x86 Bridgeboard update (PCem core)

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by superfrog

Does the BB emulation support the ability to use an Amiga floppy drive as a PC drive via the Flipper utility? I tried to make this work just out of curiosity and I got a Diskette drive 0 seek error on boot and it won't read the floppy that's in DF0: (I have Drive A: set to Shared and Shared Amiga Drive set to DF0: in PCPrefs.

I know it's kind of pointless in emulator environment, as I can more easily attach a dedicated PC floppy drive to the BB. But what if I want to pretend that it's 1991 and it's too expensive to buy a 3.5" PC floppy drive after I already spent all my money on my fancy new 386SX Bridgeboard?

No. Flipper is A2386SX only and I don't know how it works. I would most likely need to have A2386SX board to reverse-engineer it and implement it correctly.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Originally Posted by AnnaWu

Hmm, A:\ is not accessible. The device is not ready.

I think I found the cure

[AnnaWu]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

I think I found the cure

The reason?

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Very simple, on Win95 just remove the "controller floppy" from the device manager, at the next reboot the floppy will work fine

[AnnaWu]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

Very simple, on Win95 just remove the "controller floppy" from the device manager, at the next reboot the floppy will work fine

Strange but thanks.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Yes strange, attention if you are updating hardware will be automatically found on the floppy controller and the floppy drive will not work.

In Win95 device management instead of removing the floppy controller you can opt for disabling the controller, the floppy drive will still work, see screnshot.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Zilog

Without the "Include Cd and FMV Audio" its ok.

With crash.

Does it also crash if you disable all PC sound devices? (Remove possible sound blaster, make sure PC speaker is unticked).

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Toni only happens when you set the SoundBlaster in "Expansion Boards Setting"

[Toni Wilen]

CD audio crash should be fixed now if more than 1 non-Paula audio stream was opened.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

OK Toni with "Include Cd and FMV audio" he feels bad but there are no more crashes, to listen to the CD-audio in a perfect way, just remove the check from "Include Cd and FMV audio" even hot.

[Zilog]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

CD audio crash should be fixed now if more than 1 non-Paula audio stream was opened.

Thanks Tony for fix.

[superfrog]

Is it possible to improve the PC speaker emulation in the XT Bridgeboards? The A2386SX has a speaker mounted on it; the A2286 and A2088 have a header (J2) you can attach a speaker to. I looked at photos of the A2088T bridgeboard at Amiga Hardware Database and noticed that it has a speaker mounted on the PCB. So with the 2088T the PC speaker should function as expected since it had a speaker mounted on the board and it's an XT class card.

With PC speaker enabled using A2088T XT Bridgeboard, the speaker ticks with every keystroke, and the POST beep doesn't sound right. Is it possible to fix this?

I uploaded a test config and hdf to The Zone. Thanks!

http://eab.abime.net/zone/A2088T%20Speaker%20Test.zip

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by superfrog

Is it possible to improve the PC speaker emulation in the XT Bridgeboards? The A2386SX has a speaker mounted on it; the A2286 and A2088 have a header (J2) you can attach a speaker to. I looked at photos of the A2088T bridgeboard at Amiga Hardware Database and noticed that it has a speaker mounted on the PCB. So with the 2088T the PC speaker should function as expected since it had a speaker mounted on the board and it's an XT class card.

With PC speaker enabled using A2088T XT Bridgeboard, the speaker ticks with every keystroke, and the POST beep doesn't sound right. Is it possible to fix this?

I uploaded a test config and hdf to The Zone. Thanks!

http://eab.abime.net/zone/A2088T%20Speaker%20Test.zip

As usual: I don't know how it should work, it is using exact same code in all 8088 based bridgeboards.

Someone with real bridgeboard needs to confirm it. "Does not sounds right" is not good enough reason.

[superfrog]

Perhaps we need to get you a real Bridgeboard to test with. They come up for sale on eBay from time to time, and I've seen a couple that sold recently. If I were to try to purchase a Bridgeboard that you could use for testing, which model would you want?

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by superfrog

Perhaps we need to get you a real Bridgeboard to test with. They come up for sale on eBay from time to time, and I've seen a couple that sold recently. If I were to try to purchase a Bridgeboard that you could use for testing, which model would you want?

I don't need the board (and shipping it around the world would be useless), I only need to know if BIOS boot beeps are same or different (and if different, recording of the sound) vs emulation.

If they are different, there has to be some hardware difference. Extra enable/disable signal or something..

EDIT: I don't want to assume anything, most likely BIOS comes from some Commodore PC which may have unexpected features, like key click or weird boot tune.

[superfrog]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

I don't need the board (and shipping it around the world would be useless), I only need to know if BIOS boot beeps are same or different...

Okay, I just thought if it was on your hardware wish list, I could contribute it as a donation to the WinUAE project if you thought having one could improve your ability to make this part of the emulator substantially better. I would probably get it shipped to myself and play around with it for a while before sending it to you because I've always been curious about how a real Bridgeboard behaves and really wanted one back in the day but they were pretty expensive. And because they are fairly rare, they are also pretty easy to re-sell.

But if you don't really want or need one then I won't bother.

I don't think the POST beep is much of a concern. Usually PCs just beep once after POST to indicate that the hardware self-check and initialization was successful. The chime that the XT BB makes through the PC speaker at POST is a bit strange but maybe that's just how it worked. The bell and other PC speaker sound functions seem to work fine with the emulated XT Bridgeboards.

The main thing I wanted to see if you could address is the ticking noise that accompanies every keystroke. I think you said something about the keyboard and speaker using the same I/O channel or something in an earlier post, so I wondered if the issue with the keystroke ticking might have something to do with that.

[superfrog]

I also just checked the Commodore PC30-III emulation in PCem, which uses a BIOS that is pretty similar to that used in the Bridgeboard. It has a standard POST beep and no keyboard ticking. I don't think I've ever come across any system that has keyboard ticking or clicking as a feature unless maybe it is something that can be enabled/disabled. So I think it's probably fair to assume that C= did not intend for the PC speaker to tick with keystrokes in the XT Bridgeboards, especially since the AT Bridgeboards do not have this behavior.


But as you say, we can't know for sure without finding out how a real BB behaves.

[Toni Wilen]

It really does look like it is BIOS really does have key click code, it does very clear speaker data and enable bit changes.

PC30-III is far too new, it is also AT, not XT. A2088 is most likely at least partially based on A1060 (Sidecar) so Commodore PC it is based on must be from 1985-86 or even earlier. AT clones were much more "standard" than XT clones.

I don't have much use for the board, most of the hardware is only visible from PC side (totally inaccessible from Amiga). I won't do any kind of PC debugging.

[AnnaWu]

I am currently experimenting with internet access on Windows 95 (OSR 2.5).

[Zilog]

Hi to all,
i don't now if this test if already do....
The midi port external function correctly.

I have emulated Sb16 with and without external midi Roland.

I have post in the zone 2 famous soundtrack games with different midi device.

Motal Kombat 2 and Sound Blaster 16
Motal Kombat 2 and Sound Blaster 16 + Roland

Monkey Island 2 and Sound Blaster 16
Monkey Island 2 Sound Blaster 16 + Roland

Good Listen.