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Anyone who has built up a microchannel system with sound, compact flash, ethernet, etc., was it worth it?

VERAULT said:
Of course not. You need to add them to the setup disk. Same as you would for changing any option on an IBM ps/2 system.
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I know that. It does not recognize them when I add them to the reference disk. Even went to the trouble of recapping the board which solved random error codes on the front panel display but not refusing to recognize the diskettes for the cards.
 
krebizfan said:
I had one of those Ultimedia systems IBM offered in the 90s. Model 77 IIRC. It was adequate to the task.

Much of the PS/2 lineup wasn't quite to the standard one expected from IBM. The tower cases were a joy to work with. What went into those cases was underdeveloped with SIMM sockets that didn't work and even incompatibilities when installing IBM manufactured MCA expansion cards. The PS/2 line also had a lot of those horrid Dallas clock/batteries making just one more repair item.
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So. The business case [note the word "business"] was to sell to folks needing to engage in business. Not the hard-core gamer market [which didn't exist back then]. IBM sold [or tried to sell] reliability. Compatibility with business-related apps [accounting, word processing, etc] was what IBM focused on. This was in the late 80s into the early 90s, video capabilities, GUI interfaces, and the ever pervasive networking came late in the game.

SIMM sockets did come in early systems with plastic "catches" which didn't age well.

Incompatibilities... uh, IBM didn't start off by asking everyone to install any card. Look at the announcement letters, they list compatible [tested] configurations. Around '91-'92, IBM developed a new configuration algorithm [SC.EXE] that handled conflicts much better. If you want to get down into the weeds, I'm your Huckleberry... I am aware of a number of boards that IBM either replaced or applied mods to, and less commonly, even reimbursed the customer for. But in the whole, most of the cards work. You might have to play with slot or card order, but...

Dallas battery-backed RTCs, soldered to the system board, bad ju-ju. Considering that the battery was good for ten years [at best?] -AND- that IBM got out of the market leader position, that's not helpful.
 
ardent-blue said:
SGI IrisVision? Do tell.

With what application? Pretty limited to CAD, IIRC. I DO know someone with the correct compiler, if you have a desire to code for it.
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I bought it in 2009 with two binders of technical docs for $150 + shipping. Right at the end of when this stuff was still obscure junk.
At the time I had it setup with AutoCAD (I have the AME kit which was the full 3D modelling package but I have never gotten past the lack of a product activation key) and was working towards installing Autodesk Animator but my larger issue was at that time the only disk images that existed were copy-pasted backups of the files on the disks into ZIP files and not proper disk images, so they were somewhat mutilated and I was fighting to even get the demos to install. Likewise nobody really understood how the video passthrough worked yet so I had designed a cable to pass video from XGA through the card and then out the 3W3 to the monitor but the system died before I could test it, I ran out of space/time and when other people figured it out and posted about it before me it went into storage and I lost motivation.
Someoen here on the forum nagged me for a while to try and get back on track with this but it never happened. I'm sorry, man.
I got a couple photos from that system.

IMG_5859.jpg

CGS_0537.jpg


This was all before MCA got expensive. The model 95 was still $150 on ebay, network cards could be had for under $25 + shipping, SCSI disks were not unheard of to find but ultimately the market for MCA sound cards was still a thing (to thinkt here was a time when they were still under $200) and my attempts to feed it the card out of an RS/6000 failed because of driver issues. It saw it, but it just was not happy with it.

IMG_5861.jpg
 
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An ethernet and scsi card would be nice but having only two mca slots filled with a soundcsrd and CF hdd card pretty much maxed me out.
 
For me the interest would be in installing a multi-tasking OS that ran "smoother" or "better" in some way than on ISA/VLB/AGP hardware. I would expect that fileserving over a 10/100 ethernet MCA card would be better and not bog down the system, for instance. Whether that would be enough for me to care about the PS/2 long term, I don't know.
 
