Tag Archives: dual CPU

Intel 80860, Olivetti CP486

Olivetti LSX 5010

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Years ago I got that broken Olivetti CP486 board (the predecessor of the LSX 5010 and 5020 family) – one of the two ever made i486/i860 combo Mainboards (the other one was the 4860 by Hauppauge). Well because it was broken, missing important parts and I felt like I’m the only one on the planet having such system I dumped it.

There’s life out there!

Now I learned there are at least two LSX 5010 owners left on this planet and one of them contacted me, primarily asking for an i860… well, long story short:
His LSX 5010 was broken, too, but complete! We agreed on a deal: I try to fix it (plus an i860) and he’ll give me a system out of his collection.

Some days later I had everything I’d call a good-to-go system:

The grey box with an LCD display is the “console”, giving you POST information, a speaker and some buttons. Next to it the huge power-supply and in the slots you can spot the EVC-1 graphics card an my trusty ISA/PCI POST card…

Let there be light

Booting the system just the console showed a “CMOS Periodic Int Error“. Doing a warm-boot it replaced by a „Base 128k Ram Error“.
Additionally it behaved somehow flaky, booting  into different states every now and then:

These three Errors were solvable:

  • Flaky behavior: Replacing all caps – this always helps. Believe me. The system booted into a reproducible state after this.
  • CMOS error: The dreaded DALLAS CMOS clock-chip… we all know the drill. Its battery is empty and EISA systems heavily rely on a working CMOS storage. So it got an external battery surgery.
  • RAM error: That was a bit tricky. The LSX’es need parity RAM. One SIMM per bank. Max. mem is 16MB – I only have 16MB+ SIMMs. So I had to get small parity PS/2 SIMMs. 2x4MB did it.

Booting the system now, the console greeted me with

  • „Console Passed“
  • „P.O.D. Running“ (That’s the Power On Diagnostic)

…and then „Non-Maskable Int. Error“. Dammit! This can have many reasons, most of the time it’s RAM (parity). But in my case, it’s been different…

That was a fun one (actually two):
The trace to the i486 processor NMI-pin (B15) was scratched and needed repairs. But it still kept throwing that error. Why-oh-why?!?! After a whole day of digging I had a severe facepalm-moment:

The owner replaced the CPU by an 80486SX because he was under the assumption the LSX 5010 was an SX system. But it wasn’t. It’s a 80486DX @ 25Mhz system (while the 5020 is 33MHz).
And while everybody is claiming the SX is just a DX minus FPU… it is not a 100% drop-in replacement!
While the DX’es have their NMI-pin at B15 the SXes have it located at A15 (where DXes have IGNEE) and B15 is not-connected. Doh! (Checkout the pinout here)

So replacing the SX by one of my 486DX  we finally got a full boot! Tadaa:

Those stripes came from the EVC-1, which definitely also had its problems. So checking its board with my microscope I came about this:

Uhhh…. a cracked diode (D14) connected to address-line A0 to the video RAM. That explains the lines quite well.
When the new DA5 (BAR43S) diodes arrived I replaced the broken one, fired up the LSX 5010:
Looking good, booting into the EISA CMOS setup and while editing the config I could watch the picture disintegrating by every keystroke. More and more garbage was displayed, columns disappearing until it was all black.
The EVC-1 literally died in action in front of my eyes 🙁

I’m not sure what happened here. The fixed address-line can’t be responsible for this. All ICs still get their clean 5 volts. I suspect that one or more of the many old PALs (some of them even bipolar) died…

Ride on…

Anyhow, plugging in my ET4000 workhorse I was able to resume the setup. EISA systems always need a setup tool to tell them all the features of their Mainboard as well as the cards being installed. Luckily the owner had the basic tools at hand… you’re screwed without them.
So this is the one for the LSX booting:

After that’s been done I ran the diagnostic tool – in German just for the fun of it (You can spot all those “OKs”, right?)

But wait a second! Isn’t there something missing?
You’re right… here you go:

The mighty i860 RISC processor… and it is detected just fine: “Pass” 🙂

But does it work, too?

Yes it does! Hooray… mission accomplished!

Downloads

As usual, here are the dumps of the BIOS, Config EPROM and CMOS.
Additionally, you’ll find the floppy images of the config- and diagnostic tools in this archive.

Conclusion

The LSX 5010 is very much like the Hauppauge 4860 a fragile system to work with.
If the unusual configuration of EISA systems weren’t enough, the use of the many, many, many proprietary ICs (i.e. GALs and PALs) make them prone to aging and hard to fix.
They were bespoke designs, limited in their compatibility – Olivetti lists about 30 cards (VGA, SCSI, most of them multi-RS232) officially working – and most importantly need specific parts like the console and software.
Without the proper EISA config tool you always get at least error messages. Without drivers for the i860 you will not be able to use that and it’s just a heating-element inside your computers case.

