Yey, my IBM PGC just arrived (pictures included)!

[per]

As you may know, I recently bought an IBM PGC, and it arrived just now. The post office took an additional 200 NOK (about $40 USD) in customs taxes :angry: , but I could afford it.

This PGC is from about mid-1984, and it seems to work as it should. Some of the cards seems to have a little minor bend, but they still fit within the plastic tracks provided for full length cards.

Now is the time to start experimenting with how fast the card actually is, and if it IS possible to write a game/demo that uses it's 3D capabilities.

I've included some pictures from the diagnostic test.

Just one question; On my monitor, colour nr.6 in CGA emulation mode is dark yellow. Is it dark yellow on the IBM 5175 too?

 

[per]

Sorry, my fault. CGA Color 6 IS appearing as brown. However, FlightSimulator 2.13 appears in Black/Cyan/Magenta/White instead of Black/Cyan/Red/White.

 

[Andrettigto]

I'm glad it's working and not DOA. Is it true that they give off a lot of heat when running? That's a really rare setup you've got, I would have paid more.

About the pallet color issue, I read this:
" On a real CGA, if bit 2 of port 03D8h and bit 5 of port 03D9h are both set, the palette used in graphics modes is red/cyan/white. On a PGC, it's magenta/cyan/white. You still get red/cyan/white if bit 5 of port 03D9h is not set. This is a firmware issue rather than hardware. "
http://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/pgc.html

So with Sub-Logic, there must be a slight compatibility issue in that mode. I'm suprised it even runs that game.

 

[per]

I'm glad it's working and not DOA. Is it true that they give off a lot of heat when running? That's a really rare setup you've got, I would have paid more.

About the pallet color issue, I read this:
" On a real CGA, if bit 2 of port 03D8h and bit 5 of port 03D9h are both set, the palette used in graphics modes is red/cyan/white. On a PGC, it's magenta/cyan/white. You still get red/cyan/white if bit 5 of port 03D9h is not set. This is a firmware issue rather than hardware. "
http://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/pgc.html

So with Sub-Logic, there must be a slight compatibility issue in that mode. I'm suprised it even runs that game.

I can tell you it gives off a LOT of heat. The 8088-2 on the card runs at 8MHz (it's driven by a 24MHz crystall run through the usual 8284), and there is a total of 179 IC's packed rather compact together that constantly draws a lot of power! It gets does quite hot after a while, i wouldn't be surprised if it passed 50 degrees celsius (assuming the chassis is closed and no extra fans installed).

With the fact that this card does not contain any 6845 or equalent CRT controller, I'm surprised how well it emulates the CGA too. In graphics mode, it's surprisingly fast. I would even say it is faster than the original CGA (stay tuned, I'll be runing Trixter's CGA-Compability tester on it tomorow)!

Most of the logic on the card is either standard TTL logics. there is also some chips with special functions like the Video DAC, CPU, and memory, but there is two chips I am unsure about. Those two chips turns out to be 82S105's; AKA. "16 X 48 X 8 Field Programmable Logic Sequencer"'s.

What would you think will happen if I replace the 8088-2 with a V-20 (Overclocking is not a good idea since it generates enough heat from before on)? I don't want to do it, but I just got the idea...

I am currently working on puzzeling together some really high-res. panorama pictures I took of the different boards.

 

[Trixter]

What would you think will happen if I replace the 8088-2 with a V-20 (Overclocking is not a good idea since it generates enough heat from before on)? I don't want to do it, but I just got the idea...

If any of the software/firmware relies on 8088-2 quirks, you may brick the board, so I wouldn't try.

Very jealous let us know, with photos, if you get anything nice and high-color/high-res working.

 

[Chuck(G)]

I don't know that substituting a V20 would work or not, but you might consider an 80c88-2 to cut the power consumption a bit. My concern with the V20 might be that there are some video signals that are supposed to work with specific software loops in the firmware to this thing.

Those "programmable logic sequencers" are more-or-less fancy registered PALs (see the datasheet for a PAL16R8 for comparison). Basically an EPROM and a latch, where the EPROM output, combined with any number of inputs determines the next EPROM location, or "state". Woz did his disk controller like that--it's scarcely more than a ROM, a latch and some glue.

The awful thing about the product timing was that a PC AT with an EGA card could easily outrun the PGC and cost only a fraction--and the EGA display was bit-addressable; you didn't have to throw a bunch of graphics drawing commands at it to get something done.

 

[Jorg]

Ow, Per, yes, some nice pictures would be great.

