monotech / nuxt Goto Github PK

GLaBIOS is an open-source BIOS for IBM PCs and clones wih 8088 and V20 CPUs. It also explicitly supports so-called "turbo" clones that have software-switchable clock speeds. At first glance, It would seem like an ideal fit for the NuXT. Has anybody tried testing compatibility yet?

Hello there,

Could you update the BIOS to version 0.9.9?

Thank you.

Cold booting the machine with the onboard VGA disabled and an IBM CGA card, no output is displayed on the monitor. If I wait a bit and reset, the machine boots correctly with CGA output. If I try to reset too quickly I get no output, so maybe the CGA card just hasn't had enough time to initialize?

I am using KiCad6. Everything looks ok so far. However some 3D models are missing.
For example

${KIPRJMOD}/3Dmodels/Edge Connector 62pin P2.54mm RS5.08mm.STEP
${KIPRJMOD}/3Dmodels/PLCC-68 THT Socket.igs

Etc..

R.

Hi,

awesome work! Is this 100% open source so I could in theory get all the parts and firmware by myself or would there be missing any parts?
Not that it would be very feasable... :-)

Thanks!

Hi, I find it difficult to find the CF Card Socket pretty much anywhere in the world right now.
Could you please point at where we could source one from please ?

Thank you.

Hi!

Can you update the BIOS file for NuXT (v1.2) to version 0.9.8?
https://github.com/skiselev/8088_bios

I have an official IBM CGA card and would like the system to boot in 40 column mode, but the switch for that doesn't seem to work. The machine always boots in 80 column mode. I can switch to 40 columns successfully from dos using the mode 40 command. Any ideas? Thank you.

I noticed that the NuXT system ROM is built a bit differently than the upstream releases from https://github.com/skiselev/8088_bios. For example, the BIOS is located at C000 instead of A000. Also the xt-ide version is different. It would be nice to have docs/scripts for how to build the ROM as described in the NuXT manual. Thank you.

This is such an amazing project! 😍

I was wondering, however. Would it be possible to develop a variant of the NuXT board that offered compatibility with Tandy 1000 and IBM PCJr computers, particularly the graphics and sound capabilities of those systems?

I reckon integrating the sound part would be relatively easy, since one could simply integrate an existing available design such as the Lo-tech Tandy Compatible Sound Adapter into such NuXT motherboard variant.

I expect that the graphics part would pose a much bigger challenge. There are no existing open source and/or DIY projects for a Tandy 1000 compatible graphics adapter or controller that I'm aware of. The fact that this graphics standard is reliant on shared memory in the first 128KB of the 640KB conventional memory range would make it even more challenging. Perhaps this would require the use of dual ported RAM, at least for the first 128KB of RAM. And additionally, some circuitry would be required to map some of that memory to address 0xB8000 for CGA compatibility. And then there is the matter of subtle compatibility issues between PCJr and Tandy 1000 graphics controllers. Ideally, we'd want such a NuXT board to offer compatibility with both systems as best as possible. I'm no expert, but this would probably require an FPGA-based graphics controller. The obvious output ports would be a RGB TTL DB9 port for CGA monitors and an NTSC composite video port, which would also allow the display of 16 color composite mode CGA graphics, if the CGA compatibility of such a solution were good enough. There are already solutions out there to convert CGA/Tandy signals to something more modern, should people need it.

Anyway, perhaps it would be something to consider. It would better justify an on-board graphics solution, due to the shared memory requirement. It would perhaps also be more "era-appropriate" than a VGA chip.

What do you think? Is this a crazy idea? As popular as the NuXT product already is, releasing a Tandy 1000 compatible variant would cause even more retro computing and gaming enthusiasts to take notice.

As a possible less ambitious alternative suggestion: perhaps a separate ISA card could be designed that would offer this compatibility (both graphics and sound) with the NuXT board, if the board could somehow allow the video memory of such a card to be mapped to both the lower part of the system RAM (up to 128KB) and the 0xB8000 memory range for CGA compatibility.

What do you all think? Crazy? Doable? Or both? 🙂

At any rate, thanks for producing this awesome piece of retro kit. Keep on tinkering!