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Ever seen a 80186 accelerator board? I have now. (and so can you)

I know I may be late to the party (again) but I have a Orchid PC Turbo 286e card I have the software as shared by user: per on another post but I’m lacking the manual. I was wondering if I could learn anything from the 186 manual which may give me some steer. I’ve yet to get the card to initiate. Though looking at the dos requirements of the earlier card I’m thinking maybe I need to try earlier dos versions.. again any steer I’ll take. I’m trying to run it in an IBM 5155 and I’ve just made enough space just to do so. Added an Ati Wonder 800 ega if anyone curious.. currently tried Dos 6.22, Dos 3.3 and I guess I may need to keep going back. Both dos versions are MS Dos.
 
Your post has inspired me to dig out my (also not working) 286e! I don't hold out much hope as I received it with the 286 LCC chip inserted the wrong way round. I've replaced the CPU, but suspect the previous orientation didn't do the board much good. In trying to get it up and running I also did a lot of searching and was never able to find a 286e manual.

One thing for certain however, is the board won't like the EGA card. Are you able to try with the original CGA card from the 5155?
Any DOS version pre-5.0 should be fine though.

Also, how have you got all the jumpers configured? Attached is my board setup.


This is the message I get after running my TURBO.SYS. Is it what you get?

PCturb0-286e System Version 1.26 06/05/87
(c) Copyright 1986 More Computing. All Rights Reserved.

DISK CACHE 2.22
(c) Copyright Orchid Technology 1985, 1986

PCturbo-286e Card not responding. Please check all board
jumpers and try again.

Now executing on host machine.
 

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th3bar0n said:
Your post has inspired me to dig out my (also not working) 286e! I don't hold out much hope as I received it with the 286 LCC chip inserted the wrong way round. I've replaced the CPU, but suspect the previous orientation didn't do the board much good. In trying to get it up and running I also did a lot of searching and was never able to find a 286e manual.

One thing for certain however, is the board won't like the EGA card. Are you able to try with the original CGA card from the 5155?
Any DOS version pre-5.0 should be fine though.

Also, how have you got all the jumpers configured? Attached is my board setup.


This is the message I get after running my TURBO.SYS. Is it what you get?

PCturb0-286e System Version 1.26 06/05/87
(c) Copyright 1986 More Computing. All Rights Reserved.

DISK CACHE 2.22
(c) Copyright Orchid Technology 1985, 1986

PCturbo-286e Card not responding. Please check all board
jumpers and try again.

Now executing on host machine.
Click to expand...
I’ve had both versions of messages may I know where you got the software? Was it also from pers post. I’d be interested if you have anything different to me or software.

How is the ega card a problem? This is news to me the issue with the 5155 is the number of longs slots available. I guess I could loose the fdd controller for testing as using xt ide I still have the original long card. I’ve tried with a couple of versions of dos 3.3 and 6.22 but the results are consistent it hangs after using the turbo command or turbo /! (Co-pro)

I’d be happy to learn more and share what I’ve found so far.

The only issue I can see on the card is a potentially leaky cap between the 8284 chip below the fpu I see this on the rear of the card. I fitted a 387 but tried it with and without - I’m not great with a soldering iron but I want to get this running the software seems to hang currently at the point of trying the turbo

I really would like to get it working I may have to try replacing that cap. My jumper settings look the same I’ve tried different settings for all the Irq options.
and jumpers on and off in all sorts of configurations.

I’ve tried with and without the daughterboards as well.

Pictures of the 3 boards attached.

Mike
 
Yes I think they are fundamentally the files from Per and then his posts and possibly some old usenet posts on how to setup turbo.sys etc. I've attached them to this post, just copy them to the root of a bootable DOS 3.3 disk.

The issue with EGA is covered in this post, and is a problem for these accelerators that don't have a ribbon connection to the CPU socket.
https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?t...8-to-80286-isa-coprocessor.44266/#post-550077

I think you could get an EGA adapter that connected to one (or both?) of the 40-pin headers to get around that limitation.

Did your photos definitely attach as I can't see them? If there are three boards it sounds like you might have the EMS/Extension memory which is cool!
 

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th3bar0n said:
Yes I think they are fundamentally the files from Per and then his posts and possibly some old usenet posts on how to setup turbo.sys etc. I've attached them to this post, just copy them to the root of a bootable DOS 3.3 disk.

The issue with EGA is covered in this post, and is a problem for these accelerators that don't have a ribbon connection to the CPU socket.
https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?t...8-to-80286-isa-coprocessor.44266/#post-550077

I think you could get an EGA adapter that connected to one (or both?) of the 40-pin headers to get around that limitation.

Did your photos definitely attach as I can't see them? If there are three boards it sounds like you might have the EMS/Extension memory which is cool!
Click to expand...
Interesting, not sure why the pics didn’t attach (actually just tried again and too large) probably me rushing out a reply. Yes I have the ems extension also. I believe my card is the one that turns up on a Google search as it was the same for the eBay listing that I bought it from.
I have tried also with the original cga but it’s very tight as the daughter boards on the 286e make it almost a double width card.

For now I’ve inserted some paper cd cases as and extra layer of insulation as I worry something could short out but it’s not a long term solution. Both the cpu and FPU get very hot and the chip in the other lcc socket with the heat sink also gets very hot. Worryingly so given they have yet to do anything.
9D23DA1D-4E4B-45CD-A1A1-679625FC4C35.jpeg26F85389-6524-497C-BCF8-94B427FBF01B.jpeg0EE64B21-13A3-441E-8D2A-1B04A837D758.jpeg

So here’s the pictures as I had it separated to try the card in sections.

