Tag Archives: EISA

Intel 80860, Olivetti CP486

Olivetti CP486

Leave a comment

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!

EISA Bus, Knowledge Base

Intel EISA Chipset

Leave a comment

This chipset started it all… it was the first EISA chipset produced and the one which riddled me the most. Mainly because I have two EISA boards behaving differently when it comes to expansion cards which were developed later (~1992-94) and so I suspected the Bus Controller to be the reason for all the hassle:

The Hauppauge 4860, an early EISA system and my Intel Professional Workstation (aka LP486, not yet documented on this page).
The first is using a 82350 chipset while the latter has a 82350DT. Where’s the difference? There’s no clear answer to this anywhere, so I had to do some lenghty, in-depth research.
Good that I do not only collect ancient cool hardware but also some documentation, e.g. the 2″ thick Intel “Peripheral Components” handbook from 1991…

Intel_Periph

Here’s my conclusion:

The ‘original’ 82350 Chipset -released May 1990- included just 2-3 chips: 82357, 82358(-33) and (optionally) 82352.
The 82350DT -released April 1991- consisted on 5-7 chips: 82357, 82358DT, 82359, 82351, 82352, 82353 (some of them used multiple times).
The difference between the non-DT and DT version of the 82358 seems to be the synchronous interface to the 82359 DRAM controller, which wasn’t available in the initial chipset.

Chip-by-chip round-up of the chipset:

The 82350DT EISA chip set contains 7 VLSI chips to build a complete EISA
system. It is built upon the 82350 EISA chip set utilizing the 82358DT EBC and
82357 ISP and then adds VLSI components:

  • 82359 DRAM controller.
  • 82353 Advanced Data Path,
  • and 82351 LIOE Local IO Peripheral

The picture below shows a 486 based system with 82350DT chip set.

illu

The host bus connects the CPU and the memory subsystem. Tlte peripheral bus (X-bus) is an 8-bit bus to support the motherboard IO functions: keyboard, floppy and the LIOE which integrates the parallel port; and support: extemal teal time clock und serial ports. The peripheral bus is a buffered version of the 8-bit ISA bus. The memory subsection operates independent of the CPU clock. This independence is accomplished through the use of 82359’s integrated programmable delay line and the  rogrammable state tracker(PST) function. The integrated programmable delay line is used to time precisely the DRAM cycle sequence to DRAM parameters. The PST resides cm the CPU module. Tite 82359/82353 reside on the motherboard. They are indifferent to the CPU/cache used. The PST converts processor cycles to a form acceptable to the 81359. This allows different CPU/ cache combinations to be connected to the same motherboard. Further, it translates CPU’s clock-dependent handshake to clock-less memory interface handshake.

Local I/O EISA Support Peripheral, lntel 82351

The 82351 supports or integrates all of the IO peripheral functions for a typical EISA system board with a minimum of external logic. lt integrates local I/O ddress decoder, EISA system configuration registers, two external serial I/O ontroller interfaces with four assignable interrupts generation, external EISA onfiguration RAM interface, parallel port interface, external floppy disk controller Interface, external keyboard (8×42) controller interface including interrupt generation, and external real time clock interface and EPROM or FLASH EPROM BIOS ROM interface. lt was available in a 132-pin PQFP (Plastic Quad Flat Pack) package.

EISA Bus Buffer (EBB), Intel 82352

The 82352 is a bus buffer IC for EISA bus system. Three 82352 chips are used in a 82350 EISA system. Only one 82352 chip is used in a 82350DT EISA system.
lt operates in three modes. ln Mode 0 it performs data latch and swap functions.
It allows swapping and assembly of  data between the host and EISA/ISA buses on a byte by byte basis. In Mode 1 it provides 1 buffered path between the host data bus and DRAM with parity generation/check. Mode 2 was reserved by Intel for future use (never happened). Mode 3 provides address latching function between the host and EISA/ISA buses. The 82352 was available in 120-pin quad flat pack (QFP).

Advanced Data Path, Intel 82353

The 82353 provides advanced data path in e 82350DT EISA bus system. Two 82353 chips are used in a 82350DT EISA bus system as showed in the graph. Each 82353 is designed as a 16-bit slice. Two 82353 chips can provide parallel interface to 32, 64 or 128- bit wide memory structures to a 32-bit host and system bus.
The 82353 provides optimal 486 burst performance. Each memory cycle enerated by the address controller chip causes 128 bits of memory data to be latched in two 82353 chips. Once data is latched, these 82353 chips mux the four dwords to the destination in one wait state. The 82350DT EISA bus has 128-bit memory bus. A typical burst is 128-bit wide. and a bus with the same width
allows to read the whole burst in one memory cycle. This provides a zero wait state burst at any frequency. The 82353 was available in a 164-pin PQFP package.

