Atari PC4 and ISA cards / conflicts?

[leech]

So, for those of you who are unaware, Atari released a series of x86 based computers ranging from an 8088 to a 386, the last being not really designed by them, but labeled as the PC5.  I have the PC4, which is a  286, but weirdly has CGA, EGA, VGA, Hercules and MDA(I think) output.

The stock system as I got it was an 8mhz 286 (turbo to 12) with 1mb of ram, and a 30mb RLL hard drive, with a 1.2mb 5.25" floppy drive, and it came with a keyboard and manuals and disks.

 

First thing I noticed when reading through the manuals, was that there was some confusion on the BIOS setup.  Granted this is my first Pre-Pentium PC, as I didn't switch from my beloved Atari Mega STe until '95 when the Pentiums first came out, and Windows 95, though even at the time I had used DOS a bit, so am familiar with it.  Seems earlier BIOS had a software program to make sense of the settings, I think I found an amibios program that works well enough, and sort of figured out how to change things in the built in bios through the various addresses.  But that brings me to this question...

 

Certain cards I've attempted to put into the ISA slots have just basically ended up giving me a fart noise, even closer than that of the one you get on an Atari 8bit before the 'READY' appears.

 

The current setup I have in there is an Sound Blaster Awe64 (model CT4380, tracked one down with an IDE on there for the CD-ROM), an XT-IDE with a Compact Flash card (I removed the RLL drive and controller), swapped out the 5.25" floppy drive with a HxC Floppy Emulator.

 

Now I've managed to get everything working right (including outputting through the SB Awe64 to a Roland MT-32 for some Monkey Island awesomeness), but I'm really curious about my quest to getting other ISA cards I bought to work in the machine.

The two cards that cause the 'fart' are a Super Multi-IO board made by Digital Research.  I got it before I realized I could get an Awe64 with an ATAPI controller on board, and that the XT-IDE for some unknown reason doesn't support ATAPI...

 

I even tried pulling out the other two ISA boards, only turning it on with that board.  I even set all the jumpers on the board to disable parallel port, serial, ide, etc.  Basically everything, and it still acted like I was stepping on a stink beetle.  The other card I have that it disagrees with, is a NE2000 based Novell Network card.  I picked that one on the advice it'd actually work in DOS.

 

Any and all help appreciated.  I was going to work on scanning in the English manuals as well, once I get some time.

[leech]

Time to pretty it up with some pictures.

[leech]

Video of the setup with Secret of Monkey Island Talkie version, along with the Roland MT-32.

[zzip]

I'm a little confused.   You got the ATAPI CD-ROM working through the SB AWE64?   Why do you still need the I/O card to work?

 

Could it be conflicting with built-in IDE? Or is the existing IDE on a card you removed?

 

I believe older PCs weren't always 100% compatible with the ISA standard. 

[leech]

On 10/2/2020 at 7:57 AM, zzip said:

I'm a little confused.   You got the ATAPI CD-ROM working through the SB AWE64?   Why do you still need the I/O card to work?

 

Could it be conflicting with built-in IDE? Or is the existing IDE on a card you removed?

 

I believe older PCs weren't always 100% compatible with the ISA standard. 

You're right, now that I got it working on the AWE64, I don't really NEED the I/O card to work, I'm just more curious as to why most of the cards I've tried in it cause the start up to crash.  Pretty sure it's memory allocation / IRQ conflicts.  Still need to work out networking. 

 

It's kind of more of a quest thing to get it to work.

[zzip]

Is it that the drivers don't detect the NE2000 card, or does it cause the buzzing sound as well?    Apparently if you have the drivers from the wrong manufacturer with an NE2000 card, it may not detect properly. 

 

I had this issue with an ATAPI cdrom in a 486 recently.   Would not detect.   You'd think any ATAPI driver would work, but nope!   Tried a different driver and worked fine.   So you may want to try different drivers.

[leech]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

Is it that the drivers don't detect the NE2000 card, or does it cause the buzzing sound as well?    Apparently if you have the drivers from the wrong manufacturer with an NE2000 card, it may not detect properly. 

 

I had this issue with an ATAPI cdrom in a 486 recently.   Would not detect.   You'd think any ATAPI driver would work, but nope!   Tried a different driver and worked fine.   So you may want to try different drivers.

The NE2000 causes my XT-IDE to not recognize a card is inserted.  My only guess is that since it also has an empty spot for a boot ROM that it is trying to assign it to the same address space. 

I tried several ways of getting a CF card to play nice with DR-DOS (6 and 7) to install.

 

Ah DOS... where a game won't run because it needs 600kb of conventional memory, and getting things to load into extendend memory is a pain... not to mention the whole difference of XMS vs EMS...

[Clint Thompson]

On 10/1/2020 at 9:08 PM, leech said:

Video of the setup with Secret of Monkey Island Talkie version, along with the Roland MT-32.

That's cool as hell and for a 286 to have a CD-ROM as well! During the time period, I only remember late 386 machines being multimedia machines worthy of a CD-ROM and had never even considered it a realistic possibility for a 286, though clearly it works.

 

How are you getting on with your PC4 these days? That looks like a nice trakball, too!

 

Dig the MT32 setup. I would get one but now they're like $300 thanks to LGR's "awareness" missions

 

What other games have you loaded up on it and more specifically, those that use the MT32?

Edited June 9, 2022 by Clint Thompson

[leech]

34 minutes ago, Clint Thompson said:

That's cool as hell and for a 286 to have a CD-ROM as well! During the time period, I only remember late 386 machines being multimedia machines worthy of a CD-ROM and had never even considered it a realistic possibility for a 286, though clearly it works.

 

How are you getting on with your PC4 these days? That looks like a nice trakball, too!

 

Dig the MT32 setup. I would get one but now they're like $300 thanks to LGR's "awareness" missions

 

What other games have you loaded up on it and more specifically, those that use the MT32?

My next task is to desolder the SIPPs, and put in some SIMM slots so I can upgrade it to 8mb of RAM. 

 

The biggest hurdle to classic gaming on it is the massive amount of games that require a 386 or higher.  But this is for sure the box for 8088 - 80286 era gaming.  The PC had loads of games that will support MIDI output.  I have managed to get boxtron (a compatibility layer for Steam that will set up the MIDI for you for Steam games) to work with Star Wars: Dark Forces.  That is my current 'MIDI enabled game I have slowly been working my way through.  But most of the Sierra games support it as well.  Duke Nukem 3D is another.  Though I don't think that will run on the PC4.

 

Any suggestions on great 286 era games?

[leech]

1 hour ago, Clint Thompson said:

What other games have you loaded up on it and more specifically, those that use the MT32?

https://www.mobygames.com/attribute/sheet/attributeId,47/p,2/

[Clint Thompson]

8 hours ago, leech said:

My next task is to desolder the SIPPs, and put in some SIMM slots so I can upgrade it to 8mb of RAM. 

 

The biggest hurdle to classic gaming on it is the massive amount of games that require a 386 or higher.  But this is for sure the box for 8088 - 80286 era gaming.  The PC had loads of games that will support MIDI output.  I have managed to get boxtron (a compatibility layer for Steam that will set up the MIDI for you for Steam games) to work with Star Wars: Dark Forces.  That is my current 'MIDI enabled game I have slowly been working my way through.  But most of the Sierra games support it as well.  Duke Nukem 3D is another.  Though I don't think that will run on the PC4.

 

Any suggestions on great 286 era games?

That’s awesome about the memory upgrade path. Crazy to learn about SIPP memory after being in the tech field for so long, but most of the earlier computers I had used (8088s) were fixed memory and not upgradeable outside of the expansion cards. 
 

As far as 286 era games, my immediate list would include stuff like Jazz Jackrabbit and the Commander Keen series, just off the top of my head. You’ve already covered Leisure Suit Larry surely.  
 

Any Windows games run well on it?

[leech]

37 minutes ago, Clint Thompson said:

That’s awesome about the memory upgrade path. Crazy to learn about SIPP memory after being in the tech field for so long, but most of the earlier computers I had used (8088s) were fixed memory and not upgradeable outside of the expansion cards. 
 

As far as 286 era games, my immediate list would include stuff like Jazz Jackrabbit and the Commander Keen series, just off the top of my head. You’ve already covered Leisure Suit Larry surely.  
 

Any Windows games run well on it?

Ha, I have known about SIPP existing since I think when I was looking to upgrade the memory in my Mega STe in 1993ish.  I don't think it was around very long at all.  Only a specific window of time before SIMMs were the better choice.  The PC4 has 4 SIPP slots and 4 are just full on soldered in.  I think I am going to need to use hot air to get all the pins cleared at once, gonna be a pain... but only way to max it out to 8mb of RAM.

 

I actually haven't tried any Win3.1 games on it.  Was looking last night at what will even run. 

[UnderTheRain]

On 10/3/2020 at 9:55 PM, leech said:

You're right, now that I got it working on the AWE64, I don't really NEED the I/O card to work, I'm just more curious as to why most of the cards I've tried in it cause the start up to crash.  Pretty sure it's memory allocation / IRQ conflicts.  Still need to work out networking. 

 

It's kind of more of a quest thing to get it to work.

It all depends upon what hardware is on the super i/o board sometimes parallel ports or addition parallel ports were configured to use irq 5 which is being used by you're awe 64. The old ISA cards required manual setting via jumpers quite often and you might find you are sharing irq's or memory address across the cards. It all depends on what ports you have, what extra you have on the cards and what they are set too? The first two serial ports were irq 3 address 03f8 I think and irq 4 02f8 and extra serial ports used to used 3rd port irq 3 again 03e8 and port 4 irq 4 02e8 or something like that parallel ports tended to use irq 5 or irq 7 and that quite often conflicted with sound cards. You need to find out if you have onboard ports what they are set to what the ports on you're card are and what they are set too. This is similar with IDE you used to normally have a primary ide interface with 1 master and 1 slave drive (set by jumpers on the device hd/cr-rom etc) and then a secondary ide interface again with a master and slave, you could have more ide interfaces but you would need to check what settings your onboard has if you have any and what settings your I/O card is using. Too many ports or IDE interfaces and you are likely to have duplicated settings until you change them manually. NE2000's needed a few bits of software under dos are you networking in dos or under windows of some description again check the irq's and addresses.

[leech]

I know when I was testing it at one point I had literally set the jumpers to disable everything on the card, and it still would not boot with the card in it.  I tried it last night in the PS/2 I have and it didn't like it there either.  Pretty sure the card is for one of the early XTs that had basically nothing.  Ha, the board has dual joystick ports, which I think is pretty rare, isn't it?

 

Edit: I guess it is 16-bit, so not XT...

Edited July 8, 2022 by leech

[leech]

On 7/2/2022 at 6:39 AM, UnderTheRain said:

It all depends upon what hardware is on the super i/o board sometimes parallel ports or addition parallel ports were configured to use irq 5 which is being used by you're awe 64. The old ISA cards required manual setting via jumpers quite often and you might find you are sharing irq's or memory address across the cards. It all depends on what ports you have, what extra you have on the cards and what they are set too? The first two serial ports were irq 3 address 03f8 I think and irq 4 02f8 and extra serial ports used to used 3rd port irq 3 again 03e8 and port 4 irq 4 02e8 or something like that parallel ports tended to use irq 5 or irq 7 and that quite often conflicted with sound cards. You need to find out if you have onboard ports what they are set to what the ports on you're card are and what they are set too. This is similar with IDE you used to normally have a primary ide interface with 1 master and 1 slave drive (set by jumpers on the device hd/cr-rom etc) and then a secondary ide interface again with a master and slave, you could have more ide interfaces but you would need to check what settings your onboard has if you have any and what settings your I/O card is using. Too many ports or IDE interfaces and you are likely to have duplicated settings until you change them manually. NE2000's needed a few bits of software under dos are you networking in dos or under windows of some description again check the irq's and addresses.

No worries, I am 46 and know all about IRQs and the master/slave of IDE.  Sometimes old hardware just acts weird.  Like for some reason I could not get the IDE controller to work with a compact flash card last night.  It kept saying it couldn't configure the drive (256mb CF card) even though it attempted to boot off of it, I could not get DOS to format it.

[UnderTheRain]

On 6/9/2022 at 2:36 PM, leech said:

Ha, I have known about SIPP existing since I think when I was looking to upgrade the memory in my Mega STe in 1993ish.  I don't think it was around very long at all.  Only a specific window of time before SIMMs were the better choice.  The PC4 has 4 SIPP slots and 4 are just full on soldered in.  I think I am going to need to use hot air to get all the pins cleared at once, gonna be a pain... but only way to max it out to 8mb of RAM.

 

I actually haven't tried any Win3.1 games on it.  Was looking last night at what will even run. 

How long are the sipp's? Hot ait for removing something long is going to be very very very painful you'd be better off with a hot plate or a soldering iron with a bar (only this also wouldn't be great to things simm length ish). 

[leech]

8 minutes ago, UnderTheRain said:

How long are the sipp's? Hot ait for removing something long is going to be very very very painful you'd be better off with a hot plate or a soldering iron with a bar (only this also wouldn't be great to things simm length ish). 

Solder sucking ftw!

[UnderTheRain]

1 minute ago, leech said:

Solder sucking ftw!

For older computers I would recommend using a de-soldering gun if you have access to one it's much cleaner than an iron and manual solder sucker 

[leech]

9 hours ago, UnderTheRain said:

For older computers I would recommend using a de-soldering gun if you have access to one it's much cleaner than an iron and manual solder sucker 

Yeah, that is what I use.  I have never had much luck with an iron and solder sucker.  I have an okay-ish de-soldering gun.  Has made things much easier, though for sure there are some stubborn spots that it fails on occasionally.

[+tf_hh]

On 6/9/2022 at 6:44 AM, leech said:

My next task is to desolder the SIPPs, and put in some SIMM slots so I can upgrade it to 8mb of RAM.

 

Did you ever make this happen? I´ve tried to expand the memory to 8 MByte. 4 MByte (in four SIPP modules with 1 MByte each) where already installed. When I add the next four SIPPs with each 1 MByte, the system starts with 4 MB in total, not 8 MB. The new SIPP modules work fine, when I place them into the first four rows, the machine works also fine. But info about this system is hard to find.

 

After RAM check the BIOS said "Bank 0 installed 1 MB WAITSTATE 1". Same for Bank 1. Bank 2 and 3 are shown as disabled. But how I can enable these? I´ve tried all jumpers on the mainboard, but no sucess.

 

Any help appreciated!