My second computer

I haven't forgotten my blog (I can't believe its almost three months since my last message). I've simply been too busy to even answer emails so writing a blog was not possible. Believe it or not, I'm writing this first on a paper because I don't have time to write it at home. Of course I'll have to type all this to computer but I hope it will take less time than typing while thinking what to write.

This is a good time to write about my second computer. I had to sell my Trifunic XT and 8-bit Nintendo but instead of buying a new computer, I bought little used SNES! I don't remember where I got the money for the Commodore 286 (I never sold the SNES) but I bought it quite soon after the SNES.

I remember the Commodore specs very well but I do not remember the model, and no, I sadly don't have any picture of this computer either.

The specs were:

• 286 12 MHz
• 1 MB RAM
• Integrated Paradise VGA (PVGA1A)
• 40 MB Quantum ProDrive 40AT
• 3,5" and 5,25" HD Floppy Drives

I've always regretted that I gave away all my 5,25" floppies with Trifunic XT. 5,25" floppies eventually proved to be more reliable. No wonder since less data is stored on a larger area. And I like the look, fell and sound of 5,25" floppies more than 3,5" disks.

What about monitor? That was greyscale IBM VGA. There is a small story behind it. I bought the Commodore from a small store selling new and used computers. On the same street there was another store like it. It was called Visiotek. Over the years many small computer stores born and died but Visiotek remained longer than any of the other stores I used to visit. Visiotek was never the cheapest but it had largest amount of used computers and items. Even as late as 2002 I bought a nice 486 system from there (that became what is now my gaming 486). Three years later you couldn't get anything older than Pentium 2 or 3 from there (it is very surprising that they even sold 486 systems as late as 2002). Maybe internet with cheap online stores, auction sites etc was too much but it was sad to see Visiotek wither away.

But back to the greyscale IBM VGA. It cost 400 Finnish Mark and I think so did the Commodore (very close anyway). I carried them to bus station that was nearby. First I carried the Commodore on a bag over a short distance and then the monitor (and so on).

I suppose I'm one of the few that has used greyscale VGA monitor for gaming. My cousin once asked why since my previous computer had color display (CGA). The greyscale VGA is without a doubt an improvement over the CGA. There are only a handful of games where I missed the CGA colors and those games mostly were CGA only games with well selected colors. Greyscale VGA allowed me to play all those EGA and VGA games I always wanted.

There are limitations with greyscale VGA. VGA can display 256 colors simultaneously. Each color has 6 bits for red, green and blue each, so full palette is 18 bits or 262,144 colors. But greyscale VGA monitor has only one beam, not three. So it can only display 64 (6 bits) shades of gray (black and white included). VGA BIOS is wise. It detects (or should detect, at least it can be forced by software) greyscale monitor and enables algorithm called greyscale summing. It is a technique for making sure that monitor displays as many different shades as possible, or more properly makes sure completely different colors are not displayed as same gray.

Many games do not use BIOS for setting colors (they write directly to VGA registers) and it causes a problem. For example some shades of red and blue turn out to be the same dark grey when greyscale summing is not used. Many Sierra games have driver for greyscale VGA monitors and it does the summing. Graphics look much better when the greyscale driver is used.

I didn't have the greyscale VGA for long. It was replaced with IBM Color VGA. Externally it looked identical to the greyscale VGA monitor. I'll tell more about it in my next blog entry and also about my first sound card.

Finally completed the 486DX2 system

The problems with the Toshiba CD-ROM drive were not related how the driver was loaded. I started having the very same occasional crashes. I had to accept that the drivers are buggy or there are some hardware incompatibilities.

No matter, I replaced the Toshiba drive with quad speed Mitsumi IDE CD-ROM drive. VIDE-CDD.SYS works perfectly with it since there were no transfer errors or crashes.