Integrated System Peripheral (ISP), Intel 82357

The 82357 contains DMA controllers, interrupt controllers and programmable 16-bit counter/timers. lt provides high-performance arbitration for CPU, EISA/ISA bus masters, DMA channels and refresh. It also provides logic for generation/control non-maskable interrupts. The DMA function is provided by two inbuit 82C37A DMA controllers. These DMA controllers are connected in cascade mode to provide seven independent programmable channels. The timing control for 8-, 16- and 32-bit DMA data transfer is provided. The data transfer rate is 33MB/sec. There are two 82C59A interrupt controllers in the 82357 chip, which provide 14 independent programmable channels for level or edge-triggered interrupts. The 82357 contains five 82C54 compatible programmable 16-bit timers/counters. lt was available in a 132-pin PQFP package.

EISA Bus Controller, Intel 82358DT

The 825358DT provides an interface between 386/486 CPU and EISA bus system.
It provides EISA/ISA bus cycle compatibility with the host(CPU) bus. The 82358DT is a part of intel 82350 and 82350DT chip set. It translates host(CPU) and 82359(DRAM controller) cycles to EISA/ISA bus cycles. lt supports 8-, 16- or 32-bit DMA cycles. lt also supports host and EISA/ISA refresh cycles. lt generates control signals for advanced data path(82353) and EISA bus buffer(82351). lt was available in a 132-pin PQFP package.

DRAM Controller, lntel 82359

The 82359 is a highly integrated advanced memory controller. lt supports 386 and 486 microprocessors. Its operation is independent of speed and type of the CPU. It allows a system designer to implement a variety of CPU/cache combinations. It provides address control, refresh generation and critical DRAM timing generation. In conjunction with two advanced data path devices (82353), it acts as a highly integrated 32-bit dual ported memory controller. Its two ports (or address gateways) to main memory are: one exclusively for the host and one exclusively for EISA. This configuration of ports permits CPU activity to be isolated from EISA bus activity. It controls up to 256MB of motherboard DRAM. It supports 32-, 64- or 128-bit wide memory configurations. lt was available in a 196-pin PQFP package.

Bus Master Interface Controller, Intel 82355

The 82355 is used in an EISA add-in card (expansion board) – thus rarely found on mainboards.
It supports 16- and 32-bit burst transfers at maximum data transfer rate of 33MB/s. It also supports 32-bit non-burst and mismatched data size transfers. It automatically handles misaligned double-word data transfer with no performance penalty. It has two independent data transfer channels with 24-byte FIFOs. Expansion board timing and EISA timing operate asynchronously. The 82355 supports 32-bit EISA addressability (4GB). It integrates three interfaces:
EISA, local CPU and transfer buffer. It supports automatic handling of complete EISA bus master protocol. This includes EISA arbitration/preemption, cycle timing and execution, byte alignment, etc. Further, the 82355 supports local data transfer protocol similar to traditional DMA. It was available in a 132-pin JEDEC PQFP package.

EISA Bus, Knowledge Base

The EISA Bus

Leave a comment

Actually I have no idea why this subject caught my interest so well.
During the hey-days of the EISA bus I wasn’t interested at all, thought that’s something which will never take off and was intended for servers only. I happily stuck to clumsy ISA and sat there until PCI was affordable (ASUS SP3G anyone?).

Now, fiddling with all those exotic cool mainboards, EISA crosses my path all the time. The way EISA is configured, the somewhat cumbersome use of cf.exe (ECU – EISA Configuration Utility) tool drew my interest… maybe because it has the scent of manliness 😉

In my humble opinion, EISA was a crutch, but it layed some basics for the next 10 years:

  • It defined (as a by-product) a standard for the ISA bus, which was all chaotic before
  • It forced Big-Blue (IBM) to think over their Microchannel licensing
  • It was a test-bed for how do things right… later known as PCI

That said, it is the fun twilight-zone between ISA’s direct access “do what you like” and PCI’s “you touch – you die” approach. Where else do you have 32-bit speed and can still change bits manually with DOS’ debug?

