Author Topic: Help me to setup my A2386sx (Read 7016 times)

Xanxi · « **on:** January 04, 2011, 03:29:27 PM »

Hi.

I am trying to setup my A2386 bridgeboard in my A2000.
It has been upgraded to 8 MB of RAM.
I also have a Cyrix upgrade chip and a 387 FPU but those are not yet installed.
I have additional ISA boards: a Trident VGA board, a SB16 and an I/O controler with IDE port.
All my ISA slots are full 16 bits.

So, i have a running installation of OS 3.1 and Janus 2.1 installed.

I have several question:

1/ How to actually share the internal floppy from the amiga with the BB? I have read somewhere that i should have a special cable to hook the drive to both the amiga mobo and the BB: seems rather dangerous!

2/ How to use an external floppy drive from the exernal floppy port of the BB? I have set PCsetup to "external" and the PC bios to "720k" as it is a DD drive: the drive makes some noise at boot but is not recognized.

3/ How to use my additional boards? The Trident VGA board seems to prevent the BB from booting, but i see some kind of Trident splash screen when lauching PCColor. I can only access the BIOS if i remove the Trident.
What about the ISA IDE controler? I have a Disk on Module of 128 MB hooked on it, but it seems to have no way to access it on the BIOS, which offers a wide range of harddrive setup for some mysterious partitions.

4/ what is the PS2 like port on the back of the BB? Mouse? Keyboard?

Thanks.

Any help is appreciated from someone using this board or any 2088/2086.

shaf · « **Reply #1 on:** January 04, 2011, 04:41:34 PM »

Are you ising a VGA Monitor to View the ISA VGA output? The Video Emulation on the Amiga side is only CGA. It's likely that the PS2 connector is a dual connector which does both mouse and Keyboard but would require a PS2 Y splitter to use both devices.

Matt_H · « **Reply #2 on:** January 04, 2011, 04:56:39 PM »

Quote from: shaf;603792

Are you ising a VGA Monitor to View the ISA VGA output? The Video Emulation on the Amiga side is only CGA. It's likely that the PS2 connector is a dual connector which does both mouse and Keyboard but would require a PS2 Y splitter to use both devices.

Don't plug PS/2 stuff in there! It's a custom port designed for a special monitor switcher. The PC Color program is obsoleted by a stand-alone video card, so that port was intended for a software-controlled switch to flip between Amiga and PC video.

Xanxi · « **Reply #3 on:** January 04, 2011, 05:04:59 PM »

Oh, thanks for the warning about this port: i was about to blow up something again!

I have not pluged yet a VGA monitor, not even on the A2030/C643D on the amiga side. I'm trying to setup everything on a mere TV from the RGB out, until i can close the case and make a room for it on my desk (it's lying on the floor for now, my wife is quite upset

).

Xanxi · « **Reply #4 on:** January 08, 2011, 11:18:36 PM »

I have made some progress since the last time i posted about this.

It seems the amiga floppy drives can be shared only with a special double Y cable that need to be hooked to the two floppy connectors CN501 and CN502 from the bridgeboard, to the amiga drives and to the amiga mobo.
Such a cable would be difficult to find and of course i do not have it.

However, i have been able to boot from a real PC 1,44MB drive connected to the CN503 floppy connector of the BB. I have lauched the MSDOS 5 install from floppy, but the BB did not find any hard drive to install to.
I am still not able to boot from an external drive though.

I have an I/O board: it is this one http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-disk-floppy-controllers/E-H/GOLDSTAR-ELECTRONICS-INTERNATIONAL-INC-Two-IDE-AT-32.html
I have a small disk on module of 128 MB on the IDE connector.
It seems the floppy and serial controllers of this board could conflict with the I/O range reserved to the BB. So i have messed with the jumpers to keep only the IDE port activated.
The problem is it has 3 rows of pins for 12 jumpers, and i do not know which should be the pin 1, so i may be wrong following the informations from the link below.

If i plug the board again, i can't boot from floppy anymore.

I also would like to install MSDOS to a hardfile, or to use my PCtask hardfile with the BB but don't know how to do.

If anyone can help, you are most welcome.

I could also use the manual

Matt_H · « **Reply #5 on:** January 08, 2011, 11:49:28 PM »

A manual is critical for setting up a bridgeboard. Can't find a digitized one after a quick look, unfortunately. Hopefully one will turn up.

About that floppy cable, though, I seem to recall that it's just 2 floppy cables taped together and one set of connectors goes from motherboard to bridgeboard and the other set goes from bridgeboard to drive. But definitely get confirmation on this before you try it! There are jumper settings involved, too.

