cable are you using to hook up the second drive? If
>it's an 80-conductor (UDMA) cable, then it's likely that the old IDE
>controller can't see the drive. You need the 40-conductor cable.
>You may also have to jumper the drive to restrict it to 8GB or less
>(some drives can do this).
>
>FWIW,
>Chuck
>
>
The cable is a 40-pin ribbon cable (the old kind).
Hi!
I am continuing work on the N8VEM project. So far the SBC phase appears to
be a success. There are many successful builders.
The next phase has started. I just received an order of ECB backplane PCBs.
I am assembling my own ECB backplane using standard off-the-shelf-parts.
The ECB backplane can be used with the N8VEM SBC for IO expansion. It is
intended for the "heavy" IO devices like Disk controllers and video boards.
I am presently working on an ECB bus monitor to assist in the development of
builder developed ECB peripherals.
However, the ECB bus monitor will probably not be available for several
weeks.
After the ECB bus monitor project, I will continue on with the N8VEM Disk IO
peripheral. It will have an IDE and NEC765 based FDC.
All hardware and software information is freely available and I will help
you the best I can to build your system.
Obviously, most builders are highly skilled individuals who choose to highly
customize their systems and don't need any of my help.
Builders are encouraged to share their experiences on the N8VEM forums to
help others. This has been quite successful in identifying and resolving
various bugs.
If you are interested in either the N8VEM SBC or ECB backplane PCBs to build
your own home brew Z80 CP/M computer, please contact me offline.
The SBC and the ECB backplane PCBs are available for low cost ($20 each plus
shipping).
Thank you in advance. Have a nice day!
Andrew Lynch
PS, you can get additional information here:
http://groups.google.com/group/n8vem
You can find a Terak emulator here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bk-terak-emu/
Schematics of the boards would be nice to find.
I have pics of the boards on bitsavers.
If it ends up you're missing boards, I have a CPU, but
no monitor or keyboard, and at this point it seems about
as likely to finding a kb/monitor for my PERQ.
Geez, that hurts. They're 'investment grade'
systems now. Major bummer.
I saw a couple, some years ago, rusting away in a
scrapyard in the midwest. They used to belong to
Boeing. Damaged beyond all repair.
Lots of heartache to go around . . . .
-- Steven Hirsch <snhirsch at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It's listed for $199 plus shipping for the main unit
<sigh> I picked up three or four units with disk drives about 12 years
ago at University of Vermont's surplus sale. Had no idea what they were
and could not find anyone who did. Ended up parting them out and keeping
the drive mechanisms.
Blast.
Steve
--
____________________________________________________________
Click to make millions by owning your own franchise.
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/Ioyw6i3m6iRzCLyaA7qgoeQCz0rN6r7…
Does anybody have a PC board cad layout of the DEC card edge connector?
I was hoping to find it in PCB (http://pcb.sourceforge.net/index.html)
format.
I would like to have some boards fabricated that were just fingers and
connection pads. I will attach the fingers to some Vector boards and do
point-to-point wiring. I have some project ideas for OMNIBUS and QBus,
but DEC protoboards are rare and/or expensive.
I have little experience with layout work and so far have been
frustrated by my attempts.
-chuck
Hi Dave,
> I'd love to see something like this happen. Are the Lilith's
> internals documented well enough to allow for something like this?
They weren't until Jos Dreesen provided the ftp address:
ftp://jdreesen.dyndns.org/ftp/lilith
What there was effectively user documentation / research papers on
the Lilith hardware / software and the Medos operating system and
a PC version of the Lilith modula-2 compiler (with an MCode interpreter)
in both source and object form.
But now we have systems disks, source code, microcode and schematics.
So we can emulate lilith at a variety of levels from, say, a simple
Linux/X11 software version to a low-level TTL reproduction (thought you'd
have to source AMD29xx bit-slice processor parts). Importantly for me
the new information contains it's bitmap formats so my MCode interpreter
in 'C' can support the missing graphics opcodes.
Lilith is really an impressive European graphics workstation, which
although not as revolutionary as the Alto was certainly radical for the
time even though it predated the Macintosh by only 2 or 3 years.
Amongst its many interesting facets:
* The display was geared to PAL video standards, hence the 768x594, 50Hz
interlaced format (of course this means it can be emulated on any SVGA or higher-resolution display).
* MCode is well suited to microcode and cpu emulation making it easily
ported to the pdp-11, and 8086.
* They used a kind of 8086 segmentation scheme to get around 64kW limits.
* It could run Modula-2 about 3x faster than an Alto could run Mesa.
* It was a true programmer's machine running Modula-2 from the
ground up. In that sense it was an experiment in using the latest GUI
ideas for systems development (wheras Alto was primarily an experiment in
easy-to-use personal computing for non-technical people).
In the end it's the use of MCode which should allow a firmware-level emulation to run original systems disks on a simple Microcontroller and that kinda interests me: A lilith for only a few ?/?/$ :-)
So, one day I'll have my own Lilith, and it will fit in my pocket ;-)
-cheers from Julz @P
---------Original Message(s):
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:24:55 -0700
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
Subject: Re: Upgrading early BIOS
On 14 Aug 2008 at 10:55, M H Stein wrote:
> Well, I never knew that just replacing the cable in my 386 and 486 systems
> would speed things up; live and learn. I always thought that if the mobo
> wasn't pin 34 aware and UDMA capable then the cable wouldn't have much
> effect on the transfer mode. AFAIK in order to use UDMA all three items
> have to be UDMA capable, the mobo, the cable and the drives, although
> I'd say that, assuming it's UDMA aware, the mobo controls the speed
> depending on what kind of cable and drives it sees. Semantics?
Partly, I suppose. I can speak only from (a pile of) experience.
Using a UDMA cable can create some real problems with older systems.
And some early supposedly-UDMA-capable systems can't handle the full
transfer rate of UDMA-133.
IDE's pretty much been a mess from Day One. For example, I've got an
early IDE drive that flips the endian-sense on the word pair returned
for the total number of sectors on the drive. It was not uncommon
for drives from two different manufacturers not to work as master-
slave on the same cable.
At any rate, for the OP my advice stands. Use a 40-conductor cable
and forget about cable select--jumper for master and slave. And
cross your fingers and offer up a chicken or two to whatever deity is
in charge of IDE operation.
Cheers,
Chuck
----------Reply:
Ah, now those 3 paragraphs I agree with 100% (although I'm not sure that
IDE deities care for chicken); anything else was surely just semantics ;-)
m
Hi,
I am writing a little 68000 ASM code so I can add a few of my own commands to AMOS Basic. Whilst searching online I found this great page:
http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=84
It mentions a "green-covered" issue of Byte with programming tips for the 68000 (eg. moveq #0 is faster than clr.l 0!). Does anyone have this issue and can I have a copy of it? Or at the very least, the issue number so I can hunt it down, please?
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
Hi,
I found a program, which converts a .brd file into Protel format. I
can import Protel format into my Altium designer system.
If you still interested, please send me your files. Thanks.
By the way, I used EAGLE more than 20 years ago, but it doesnt meet
any of the design creterias of commercial PCB development, so I drop
it. Maybe the system is better now, but I can tell you, I dont need a
day or a week to create a component, I just need 10 minutes to create
components with 20 to 40 Pins, including different packages (Through
hole and SMD). And I am not a?professional PCB designer, I only do two
or three simple projects a year.
Cheers
Gerhard