DSM-860, Intel 80860

The DSM-860 Series

2 Comments

Based on a public project from Rolf-Dieter Klein and Tobias Thiel (“PC-Karte mit i860”) in the German computer magazine “mc” (2/90 to 7/90), the Munich based company DSM built several i860 boards for the PC/AT which they called the DSM-860 series.
All DSM-860 have one thing in common: They offer a high level of hardware features – no costs were feared. So naturally, those cards were not cheap. But you really got something for your money. All versions featured

  • 4 Transputerlinks for networking multiple cards
  • Connection to the hosts system-bus (ISA/EISA) via dual-ported RAM
  • A 16-bit bus is also available via dual-ported RAM on special connectors giving a throughput speed of 8MByte/s for high-speed connections between several SPC boards.
  • RAM was put on an extra RAM board making the complete SPC-860 a double-card sandwich

DSM-860

The 1st incarnation was the SPC-860, very quickly renamed to DSM-860, an 8-bit ISA card with 4MB RAM (DIL) and 4 10mbps Transputerlinks via four C012’s (polled by the i860 resulting in 740kbps linkspeed).

Here’s a picture from a 1992 ad, with separate RAM card attached:

print-DSM860-8

It did cost 16450 DM including the (GNU) C compiler and assembler.

DSM-860/16

Next, they released the DSM-860/16 (renaming the DSM-860 into DSM-860/8) being a full fledged 16-bit ISA card. It has a real Transputer (16bit T222, having its own 32K SRAM) for handling the “multiprocessor communication” and is able to support up to 256MB on a sandwiched daughter-board, now using SIMM modules instead of DIL parts.
The Hitachi HD63310 dual-ported RAM, used in the 8-bit version to communicate with the host was replaced by faster Cypress IDT7130 types (“because of the high speed of the 16-bit ISA interface” ;-)), resulting in a peak-rate of 14MByte/s.

Here’s the schematic of the card and its components

SPC860schem

This is how it looks in reality… my DSM-860/16:

DSM860-16

As you can see, the card is not exceptionally high integrated – even built 1992 there is not a single SMD part used, everything is socketed, only some PALs could be called “custom parts”. But this does not necessarily mean it’s badly designed or build.
If you have a close look (click the picture for a bigger version), you’ll see that every part/socket/jumper on the board is nicely specified in the silk-screen printing. All GALs and the EPROM contents are available in the documentation… which has 426 pages by the way.

Here’s the left side in more detail:

DSM860-16_left

This end of the card is the “external comms” side. Beside the all-mighty i860 you can easily spot the golden Transputer being the communication controller.
To its left, there’s the first dual-ported RAM (1k x 8) connected to the socket for the external bus (Ring-A, located on the edge above). Below that are the two 16k SRAMs -marked MHS- for the Transputer. Then to the right are the two dual-ported RAMs (a 7C131 and a so-called slave 7C141) making the 16-bit connection to the i860’s bus. The rest of the parts are quartz oscillators (5MHz & 40MHz) and drivers/buffers for the buses. On the top edge next to the Ring-connectors you can spot the 4 Transputer links (JP9-12).

The right side is comparably boring:

DSM860-16_right

The boot EPROM, 6 GALs, again two dual-ported RAMs (this time for the ISA-bus connection) and some buffers… well, and 5 LEDs. LEDs are good. 😉
Also, you can see the pin-row connectors at the lower edge and on the left of the photo. That’s the expansion-bus. The lower connector is more or less 1:1 the ISA bus, the left one is a 16-bit bus to the i860. AFAIK, they never offered an expansion for sale.
The last (but not least) interesting thing on this picture is the copyright. Yes, it’s a DSM860/16 from 1992, RDK made it (Rolf-Dieter Klein), DSM in Munich distributed it – but it’s obviously also a rev. 1.6, which means there could be others before or after that one. If you have more informations I would be happy to learn more.

DSM860-OEM/16

I’m pretty sure there was one more version after this rev.1.6, this b/w picture from a DSM press release about shipping the 250.000th slot-CPU card shows a very changed design. The silkscreen print says “DSM860-OEM/16”, so it’s obviously nothing for the normal market.
Mind the onboard-RAM, the missing comms-section and the high integration (SMD parts all-over) and even an early form of an FPGA from Lattice – my assumption is that this version could be the answer to the Kontron SBC860 showing nearly the same layout:

OEM_250ste
At least this ‘riddle’ is finally solved. I was able to buy an DSM860-OEM/16..Yay! As assumed, it is a modern (for 1990 standards) version of the DSM860-16 now consisting of just one board, so no more RAM card as described below- and without the Transputer and Ring-A/B stuff.

