A2386SX bridgeboard problems

[murple]

Tell you what, if I can't get it working I'll give it to you for $15 plus shipping and packaging... lets say $20 if you're in the US, $25 if you're overseas.

[murple]

Well, I took out the RAM card, and I guess I'm an idiot because it no longer says "Defective"... but I'm pretty sure it said that when I put it in there a few days ago too. I'd want to have it in the computer for a week with no further crashes before I'm willing to say its fully working. It probably is good, since as was pointed out, the symptoms of having the Zorro bus maxxed out might be random crashes rather than an instant failure. And of course, the battery is still all screwed up too.

But I'm not leaving it in my computer yet. The main reason I wanted this thing was to make use of the fact that there's a program to let you use an ISA ethernet card with the bridgeboard that AmigaOS can see, and maybe throw on a PC floppy drive. I only have 1 SIMM on my G-Force accelerator, and I'm not going to sacrifice 8MB RAM just for an inefficient ethernet setup.

I'm going to have to get a real battery on there as well. Now that I'm home and looking at it, the side with the diode isn't even soldered in, and the other side (that was hanging loose) has a lump of cold solder on the back. I think I might have a spare NiMH barrel battery that I can use to replace the floppy little clip thing. I'll probably do that this weekend.

After I fix the battery, I'll try installing the software and putting the bridgeboard through some tests. If it doesnt work, my offer of $20-25 will remain. If it does work, I'll put it in a box until I can find some GVP SIMM. If I can't find memory in a couple months, or if I find a reasonably priced Zorro II ethernet card... I'll sell it for $50 and write off the $110 as "I'm a retard" costs. (This offer is directed at BinoX.)

[murple]

I'm looking at the battery on this thing now...

What's on there is a little watch battery clip containing a CR2032 battery. There's a diode of some sort connected to the + lead of the battery clip.

This photo of a board however has a 3.6V barrel NiCad battery on it:
http://amigahardware.mariomisic.de/download_photos/a2386sx_1_big.jpg

Is the 3V+diode equivalent to a 3.6V battery somehow? I'm trying to decide how to repair this. The way the battery clip was added doesn't seem like the best approach. The leads are too short to get a real good solder joint. I could solder long wires to the board, and connect them to the battery clip (perhaps on a small board of its own). If I do that, is the 3V sufficient, or should I look for a 3.6V lithium disc battery? Alternatively, I think I have a 3.6V NiMH barrel battery I could use directly on the board.

[countzero]

the diode is to prevent the board from recharging the lithium coin, which is not rechargable. I'm not sure if there exists a 3.6 lithium coin battery (I couldn't find). So fitting a proper 3.6 NiMH may be the best approach .

If the board doesn't work for you somehow, I'ld like to have it back for what you paid to me. You don't need to give it away for $20 or something. I'm not sure what kind of performance you'll get by using an ISA board through the bridgeboard. Using a proper Zorro card is the best approach. You're in luck, cause soon X Surf 3 boards will be in stock, which give you much better performance you can ever have from an ISA card. The price is just right too. you can buy it with my refund and probably have some change back.

[rkauer]

murple wrote:
I'm looking at the battery on this thing now...

What's on there is a little watch battery clip containing a CR2032 battery. There's a diode of some sort connected to the + lead of the battery clip.

---zip---

Is the 3V+diode equivalent to a 3.6V battery somehow? -zip-The leads are too short to get a real good solder joint. I could solder long wires to the board, and connect them to the battery clip (perhaps on a small board of its own). If I do that, is the 3V sufficient, or should I look for a 3.6V lithium disc battery? Alternatively, I think I have a 3.6V NiMH barrel battery I could use directly on the board.

 The "lithium hack" (CR2025,3032,etc + a diode) is sufficient to provide "almost" 3V to the board. And coin batteries don't leak (barrel batts do!). :madashell:

 I've lost an A1200 acelerator, thanks to a barrel battery. :pissed:

[murple]

The NiMH batteries supposedly don't leak, the older NiCad ones are the ones that start leaking.

