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Wanted: Ethernet, VGA, and Sound Card for my C= PC10-III 8088 System

S

SkydivinGirl

Veteran Member
Joined
Jan 12, 2012
Messages
507
Location
Raleigh, NC, USA
I'm working on my 8088 Commodore PC10-III project and was hoping to get a few cards. Please let me know if you have a compatible Ethernet, VGA, or Sound card available. I'm not looking to spend too much, but I will pay a reasonable price. It would be even better if I could get everything from a single seller. :)

Thanks!

Heather
 
I'm gonna ask the ignorant question (it's complementary) ;-) What slots/bit can it handle? I don't recall if it can do 16-bit or if it's strictly 8-bit ISA.
 
There's a lot of 16-bit cards that work in 8-bit slots (i.e. soundblaster 16s and trident VGA cards)
 
LOL. :) Yep, strictly 8-Bit ports. I only have two slots left, after building and installing an XT-IDE Rev 2. I think the order of importance I'd place on the cards is Video then Sound then Networking. I put networking last because I can easily transfer data via Zip drives. I think I could also use a Jaz drive on the system with the XT-IDE. Since this is my first 8088 project, I'd appreciate any other thoughts. :)

Heather
 
Depending on what you want to do with the 5150 on the network there are several parallel port (or, in some cases, serial port) possibilities. Lantastic Z is a full-blown network option between two computers using either parallel or serial ports (or modems). LapLink is good for file transfers as is DOS Intersrv/Interlnk. And none of these requires a slot which is a definite plus on a 5150.
 
Thank you both for the links and suggestions. I forgot about using LapLink cables. I have three of them! Sounds like a network card is most likely going to be off the list. :)

I'll look around for some of the cards in the links, but I don't want to pay silly eBay prices.

Heather
 
Hi everyone,

I decided to build one of Sergey's ISA SVGA cards so I'm all set there. I suppose a sound card is not really necessary in an old XT machine, but I'll keep an eye out for one anyways.

I was also able to get the Serdrive working properly using the XT-IDE Rev 2 with UART that I built. Serdrive came in handy since my Commodore PC10-III has a maximum floppy drive size of 720K and MS-DOS 6.22 is only available on 1.44MB disks. Serdrive was able to mount the 1.44MB floppy disk image on my C= without issue. When asked for the next disk, I simply stopped Serdrive then started it again with the next floppy image.

Using the built-in serial port on my Win PC, I was able to get 115.2K baud transfers. I'll play around with some other types of serial devices to see if I can improve the speed, but it was a great feature that I can see myself using more in the future.

Thanks everyone!

Heather
 
Wow, that is pretty handy. I did not know about Sergey's projects.
How did you get the board made for the SVGA card and was it very much a challenge?
 
SkydivinGirl said:
I was also able to get the Serdrive working properly using the XT-IDE Rev 2 with UART that I built. Serdrive came in handy since my Commodore PC10-III has a maximum floppy drive size of 720K and MS-DOS 6.22 is only available on 1.44MB disks. Serdrive was able to mount the 1.44MB floppy disk image on my C= without issue. When asked for the next disk, I simply stopped Serdrive then started it again with the next floppy image.
Click to expand...

I'm glad to see that you found this useful! AFAIK, you're the first person on this forum to even try it (or at least report about trying it).

Using the built-in serial port on my Win PC, I was able to get 115.2K baud transfers. I'll play around with some other types of serial devices to see if I can improve the speed, but it was a great feature that I can see myself using more in the future.
Click to expand...

If you have the hardware for it then you should be able to reach 921.6 kbps but it would require a CPU running at approximately 10 MHz and you would also need to use a faster crystal on the XTIDE v2 card. Beware though, this is theoretically speaking. As far as I know, no one has tried it yet. With an 8088 at 4.77 MHz you can achieve speeds up to 460.8 kbps at most.
 
amadama said:
How did you get the board made for the SVGA card and was it very much a challenge?
Click to expand...
I just ordered the parts so I'm not sure how much of a challenge it will be. Of course, the most difficult part of the build will be the surface mount Trident chip. The rest is through hole components which is no more difficult than any other build. I'll post my results and thoughts. :)

Krille said:
I'm glad to see that you found this useful! AFAIK, you're the first person on this forum to even try it (or at least report about trying it).
Click to expand...
Not only was it useful, it was perfect for the purpose of installing software on a new partition. Even having an HxC installed would not let me use disks greater than the 720K limit due to the fact that the floppy controller was the limiting factor. At first, I worked around the issue by installing DOS in a virtual environment then copying the installation via a ZIP drive. Using Serdrive was a much better option.

I also love the fact that you can use Serdrive to create virtual hard drive images. I can see a lot of uses for that.

Krille said:
If you have the hardware for it then you should be able to reach 921.6 kbps but it would require a CPU running at approximately 10 MHz and you would also need to use a faster crystal on the XTIDE v2 card. Beware though, this is theoretically speaking. As far as I know, no one has tried it yet. With an 8088 at 4.77 MHz you can achieve speeds up to 460.8 kbps at most.
Click to expand...
I *may* try to increase the crystal at some point, but my initial goal is to reach the 460.8K speed by using a higher speed serial port on my PC.

Heather
 
SkydivinGirl said:
my Commodore PC10-III has a maximum floppy drive size of 720K and MS-DOS 6.22 is only available on 1.44MB disks.
Click to expand...

O RLY? :D

msgl90.jpg
 
Well look at that! I couldn't find any copies on anything smaller than 1.44MB disks. I wonder if there was ever a non-upgrade version released on lower capacity disks... :)

Heather
 
What I do to install DOS 6.22 is to have a bootable diskette with FORMAT.COM / FDISK.EXE. I then format a HDD with the system. I install FX or INTERLNK and just copy DOS across (or selected files) from another system. Works fine.
 
I have a cga/ega/vga video card on ebay... I tested it once in my 8086 ibm and it seemed to work okay. I think I have an 8-bit ethernet card i'll toss in for free, but if memory serves it will require one of those media adapter things. I'll look in my spare parts bin and get back to you if your interested.

As for sound, I do have a few generic soundblasters, if need be.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/231267634442
 
SkydivinGirl said:
Well look at that! I couldn't find any copies on anything smaller than 1.44MB disks. I wonder if there was ever a non-upgrade version released on lower capacity disks... :)

Heather
Click to expand...
You can copy all the files from the original disks to whatever size disks your system uses and then copy those smaller disks to your HD and install from there. You might need to manually install the system files to the HD via the SYS command to get the HD to boot.
 
PeterLI said:
What I do to install DOS 6.22 is to have a bootable diskette with FORMAT.COM / FDISK.EXE. I then format a HDD with the system. I install FX or INTERLNK and just copy DOS across (or selected files) from another system. Works fine.
Click to expand...
This is pretty much what I did the first time I installed DOS on this system. It was a bit of a pain whereas using Serdrive was just like doing a floppy install, which was MUCH nicer.

luckybob said:
I have a cga/ega/vga video card on ebay...
As for sound, I do have a few generic soundblasters, if need be.
Click to expand...
I'm all set on the video card and I generally don't buy things on eBay that are not BIN. Contact me via PM about the Soundblaster if you have one that is known to work with the 8088.

Stone said:
You can copy all the files from the original disks to whatever size disks your system uses and then copy those smaller disks to your HD and install from there.
Click to expand...
I thought about this as well, but the original MS-DOS 6.22 floppies that I have contain compressed versions most of the files. The installation program automatically expands these files onto the HD as it installs. It wouldn't be too difficult to write a quick batch file that would do it, but it doesn't make sense when Serdrive works perfectly. :thumbsup:

Thanks everyone!

Heather
 
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