Those (server) systems were meant to run as-is. Pretty much like a SUN, HP or SGI server of the same period. You can pick from like 2-3 devices to add and that’s pretty much it. They were not designed as an average PeeCee running Doom.

Intel 80860, Olivetti CP486

Olivetti CP486

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The Olivetti CP486 was “the other” machine on the market which provided an 80486 and an 80860 on the same mainboard. The same board was used in Olivetti machines called LSX-5010 (25MHz) or LSX-5020(33MHz).
Like the Hauppauge 4860, it was an EISA bus system too, had no 2nd level cache but an extra socket for a Weitek 4167 FPU. Again very similar is the use of an huge array of PALs and GALs… and huge is the keyword for its size:  40,5 cm x 34 cm (16″ x 13.4″)!

CP486_total

My CP486 which I’m showing here seemed to have been through very though conditions. It was quite dirty and is of course not working :-/ Mainly due to a missing PAL, I guess (shown in the following picture).
So here’s the lower part of the board (90° tilted for better reading):

CP486_left

At the top the i486, in this case an DX2/50 I had lying around – nicely fitting the 25MHz oscillator to the right of it. At the edge of the photo you can see a bit of another socket. That’s where the optional Weitek FPU would have go (See the picture of the total view).
Next you’ll spot the many PALs around it. And a wild mixture it is! All PALs/GALs on the board are from different manufacturers, years and kinds. Some still featuring labels, most of them peeling off. According to the only documentation I was able to find, “in field” upgrades seemed to happen quite often. The little red arrow indicates the missing PAL at “U82” I talked about before. It should be a 16R4 containing the snoop-control, a vital part of the memory management. Without it, the board is pretty much brain-dead 🙁
Next are 8 slots for PS/2 SIMMs… depending on the BIOS version up to 64MB RAM were usable.

In the low left corner is what made this board special: The i860 socket. The 3 PALs above it are his address decoders… nothing is known about how the two processors shared the RAM.

Which leads us to the other half of the board:

CP486_right

This part is mainly chip-set stuff. At the top left there are the Intel 82358 EBC and 82537 ISP (See my Knowledge-Base article for more info) ICs.
The rest of the action is squeezing into the lower right corner: On top the WD16C552 Serial and Parallel Port Controller. The other two bigger PLCC ICs are EP1800 CPLDs supposedly working as I/O controllers. To their right is a 8742AH handling the PS/2 keyboard and mouse.
Below that there’s the inevitable DALLAS clockchip, a 64kbit EEPROM (probably EISA config) and a 1Mbit 28F010 Flash EPROM for the BIOS. Pretty modern stuff actually.
Naturally I read out the BIOS… it’s completely Olivetti propriety as they always did back in those days (Download available at the end of this page).
Last but not least, the power connector. Again, propriety but I do have the original power supply. Nice big paper weight.

The EVC-1

Like the Hauppauge 4860 (again), the CP486 also offered a special Graphics Card which enabled the i860 to directly write into its video memory, so it could be used as an accelerator.
While Hauppauge went the way of offering a special dedicated slot, Olivetti designed a special EISA Video Card… well, the EVC-1.

CP486_EVC

While it features a standard EISA slot connector, it does not work in other EISA systems (You get the BIOS boot messages but it then hangs with wire-do chars displayed).

It’s core is a Chips & Technologies 82C452, a mediocre VGA chip.  Olivetti attached this DRAM VGA controller to 1MB dual-ported DRAM… This totally makes sense because the 82C452 can act as a simple VGA controller while the i860 will als be able to write to the screen (via EISA DMA) for example doing the heavy lifting graphics stuff. The idea is the same as Hauppauges Framebuffer but enhanced with a VGA controller.
That said, IMHO 1MB video memory is a bit less for such a professional approach.

Conclusion

So, here‘s the CP486 PDF-document I was able to find in the WWW including my BIOS dump.
If you happen to own a CP486/LSX50x0 I would be happy to hear from you!

Final anecdote: I’m not sure this guy (German forum, Google-Translate will most likely help) knew what he was doing when scavenging a complete, fine running LSX-5020 for a boring case-modding stunt. In a few years he will kick his ass for killing a one-of-a-kind machine for a boring mass-market PC.
That’s the same sin many Americans did to their vintage Ferraris when they replaced the somewhat complicated original engine with an off the shelf Ford V8 to make it reliable… and reduced its value to 10%. Sin! Sin I said!