I must have missed it, but where did you manage to find that thing?

 

[per]

Ow, Per, yes, some nice pictures would be great.

I must have missed it, but where did you manage to find that thing?

I got it on Ebay, from RE*PC. I was originally buying the IBM game controller from them, but I suddenly realized they had an IBM PGC for sale too. The game controller won't be recognized durning the Diagnostic test, but I think that's because nothing is connected to it.

About how the PGC did in the CGA-Compability test was pretty interesting. The first fact is that memory R/W's are actually slower than on the original CGA. Not much, but on average about 10KB/s below. The next thing is that the card does very well behave as a CGA card durning the graphics tests. The only signifficant difference is that it doesn't support overscan, but it does support different background colors/text colors. Color 6 is brown, as expected. It also supports blink on/off (extended BG colors when off), and to my surprise, it made it through the cursor test (I haven't seen any other CGA-clone doing that)! The weirdest ressult was the snow test. I know snow is supposed to appear in the area below the explaining text. On the PGC, it appeard everywhere else (in other words, OVER the explaining text, and in the first column)! I found that kind of strange. As other stated above, 160*100 16-color mode is not supported. The PGC also uses a sligthly different font than the CGA (doesn't quite look like the EGA/VGA font either, IIRC, maybe it's using it's own font?). Vertical refresh rate is calculated to 60Hz, as expected, The horizontal refresh test fails miserably; Instead of the colored bars moving up and down, the background gets filled with one of 4 flashing colors at seemingly random times (Didn't try it long enough to test if it was truly random or a system in it). Row/Col. reprogramming is not really supported, the end of each row expands to the next row, and the display doesn't make up squares anymore. Display repositioning is supported, as well as start-address reprogramming. Hardware detection detects it as a CGA card.

Anyways, I've included a coupple of images. It took me three hours to make that screen example. Most of the time, I was trying to correct errors made when mis-spelling the commands send to the card (Don't ask me how many times I had to repeat "c 0", "pf 1" and "ci 10").

 

[Andrettigto]

Nice pics... too bad you're so ugly. lol Thanks for posting them.

I wonder what the other jumper beside the CGA mode select is for? Another sweet pic would be with the 3 boards assembled and mounted.

Now you need to test performance for what this board was really designed for, AutoCAD. It would be a great test to try and I'm sure with proper drivers, it'll smoke an EGA set up.

 

[mikey99]

Congrats on finding the PGC and glad to hear it works !

Did you disassemble the boards for those pictures ?

In 1985 the lab I worked in bought one of these setups,
PGC with the 5175 monitor. I remember seeing a demo played
with a bowl of fruit in 256 color mode spinning around. We were
all amazed at the detail and animation. I've been looking around
for that demo but haven't found it.

The only programs I've tried on my PGC:
1) CSHOW (can't recall the exact version number but it allows
display of 256 color GIF files on the PGC)
2) IBM CADWrite

Let us know if you find any other programs that work on the PGC.

I found a few pictures of the one I bought (also on eBay) awhile back....

 

[Marrr]

it made it through the cursor test (I haven't seen any other CGA-clone doing that)!

Try it on ATI SWGS - worked for me.

Anyway, wasn't PGC designed primarily for IBM GKS, rather than AutoCAD?

 

[per]

Congrats on finding the PGC and glad to hear it works !

Did you disassemble the boards for those pictures ?

In 1985 the lab I worked in bought one of these setups,
PGC with the 5175 monitor. I remember seeing a demo played
with a bowl of fruit in 256 color mode spinning around. We were
all amazed at the detail and animation. I've been looking around
for that demo but haven't found it.

The only programs I've tried on my PGC:
1) CSHOW (can't recall the exact version number but it allows
display of 256 color GIF files on the PGC)
2) IBM CADWrite

Let us know if you find any other programs that work on the PGC.

I found a few pictures of the one I bought (also on eBay) awhile back....

Yes, I had to disassemble the boards to take the pictures, but that went without troubles.

Lucky you! you got your cards with the original box and some documentation (I only got the cards). Is there any posibility for you to scan any of the documents?

In fact, instead of trying to find programs that will work with this card, I may do an attempt making one myself! It's not really difficult as of the way the PC comunicates with the card is rather simple, and the commands you send to the card are not too dificult to learn. 3D is actually really easy when you understand the differences between Object-space, World-space, and what you actually see on the monitor.