That also made the 486 system complete. It turned out to be quite nice. Here are the specs:

• Asus ISA-486SV2 motherboard + 16 MiB RAM
• Intel 486DX2 66 MHz
• Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428 based VLB graphics card with 2 MiB RAM
• Network card with XTIDE Universal BIOS ROM
• VLB multi I/O card (native support by XTIDE Universal BIOS)
• CF to IDE adapter with bracket (card can be easily removed)
• 6 GB Hitachi Microdrive
• Mitsumi quad speed IDE CD-ROM drive
• 3.5” Floppy Drive (quiet Panasonic)
• Sound Blaster 16 (CT2230) + Turtle Beach RIO (General Midi card with 4 MiB ROM)
• Temperature controlled power supply silenced with Nexus SP802512L-03 fan
• Barrel battery replaced with two AA batteries

I think it is a very good system for retro gaming. Of course my own 486 gaming system is even better in every way. Maybe I should write about it in my next post.

Installing FreeDOS on a 486

I wish I had more time for retro computers. Since my last post, I've been building 486DX2/66 system using spare parts I already have. When it is complete, I plan to try to sell it in Finnish auction site called huuto.net. To be honest, I don't actually expect anyone to buy it from there, at least not with the price I'm thinking of (it is going to be very nice system). I've never sold anything on ebay so maybe it is time to try although I fear postage might scare potential buyers off.

I'll tell more about the system when it is complete (and all the problems I've faced so far) but it is going to have a microdrive (I prefer those over CF cards) for easy and fast way to transfer files between it and modern system. So the system is going to have XTIDE Universal BIOS in it and I also plan to install DOS and old commercial games that are now released as freeware along with popular shareware games.

Since I'm going to sell the system, I just can't install any DOS no matter how old they are now. I would have liked to install PC DOS 2000 (100% compatible with MS-DOS 6.22 but more optimized with extra features) but the only option now is FreeDOS since it can be distributed free. I'm installing version 1.1 that is the latest.

I've been testing XTIDE Universal BIOS with FreeDOS boot disks but I've never installed whole FreeDOS. For those that do not know, FreeDOS is meant for more modern systems and so it may not be a perfect choice for retro gaming. There is 8088/8086 compatible kernel so it can be used even on oldest PCs but you'll likely need to customize your own version for 16 bit systems. There might be unexpected problems. For example I was able to boot my 286 with FreeDOS boot disk but it always froze when I tried to boot from hard drive. I was able to make 486 system bootable with the very same boot disk without any problems.

For retro gaming purposes FreeDOS has one great benefit over PC DOS 2000: FAT32 support. You won't need it unless you use out of era hard disks (I have 120 GB drive on my 286) but if you do, you'll no doubt want to access more than 8 GB and don't want to be limited to 2 GB FAT16 partitions.

MS-DOS 7 (Windows 9x) has FAT32 support but MS-DOS 7 requires 386 or better. PC DOS 7.10 works on 16-bit systems and also supports FAT32 but 7.10 is only available as boot disks. I found a collection of PC DOS 7.10 boot disks (different builds) and tried to install them over PC DOS 2000. It worked but every build had the very same problem: himem.sys consumed lots of conventional memory, many times more that it did with PC DOS 2000.

I eventually came to the conclusion that FAT32 is not that important for XT and 286 systems and I'm going to replace the 120 GB drive from my 286 system next time I open it. For 386 and later you can choose between MS-DOS 7 and FreeDOS and I recommend to at least try FreeDOS.

But for the 486DX2 system I'm building it was damn hard to install using official CD image for the FreeDOS 1.1 distribution. The CD is bootable but this old 486 does not support boot from CD-ROM. The CD contains setup.bat so booting from CD should not be needed. Well, the setup froze when I used MS-DOS 6.22 boot disk. Setup also failed with the FreeDOS boot disk I already had. All I got was out of environment space errors. I had to examine install documentation to find that setup requires 2k environment space to be set.

FreeDOS installed perfectly on my Pentium system (that was able to boot from CD). I tried to create install boot disk using it but it did not work much better. There was always something preventing the install. Finally I used the Pentium system to install FreeDOS and then moved the microdrive back to the 486.