Caplin Cybernetics

Caplin Cybernetics i860/Transputer cards

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Caplin Cybernetics (just Caplin for short) was one of those many UK based (London to be exact) companies building Transputer based high-performance systems. Caplin seemed to be specifically concentrating on providing Transputer technology for DEC systems, namely VAXen.

As of now, I do not know much more about Caplin, but I know there are still some former employees around and I’d be happy to learn more about the company as well as the systems I’m going to describe further down.

By a lucky indecent I got my little greedy hands onto 2 different Caplin systems. Both connecting Transputer (networks) to a mighty Intel 80860XP.
While these boards have i860’s on them I’ve put them into this Transputer category, as they were meant as math accelerator for Transputer networks, not the other way round like the DSM860 boards, which used Transputers mainly for networking.

I don’t have any documentation for those boards but I hope to get them working as soon I figured out how to connect to the Transputers, find out more about the memory-mapping and found a way how to read those damn Bipolar-PROMs.

That said, from here everything is just wild speculation, assumption and finger-in-the-air-guessing – If you know more/better: Let me know please!

I’m specifically looking for the document called “Caplin XPR Series Technical Overview”. If you still have a copy or you do know somebody who might: I’d be very happy to hear from you!

HXI860

The HXI860 seems to be the earlier implementation of a Transputer-to-i860 board. It is a quite late i860 implementation though, featuring the first incarnation of the i860, the 860XR, predecessor  of the 860XP.

A picture says more than a 1000 words: The HXI860 in full view

HXI860-total

Let’s start with the left side of the board. The picture is a bit blurry (sorry) but it’s enough to identify what I’m going to talk about:

HXI860-upper

Starting on the left there are many blue 2-row pin connectors. This seems like a job for long winter evenings to find out which pin is connecting to what.
Then there are the 3 “golden boys” next to the connectors: From top down those are 1 T800-25 and two C004 linkswitches. Above the T800 there’s 4MB for his own use.
Then there are two FPGAs, one with the AT&T logo (ATT3020) and one more familiar XILINX XC2064, both getting their programming from an Xilinx 1736A PROM.
In the top-right corner the heavy-wight-champion i860XR (40MHz) surrounded by lots of buffers and GALs. The long DIP ICs on the right edge are IDT73210 octal transceivers with parity checking.
Rightmost are the connectors to the DEC Q-Bus… luckily only power & GND are taken from there, so you don’t necessarily need a VAX to use the board.

The right side of the board looks like this:

HXI860-lower

Ignoring the lurking C004 and Xilinx CPLD the leftmost black square IC is an T222C-17 which most likely controls the initial C004 configuration. He gets his code from two ICT 27CX642 which are quite strange devices: Made like CMOS EPROMS they use differential memory cell techniques to provide bipolar-prom speed. No idea how I will be able to read them out with my standard EPROM programmer.
Also, there’s a “6bit” dip-switch next to the T222 which I was told will be used to configure the link routing… let’s see what I will figure out by try’n’error.
The other four square ICs are 2Kx16 dual-ported RAMs (IDT7133). Four of them makes 64bit… well, that the i860 memory bus interface.
Last but not least there’s a long DIP IC above the DP-RAM… it’s an C012 Transputer link-adapter. So one Transputer link must be connected here, converted into 8-bit parallel. Could it be that they connected the 64-Bit RAM of the i860 via a transputer-link? (shudder)
Ok, and obviously there are 8 SIMM slots for i860 RAM… parity RAM required.

XPR201

This much bigger board seems to be the successor to the HXI860 and I was told it was the fastest i860 board Intel ever tested. Also this seems to be a prototype and was never officially sold.
It now features a 50MHz i860XP (fastest i860 available), two instead of one T800 but no C004 at all. Also the communication between the Transputer(s) and the i860 seems to be fully memory-mapped and no C012 is involved.

Here’s the full-view:

XPR201-total

Let’s go into detail… the “Transputer side” for a start:

XPR201-T800side

The connector at the top-right edge is yet of unknown type.
Below this, there are 2 T805-25, each having 4MB of RAM. Two AM27S33 4Kx4 bipolar PROMs (flanking the RAM to each side) seem to offer the 4K boot-code.
This board, too, has a 6bit dip-switch. Again, no idea yet what it does.

The most space in this picture is used by the much more sophisticated i860-to-Transputer interface, which is so complicated that it needs a diagram for itself (Thanks to Mike B. for beautifying this!):

XPR201

Eight(!) 4Kx16 IDT7024 dual-ported SRAMs are used to convert the i860’s 64bit bus to the Transputer 32bit bus – most likely they’re part of the “DMA engine”, too.

For doing this you normally only need 4 of them, but as you can see on the above diagram, Caplin chose to use the two T800 independently, so each Transputer has his own 16k SRAM directly connected to the i860.
Then, each Transputer is also connected to a 1MB VRAM bank (consisting of eight HM538123 having 128K word x8 DRAM and 256-word x8 Serial RAM). I was told the serial-side is connected to the Transputer, the parallel-side to the i860. Behind the VRAM is the “DMA engine” most likely the array of XILINX FPGAs you can see on the upper edge of the picture below.

The reason for this “over engineered” design most likely was, that you could use the SRAM for small but very fast read/write operations, while you would use the VRAM for bigger chunks of data.

The lower-edge (“i860 side”) overlaps a bit with the above picture of the “Transputer side”:

XPR201-i860side

Again, like on the HXI860, lots of IDT73210 octal transceivers, the 4 XILINX FPGAs (the “DMA-engine”, also fed by 1736As) and a huge array of GAL/PALs doing the bus-handling.
Then there’s the i860XP (50MHz) hidden under a heatsink.
A bit below is a 16-positions dial – no idea what it does. First thing coming to my mind: RAM timing.
Finally even more buffers connected to 8 SIMM slots (the i860 private RAM, Parity-only again).
The blue connector on the bottom edge is meant to connect to a 2 digit, 7 segment display which I have on a second board I own.

Hauppauge 4860, Intel 80860

Hauppauge 4860

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Not really an expansion card but a full blown EISA motherboard featuring an i80486 and an i80860 socket directly on board – thus the ingenious name Hauppauge 4860. The i860 can work in parallel to the i486, both sharing the on-board RAM which can be freely partitioned. But theoretically the i860 could also run completely alone… at least Hauppauge mentions this in the manual, announcing a UNIX version for this option (of course that never shipped).

This board is quite a huge beast, full size AT that is. For its time it was regarded as high-quality but besides 1 ASIC and 2 Intel chip set ICs there are a lot of logic ICs and PALs.
I’d say it’s a ‘IC graveyard’ and one of the most exciting 80486 boards ever made.
(And a real diva when it comes to add cards :-/ More on this further down)

FullBoard

These are the main specs:

  • 80486 socket (does not run stable with DX/2), 25 or 33MHz
  • 80860 socket (same clock speed as 486)
  • Weitek 4167 (aka Abacus) mem-mapped FPU socket
  • Intel “485TurboCache Module” socket
  • 7-8 EISA Slots (depending on revision)
  • Intel EISA chip set consisting of 82358-33 EISA Bus Controller and 82357 Integrated System Peripheral
  • On-board Serial/Parallel and PS/2 mouse support
  • 8 SIMM sockets for up to 64MB (Fast Page Mode,parity – No chance with EDO or non-parity)
  • Award “486 Modular BIOS v4.10” / BIOS level 1.01 -obviously specifically tailored to the 486/860 needs.

Because there are so many things on this manly mainboard, I will go into further detail based on quadrants:

Lower right

LowerRight

Well, that’s where all the mojo sits, right. The two processors side by side – ahhh – what a macho view! 😉 Mind the single oscillator: This means both CPUs run at the same speed, which is a bit of a pity, as the i860 was/is available at clock speeds up to 40MHz. Because Intel never really crossed the 33MHz external clock (the 50MHz 486 was quickly replaced by clock doubling versions due to heat issues) for their 486 processor, this is the highest common denominator.
That said, the Hauppauge 4860 does not support DX/2 processors… believe me I tried them all (even up to 5×86 w/ voltage regulator).Yes, it’s running fine one day while failing to boot the next day. So be sporting about it, an AMD 5×86/133 will easily outperform the i860/33 and who would like to put him ashame like this?

Ok, next to the two brains you can easily spot the 8 SIMM slots. It’s not easy to satisfy the RAM specs here: PS/2 SIMMs, optimally 60ns, Fast Page Mode (FPM) with parity – only up to 8MB per SIMM will be addressed. I had to learn that it is not so easy anymore to find those SIMMs today :-/
At the rightmost edge of the board you can see the classic AT-style power connectors… with an additional connector for 5V. Yup, it’s a server board, having all RAM- & EISA-slots populated, this beast can slurp quite some juice. Ok, it still would be nothing compared to todays insane 1000W power supplies feeding quad-core CPUs and dual graphic-cards.

At the lower edge you can spot quite some logic ICs. That’s a part of the memory interface – yeah, no stinkin’ ASIC, just TTL logic and many GALs.