Here are my pictures of it. First of all, the card in full view:

OEM16_full

The right half shows a very high degree of integration compared to its predecessor. All DIL ICs were replaced by SMD parts and lot of logic went into PALs and even an FPGA (The contents of the EPROM is the same as with the other card, minus Transputer handling):

OEM16_right

The left half contains the CPU and the RAM. This time only 8 SIMM slots:

OEM16_left

The RAM card

DSM860-RAMcard

This is the 2nd part of every DSM-860 – the RAM card (except the OEM-16). Same dimensions as the SPC itself… i.e. full length. The biggest part of it is consumed by the 16 angled SIMM sockets, obviously interleaved, thus named altering slot-a & b. Only the 8 a-slots are populated on mine.
The rest of the board is used for lots of buffers and drivers, some GALs (doing the mem-mapping) and there’s quite a big copyright… again.

DSM860-RAMcard_C

One typical detail of those days is the fact that manufacturers were not very keen on having users doing upgrades themselves. Even this RAM board has standard SIMM sockets and one could simply plug in more SIMMs to expand the RAM you had to change a GAL (the one in the lower left corner with a while label saying “UXM24Wxx” on it). Obviously these GALs are the only ones notdocumented. All I know is that there were 3 GALs available differing in the last two letters of the label:

  • 8B = only a-slots can be used by either 1M or 4M SIMMs giving 8 or 32MB total
  • 16 = both a- and b-slots used with 1M SIMMs = 16MB total
  • 64 = a- and b-slots filled with 1M and/or 4M SIMMs giving 16, 40 or 64MB total.

Because the card as well as the documentation says the maximum supported amount of RAM is 256MB there might be the chance of supporting 16MB SIMMs – I did not try this yet.

Both cards attached together give quite a big and heavy sandwich

DSM860-16_sandwich

It’s obvious that you not only need 2 full-size slots but also guide-rails inside the case to hold the weight of this beast.

DSM-860/32

This seems to be the king of the SPC hill. Technically it’s pretty much the same as the DSM-860/16 but this time featuring a 32-bit system bus – namely EISA. The EISA bus was a dead-end like IBMs Microchannel but comparably easy to implement and free of license fees.

So the main difference to the DSM-860/16 is the 32-bit wide connection to the hosts bus, visible by the 4 dual-ported RAMs used for a 32-bit wide connection to the EISA slot.

Again, here’s a 1992 magazine ad showing a probably early version of the card as the marking says “DSMß860-32” (mind the beta) and the year “1991”:

print-DSM860-32

Compared to that, my version (1.2) does not look that much cluttered – also the Transputer comms part were moved to the left side of the i860 and two more LEDs were added:

DSM860-32

So the left side of the card looks pretty identical to the DSM860-16, while the right side has a bit more logic to satisfy the EISA standard, the already mentioned 2 more DP-RAMs, a bigger expansion-bus due to the EISA slot and most important: 2 more LEDs! Did I mention that LEDs are good? 😉

DSM860-32_C

This more detailed picture shows that the DSM860/32 was released the same year as the ISA version. This card is a rev.1.2 – again, if you know more about revisions, I’d be happy to hear from you.
You might have spotted that this card looks a bit shabby. That’s because it was pulled from some universities dumpster. It was missing some components and had some “scars”. The good thing was that none of the GALs were missing and due to the fact that every piece is documented on the card it was easy to replace the missing parts.
On the above picture you can clearly see e.g. the 100nF capacitor C40 below the i860 or the 40MHz OSC. I wish everything would be that well documented.

The Infinity card

This is a rare and mysterious beast. The documentation only touches it very briefly. It’s definitely nothing been built for the average DSM860 user – if something like that existed. For sure it was extremely expensive… and it has LEDs 😀

DSM-EINF860M

So at the first look you see 2×3 connectors for 40pin cables – the same used on the DSM860 cards (Ring-A and -B). Then there are a lot of drivers and buffers and a big Lattice pLSI 1032-50 which is a 6000 gates PLD (Programmable Logic Device). A closer look to the board gives more hints – thanks to the DSM (or RDK) habit to print as much info as possible onto the board:

DSM-EINF860M_C

Ok, first information we get is that this is a EINF860M or INFINITY 32Bit Extender. It’s like all other boards (c)1992 by DSM Munich and -as one would expect- designed by Rolf-Dieter Klein (RDK).
The three connectors are labeled ADDR(ess), DATA MSB (Most Significant Byte) and DATA LSB (Least Significant Byte).
The the right of the connectors is an Intel 85C098-20. I think that’s a One-Time-PLD, not 100% sure.

My educated guess is that this card is what the print on it says: A bus extender. Using the 16-Bit bus on the DSM860 cards one can build quite a big parallel computer. But the max. length of the flat-cable to connect each card with the next one is limited. So this card would be connected to other DSM860 cards in the same case (i.e. a 19″ case in a rack) and the extender would then “amplify” the bus-signals to be send over into the next rack full of DSM860 cards.
That said, my fear is, you’ll need two of those cards as the seperation of Adresses and Data (MSB and LSB) is nothing being used on the DSM860 cards. So my next guess is, that the INFINITY communicates over the EISA bus with the other cards and has its own external bus. Again – I’m happy if you contact me if you know more/better!

Nostalgia

And here’s a full page ad I found in my old (German) computer magazines – it shows all 3 versions:

pcsystems, Systems

Kerberos

Leave a comment

Kerberos is the machine I’ve specifically built for hosting all 3 DSM860 cards I own.
The name was chosen because the hell-hound Kerberos (Latin ‘Cerberus’, Greek ‘Κέρβερος’) is mostly depicted with three heads and the Greek myths offer innumerable possibilities for a nice g[r]eek name space 😉

The quest for the right motherboard was not easy. It should be small, still featuring as many EISA slots as possible. In the end it became a Gigabyte GA-486SA having some quite unique features for its time:

  • 8 EISA slots
  • 2 of them also having Vesa-Local-Bus connectors
  • A Weitek 4167 Socket
  • 8 SIMM slots

Because it was clear I will use-up 6 slots just for the 3 DSM860 cards (being sandwiched boards) I wanted to fill the remaining 2 slots as clever as possible.
After another year (!) of searching I was able to get my greedy little hands onto a Western Digital ‘Ports’o’Call‘ Vesa-Local card. This is a rare do-it-all card saving lots of slots, specifically:

  • WD90c33 VGA (1-2MB) connected to the VL-Bus (fast!)
  • Appian Local Bus IDE controller (also quite fast)
  • Floppy controller
  • 2S/1P peripheral controller

In a sentence: Everything a basic system needs to work! The remaining slot was planned for a NIC making the system complete.
Because I was expecting quite some heat coming from the three i860 I’ve opted for a desktop case so that the heat can easily dissipate through the open casing – also I was prepared for lots of plugging and unplugging of cards, jumpers etc. which is much easier with a desktop case.

Golden Rule #1 of hardware fiddling: One step after the other!

So before filling the system up to its rim, I started with just one DSM860. It quickly became clear that there was no way in using the ports’o’call’s WD90c31 as the server running on the DSMs does only support certain VGA cards (if you like to have graphic output), namely some very obsolete, non-standard Genoa cards…and in its latest version: Good old ET4000!

So the nice ports’o’call had to make place for a standard multi-IO controller and the 2nd slot was used for an ET4000. That setup worked quite nicely!
After the last DSM860/32 board was fixed, I was ready to “stuff that turkey”.

One card after the other went into the slots – that’s what I call a crowded house:

Animation1

As the animation above is not the highest quality (file size!), here are some more shots…

All seats taken, sorry:

fullhouse

The money-shot 😉 Indeed… in 1991 you would have payed 48.000 German Marks (~US$ 24k) for the DSM860’s alone… plus a 486DX/2 system with a whopping 32MB of RAM (~9500 Marks = ~US$ 4750). So that’s a total of $US 28.750 or the average income/year (1991) in the US.

moneyshot

Finally some of Kerberos facts:

  • 3 x i860/40MHz each 8MB RAM (= 180-240 ‘marketing-MFLOPS’ / 360 ‘marketing-MIPS’)
  • Handcoded code using LINDA SMP techniques can realistically reach ~80 MFLOPS on this system, that’s about the speed of a Cray-1 or … a Pentium Pro 200 :-/
  • 1 x 486/DX2-66, 32 MB RAM (~3.5 MFLOPS)
  • Complete system (w/o display) draws 140W when running full steam ahead. Which is about the same a recent (’09) Intel Core2/Core i7 or AMD Phenom needs @ 3.2GHz – just the CPU though!
Hauppauge 4860, Intel 80860

Hauppauge 4860

11 Comments

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: