x86 card revival thread

[micheledipaola]

thanks @evanboonie for all your work. The cache mod looks really promising and interesting, and the component list you shared is less than 20€ from digikey, so definitely worth a shot. I am totally scared by the soldering work, so I should probably ask for some help by some skilled friend, but I am putting this mod on my to-do list for sure... looking forward to the PCMCIA one too on my... OrangePC 2 (let's start using the correct naming you provided) but... I leave you to go on and explore it before

 

[evanboonie]

I finally got around to testing a 3.3v AMD Am5x86 in my OrangePC 2 and it works! Well, mostly. First off, it just refuses to POST when set to the 3x multiplier. I believe that the issue isn't so much with the multiplier itself, but the fact that the bodge wire enables write back cache when in 3x mode. I didn't feel like moving the wire around to confirm since it works in 4x though. There are also some BIOS issues with the 5x86: The system will only ever report it as a 75MHz 486 regardless of the bus speed. HWiNFO, System Information 8.0, and TopBench 3.8 also believe that it is a 75MHz 486. However, Speedsys 4.78 does actually report it as an Am5x86 running at the correct clock speed. I even got a successful Speedsys run with a 40MHz bus and the CPU running at 160MHz with accurate looking benchmark results. I haven't gotten around to installing Windows on it yet, so I'll report back when I get that up and running stable.

I also received the other CL-PD6710 PCMCIA chip that I ordered from China and this one checked out okay on the multimeter (good VCC+GND pin locations). This one was a "Basis Communications" part instead of Cirrus Logic, so if you go looking for one, that is my recommendation at this time. The Basis part is also the one installed on the PCMCIA PC/104 board I have which I was planning on harvesting as a backup option. After soldering the new CL-PD6710 on to my OrangePC 2, it still boots. I don't have any software on it to test the slot functionality yet, but I hope to install Windows 95 on it this weekend and will give it a test then.

 

[evanboonie]

I have finished my journey with the Orange PC 2 hardware upgrades and everything is working great! For those just tuning in, my card started life as a "220" with only serial/parallel. I added L2 cache and PCMCIA to give it all of the features of a "290". I even got write back cache working on my Am5x86 at 4x by moving the bodge wire to always enable it. Running at 160MHz with WB enabled, I scored a 60 on Speedsys. I also got Windows 95 installed and running stable on this configuration. PCMCIA works within Windows 95 as well! Below are some photos of my modded card. I put an oversized heatsink on the 3.3v regulator as it does get quite hot. I had to cut a fin off of the heatsink to make it fit. I also trimmed back the PCMCIA cage to make room for socketing the Decl ROM after I dumped it.




Eventually I would like to try hacking the BIOS on this card to tighen up timings and see if I can squeeze even more performance out of it. I'm also waiting patiently for the PCMCIA PicoGUS to give it sound. I'm currently moving to a new house now though, so this will have to wait for future months to complete.

 

[evanboonie]

I've also finished modding my original Orange PC. The clock doubling and 8k of cache works perfectly on the TI486SXLC2 I installed. I tried overclocking it, but the OrangePC application reports errors on start even when I run it at 30MHz, so this card is basically not over-clockable. The 25MHz (50MHz clock doubled) speed and additional cache still result in almost 2x performance vs the Cx486SLC that came installed in the card. Speedsys locks up with this configuration, but SI8 and Topbench report scores between a 386DX-40 and 486DX-33. I also used an ISA riser card to install a low profile sound card which I wired up to my Quadra's CD audio input and it also works perfectly! I really like the audio quality and the fact that line level audio is exposed on headers for the OPTi 82C931 card I'm using, but loading the drivers do make MS-DOS 6.22 take 5-10 minutes to boot... If anyone else tries this, I'd recommend using a different ISA riser than I used. The "riser" I used was designed for pin headers, not another ISA slot; so tedious bending of pins on the edge connector slots was required to make it fit. You can't see in the photo as it is below the sound card, but I also attached a heatsink to the CPU as it gets quite warm vs the original.

 

[NJRoadfan]

It shouldn't take 5-10 minutes to boot MS-DOS. Give UNISOUND a shot in configuring the PnP soundcard.

 

[evanboonie]

It shouldn't take 5-10 minutes to boot MS-DOS. Give UNISOUND a shot in configuring the PnP soundcard.

Thanks for the tip, I'll give that a shot. It booted in seconds before I installed the OPTi driver I found on Vogons.

 

[powermax]

I also took some better quality photos of these Orange386 and OrangePC 290 cards.
View attachment 45833

Is the above Orange386 card from the OrangePC 200 series?

I assume it's a Nubus card. The question is where the Nubus interface is implemented. I see a Xilinx FPGA (U44) and a large IC right above it (U67). Unfortunately, the sticker "90 ATC 01020" hides the chip markings. It would be great to know what kind of chip sits there.

Every Nubus card requires a DeclROM to be recognized by Mac OS. U82 looks like the DeclROM. Did you try to dump its content?

 

[joevt]

If the ROMs are working, then try SlotsDump or SlotsGrab from https://github.com/joevt/SlotsDump to dump them. It might be interesting to see if those dumps match an externally dumped version.

 

[evanboonie]

My previous post #137 on this thread has dumps from the original OrangePC (200.bin) and the OrangePC 2 (220.bin). When I say "Original OrangePC" I mean the one with a single 16 bit ISA slot and 386sx/486slc. The OrangePC 2 is the 200 series. I desoldered the DeclROM chips and put them in an EEPROM programmer to get those dumps.

 

[joevt]

My previous post #137 on this thread has dumps from the original OrangePC (200.bin) and the OrangePC 2 (220.bin). When I say "Original OrangePC" I mean the one with a single 16 bit ISA slot and 386sx/486slc. The OrangePC 2 is the 200 series. I desoldered the DeclROM chips and put them in an EEPROM programmer to get those dumps.

They just contain product info. No drivers or BIOS or anything. Everything else is zeros.

They both have:
Board:
OrangePC
Orange Micro, Inc.
1.0

200 has:
CPU:
CPU_80386_OrangeMicro_OrangePC

220 has:
CPU:
CPU_486_OrangeMicro_OrangePC

 

[Byrd]

I even got write back cache working on my Am5x86 at 4x by moving the bodge wire to always enable it. Running at 160MHz with WB enabled, I scored a 60 on Speedsys.

On your card and CPU did WB give a reported boost over WT cache? I've a OrangePC 290 card with an Intel DX4-100, unsure if the WB-enabled version but keen to try if worth the effort.