I’ve tried without the ati card and no difference sadly still stalling at turbo and halts the system. I did wonder if you should be calling turbo at the point of execution but then I couldn’t figure how that helps. Eg turbo /! win (for example) it didn’t seem to make any difference.

I’m now wondering if the xt Ide however is a conflict.. so may try booting purely from floppies. Though this makes it less than useful.

My guess at this time is a fault on the board, perhaps that bad cap or some other failure.

Sadly I don’t have the required skills or equipment to do much than replace the bad cap(s)

If I progress further I’ll report back. Btw changing the jumpers had me thinking if like the 186 board you have to tell the board of the amount of ram present on the mainboard. Mine is a 256kb board modded to take 640kb presently. My thinking as the ram on board the 286e. When I changed these at jr3 onwards I got different responses like the card not detected as per your test. If only we had the elusive manual!

I’ll have a read of that forum and continue to Google for more information

I know the user foone on twitter also has this card but he lost the software disk he had - hopefully he might find it at some point that may give more clues as when switching on coprocessor with /! It tells you to read something on the file system that we don’t have. I also note mine is a Rev 1 board printed on it. Perhaps there were more than one revision of the software?

I still want to make progress.

Are you running yours in a 5160?

I can’t find much else in line but the forum you linked is new to my search.

Thanks for that.

Do keep trying :)
 
So a slight update, I copied the files to run purely across both floppy drives making a 2.11 boot disk, so no xt-ide, no ega card, I even put back the original 8088 from the v20. No difference. It all still hung at the point of executing turbo

Btw here are some further links I could locate in case any of these are new to you - though I’m sure you will have seen these:

https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?t...nd-some-very-good-news-about-my-new-xt.14975/

Orchid PCTurbo 286e Info??? | Vintage Computer Federation Forums

https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/i-finally-figured-what-that-ide-like-card-was.14862/

https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/077/Q77094/

https://worldradiohistory.com/hd2/I...7/Radio-Electronics-1987-11-OCR-Page-0094.pdf

https://worldradiohistory.com/hd2/I...7/Radio-Electronics-1987-11-OCR-Page-0095.pdf

https://inhale.ed.ntnu.no/oldtech/gallery/Orchid/

https://mobile.twitter.com › statusfoone on Twitter: "a PCturbo 286e! This is an add-on card for the original IBM PC ...

https://web.archive.org/web/2014100.../pctj/PCTJ-1987-06/pages/PCTJ-1987-06 153.pdf
 
I've seen some of those but definitely not all, so thanks for collecting here!

The fact your board doesn't work either, might mean it's an age related failure which hopefully we'll ultimately track down. I'm also hoping Per notices this thread as I'm curious if his board is actually still working.
I'm currently testing mine on a bare bone setup on the bench.. 5160 256kb motherboard, PSU, CGA, floppy controller and Gotek with a bootable DOS 3.3 disk.

Two next steps for me -

1. Confirm whether the original or my new LCC 286 actually works. This board is the only thing I have that takes that form factor so I've ordered an LCC68 socket which I'll try in an old 286 motherboard.

2. Attach a logic analyser to see what's happening at startup, particularly if power and clock at least are getting to the CPU. My CPU also gets hot (while doing nothing) so pretty sure it's getting power.

Might be a few days before I get to this but will post my findings!
 
th3bar0n said:
I've seen some of those but definitely not all, so thanks for collecting here!

The fact your board doesn't work either, might mean it's an age related failure which hopefully we'll ultimately track down. I'm also hoping Per notices this thread as I'm curious if his board is actually still working.
I'm currently testing mine on a bare bone setup on the bench.. 5160 256kb motherboard, PSU, CGA, floppy controller and Gotek with a bootable DOS 3.3 disk.

Two next steps for me -

1. Confirm whether the original or my new LCC 286 actually works. This board is the only thing I have that takes that form factor so I've ordered an LCC68 socket which I'll try in an old 286 motherboard.

2. Attach a logic analyser to see what's happening at startup, particularly if power and clock at least are getting to the CPU. My CPU also gets hot (while doing nothing) so pretty sure it's getting power.

Might be a few days before I get to this but will post my findings!
Click to expand...
Awesome glad to hear you have some equipment.

I also don’t own any other lcc 68 I did wonder if it would be worth swapping out the socket to a pin compitible pga or plcc as that would open the avenue to adding other accelerators. There were some ribbon type adapters for lcc to pga at one time but they are likely rarer than the boards themselves. I think they were with the Rev to 486 upgrades. I found some images a while back.

Btw I did track another board on sale 286e and trying to get the guy to consider shipping to the uk as he’s in Brazil. But he’s asking a kings ransom for it..

It would be good to see if there are more of these in the wild and functional.

Mike
 
per said:
Yes, I have heard about it, but never actually seen one. I have the equalent 286 version which works in much the same way. It even seems to be using the exact swame gate array, so the manual may even be very helpfull for me.

These cards doesn't replace the CPU in the host computer, but it rather uses the host as a "southbridge"-style I/O manager. The turbo card is more or less it's own computer, allthough it uses some basic resources from the host. It works surprisingly well for most programs, but programs that use a lot of low-level code may have issues running on it. My 286 version can even run a program on the 286 on the card while simoultaneously running a program on the host, but then things may easily get out of hand.
Click to expand...
Is there more information about your turbo card. Do you mean that you made a turbo card?
 
Mike1978 said:
Thanks to Paul (th3bar0n), he got a copy of a new card with software and manual. I’ve upload this to vogon drivers:


If anyone has the original card and this works for you then please let me know.
Click to expand...
Thank you very much!

chjmartin2 said:
Is there more information about your turbo card. Do you mean that you made a turbo card?
Click to expand...
Yes, the card I have was just a Orchid PCTurbo 286e. The card I was speaking about was the earlier 186 version also from Orchid.
 
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