Some hints; when making programs with several objects, store each object as a list of commands required to draw that object. When doing, say an animation, do the following for each frame:

1. Clear the screen.
2. Set up the envroniment (Model-matrix/View-matrix/View-reference-point/View-angle/Distance-to-View-reference-point for 3D, window for 2D, and ViewPort for both).
3. Call the command-list that draws the desired object.
4. Repeat step 2 and 3 untill all objects are drawn.

All you have to do between each frame is to slightly change certain of the values used in step number 2. Those changes will be the general "movments" in the animation. For the rotating bowl of fruit, the value changed is of course how many degrees the model matrix is rotated on the Y axis (may also be the view matrix instead of the object matrix; difficult to say if there is only one object). The rule is that if you change the model matrix, only the object changes, while changing the view matrix, everything changes (think of it as if there is a camera that is being moved).

 

[per]

Try it on ATI SWGS - worked for me.

Anyway, wasn't PGC designed primarily for IBM GKS, rather than AutoCAD?

I tried that, however, when I tried it it didn't work. Maybe it was because it was emulating CGA to a monochrome monitor (I don't got any working CGA/EGA monitors ).

 

[Marrr]

I tried that, however, when I tried it it didn't work. Maybe it was because it was emulating CGA to a monochrome monitor (I don't got any working CGA/EGA monitors ).

Ahh, makes sense now. I tested those cursors with a CGA-type monitor.

 

[per]

I may have given some miss-information regarding the heat generated by the card. Yes it does generate heat, but not 50 degrees celcius! In fact, the temperature is rather something between 35 degrees celcius and 40 degrees celcius.

My bad, sorry.

 

[dongfeng]

That's really interesting! I look forward to seeing you write some cool software for it

Now you just need to find the IBM 5175 monitor! :mrgreen:

 

[Andrettigto]

I may have given some miss-information regarding the heat generated by the card. Yes it does generate heat, but not 50 degrees celcius! In fact, the temperature is rather something between 35 degrees celcius and 40 degrees celcius.

My bad, sorry.

I didn't think of it as an unusual reading. My gamer system is running 2 4870x2's and under load the gpu temps climb over 82c!

 

[per]

That's really interesting! I look forward to seeing you write some cool software for it

Now you just need to find the IBM 5175 monitor! :mrgreen:

Well, as of my previous bad-shipping-experience with other monitors, I think I will stick to using the card with a normal VGA monitor.

 

[Trixter]

The weirdest ressult was the snow test. I know snow is supposed to appear in the area below the explaining text. On the PGC, it appeard everywhere else (in other words, OVER the explaining text, and in the first column)! I found that kind of strange. As other stated above, 160*100 16-color mode is not supported. The PGC also uses a sligthly different font than the CGA (doesn't quite look like the EGA/VGA font either, IIRC, maybe it's using it's own font?). Vertical refresh rate is calculated to 60Hz, as expected, The horizontal refresh test fails miserably; Instead of the colored bars moving up and down, the background gets filled with one of 4 flashing colors at seemingly random times (Didn't try it long enough to test if it was truly random or a system in it). Row/Col. reprogramming is not really supported, the end of each row expands to the next row, and the display doesn't make up squares anymore. Display repositioning is supported, as well as start-address reprogramming. Hardware detection detects it as a CGA card.

I'm glad that program has been so useful for you I'll try to comment on what the test is doing and what might be happening:

Re: snow, I make the snow appear by waiting for the end of vertical retrace, then monitoring the horizontal retrace port until 8 scanlines go by, then I start reading and writing the entire screen to itself to generate the snow. If the horizontal and/or vertical retrace port at 3da isn't there/behaving, then that would cause snow over everything. In fact, it explains why the other colorbar test failed too.

For being such a wacky card, I'm surprised at the level of compatibility you saw.

 

[mikey99]

All this talk about the PGC/PGD gave me some inspiration to pull out
my card and display and spend some time playing around. I put the
PGC card in my IBM AT , and hooked up the 5175. It all still works
okay, so now I just need to find something to run on here. I'll probably
start with trying some old CGA games to see how they look in the emulated
CGA mode. I'll try to post some pictures at some point.

One thing I did notice, the AT setup disk version 2.07 hangs when
I try to go into the System checkout. It's probably caused by one
of the non-IBM cards I have installed, an RLL controller and a Sound
Blaster (8-bit). Another thing is the setup disk detects the PGC only
as a CGA card, which seems a bit strange.

I tried an old version of CSHOW (a jpg/gif viewing program) , it does
detect the PGC and displays a 640x480 test pattern on the screen.