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Need help when use isa-to-usb card in IBM 5160!

@Stone
I bought this card trough a taobao agent.

@Gerardcjat
pearce_jj posted an initial design here, i don't know the status of it but there is not much to it, only a bios chip, the usb chip and an address decoder.
 
Congratulations. I am sure that many people will be interested.

I am surprised there is so little interest on what Ineverland did !!
Personally, I found this very interesting, and I will try to "duplicate" it.
First step : Buy the card through an TaoBao agent .....
Started ....
I will update ( may be on a new file ) what I get and do ....
Specials thanks to Ineverland. ;)
 
Are you able to pull the contents off of the USB ROM? I've got one of those ISA cards too, but don't have the ROM to test with. I've got an EPROM Burner/Reader as well so I can make a copy.
 
ineverland, jh1523 and i have posted some ROM images and links to them in this topic.
To date there are still some problems with them.

So if you read this entire topic you should find a ROM you can try.
 
I am surprised there is so little interest on what Ineverland did !!
Personally, I found this very interesting, and I will try to "duplicate" it.
First step : Buy the card through an TaoBao agent .....
Started ....
I will update ( may be on a new file ) what I get and do ....
Specials thanks to Ineverland. ;)

Hope you have fun with it.
 
The only issue really is that the board will need SMT components on it (the CH375 at least). But the design is done so if there is a working BIOS available, I'm happy to run some PCBs.
 
Update, as promised :

Parts are "only" living China. I used YOYBUY agent but this was not so easy ....
When you purchase parts, the parts go first to their warehouse, then they wait an "order" from the buyer to actualy send them ( probably to offer combined shipping ) BUT ....
They just to not email / notice you of the arrival into their warehouse !!
You have to check periodically their site.
Not so convenient ...
On the other hand, they accept Paypal althrough it is not obvious to find how to do so on their web site.
Next time, I may try another TaoBao agent.
 
Update, as promised :

Parts are "only" living China. I used YOYBUY agent but this was not so easy ....
When you purchase parts, the parts go first to their warehouse, then they wait an "order" from the buyer to actualy send them ( probably to offer combined shipping ) BUT ....
They just to not email / notice you of the arrival into their warehouse !!
You have to check periodically their site.
Not so convenient ...
On the other hand, they accept Paypal althrough it is not obvious to find how to do so on their web site.
Next time, I may try another TaoBao agent.

They have two version of the card, with or without boot rom,remember to buy the one with boot rom.
 
Update :
- Cards ( x2 ) arrived yesterday
- Today, I dig up my programmer, checked it can handle W27C512 and programmed successfully a couple of W27C512,

Will probably try it, tomorrow.
 
@Geradcjat, would you mind sharing your ROM (preferably the source)? Is it fully working at this point?
 
@Geradcjat, would you mind sharing your ROM (preferably the source)? Is it fully working at this point?

Well, there is some misunderstanding, it seems.
May be I have not worded correctly what I am doing. :-( English is not my native language.
- I am simply trying to duplicate Ineverland's work, for use on one ( or both ) of my 5155 PC
so the ROM content is what he posted on this file ( modified CH375ROMetc ... )
- I have NOT tested the "assembly" YET, and I am not sure I can do it shortly .... I am very busy during the day, well theses days ;-) and often get home a bit tired.
Most of all, I am a novice on BIOS ROM !
 
Well, there is some misunderstanding, it seems.
May be I have not worded correctly what I am doing. :-( English is not my native language.
- I am simply trying to duplicate Ineverland's work, for use on one ( or both ) of my 5155 PC
so the ROM content is what he posted on this file ( modified CH375ROMetc ... )
- I have NOT tested the "assembly" YET, and I am not sure I can do it shortly .... I am very busy during the day, well theses days ;-) and often get home a bit tired.
Most of all, I am a novice on BIOS ROM !

Hi Gerardcjat,this is the BIOS file you can write to your w27c512.
It's 64k in size, according to pietja's post, the lower 32k is padding with 0xff.
 

Attachments

  • burn(w27c512).zip
    1.9 KB · Views: 14
Anyone interested the Lo-tech version can read more here.

A few random questions. :)

Are you working on integrating support for these boards in XTIDE Universal BIOS?

What is the difference between the Standard and Fast transfer modes? As far as I can tell (and I might be wrong on this, reading the datasheet makes me wish google had an engrish translator), the CH375 can only do 8-bit transfers (via Base+0) so how would Fast mode work?

The port range is 260h-268h? Again, AFAICT, the CH375 only uses two or three 8-bit ports? BTW, the wiki page refers to both 360h and 260h. I guess this is a typo?

Considering these boards could be useful in a wide range of machines (I'm thinking from XT to AT machines, perhaps all the way up to Pentium class) maybe it would be worth adding more options for ROM and I/O port addresses?

Also, as far as I can tell, the CH375 supports more than one drive. Has anyone tried using a USB-hub with multiple drives? I don't think the BIOS supports that but the driver might? I haven't checked.
 
The port range is 260h-268h? Again, AFAICT, the CH375 only uses two or three 8-bit ports? BTW, the wiki page refers to both 360h and 260h. I guess this is a typo?
The CH375 itself is using the following ports:
Code:
Base  R/W data
Base +1 W command
Base +1 R interupt
The hardware itself only needs 2 8-bit ports, however making an address decoder is for such a small port rang is harder to do.

So try to make the address decoder as specific as possible, the only thing to keep in mind is the possibility that the driver is using the extra port aliases but that is something that has to be tested.
 
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