So amazing. Perhaps we can do SSHDOS. That is so awesome

ahmadexp wrote on 2024-08-31, 01:11:

So amazing. Perhaps we can do SSHDOS. That is so awesome

That would probably work. I need to look into how to set up the Waterloo TCP/IP "stack" though - it doesn't like mTCP (I've already tried).

Does it need to be SSH though? Why not telnet, if it doesn't allow anything outside of the board itself it should be pretty safe 😀

Deksor wrote on 2024-08-31, 07:52:

Does it need to be SSH though? Why not telnet, if it doesn't allow anything outside of the board itself it should be pretty safe 😀

Good point! I tried telnet now, set up a telnet server on the CM4 only listening to the IP of the eth0 device, works fine using the mTCP telnet client! 😀

any chance you use the new RP2350 instead of the 2040? maybe the new has more legroom for future emulation?

Bit2024 wrote on 2024-09-10, 02:26:

any chance you use the new RP2350 instead of the 2040? maybe the new has more legroom for future emulation?

Still early days for the RP2350. As far as I can tell, it's not even possible to order the chip yet, looks like all of Raspberry Pi (the company)'s production is going to their, and selected partners', boards at the moment.
Besides, what's running on the RP2040 isn't my code - that's all Ian/polpo's great work. I'm sure he'll get an RP2350 version running at a later time!

For now - rest assured that the PicoGUS with the RP2040 is already the best sound card for DOS, hands-down. Accurate GUS, SB, Adlib, intelligent mode MPU-401, etc. Combined with the CM4 running munt or nuked-sc55, I'm almost pressed to see how it could get any better! 😆

This is looking incredible, Elvind!

Given the cost and limited availability for the existing mPCIe graphics solutions (that don't seem particularly good anyway), I have a crazy thought to throw out there for a future revision: how realistic is it to either adapt the MXM Voodoo4 for this use case?

Voodoo4 M4800

Aren't mPCIe and MXM kind-of sort-of the same signal? No idea how much power a Voodoo4 uses - 10w maybe? So beyond the obvious mechanical limitation, the mini PCIe bus standard won't handle it - any kind of mPCIe-to-MXM riser/adapter would need some additional 3.3v power. I get that the board itself is abolutely jam-packed, but if this were to just come off a riser cable and sit on the bottom of a hypothetical enclosure, maybe it all somehow works?

I guess a Banshee or Voodoo3 would probably be a better 'fit' than a V4, but either way, it seems potentially a better solution that what's out there, that might not even really increase the overall footprint of the system if things are stacked neatly (MXM Type A = 82x70mm).

Anyway, just a mad idea.

jerms wrote on 2024-09-10, 07:23:

This is looking incredible, Elvind! […]
Show full quote

This is looking incredible, Elvind!

Given the cost and limited availability for the existing mPCIe graphics solutions (that don't seem particularly good anyway), I have a crazy thought to throw out there for a future revision: how realistic is it to either adapt the MXM Voodoo4 for this use case?

Voodoo4 M4800

Aren't mPCIe and MXM kind-of sort-of the same signal? No idea how much power a Voodoo4 uses - 10w maybe? So beyond the obvious mechanical limitation, the mini PCIe bus standard won't handle it - any kind of mPCIe-to-MXM riser/adapter would need some additional 3.3v power. I get that the board itself is abolutely jam-packed, but if this were to just come off a riser cable and sit on the bottom of a hypothetical enclosure, maybe it all somehow works?

I guess a Banshee or Voodoo3 would probably be a better 'fit' than a V4, but either way, it seems potentially a better solution that what's out there, that might not even really increase the overall footprint of the system if things are stacked neatly (MXM Type A = 82x70mm).

Anyway, just a mad idea.

Haha yeah, that is a pretty mad idea! Nothing wrong with those, though!
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't intrigued... 😉

Let's see - I'm not that familiar with the MXM standard, but it does use PCI-express yes.
Here are my initial thoughts:
1. This would be wildly expensive (far more than the SM750-based mini-pcie cards).
2. Such a card would probably draw far more than 10 watts, require ample cooling and another source of power than what I've currently set up.
3. I'm not sure if it would run on the wimpy x1, gen 1 (250 MB/s) PCI-e lane on the Vortex86EX.

Taking a step back and looking at what we already have - yes, the DMP Vortex86VGA card is pretty anemic, but works well enough with non-demanding DOS games. The SM750-based cards are way better though, and they're not really that hard to get hold of, just a bit more expensive (~150-200 USD). Sure, they lack 3D acceleration, but they're also super tiny and sip power. From my experiments with the ITX-Llama board I made last year, it's clear that the Vortex86EX is going to be the bottleneck (vs the GPU) as soon as you fire up Windows 95/98 and try playing almost anything. Having a real 3D accelerator is cool, but as long as you stay in DOS, it wouldn't really make that much of a difference.

Long time lurker, first time poster here. This little fella looks incredible. The way to mount CD images collared me in. I have them all imaged on my NAS, so the last thing I want to do with my collection is use the physical discs. Had one shatter in an LG drive a few years ago - never again!

Shame about the SM750 cards being so expensive though. Without 3D acceleration, would they make that much of a difference in Windows games?

ProfsRetroFix wrote on 2024-09-10, 08:34:

Long time lurker, first time poster here. This little fella looks incredible. The way to mount CD images collared me in. I have them all imaged on my NAS, so the last thing I want to do with my collection is use the physical discs. Had one shatter in an LG drive a few years ago - never again!

Shame about the SM750 cards being so expensive though. Without 3D acceleration, would they make that much of a difference in Windows games?

The 2D performance is a bit better on the SM750 cards, but I don't think I have any kinds of Windows benchmarks. I've barely touched Windows on any my Vortex86EX-based systems running the SM750 or V86VGA. DOS is where this CPU (and PicoGUS and MT-32 & MIDI emulation) really shines!
For DOS benchmarks, I think we did a bunch of them back in the original TinyLlama thread.

Eivind wrote on 2024-09-10, 09:05:

The 2D performance is a bit better on the SM750 cards, but I don't think I have any kinds of Windows benchmarks. I've barely touched Windows on any my Vortex86EX-based systems running the SM750 or V86VGA. DOS is where this CPU (and PicoGUS and MT-32 & MIDI emulation) really shines!
For DOS benchmarks, I think we did a bunch of them back in the original TinyLlama thread.

That's fair. Getting a Windows machine up and running is simple enough, the DOS part is where it's a struggle, so this definitely fills that box.

Looking forward to the PicoGUS and MT32 emulation especially!

For 3d accelerarion I'm considering making a pcie version of the riva tnt vanta.

Why such a low end chip?
Well the CPU is already anemic so it shouldn't hurt performance at all. The driver overhead should be pretty minimal too, furthermore the vanta is still supported by windows 3.1! So if for some reason you want it on the tl, you could use it 😀

Then there's also another main interest: cost.
Nobody wants them, to they're literally everywhere, so I won't feel bad to use what's literally ewaste for most nowadays.

Also now that I have both the dm&p graphics card and the sm750 card, there's one thing I'm quite disappointed about : vesa compatibility. Some of the dos games I like are running at 640x400 with some vesa mode.
Sadly I cannot run those games with that resolution, because there's no support at all.

Another possibility would be to adapt some S3 trio64 to the tl. They're also very easy to find on cheap used cards. There would be no 3d acceleration, but the compatibility and performance would be much much better in my opinion.

Deksor wrote on 2024-09-11, 06:50:

For 3d accelerarion I'm considering making a pcie version of the riva tnt vanta. […]
Show full quote

For 3d accelerarion I'm considering making a pcie version of the riva tnt vanta.

Why such a low end chip?
Well the CPU is already anemic so it shouldn't hurt performance at all. The driver overhead should be pretty minimal too, furthermore the vanta is still supported by windows 3.1! So if for some reason you want it on the tl, you could use it 😀

Then there's also another main interest: cost.
Nobody wants them, to they're literally everywhere, so I won't feel bad to use what's literally ewaste for most nowadays.

Also now that I have both the dm&p graphics card and the sm750 card, there's one thing I'm quite disappointed about : vesa compatibility. Some of the dos games I like are running at 640x400 with some vesa mode.
Sadly I cannot run those games with that resolution, because there's no support at all.

Another possibility would be to adapt some S3 trio64 to the tl. They're also very easy to find on cheap used cards. There would be no 3d acceleration, but the compatibility and performance would be much much better in my opinion.

Interesting! When you say "making a pcie version" - do you mean actually harvesting components and doing a custom board layout, or plopping the old card into some kind of adapter?

I should mention, while nothing is 100% yet, I've talked with @sdz here on Vogons about trying to get his Voodoo4 M4800 MXM card working with the TinyLlama (thanks for bringing that project to my attention, @jerms!). I'll probably do a slightly larger board layout with an MXM connector, beefed-up power system and a VGA and HDMI connector - and we'll see where that goes! Having the far more capable MXM connector and larger graphics card footprint (7x8cm) could open up possibilities for other reimplementations of old graphics cards as well, not just the V4 (which is totally overkill with this CPU, but also so cool it doesn't really matter! 🤪).
We could still use the V86VGA and SM750 mini-pcie cards with an MXM-to-mini-pcie adapter, would be simple enough.

Exciting times ahead!

I was thinking of harvesting the components of a card to make something new (it being pcie would be a test run before making it smaller to fit the TL, or easier to fit on the main pcb, idk)

Deksor wrote on 2024-09-11, 17:33:

I was thinking of harvesting the components of a card to make something new (it being pcie would be a test run before making it smaller to fit the TL, or easier to fit on the main pcb, idk)

No room for fitting almost anything on the TL board itself, and I'd say very hard if not impossible to fit on a mini-pcie board. Also - there's the issue of the mini-pcie connector only supporting 3.3V power - older components need at least 5V.
Both of those issues could be solved by using the MXM standard, though, which is what I alluded to in my last post. More space for components, separate 3.3V, 5V and "PWR_SRC" (7-20V) rails, return VGA and HDMI signals, etc. And still a fairly small footprint, would fit nicely under a slightly larger TL board. As a plus, an MXM card wouldn't be tied to the TinyLlama project alone, it could be used both in older laptops and on simple, passive carrier boards for fitting in standard PCIe slots or whatever else anyone cooks up, as seen in @sdz's thread.

Getting back to your plan about the Vanta or Trio64 - graphics cards are very complex, I'd say you have your work cut out for you! 😀 But man, would it be nice to have a decent selection of modern recreations of old graphics cards!

For the trio64, one of my friends (computerguy096) designed a VLB version of the trio64 and it's open source, so it's definitely possible 😁 (maybe I can use that work to just rebuild a pci card ... with a pci to pcie bridge)
As for the vanta, I think it's running on 3.3V because it's designed for AGP which is 3.3V

Deksor wrote on 2024-09-11, 21:36:

For the trio64, one of my friends (computerguy096) designed a VLB version of the trio64 and it's open source, so it's definitely possible 😁 (maybe I can use that work to just rebuild a pci card ... with a pci to pcie bridge)

Yeah, that sounds within reason! 👍

Deksor wrote on 2024-09-11, 21:36:

As for the vanta, I think it's running on 3.3V because it's designed for AGP which is 3.3V

Well, the AGP standard calls for power rails of 3.3V, 5V and 12V - regardless of the signal voltage level. I have no clue what individual cards actually utilize, though.

Great to see a new TinyLlama. I was wondering if something like this could be made to work with the Vortex
https://youtu.be/g4OluJwGDEQ?si=k-eJBTS5089j-d9z
It's a hardware approach to slowing down the Cpu anywhere from 0% to 100%. Doesn't seem to have had much views, but I think seems to be the ideal way to get games running at perfect speed.
Good luck on tinyllama 3.

Evan Thompson wrote on 2024-09-19, 20:16:

Great to see a new TinyLlama. I was wondering if something like this could be made to work with the Vortex https://youtu.be/g4Ol […]
Show full quote

Great to see a new TinyLlama. I was wondering if something like this could be made to work with the Vortex
https://youtu.be/g4OluJwGDEQ?si=k-eJBTS5089j-d9z
It's a hardware approach to slowing down the Cpu anywhere from 0% to 100%. Doesn't seem to have had much views, but I think seems to be the ideal way to get games running at perfect speed.
Good luck on tinyllama 3.

This was brought up in the ITX-Llama thread earlier (same processor) - unfortunately there are no STPCLK or HOLD pins on the Vortex86EX. 🙁

This is so cool, I'm definitely going to get my hands on a few of these to do some oldschool LAN gaming!

Maybe I've missed it somewhere but how big are these boards? Apologies if you've already answered this! I have an cute little Moomin biscuit tin that I reckon I can use an an enclosure for one.