Re: [Freedos-user] PCI parlallel port card....

2024-08-02 Thread Roger via Freedos-user
Ebay.com is increasingly becoming a gamble.  Many are using the online
service(s) for making easy money, rather than selling a
legitimate product.  (eg. drug activity, other nefarious activities, ...)

Also, there's really no more Ebay.com customer phone support, likely with
Ebay.com simply relying upon Government for providing customer relief.
(Much like supposed corporations relying upon third party sold warranties,
rather than supplying the standard one year guarentee/warranty laws
require.)  Similar also occurring on Amazon.com, peopling using the
Amazon.com for selling products not fit for selling within local stores, at
retail cost versus the inflated price of good products.  (Also recently
reported via news media.)

Think when corporations allow such activity, they should no longer be
called a business.  Huge fan of Amazon.com, however they seem a little slow
sometimes.  With Ebay.com, good luck, as I think Ebay.com might be being
run entirely by AI, or explicitly by sellers.

Up until few a years ago, I had really good luck with getting working
products through Ebay.com, but once apparently phone customer service
ceased at Ebay.com, things might be getting far worse.

On Thu, Aug 1, 2024 at 9:47 PM Jerome Shidel via Freedos-user <
freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:

>
>
> > On Aug 1, 2024, at 8:12 PM, Roderick Klein via Freedos-user <
> freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> >
> > On 18-05-24 21:54, Roderick Klein wrote:
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> Are there any PCI cards that live at IO adress 378 so they are
> >> compatible with DOS ?
> >
> > I asked this a few months ago. Somebody pointed me at a PCI card of
> Startech. But this card is no lomger in stock.
> > Does anybody know PCI cards at IO address 378 you can still buy new in
> the US ?
> >
> > Thank you,
> >
> > Roderick
>
> eBay is your friend.
>
> I just did a quick search for “pci parallel port” and had a bunch of cards
> from $4 and up. With a little effort you probably could find one that is
> new for about $10-$15. You may end up with a combo serial/parallel card.
> But, often those have jumpers to change or disable the ports used.
>
> About two weeks ago, I replaced the ailing CD in my PentiumPro machine.
> For $26 and free shipping, I got a brand new (bulk packaging) IDE DVD
> drive. Took 5 minutes to drop it in to the machine and it works great.
>
> :-)
>
> Jerome
>
>
>
>
> >
> >
> > ___
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>
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Re: [Freedos-user] PCI parlallel port card....

2024-08-01 Thread Jerome Shidel via Freedos-user


> On Aug 1, 2024, at 8:12 PM, Roderick Klein via Freedos-user 
>  wrote:
> 
> On 18-05-24 21:54, Roderick Klein wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> Are there any PCI cards that live at IO adress 378 so they are
>> compatible with DOS ?
> 
> I asked this a few months ago. Somebody pointed me at a PCI card of Startech. 
> But this card is no lomger in stock.
> Does anybody know PCI cards at IO address 378 you can still buy new in the US 
> ?
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Roderick

eBay is your friend. 

I just did a quick search for “pci parallel port” and had a bunch of cards from 
$4 and up. With a little effort you probably could find one that is new for 
about $10-$15. You may end up with a combo serial/parallel card. But, often 
those have jumpers to change or disable the ports used.

About two weeks ago, I replaced the ailing CD in my PentiumPro machine. For $26 
and free shipping, I got a brand new (bulk packaging) IDE DVD drive. Took 5 
minutes to drop it in to the machine and it works great.

:-)

Jerome




> 
> 
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Re: [Freedos-user] PCI parlallel port card....

2024-08-01 Thread Roderick Klein via Freedos-user

On 18-05-24 21:54, Roderick Klein wrote:

Hello,

Are there any PCI cards that live at IO adress 378 so they are
compatible with DOS ?


I asked this a few months ago. Somebody pointed me at a PCI card of 
Startech. But this card is no lomger in stock.
Does anybody know PCI cards at IO address 378 you can still buy new in 
the US ?


Thank you,

Roderick



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Re: [Freedos-user] PCI parlallel port card....

2024-05-20 Thread Ralf Quint via Freedos-user

On 5/19/2024 2:25 AM, Frantisek Rysanek via Freedos-user wrote:

Are there any PCI cards that live at IO adress 378 so they are
compatible with DOS ?

I'd argue that the devil's in "subtle detail", and forecast hard
cheese for you :-/

In order to decode the IOport window at 0x378 by a PCI card, this has
to be supported by the chipset (probably south bridge) and the BIOS
of the motherboard where you are trying this.
I don't know how the PCI card that was linked to handles this, but if 
the card itself adds an onboard ROM BIOS which patches into the default 
calls for the parallel port functions and traps the (otherwise 
non-existent, hence adding the card) ISA (port) address space, this will 
work rather transparent.


But I can only remember one card, which I used probably +25 years ago, 
what was doing that fine. And that was a card that I remember was at a 
rather premium price point, al those cheap "made in Shenzen" PCI cards 
had the actual ports in PCI (port) address space, maybe patched some 
BIOS routines, but certainly only worked with some specialty drivers 
which would have to handle the access to those high PCI port numbers and 
commonly would NOT just work seamlessly with any old software that was 
trying to access the parallel (or serial) port...



Ralf




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Re: [Freedos-user] PCI parlallel port card....

2024-05-19 Thread Frantisek Rysanek via Freedos-user
> Are there any PCI cards that live at IO adress 378 so they are 
> compatible with DOS ?

I'd argue that the devil's in "subtle detail", and forecast hard 
cheese for you :-/

In order to decode the IOport window at 0x378 by a PCI card, this has 
to be supported by the chipset (probably south bridge) and the BIOS 
of the motherboard where you are trying this.

In a PC compatible motherboard that has or pretends support for 
legacy ISA peripherals, the ISA address space is typically catered to 
by so-called "subtractive decode" = any IOport or IOmem address not 
decoded by some other PCI device, gets funneled by default down some 
"sinkhole of last resort", which tends to be the "PCI-to-ISA bridge" 
= a particular PCI device nowadays within the south bridge. In 
reality, for many years this has really been an LPC master interface, 
leading to one or two SuperIO chips. I believe that the latest 
chipsets still support this, only the bus is nowadays SPI-based 
(rather than the LPC). Historically, after the ISA proper was gone, 
the "path of subtractive decode for legacy devices" led through the 
VESA Local Bus, and maybe also to a particular PCI device for a 
relatively brief period of time...
 
I'd say that in general, a PCI board claiming to positively decode 
some legacy ISA IO window, would have to reside on the same segment 
of the PCI bus, side by side, with the PCI-to-ISA bridge performing 
subtractive decode. Which you probably won't achieve in any modern 
chipset (say Intel 810 and later). Possibly Intel 440 or thereabouts 
would support it. We're speaking of a boundary somewhere halfway down 
the Pentium III era. (Except, see my note about PICMG setups below.)

Unlike VGA boards, where the chipsets readily let PCI cards decode 
the legacy IO address ranges, and a dedicated VGA OPROM, I'm not 
aware that PCI legacy IO would have a dedicated PCI device class, 
which would get that same sort of exclusive recognition on part of 
the BIOSes and PCI bridge hardware...

I've seen motherboards based on the late Cyrix/NS/AMD Geode, where 
the BIOS would typically allow you to map a few windows by hand, to a 
PCI/ISA bridge (often an IT if memory serves). Meaning that the 
PCI/ISA bridge did not enjoy subtractive decode for some reason. 
Possibly this got claimed by LPC or something...

I'm also aware that PICMG 1.0 CPU boards still exist, some of them 
based on relatively modern chipsets, still having an IT PCI/ISA 
bridge chip, running a "default decode path" for the IO base 0..0x3FF 
to that particular PCI device, while at the same time having a 
SuperIO chip or two on board... not sure which way the subtractive 
decode is going in that case :-) There tends to be a single segment 
of legacy PCI in such systems, so if you can get "side by side" with 
that IT PCI-to-ISA bridge, you stand a chance with that LPT card 
of yours.

Note that there are also motherboard / PICMG 1.0 CPU boards, where 
the ISA is extracted using an LPC-to-ISA bridge. In such systems, 
arguably nothing on the PCI bus would be able to decode legacy ISA 
addresses - because subtractive decode would flow down the LPC route.


The IO windows for PCI peripherals of any sort (are LPT cards special 
in any way?) are assigned dynamically by the BIOS at boot time 
(during the POST), using a top-down tree-style divide-and-conquer 
allocation approach, specifically evading the legacy ISA IO space.

Further reading:
https://ia802204.us.archive.org/16/items/33.-oxford-legacy-address-ran
ges/33.Oxford_Legacy_Address_Ranges.pdf

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=57053&start=40

You could try reconfiguring that BAR in your PCI LPT device after 
post, by accessing the PCI config space, yes it should be writeable, 
but... if you have subtractive decode routed away from your 
particular branch of the PCI tree, at some upstream fork point = 
bypassing your device, that's bad luck. Which is generally the case 
in modern PC chipsets.

Yes it's true that if a particular PCI BAR in a particular device 
asks for a specific IO window (in the ISA window or elsewhere), that 
should work by virtue of "positive decode", i.e. by being more 
specific than the "default subtractive decode route".
But you'd have to sit side by side with the PCI peripheral (like an 
LPC bridge) that sinks the subtractive decode. If you're separated by 
a PCI bridge, that's bad luck.

I recall that there may be additional chipset-specific =proprietary 
configuration bits/flags (or maybe hardwired arrangements?), which 
allow/prevent/clobber the decoding of the 0..0x3FF IO adddress spaces 
by an arbitrary PCI device, or an upstream PCI-e/PCI bridge, or some 
such. I recall Rayer and Ruik debating one such case, but google 
can't seem to find it, possibly it was in a private e-mail thread.

I can think of another way, or two:

A) On bare metal, you'd need some TSR driver, that would side-step 
into 32bit territory, trap access to that legacy LPT IO window and do 
a backgr

Re: [Freedos-user] PCI parlallel port card....

2024-05-18 Thread Daniel Essin via Freedos-user

https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/pci1pm

On 5/18/2024 12:54 PM, Roderick Klein via Freedos-user wrote:

Hello,

Are there any PCI cards that live at IO adress 378 so they are 
compatible with DOS ?


Thanks,

Roderick


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