It won't run "smoother" or "better" on a MCA machine. Amusingly, the only 10/100 Ethernet MCA card sold with Windows drivers was a modified ISA bus design that didn't take advantage of MCA at all!
 
I figured OS/2 would run smoother and better on a PS/2 then a generic PC.

Olicom OC-2335 10/100 Ethernet is the card you are talking about? There is at least one NIB on eBay now for $100 BIN.
 
Unknown_K said:
I figured OS/2 would run smoother and better on a PS/2 then a generic PC.

Olicom OC-2335 10/100 Ethernet is the card you are talking about? There is at least one NIB on eBay now for $100 BIN.
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Funny i havent heard anyone mention ollicom since the mid to lste 90s. The hob I was at used them exclusively for fast token ring and 100mb ethernet. They were trully really good network cards. Our domain controllers had them as well.
 
MCA can do what 40MBs @32 bit? Between video and hard disk there is probably enough bandwidth left for 100Mb ethernet.

There are 10/100 Mb ethernet cards for 16-bit ISA, which could barely deal with that if nothing else was using the bus.
 
The Olicom card is 16bit and doesn't utilize DMA/Busmastering. Only thing it has in its favor over ISA is that MCA runs at 10Mhz.
 
reliquiolentus said:
I know that. It does not recognize them when I add them to the reference disk. Even went to the trouble of recapping the board which solved random error codes on the front panel display but not refusing to recognize the diskettes for the cards.
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Argh. Since I don't have either, further guestimation won't add much.
 
Unknown_K said:
MCA can do what 40MBs @32 bit?
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Er, not true. Or, not exactly true. The drivers on the sysboard limit adapter-sysboard or adapter-adapter transfer speed. So if you dropped a Corvette into an 8580 [assuming you could "fix" the 2K NVRAM... ], it could run the 64-bit streaming mode, but talking to the 386 over the earlier drivers would be questionable. Adapter to adapter transfers are less constrained, since you could run a Corvette and an Etherstreamer talking to each other at rates up to 80MB/s [on a later production system, my guess 76/77, 90/95]. Where the rub is, allowing systems to reach and sustain the 64-bit streaming mode.
 
njroadfan said:
MCA runs at 10Mhz.
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Er, the granny low gear "basic transfer" is done at 10MHz, yes. ISA is maybe 16-bit [if that] over 8MHz [stable systems]. MCA transfers are not ISA. Wider [16/32 bit], less time to set up the transfer, much more flexible. Do not equate clock speeds between ISA and MCA. In ISA, the bus speed is matched to the CPU. In MCA, the bus is not shackled to the CPU speed. Each device arbitrating for the MCA bus negotiates between the initiator and target for mutually supported data width and transfer speeds [modes].
 
VERAULT said:
fast token ring
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Unfortunately, nobody made HSTR cards for MCA. "Modern" systems don't have support for TR. So, my fervid hope of running an Auto LANStreamer into a Madge Deskstream, taking the HSTR uplink over to a PCI HSTR adapter in a "Modern" system, is paradise denied.

There were Fast Ethernet uplinks for the Deskstream, but they are not common on this side of the pond. The Ringswitch also had an Fast Ethernet uplink, and I did track one down, but the Ringswitch is not seen much [if at all] in the colonies... Shipping a medium flat rate box via USPS to Germany is $85. Imagine shipping a Ringswitch, something much bigger and heavier...
 
ISA on 386/486 machines was uncoupled from the CPU clock and tends to run at around 8.33Mhz (based on the EISA spec). MCA's biggest advantage was having a "clean slate" and properly supporting bus mastering/arbitration. Regardless, companies took the cheap route and adapted chips and designs targeted towards ISA. There are a few boards out there that are basically ISA cards with programmable option select slapped on with some extra glue logic to make them behave on MCA.
 
Even if the expansion card is little more than ISA adapted to MCA, does that mean it fully saturates an MCA bus, or would MCA be able to allocate only part of its bandwidth to the ISA card while it is active?
 
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