Help me to setup my A2386sx

[Xanxi]

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.

[Xanxi]

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]

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

[Xanxi]

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?

[Xanxi]

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 ?

[Xanxi]

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.

[Xanxi]

Yes, i believed that the MSDOS 5 install disk would propose to FDisk/Format any hard drive, as it did when i installed it under PCTask with a hardfile. I'm going to see if a FDisk alone would do anything, and MSD as well.

I have no answer from softhut about the manual so far.

It would be cool and much easier to find too the double Y cable for the floppy drives.

[Xanxi]

It's working now!
As my external floppy still does not want to work with the bridgeboard, despite everything being setup correctly, i had the idea to fdisk/format/install with PC-Task the so-called Autoboot file that is created by MakeAB when you install the software.
And PC-Task did the job, using flawlessly my native floppy droives.
A pity the Janus software can't do as good as PC-Task regarding floppies.

So, i'm limited for now to a hardfile of 32 MB (seems the maximum allowed by MakeAB) but MSDOS 5 is fast as hell, i have a fast VGA output from my ISA Trident board and Dune is awesome playing on my SoundBlaster16!!
And i still have my 486 upgrade to install :-)

Now, i need to figure out how to actually use a proper harddrive/CF for the BB, or at least a whole partition from an Amiga disk.

[Xanxi]

And a german folk from ebay has been kind enough to send me a pdf copy of the A2386 manual. Glory to him!!

Be sure to download and keep a copy from there: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=07WCQ4RI

[Xanxi]

Yes guys, use your bridgeboards!!
This 386sx@25MHz is truly powerful. I have been used to crawling emulation with PC-Task so i bought a 486SLC chip to upgrade my BB, but i haven't done the upgrade yet. Even so, the A2386 runs flawlessly everything i try, from any DOS game to Win 3.1, including Alone in The Dark, a game which kills PCTask even on a 060.

I think, that, just like the Etherbridge driver, a skilled programmer could bring some useful features to the amiga with a BB, such as SoundBlaster AHI driver, MIDI output from a ROLAND board,...

By the way, does someone know what to do with the german ATUilities? It seems to be some alternate sofwtare for the BB with interesting features such as direct amiga floppy drive acess, but there is not a clue on how to actually install and use it.

[Xanxi]

Now i'm curious about the mini DIN port of the BB which is supposed to be for the non released video switch from Commodore.
Would there be any third-party device ou self-made switch compatible with this port?

[Xanxi]

There were a few commercial/semi-professional ones long ago. Fortunately, plans for a hobbyist version made their way to Aminet: http://aminet.net/package/docs/hard/BBSwitch1.0

Hope it works!

Great link! :-)
Now i need someone to build this for me.

[Xanxi]

Hi.
I have some troubles with my BB. I have setup the RAM to the minimal 256KB in the BIOS, to do some test as i had bugs from my Cyrix486 addon and now i can't enter the BIOS again with Ctrl-Alt-Esc or BBSetup to restore the settings.
I have tried to remove the coin battery from the board to clear the CMOS but it didn't work.
The manual has no clue about a clearCMOS jumper.
Any idea what i could do?

[Xanxi]

Still no success in my attemps to clear the CMOS.
I have removed the board and the battery for more than 20 minutes but the BIOS remains locked with 256KB. Ctrl-Atl-Esc does not work.
:-( :-(