PCem

I have extracted the BIOS contents of my Packard Bell Legend 760 Supreme with board model PB410A (486 SX 25 with Overdrive socket). SYS V1.01.20E, VGA V10.05.03J. I saw another Packard Bell machine added in the commit log and I was wondering if any others were wanted/needed. I would actually like to see this BIOS boot as an emulated system as well. Is there a procedure for this or is this done on a case by case basis? Thanks!

I've been unable to find out much about the PB410A on tinternet. Could you photograph the motherboard, or at least list what chips are on it? If it's mainly chips that have already been implemented then it should be relatively easy to add.

No problem. I'll clean the board tomorrow and take a picture. This site has information about that board: http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/pb/mb/410.htm

The VGA controller is an Headland HT216-32. The ROM for this is in the BIOS ROM as well.

From what I can tell the IDE and FDC ports seem to be routed to an ACC Micro 3221SP chip.
There is also an ACC Micro 2168 which could be the chipset.

Other than that I see an Ananlog Devices DAC near the VGA controller and another chip that could be an Intel DMA controller possibly. No sound on board, but a custom header for a 2400 baud modem daughterboard. It's pretty dirty so I need to give it a good clean before any usable pictures can be made.

Thanks for looking into it.

I have uploaded 4 images of the motherboard after cleaning. I attached the modem in one of the pictures as well. Thanks.

https://imgur.com/a/k9mFf

Zorix wrote: ↑Sun 04 Mar, 2018 4:48 pm https://imgur.com/a/k9mFf

Whoa! That barrel battery is still holding! I strongly advise you to remove it (it may leak and damage the board)

For sure. Actually, right after that picture was taken, I checked the voltage on it and it's dead flat, and then I desoldered it. So it's good now. The power supply though is a complete mess.

https://imgur.com/a/S9Eov

I'm hoping the motherboard is still functional. I will rebuild the power supply and extensively test it before trying it.

Hmm - that Headland video chip is troublesome. PCem currently has no emulation of any Headland video chips. If it was a dumb SVGA chip I might have tried to emulate it in time for v14, but it appears to have some acceleration features which makes it more complicated. The ACC chipset may also prove troublesome, as I've yet to find documentation for any of their chipsets.

As such it's highly unlikely that this machine will be emulated in time for v14 I'm afraid. v15 may be possible though.

Thanks for having a look. I have a datasheet for the HT216-32 but it was not hard to find. It's a VLB chip as well. I haven't heard of ACC either until I looked at the board.

Added in rev 1211. Sorry it's taken this long!

I am getting a compile error with commit 1211.

pcem-acc2036.o:acc2036.c:(.text+0x1d0): multiple definition of `acc2036_init'
pcem-acc2036.o:acc2036.c:(.text+0x1d0): first defined here
pcem-model.o:model.c:(.text+0x14e2): undefined reference to `acc3221_init'
collect2.exe: error: ld returned 1 exit status
mingw32-make[1]: *** [Makefile:817: pcem.exe] Error 1

Impressive work, Sarah. I was not expecting you to get to it this soon due to your work on the recompiler. That was a lot of effort for this machine. I will test it when I get home tonight.

I also have a few other Packard Bell computers now, a 386 class and Pentium class. I have not dumped the BIOS roms yet, but if you are interested I can get that information for you. The 386 BIOS is in two roms, probably a low byte and high byte set.

Thanks again. The PB410 is special to me.

jznomoney wrote: ↑Thu 04 Apr, 2019 11:58 pm I am getting a compile error with commit 1211.

pcem-acc2036.o:acc2036.c:(.text+0x1d0): multiple definition of `acc2036_init'
pcem-acc2036.o:acc2036.c:(.text+0x1d0): first defined here
pcem-model.o:model.c:(.text+0x14e2): undefined reference to `acc3221_init'
collect2.exe: error: ld returned 1 exit status
mingw32-make[1]: *** [Makefile:817: pcem.exe] Error 1

Typo in Makefile(s). Fixed in rev 1212.

I can confirm it works on Linux x86_64. Though the time/date does some strange things in the BIOS setup. I will hook up a hard drive image to it and install Windows on it this weekend to test further. Thanks!

Hmmm, there some bugs in the current ht216 implementation, especially this.



Driver used is in the following link:
https://mega.nz/#!v19VTChS!lZ8uEdJtCcr6 ... nIYm0KsgfI

Fixed in rev 1213.

Hmm the built-in win3.x video7 drivers that support the ht216-32 show this reddish bug and I wonder if it's the acceleration. Also, thanks for the above fix.

Fixed in rev 1214.

Excellent fix! Thanks!

Though, in win3.0's built-in 512k v7 driver, it does this.



I wonder if it's about the cursor ram or something, or the vram.

I just build pcem for the first time in awhile. The specified rom file is named PB410A.080337.4ABF.U25.bin but you had a commit awhile ago to make all the roms in lower case. Can you commit a change to make this rom file name in lower case as well? Thanks in advanced.

Edited here:
There are also several other models in the mem_bios.c that are still listed with upper case letters that will not load under ubuntu.
Example:
case ROM_IBMXT286:
f = romfopen("ibmxt286/BIOS_5162_21APR86_U34_78X7460_27256.BIN", "rb");
ff =romfopen("ibmxt286/BIOS_5162_21APR86_U35_78X7461_27256.BIN", "rb");
there are also others but I was just listing that as an example.
I'm only going by what was talking about in a previous thread here:
viewtopic.php?t=681

I hope this helps sarah and good job on the emulator as always.

Hi,
I have Packard Bell PB410A with BIOS saving settings issue with message real time clock failure.

Battery replaced with new one but problem not solved as settings reset every time restart system without removing power cord.
It's even not saving time, date or HDD details.

Any advise?

This isn't really the right place to ask - if you hadn't noticed, this is an emulator support forum...

You're better off asking at somewhere like VCF: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum.php