David ‹

This morning I soldered the 4.7k resistors to the pins and I see no change
in operation under MSDOS. I did run the RAM test within the monitor for 10
loops with no problems. Maybe I¹ll leave it running for a few hours and see
how far it gets.

Rich

--
Rich Cini
Collector of Classic Computers
Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator
http://www.classiccmp.org/cini
http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32

From:  David Fry <[email protected]>
Reply-To:  S100-Post <[email protected]>
Date:  Saturday, April 18, 2015 at 1:54 PM
To:  S100-Post <[email protected]>
Subject:  Re: [N8VEM-S100:6766] Re: S100 8088 CPU Board Crashing/Unstable

Hi Rich,

you say 'the system is stable without the pull-ups'

Do you mean it is stable when the 8088 has control of the bus ?
did you solve your original problem with the 8088 then ?

regards & thanks

David Fry

On Saturday, April 18, 2015 at 6:34:40 PM UTC+1, AltairManRich wrote:
> Thanks David. As of now, the system is stable without the pull-ups, but I
> haven't used it in a while. I'll run it tonight and see if I have any issues
> with MEM. I'll also look at which chips I'm using. My system is fully loaded.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On Apr 18, 2015, at 1:17 PM, David Fry <[email protected] <javascript:> >
> wrote:
> 
>> Hi folks,
>> 
>> A quick update on progress made.
>> 
>> The new bus controller IC (D8288) arrived this morning, a ceramic Intel part
>> and not the ceramic AMD part I ordered but I'll let that one go.
>> 
>> Fitting the Intel bus controller brought an immediate improvement to the
>> situation but not a 100% cure, the CPU card still intermittently locks up but
>> FAR less than it did. I tried the NEC V20 CPU I have and that now also seems
>> to work and I can get into MSDOS and copy files from one folder to another,
>> something I previously couldn't do.
>> 
>> I still have the Intel CPU on order and will give that a try when it arrives
>> but in the meantime I dug out my IBM Technical Reference Manual for the PC-XT
>> to see how IBM implemented the D8288. What immediately jumped out at me was
>> that on the Memory & I/O read write lines (pins 12, 8, 13, & 7) they have
>> implemented 4.7k pull up resistors, checking the D8288 data sheets from 3
>> different manufacturers revealed no mention of the need for these resistors.
>> I therefore conjecture that IBM have used them to sharpen the leading edges
>> of these control signals to counteract the capacitance of all the combined
>> gate inputs the D8288 is driving across the motherboard (correct me if I'm
>> wrong).
>> 
>> Referring to Johns 8088 schematic I cannot see these resistors implemented
>> but on the Sergey Xi8088 he seems to have used 10k pull ups on these 4
>> signals.
>> So over the next few days I will add the 4.7k resistors and conduct longer
>> term testing (outside of a CPU swap) to see if the pull up resistors add any
>> value to the problem.
>> 
>> Rich, if you are reading this, give the pull ups a go before swapping out the
>> bus controller.
>> 
>> Oh... and can someone else try running the MSDOS command MEM, it still hangs
>> my 8088 CPU but not the 80286, would appreciate feedback on this one.
>> 
>> best regards
>> 
>> David Fry
>> 
>> On Friday, April 17, 2015 at 10:36:00 PM UTC+1, David Fry wrote:
>>> Hi everyone,
>>> 
>>> I've recently plugged my 8088 CPU board into my S100 system and have been
>>> having problems with the 8088 CPU board crashing/locking up.
>>> My system comprises all S100Computers.com <http://S100Computers.com>  boards
>>> 
>>> Prop I/O Console V01
>>> 16MB V3 Static Ram Board
>>> V2 MSDOS support board
>>> V2 Z80Master CPU Board
>>> V1 8088 CPU Board (Slave)
>>> V1 ZFDC Floppy Controller
>>> V2 S100 IDE/CF Board
>>> 
>>> The 8088 board was inspected for damage before construction, All
>>> resistors/capacitors/sil arrays are new & checked with
>>> multimeter/capacitance meter before soldering to the board,
>>> All TTL logic chips (TI branded) are new, all jumpers were initially set as
>>> per Johns webpage and double checked and the 3 x 47pf capacitors are in the
>>> correct locations.
>>> 
>>> The symptoms are similar to what AltairManRich had been experiencing in a
>>> few previous posts but no conclusion has been posted.
>>> 
>>> Basically, I can boot my system into the Z80 monitor and transfer control to
>>> the 8088 CPU which signs on with it's banner, I can press 'K' and bring up
>>> the monitor menu, most monitor commands seem to work fine but menu option
>>> 'J' memory test (specifying 1000,2000 as parameters) always results in the
>>> 8088 CPU card going into LaLa Land
>>> as Rich puts it, just filling the screen with spaces and scrolling, only a
>>> hard reset recovers the system. Occasionally the 8088 CPU will go into a
>>> HALT state rather than scrolling spaces.
>>> 
>>> I can 75% of the time get the 8088 CPU card to boot MSDOS 4.01 sometimes it
>>> hangs but most of the time I can get a directory listing, but copying a file
>>> to a folder will cause the
>>> system to freeze, also running the MSDOS command MEM always results in a
>>> system lockup.
>>> 
>>> If I drop the 8088 CPU card out of the system and place my 80286 card into
>>> the system everything mentioned above works fine without an issue so the
>>> fault would seem to be on the 8088 CPU board.
>>> 
>>> Studying the jumpers and schematic I can improve matters if I jumper K5 2-3,
>>> K6 2-3, K7 2-3, K11 2-3, K13 2-3 which obviously is tweaking the bus signal
>>> timing to come more from
>>> U68 the bus controller IC, the monitor memory test 'J' then seems to work
>>> fine but the system is still not totally stable under DOS and I can get it
>>> to crash. Lowering the CPU speed to 4.77Mhz makes no difference the fault
>>> remains.
>>> 
>>> My CPU is a Fujitsu MBL8088-1 and the bus controller IC is a UMC82C88, both
>>> of these IC's were supplied as 'NOS' but I can't remember the vendor now.
>>> I also have a NEC V20 CPU I have just had delivered from UTsource, if I fit
>>> this IC then the system stability is much worse
>>> 
>>> 
>>> So I have now ordered a 'NEW' Intel 8088-2 and a 'NEW' AMD8288 (non-cmos)
>>> bus controller to see if that changes the situation.
>>> 
>>> Are there any other recent 8088 CPU board builders having problems with this
>>> board ?
>>> Rich, did you fix your board ?
>>> 
>>> regards
>>> 
>>> David Fry
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
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