Xanxi · « **Reply #6 on:** January 09, 2011, 10:33:31 AM »

I agree that it is a though job without the manual. I only have a few informations from the aminet "bridgeboard guide" or from old threads on forums.

Here is the picture of the special floppy cable:

It seems the cable from the mobo has to be pluged in connector 1 and the floppy drive itself to connector 2. The two others are for the BB ports CN501 and 502.
I don't know how to replicate this cable.

Do you have this board yourself by the way?

Matt_H · « **Reply #7 on:** January 19, 2011, 10:05:02 PM »

Yeah, that's the cable I was thinking of, but I can't remember if I still have a real one somewhere to refer to...

mechy · « **Reply #8 on:** January 20, 2011, 12:13:12 AM »

theres much better software out there than janus, its sxserv on aminet. it runs rings around janus,but requires you to use a dedicated vga card on the pc side. You can share your internal df0: as the pc floppy also.
theres some other progs on aminet to share cdroms also.i think its called Cdex?

grab the bridgeboard guides off aminet,they are super helpfull.

some links:

http://members.quicknet.nl/rhm.herold/computing/amiga/bridgeboard_faq.htm

http://aminet.net/search?query=bridgeboard+guide

also search on aminet JanusTools.lha good replacements
BBfaq25.lha good bridgeboard faq's
SxServ16.lha replacement for the crappy janus tools
Amicdex22.lha shares the amiga side cdrom seamlessly with the bridgeboard side.

there was a diamond speedstar card that could overclock the isa bus automagically ,i think it was a diamond speedstar 64(if my memory serves!?)..this made a big difference in bridgeboard performance when used with SxServ.you dont need the dedicated floppy on the bridgeboard. its possible to share df0,but i cant recall if it was sxserv that could do this or a external prog off aminet.
I think there was also helpfullstuff in ATutilities.lha off aminet..

hope that helps

mech

Xanxi · « **Reply #9 on:** January 20, 2011, 07:12:53 AM »

Quote from: mechy;607738

theres much better software out there than janus, its sxserv on aminet. it runs rings around janus,but requires you to use a dedicated vga card on the pc side. You can share your internal df0: as the pc floppy also.
theres some other progs on aminet to share cdroms also.i think its called Cdex?

grab the bridgeboard guides off aminet,they are super helpfull.

some links:

http://members.quicknet.nl/rhm.herold/computing/amiga/bridgeboard_faq.htm

http://aminet.net/search?query=bridgeboard+guide

also search on aminet JanusTools.lha good replacements
BBfaq25.lha good bridgeboard faq's
SxServ16.lha replacement for the crappy janus tools
Amicdex22.lha shares the amiga side cdrom seamlessly with the bridgeboard side.

there was a diamond speedstar card that could overclock the isa bus automagically ,i think it was a diamond speedstar 64(if my memory serves!?)..this made a big difference in bridgeboard performance when used with SxServ.you dont need the dedicated floppy on the bridgeboard. its possible to share df0,but i cant recall if it was sxserv that could do this or a external prog off aminet.
I think there was also helpfullstuff in ATutilities.lha off aminet..

hope that helps

mech

Hi Mechy.

Thanks for those informations. I already know the BB Guide from aminet but it can't replace the manual itself.
For now, i am able to boot from an internal PC floppy and to see everything on my Trident output, but i can't install any HD (CF or real disk hooked to an ISA IDE controller, or amiga hardfile): any clue about that?
Besides, when you say DF0: can be shared: to my knowledge, it can be done only with the special floppy cable depicted in my later post, with Janus or any replacement program. Are you sure it could be done without this cable?
Won't you have a copy of the manual by the way ?

spirantho · « **Reply #10 on:** January 20, 2011, 09:42:09 AM »

There's a page on floppies here:
http://home.arcor.de/kickstart/TKA/Tutorials/bridgeboard/2386floppies.html

Setting up a hard disk is covered in the manual and is complicated if you're using the Commodore system- there are better ways on the Aminet though for mounting partitions instead of files. However, I'd suggest putting an IDE disk on your IO card like you seem to have already. You should be able to jumper the HD as master, and go into the BIOS. From there you can set the HD type, probably setting it to AUTO (42 or something) is what you need. Then you can boot your MS-DOS install disk and install DOS. If you don't have an install disk you'll need to FDISK it first, remember.

Incidentally, I managed a new high "score" on 3DBench (http://ftp://ftp.eunet.bg/pub/simtelnet/msdos/vga/3dbench.zip) of about 15 I think it was on my pumped up A2386SX. That's using a 486SLC-2/50 with a Diamond Speedstar 24x graphics card (you need to take off the "Shadow JANUS" option in PCPrefs for this card) on a vanilla A1500.

Xanxi · « **Reply #11 on:** January 20, 2011, 11:34:01 AM »

Quote from: spirantho;607806

There's a page on floppies here:
http://home.arcor.de/kickstart/TKA/Tutorials/bridgeboard/2386floppies.html

Setting up a hard disk is covered in the manual and is complicated if you're using the Commodore system- there are better ways on the Aminet though for mounting partitions instead of files. However, I'd suggest putting an IDE disk on your IO card like you seem to have already. You should be able to jumper the HD as master, and go into the BIOS. From there you can set the HD type, probably setting it to AUTO (42 or something) is what you need. Then you can boot your MS-DOS install disk and install DOS. If you don't have an install disk you'll need to FDISK it first, remember.

Incidentally, I managed a new high "score" on 3DBench (http://ftp://ftp.eunet.bg/pub/simtelnet/msdos/vga/3dbench.zip) of about 15 I think it was on my pumped up A2386SX. That's using a 486SLC-2/50 with a Diamond Speedstar 24x graphics card (you need to take off the "Shadow JANUS" option in PCPrefs for this card) on a vanilla A1500.

Yes, that's exactly what i did. AUTO is actually 41 but it can't find my disk booting from the MSDOS5 install disk. I have checked that my IDE port memory access does not conflict with the memory range reserved for the BB, as described in the BB aminet guide.
Would you know how to use a PCTask Hardfile directly with the BB?
If you do have the BB manual care to sell it? Or make me a full copy (i can pay for a copy too)?
Thanks.

spirantho · « **Reply #12 on:** January 20, 2011, 01:30:07 PM »

I think you can do it with a PC-Task hardfile but I'm not sure on that, and it takes some work. It'll also be a lot slower than a proper HD.

You could try Software Hut for the manual (http://www.softhut.com/books.html lists it at $9.95) - I do have the manual but I don't want to sell it I'm afraid. If I get time I may be able to copy it but I'm very busy at the moment. I'm not sure it has anything that'll help anyway with your IDE problem... did you definitely enable IDE on the ISA card? Can you show us a screenshot of your machine running MSD on the IRQ page?
Does your HDD spin up correctly when the BB starts (it should stay powered down until janus.library is started)?

mechy · « **Reply #13 on:** January 21, 2011, 02:03:09 AM »

Quote from: Xanxi;607832

Yes, that's exactly what i did. AUTO is actually 41 but it can't find my disk booting from the MSDOS5 install disk. I have checked that my IDE port memory access does not conflict with the memory range reserved for the BB, as described in the BB aminet guide.
Would you know how to use a PCTask Hardfile directly with the BB?
If you do have the BB manual care to sell it? Or make me a full copy (i can pay for a copy too)?
Thanks.

did you Fdisk the HD to partition it and then format it? it wont automagically show up

also make sure u are using a small HD, like 1,2,4GB max,preferrably smaller even. a modern hard drive may very well not show up on a 16bit system.
hard files are painfull slow,i suggest dedicated partitions(on a real ide hd,that way also if something goes wrong you won't corrupt your amiga partitions.

spirantho · « **Reply #14 on:** January 21, 2011, 09:35:55 AM »

If he's booting from the MS-DOS install disk I think it'll do that for you won't it? As long as it's not an upgrade.
Probably best to boot into DOS though and run FDisk and see what happens. And MSD.

Author Topic: Help me to setup my A2386sx (Read 7016 times)

Xanxi

Help me to setup my A2386sx

shaf

Re: Help me to setup my A2386sx

Matt_H

Re: Help me to setup my A2386sx

Xanxi

Re: Help me to setup my A2386sx

Xanxi

Re: Help me to setup my A2386sx

Matt_H

Re: Help me to setup my A2386sx

Xanxi

Re: Help me to setup my A2386sx

Matt_H

Re: Help me to setup my A2386sx

mechy

Re: Help me to setup my A2386sx

Xanxi

Re: Help me to setup my A2386sx

spirantho

Re: Help me to setup my A2386sx

Xanxi

Re: Help me to setup my A2386sx

spirantho

Re: Help me to setup my A2386sx

mechy

Re: Help me to setup my A2386sx

spirantho

Re: Help me to setup my A2386sx