[Zac67]

countzero wrote:
You're in luck, cause soon X Surf 3boards will be in stock, which give you much better performance you can ever have from an ISA card.

Don't want to confuse you, but the XSurf is an ISA card - adapted to Z2, of course.

@murple
NiMH batteries do leak if they're old enough.

[countzero]

Zac67 wrote:

Don't want to confuse you, but the XSurf is an ISA card - adapted to Z2, of course.

Yes but it runs natively under amigaOS. What the bridgeboard does is run some kind of server on the pc side to transfer packets from the ISA network card to amigaOS through the bridgeboard interface. Which one do you think will work better ?

[BinoX]

Hmmm $50 aint bad...

If you do decide that you wanna sell it, drop me a PM

[CLS2086]

Hi there,
I reopen this old thread, not because about RAM problem, but floppy problems.
I didn"t successed to use External drive...
What is the trick ? Something to do with the jumpers ?
I took a stock A1010 drive and plug it, nothing.
I exchange the drive in the A1010 for a standard PC 1.44, nothing.
Can you help ?

[Jeff]

The 1010 drive should work as an external 720k drive. Make sure you have the jumpers on the Bridgeboard set properly, the Bios configured correctly, and take a look in the PC Setup program on the Amiga side. Bridgeboards aren't the easiest thing to setup but they are cool. Keep with it and you'll probably get it working. Then, don't touch it:-). BTW the A1011 will NOT work as a Bridgeboard drive.

-Jeff

[CLS2086]

So balance the bazaar:

I have gotten the 2 "images" of Janus2.1 for Amiga and PC side. But with WB3.1 and OS3.5 freshly installed with very little addition, installation is not working at all !

So I "deleted" installer (v1.xx) to take the "system"'s one (v4x.xx).

Here, it starts to work.
It ask a sympathetic question about the disc "boot" if it'is different from the application one.
I replied no, and it is continuing its sweet way ...
Then it shows me a beautiful script error just after Flipper.info install ... I like dolphins ...

I shall not lose courage, I look at the floppy content, I took him janus Lib in extension then I reset the machine. I heard the card made a little beep, which seems to be initalisation OK.

Well, then, I still was not avaible to create a "HardFile", but that should not prevent me from being able to work on diskettes !
So I count again on my luck.

I had to play with the jumpers, because I believe that the former owner had put an IDE or SCSI controller (though if it is possible with some cards Adaptec with floppy controler).

As my machine lacks of internal space, I tried hard on the external connector to be successfull.

I used my A1010 box and put the drive in DS1 mode, it "works" (understand he wanted to take a floppy).
As I told myself, on PC since a long time everything is in "HD"... So I have to replace the 880 Kb drive with a HD one.

I took the kit Teac RealHD+, but no luck this tiem, he did not like it at all. I tried to change the "jumper" RealHD... unsuccessful too (does someone know something about it?).

Good to this point, I reopened the machine to put a real HD PC drive and plug it in 503 port with a normaly twisted pc cable.
Here, I say to myself ok, BANZAÏ!

Close to my hand, I had a floppy of Msdos 7.1 (that the one of W95 v1, which makes it possibles to launch Win3.x) and .... No, it is trying to load but it freese (on pc side) without explanation....

It will be necessary that I try to find a version 3.3 or 6.22 in my archives ...

I keep you informed soon, but if you've trick, please explain ! This drive me crasy as Britney's song...  :-P

[CLS2086]

evening Tests : Hopes!
Yeps! It's alive.

I first made the try with MSDOS 3.3 for Amstrad 3386sx and it's booted.
That's Cool, I continued.
DrDOS 5 or 6 ... Yeah! Boot !
Win95 OSR2 Boot disks ... Yeah! Boot !
WinNT 4.0 SP1 Boot disks ! It also booted, but it displayed to me a beautiful message "required a 486 ..."

Then the Floppy test for IBM Thinkpad-310 (PC-DOS 7.1), it booted ! And the main tests were OK.
And yes only the main ones, because we need a VGA card with VESA bios for the portion of the tests Video ... an installed hdd, cdrom, plugged mouse and so on...

Then, I try to create a partition as described physical here http://home.arcor.de/kickstart/TKA/Tutorials/bridgeboard/amigajanus.html

Note : due to the install script error I didn't get the message of screenshoot 1/2/3/4...

I changed Dosserv ... , an created partition (i used MSD and MSH type as they use the same DOStype), I edited the aboot.ctrl with eMacs.
But no luck again, I also try to use the mode 41 for an auto detect, no more luck

Any tip, any hint?
Thank you all,

[amigadave]

Congrats on your success.  

Makes me want to get back to work on my own A3000T w/Vortex 486slc bridgeboard project.  I have the Floppy Drive controller chip installed and have a Cyrix Cx486SRxsquared 25/50 1P upgrade chip that fits over the 486slc (or on other bridgeboards it fits over the 386sx chip) that I have not installed yet, and I still have to find a 387 math coprocessor for it.  Hopefully it won't be difficult to find the math coprocessor.

[CLS2086]

So, now, one step beyond !!!
I regenerated once again the Janus2_1.dms, and this time I leave the original installer v1.1 in its place, and tried to boot and install from a little wb3.1 partition (500Mb).
And that worked !!! (It HATES size highier than 1.9 Gb).

There is something incompatible with newer release of Installer. Maybe someone skilled enought would find what to adapt ?

I successfully made a 10Mb "virtual" partition on an Amiga.

The last and failed step :
http://home.arcor.de/kickstart/TKA/Tutorials/bridgeboard/amigajanus.html
As it is explained, it's possible with the updated Dosserv to use and create a pure "PC" partition.
I took my chances one more time.
But no luck.
1 - Hdtoolbox automativcly change the partition type from CUSTOM to MSH\00 (but i suppose this is normal due to the fact that they've got the same Identifier, and MSD\00 too !).
2 - So I made 2 "PC" partition :
One of 202 Mb 'Dos1' -> MSH\00 Identifier
One of 2002 Mb 'Dos2'-> MSD\00 Identifier
None of them are visible on the workbench.

No luck with any of them.
Each time i try to start PcColor, a requester ask me to put device Dos1:  or  Dos2:
I pushed "RETRY", no luck. I pushed "CANCEL" it passed.
Now with FDISK, the same requester appeared again and same sad thing...  so Fdisk finished by telling me that there is no harddisk present.

Any trick or advice ? Must I install FAT95 and try to initialize these volume ? (if yes how ??)

Many thank guys !

[CLS2086]

A new stage passed !
This time, I installed Fat95 and MSD.
Then, I added in the Fat95 RDB using the identifier Custom FS instead of the normal Fat95's one.
I Reboot
I see that partition (DOS1) but appears as non-initialized.
I respected what was explained on the site and I started PcColor, who made  come a different requester.
Again, the only solution was to press the button "CANCEL".
I continued anyway.
I start FDISK and ... Miracle
It saw a hard drive of 200 MB, I created a partition, then I rebooted the "PC part", I formated it with "FORMAT C: / S / Q" always in PC mode, it's super-fast! !

I put all files of the win95 rescue floppy, and then edited the autoexec.bat and config.sys to remove unneeded line.

I rebooted once again the PC side, took off the floppy, it booted well on the partition :-D

I begun installation of win3.1 for fun, and it seemed good. But I have not yet been able to generate the PC HD Janus disk for the PC side.

I left the emulator, and then I realized that the Workbench itself still see this as uninitialized partition ...

I'm currently formatting the 2nd partition DOS2 almost 2 GB but via the Workbench.

The result in a few hours.