Lower left

LowerLeft

While or two processors still peeking over the right edge, you can easily spot even 2 more sockets on this board. The square one on the left is meant for a Weitek 4167 (also known as  “Abacus”) while the two pin-rows in the middle of the picture are planned for an “Intel 485TurboCache” (yes, that’s 485) module.
Honestly, I have no idea why Hauppauge added the Weitek 4167. As it was just about a bit faster than the inbuilt FPU of the 486/33 (~10% overall), it had no chance against the i860 – both needed programs which were specifically made for them, so compatibility wasn’t an argument for both. I guess it was added on the board just because they could… which is the right spirit!
The socket for the “485 TurboCache” was a good idea – which seems to went wrong in the case of this board. The module generally is nothing more than an i82485 cache controller with 64 or 128k SRAM. After years of searching I found two different models, both not working with the 4860. This seems to be a known issue to Hauppauge as you can find complaints in old (’92) newsgroup posts and Hauppauge itself suggesting not using this module.

Upper left

UpperLeft

This is the most modern part of the board (as by 1992 standards). It’s actually using ASCIs and not only 80’s-style PLDs. In the top-left corner you’ll spot the Samsung 82C452, which is controlling the 2 serial and 1 parallel port(s) on the board.
Next to it is all the Keyboard/BIOS stuff – one fine thing to mention: Hauppauge used an external battery for the settings/clock. Thanks to god they didn’t use some of those nasty Dallas SRAM/Clock chips. After 10 years the internal battery get weak and there’s no way the replace just that (well, there are ways, but that’s really the last resort).
Now it’s getting serious: ASICs, made by Intel… a chip set! Woohoo! Namely the 82350 Intel chip set (Click here for a lenghty article I wrote about this chip set).
This chip set comprises the 82358-33 EISA Bus Controller (EBC) and the 82357 Integrated System Peripheral (ISP). Together these two devices implement a functional interface to the EISA bus,  and provide most of the standard peripheral functions necessary to implement a minimum EISA solution. In a simple sentence: The EISA interface.
That said, there’s a catch: The 4860 being an early EISA board, does not feature the more ‘modern’ 82358DT EBC you’ll find on most EISA boards. This might be the reason why some EISA cards refrain from working with this board. I found a snippet saying “The 82358DT is a superset of the original 82358 and includes a mode compatible with the 82359 Buffered Bus“. The 82359 DRAM controller is obviously missing (probably not a available at that time) and the RAM controller is implemented in lots’o’GALs.

Across the bottom of the picture there’s another slot, looking a bit like EISA… but it’s not! That’s the Hauppauge 64bit Framebuffer Expansion Bus. Hauppauge sold a graphics card basically containing 4MB of VRAM which could be directly accessed by the i860 at very high speed. That made the board a graphics-accelerator like for example the SPEA Fire.

Not much is known about this framebuffer card. Still, I was able to find a blurry press photograph in an 1992 computer magazine. Obviously it’s mainly buffers, GALs, VRAM and 3 RAMDACs for R, G and B… I do have an AutoCAD ADI driver, but I guess you won’t get this board anywhere on the planet anymore 🙁

4860-Framebuffer

Here’s a better photograph I just dragged out of the web:

4860_vidcard

Upper right

UpperRight

Welcome to the end of our tour… the boring part – at least at the first look. 8 EISA slots and some buffers. Nothing exciting, really.
If you take a close look, you’ll see the sticker between slot 6 & 7 (counting from the bottom). This sticker tells you that this board is a “rev D2”:

RevDetail

I don’t have that much documents to figure out the tiny little differences to older versions, but the big one is slot #2. In previous revisions, that slot was ISA… a heritage to this fact is, that on REV D2, this slot is a “non EISA bus master slot” – which is also true for slot #7 (inline with the Frambuffer-Card slot).
The reason for this is (my assumption, though) that the 82357 (ISP) integrates seven 32-bit DMA channels, of which 6 routed to the EISA slots and one used for the Framebuffer.

That’s it for now. I will add new findings as I proceed with my fiddlings.
Thanks for joining the tour, don’t forget to buy a T-shirt in the merchandise shop at the exit…

Software

For the whole enchilada, get the 4860 Manual here. That’s real men reading stuff… i860 source code samples included.

This is the official tools and driver disk and here’s a (yet) small archive containing the ADI drivers for the Framebuffer card and the i860 APX specifically tailored to the Hauppauge 4860 (i.e. won’t run on any other i860 system).

Another nice find: The presentation held at Hot Chips Conference 1990. It gives some more insight into the board design and ideas behind it.

Nostalgia

I found a short article in one of my old (German) computer magazines (“MC”, 1992). Here it is for your amusement/riddling: