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Single Board Computers - Act II

L

LstBrunnenG

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You may remember that a while back I posted a thread about SBCs. I had taken apart my high school's Daktronics Omnisport 6000 swim timing computer because it was having problems. What I found inside was a proprietary power supply, a floppy drive, a hard drive, a passive ISA backplane, and two ISA cards. One of the cards was the SBC and the other was a proprietary Daktronics which had leads for all the proprietary ports such as lane inputs and start inputs. You guys (tongue-in-cheek) berated me for taking apart the school's equipment and I realized I really had no support at that point for upgrading it.

Well, the problems intensified later down the road, a new system was bought, and the old one was remanded into my care. My goal is to upgrade it, prefferably to the point where it will run Windows XP. There are two ways I can do this: buy a new SBC and somehow mod a color LCD into the Omnisport's case, or get the proprietary ISA card to work in an off-the-shelf motherboard.

My work so far has focused on the proprietary ISA card. I've tried it in a Micron PIII 500 Mhz system, and the system would not post with the card in. Then I tried it in an IBM PS/1 with a Pentium Overdrive and the system would boot. I was able to connect the proprietary keyboard (which is built into the Omnisport's chassis) to the card, load the software from the Omnisport's hard drive, and manipulate the software using the Omnisport's keyboard. As excited as I was, I soon after found that something is preventing the software from correctly accessing the real-time clock data. The clock is frozen at start-up of the software, and apparently the software uses this clock to do its timing. Therefore some kind of mod bridging the PS/1 and the Omnisport is at the moment out of the question.

What I know is that the SBC built into the Omnisport is a 486, and that the IBM that accepted the card was a 486 before the overdrive chip. Therefore it could be that the card just has a problem with anything newer than a 486 or possibly first-generation Pentium. If this is true, buying one of the PIII SBCs out there could still bring problems if the card is designed only to work with a 486 or the peculiarities of a particular chipset.

Or, it could be some kind of glitch only with the Micron system. (I've tried messing with the bios settings, tried running it with no expansion cards except for the Dak card, still hangs during post.) This means it's just a matter of finding the right motherborard with an ISA slot. This would also open back up the option of purchasing a new SBC, but I have no idea where to purchase them or what a good price is.

The Omnisport's software will run fine, properly accessing RTC data, even on the computer I'm typing this on, a canterwood board with a 3.4C. This means that the RTC glitch is most likely unique to the PS/1.

I know too little here about SBCs and ISA. There are jumpers all over the ISA card (and on some of the ones I took out of the IBM, so it's not just that). For all I know the problem between it and the Micron is one of those jumpers. I've done mild experimentation, but stopped when I was in danger of forgetting the original settings. There's not even any numbers on the jumpers or labels that give a hint as to what they do.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them. Only other thing I can think of to do besides appealing to you guys is to watch Ebay for cheap SBCs and motherboards with ISA slots.
 
Well, as far as replacement SBC's that certainly possible. I know that Ebay has a few (although sometimes they're scattered in different areas such as misc motherboards or telcom or networking).

Is your board just ISA or does it have another connector after it like a PCI connector? If it has that extra connector, it's PICMG and can plug into a backplane with both ISA and PCI slots. Although now that I think about it, if it's a 486 it's most likely just ISA.

Your other card sounds to me like a data aquisition card of some sort. There is *some* hope for it however. Most likely the reason it's not working in your newer machine is that it has a IRQ or DMA conflict with another device (just giving some examples: serial ports, parallel port, sound card). Back in the 486 days there wasn't much of any "Plug and Play" stuff. Each card/device had its own IRQ and DMA settings which needed to be manually set with jumpers. Although with your card's jumper settings not being labelled, I can see that's going to be huge pain in the ass. Have you tried Googling the card's part numbers to find any info?
To try and get yours working, I would suggest to turn off everything that you don't need for it: all the serial ports, parallel, USB ports, remove the NIC. Might have better luck now if you played with the jumpers.

Well, I hope some of this helps. Good luck.:)
 
It's a half-size ISA SBC. Meaning it's just about the size of a regular ISA card.

Would I run the risk of a similar compatibility problem if I got a replacement SBC? At the moment modding an LCD into the Omnisport chassis seems easier than modding all the omnisport's ports into an ATX chassis.

I tried turning everything I could off in the bios to no avail. Except that when I booted it with the sound card out, the intergrated sound was enabled...something to check next time I have this stuff set up to test.

Oh, and I forgot to set one of the jumpers back on the proprietary card, and then when I put it in it wouldn't work. Scared the crap out of me. Then I saw the jumper and fixed it and it worked. Whew!

So let's assume you say that the chance of conflict with a PIII SBC is nominal, and I buy one and put it in. How would I go about connecting an LCD? Currently there's a PC/104 daughterboard that provides output to a monochrome LCD module built into the chassis. Do they make PC/104 modules that support full color LCD? Or SBCs that have it intergrated? And where would I find an LCD?

Thanks for your help by the way.
 
Replacing the SBC shouldn't be a problem system wise. Heck, you could even plug in a PICMG card into the old ISA backplane. You just couldn't add any PCI cards unless you somehow got a PICMG backplane to replace the old with. As far as a new SBC working with the old data card, that I couldn't answer. Do you know for sure if your original system problem was because of the old SBC going bad or the data card going bad? Seeing as your having problems getting the data card working in another computer, could it be possible that it's bad?

Oh, and I forgot to set one of the jumpers back on the proprietary card, and then when I put it in it wouldn't work. Scared the crap out of me. Then I saw the jumper and fixed it and it worked. Whew!
Click to expand...
Wait. I'm confused. Are you saying it's working now? In your other computer?

Did your old system have an LCD? Or are you just adding functionality? The easiest way (that I can think of) to add an LCD is from the 15 pin VGA output to an off-the-shelf analog VGA LCD. A dedicated digital LCD controller and a compatible LCD might be rather expensive. You might want to read the LCD FAQ here for more info. I don't remeber many SBCs that have onboard LCD controllers. Finding a PC104 LCD controller might be a chore and expensive for that matter.
 
unless youre looking to spend out the ass for a SBC board (as they are crazy expensive) youre not going to really get anything.
 
Originally posted by kronchev
unless youre looking to spend out the ass for a SBC board (as they are crazy expensive) youre not going to really get anything.
Click to expand...

Brand new, yes they are. Ebay however, is a much cheaper alternative.
 
The original SBC in there is a 486. I'm guessing problems may be coming from that direction. If not, my next suspect is the power supply. I'll have to get my hands on a voltmeter and see if I can swap it out for an ATX PSU. Only thing is that there's battery circutry that really yells at you every five seconds unless the battery is charged...I'd have to see if there's a way around that, seeing as ATX PSUs don't have batteries.

The original chassis has a monochrome LCD built in. Problem is it's monochrome. For Windows I'd have to either get an external monitor or somehow build another LCD into it.

Playing with jumpers made it not work when reinserting it into the Omnisport. No effect either way on the old PIII. I'm guessing and hoping it's the integrated audio.

And ebay does look like the way to go with an SBC. I just wish I had more ISA motherobards I could play with & test the data card in.
 
Are you reasonably sure I could run an SBC with PCI & ISA with only the ISA backplane? And it would likely recognize an ISA peripheral?
 
Originally posted by Anomaly95
Brand new, yes they are. Ebay however, is a much cheaper alternative.
Click to expand...


theyre still pretty expensive there, unless im searching wrong.


/edit: nm, i looked, theyre not terrible, but theyre not all that impressive :D
 
Originally posted by LstOfTheBrunnenG
Are you reasonably sure I could run an SBC with PCI & ISA with only the ISA backplane? And it would likely recognize an ISA peripheral?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'm sure. :) You couldn't expand PCI card wise, but ISA will work.
 
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