[N8VEM: 18982] XI 8088 and Floppy/Serial Controller troubleshooting. Loading an OS.

[Erik Lynd]

Hello,

I have been building an XI 8088 and am loving it, but I'm having an issue
getting it booting an OS and was hoping someone could point me in the right
direction.

My current setup is:
Micro ATX ISA backplane
XI 8088 board
ISA floppy disk and serial controller
ISA super VGA card.

I have completed the compact flash card and opl2 card, but have not
installed them yet.

As far as I can tell, the super VGA card works as it should, I see both the
video card bios as well as the XI bios on boot. I also see via the bios
that the serial port seems to be recognized as well as the single 1.44M
floppy I have connected. The LED display on the backplane displays all the
appropriate information and stops at 49 (OS load).
I have tried disks for DOS 6.21, 6.22 and FreeDos 1.0. Unfortunately none
seem to boot. During boot, I get all the way to the "Loading OS" point, but
always get the "Boot Failed, Press any key to retry" prompt. I have tried 3
different 1.44 drives, 3 cables and two different National Semiconductor
PC8477BV-1 ICs. The drive is definitely accessed (or at least it's
attempted). The LED on the drive turns on when expected and I can hear the
motor spinning, but it seems to fail fairly quickly.

If anyone has any advise on where to start hunting down the problem, I
would greatly appreciate it.

Best

Erik

[Sergey]

Erik,

Do you have access to another PC or AT computer with ISA interface? If so,
you can try testing your FDC card there.
Many things can go wrong, but one component which is used with FDC (but not
used by anything else, at least not during the boot time) is the DMA
controller (8237). You can try swapping that IC.

Also if you can boot you Xi 8088 from compact flash, you can do some more
detailed diagnostic. For example try to read or format a floppy from DOS,
and see what error messages does it give.

Thanks,
Sergey

Post by Erik Lynd
Hello,
I have been building an XI 8088 and am loving it, but I'm having an issue
getting it booting an OS and was hoping someone could point me in the right
direction.
Micro ATX ISA backplane
XI 8088 board
ISA floppy disk and serial controller
ISA super VGA card.
I have completed the compact flash card and opl2 card, but have not
installed them yet.
As far as I can tell, the super VGA card works as it should, I see both
the video card bios as well as the XI bios on boot. I also see via the bios
that the serial port seems to be recognized as well as the single 1.44M
floppy I have connected. The LED display on the backplane displays all the
appropriate information and stops at 49 (OS load).
I have tried disks for DOS 6.21, 6.22 and FreeDos 1.0. Unfortunately none
seem to boot. During boot, I get all the way to the "Loading OS" point, but
always get the "Boot Failed, Press any key to retry" prompt. I have tried 3
different 1.44 drives, 3 cables and two different National Semiconductor
PC8477BV-1 ICs. The drive is definitely accessed (or at least it's
attempted). The LED on the drive turns on when expected and I can hear the
motor spinning, but it seems to fail fairly quickly.
If anyone has any advise on where to start hunting down the problem, I
would greatly appreciate it.
Best
Erik

[Erik Lynd]

Hi Sergey,

Thanks for the info. I was thinking the DMA controller might be my issue
after poking through the bios last night. It's nice to have another nudge
in that direction. I noticed that if I boot with no disk in the drive, it
takes slightly longer to fail. In my mind, that's another nudge in the DMA
controllers direction (no data, no DMA fail). I've ordered another, so
hopefully I will be farther along in a week or so.

Re: booting from compact flash. Is it possible to pre-load the compact
flash card? I was under the impression that it was not.

Loving this project by the way!

Best,

Erik

Post by Sergey
Erik,
Do you have access to another PC or AT computer with ISA interface? If so,
you can try testing your FDC card there.
Many things can go wrong, but one component which is used with FDC (but
not used by anything else, at least not during the boot time) is the DMA
controller (8237). You can try swapping that IC.
Also if you can boot you Xi 8088 from compact flash, you can do some more
detailed diagnostic. For example try to read or format a floppy from DOS,
and see what error messages does it give.
Thanks,
Sergey

Post by Erik Lynd
Hello,
I have been building an XI 8088 and am loving it, but I'm having an issue
getting it booting an OS and was hoping someone could point me in the right
direction.
Micro ATX ISA backplane
XI 8088 board
ISA floppy disk and serial controller
ISA super VGA card.
I have completed the compact flash card and opl2 card, but have not
installed them yet.
As far as I can tell, the super VGA card works as it should, I see both
the video card bios as well as the XI bios on boot. I also see via the bios
that the serial port seems to be recognized as well as the single 1.44M
floppy I have connected. The LED display on the backplane displays all the
appropriate information and stops at 49 (OS load).
I have tried disks for DOS 6.21, 6.22 and FreeDos 1.0. Unfortunately none
seem to boot. During boot, I get all the way to the "Loading OS" point, but
always get the "Boot Failed, Press any key to retry" prompt. I have tried 3
different 1.44 drives, 3 cables and two different National Semiconductor
PC8477BV-1 ICs. The drive is definitely accessed (or at least it's
attempted). The LED on the drive turns on when expected and I can hear the
motor spinning, but it seems to fail fairly quickly.
If anyone has any advise on where to start hunting down the problem, I
would greatly appreciate it.
Best
Erik

[Sergey]

Erik,

You can connect a compact flash card to another computer, for example using
an IDE to CF adapter or a USB card reader. You'll need to make it bootable
somehow. One way would be installing a virtual machine (DOSbox?) using the
same or slightly smaller disk image size as your CF card. Once DOS and your
applications are installed on virtual machine, you can copy the image to CF.
Another way is to connect your CF card to an AT-class computer using the
same IDE to CF adapter, and installing DOS on that directly, without
messing around with virtual machine.

Thanks,
Sergey

Post by Erik Lynd
Hi Sergey,
Thanks for the info. I was thinking the DMA controller might be my issue
after poking through the bios last night. It's nice to have another nudge
in that direction. I noticed that if I boot with no disk in the drive, it
takes slightly longer to fail. In my mind, that's another nudge in the DMA
controllers direction (no data, no DMA fail). I've ordered another, so
hopefully I will be farther along in a week or so.
Re: booting from compact flash. Is it possible to pre-load the compact
flash card? I was under the impression that it was not.
Loving this project by the way!
Best,
Erik

Post by Sergey
Erik,
Do you have access to another PC or AT computer with ISA interface? If
so, you can try testing your FDC card there.
Many things can go wrong, but one component which is used with FDC (but
not used by anything else, at least not during the boot time) is the DMA
controller (8237). You can try swapping that IC.
Also if you can boot you Xi 8088 from compact flash, you can do some more
detailed diagnostic. For example try to read or format a floppy from DOS,
and see what error messages does it give.
Thanks,
Sergey

Post by Erik Lynd
Hello,
I have been building an XI 8088 and am loving it, but I'm having an
issue getting it booting an OS and was hoping someone could point me in the
right direction.
Micro ATX ISA backplane
XI 8088 board
ISA floppy disk and serial controller
ISA super VGA card.
I have completed the compact flash card and opl2 card, but have not
installed them yet.
As far as I can tell, the super VGA card works as it should, I see both
the video card bios as well as the XI bios on boot. I also see via the bios
that the serial port seems to be recognized as well as the single 1.44M
floppy I have connected. The LED display on the backplane displays all the
appropriate information and stops at 49 (OS load).
I have tried disks for DOS 6.21, 6.22 and FreeDos 1.0. Unfortunately
none seem to boot. During boot, I get all the way to the "Loading OS"
point, but always get the "Boot Failed, Press any key to retry" prompt. I
have tried 3 different 1.44 drives, 3 cables and two different National
Semiconductor PC8477BV-1 ICs. The drive is definitely accessed (or at least
it's attempted). The LED on the drive turns on when expected and I can hear
the motor spinning, but it seems to fail fairly quickly.
If anyone has any advise on where to start hunting down the problem, I
would greatly appreciate it.
Best
Erik

[Erik Lynd]

Thanks for the info. The new DMA controller actually arrived and seems to have solved the problem. Tonight I'll be working on getting freedos installed. Thanks again for all your help. I'll post some photos of it up and running soon.

[Erik Lynd]

Just an update. Nearly everything is working great! Dos6.22 is loaded and runs great (I could not get freedos to boot from the compact flash card for some reason) However, I'm not getting any sound from the opl2 card. I'm double checking all my work tonight, but wanted to make sure there are no drivers or anything similar i need to find.

[Sergey]

No drivers. You just need to run some software that supports Adlib.

Post by Erik Lynd
Just an update. Nearly everything is working great! Dos6.22 is loaded and
runs great (I could not get freedos to boot from the compact flash card for
some reason) However, I'm not getting any sound from the opl2 card. I'm
double checking all my work tonight, but wanted to make sure there are no
drivers or anything similar i need to find.

[Tregare]

doom!

Post by Sergey
No drivers. You just need to run some software that supports Adlib.

Post by Erik Lynd
Just an update. Nearly everything is working great! Dos6.22 is loaded and
runs great (I could not get freedos to boot from the compact flash card for
some reason) However, I'm not getting any sound from the opl2 card. I'm
double checking all my work tonight, but wanted to make sure there are no
drivers or anything similar i need to find.

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[Erik Lynd]

That's what I thought. I'll double check everything and try again. I tested it with prince of Persia. It plays music through the PC speaker when the card is removed, but only sound effects through the PC speaker with the card installed. No music from the sound card output. Everything else is humming right along.

[Erik Lynd]

Image here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8GQUoKRUDuIUlhlQmRRbEdxaWM/edit?usp=docslist_api

[Tregare]

check out http://www.oplx.com/

Post by Erik Lynd
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8GQUoKRUDuIUlhlQmRRbEdxaWM/edit?usp=docslist_api
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[Erik Lynd]

Thank you! That's a great link!

Post by Tregare
check out http://www.oplx.com/

Post by Erik Lynd
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8GQUoKRUDuIUlhlQmRRbEdxaWM/edit?usp=docslist_api
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.
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[Erik Lynd]

Thanks for the info. The new DMA controller actually arrived and seems to have solved the problem. Tonight I'll be working on getting freedos installed. Thanks again for all your help. I'll post some photos of it up and running soon.