Bull Micral 45 - revival

[Lenord]

I had an answer to the email sent to the owner of the documentaion quoted above. It is not absolutely certain to still have the manual but he promised to check. By cons it will not be for now, we must give him some time...

Of course, no problem, i understand that it's not really urgent question.

[fneck]

Yes, I found this photo on this website http://www.feb-patrimoine.com/catalogue ... alog05.htm
The connector seems to be 20 pins

[Lenord]

The connector seems to be 20 pins

Yes, that's probably 20-pin. And its year of production (1983) also complies that version.
If that 40-pin is really self-contained XT-bus, then it could be easily adapted with a help of cheap 40-pin "IDE extender" from ALiexpress.

[fneck]

Another option on Bull machines was a proprietary network that ran under Prologue (the original Bull OS). It's called SPR network. I'm looking for information on its connectivity but it could be the 40-pin connector. To confirm... but we advance.

[fneck]

I continue the research. On this article in SVM number 49, there is an article on the BM45 in which presents "hidden under the power supply" the SCSI port and the connector for CP8. So the CP8 port would be rather the 40 pins?

http://fr.1001mags.com/parution/svm/num ... e-integral
http://fr.1001mags.com/parution/svm/num ... e-integral

Sur la partie de cette carte cachée par l'alimentation, on découvre deux connecteurs qui correspondent à deux originalités du Bull Micral 45. Le port SCSI (Small Computer System Interface), popularisé par le Macintosh d'Apple, est un accès rapide au microprocesseur, qui passe par un imposant connecteur à 50 broches, à l'arrière du Micral. Actuellement destiné au branchement d'un dispositif de sauvegarde de disque dur sur bande, il ouvre des horizons prometteurs. L'autre originalité, chère à Bull celle-là, est le connecteur pour lecteur de carte à mémoire CP8 (type carte de crédit). Il est regrettable que son installation interdise l'utilisation de cartes d'extension de grande longueur.

[Lenord]

Yes, but that port on CP8 prototype was definitely 20, not 40-pins. Maybe there were other versions...

[fneck]

I have some news today. In fact, I found the manual of Bull Micral 35, which is closer to 40 than 45 but there is the justification for the 40-pin connector. This is a proprietary connector for connecting a "DISI reference 3203" brand streamer.

For more details see here :
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9719&p=148772#p148772

To summarize, 40-pin connector for tape drive and 20-pin for CP8 drive.

Unfortunately for switches or jumper this documentation does not teach us anything because the motherboard is too different from that of BM45.

[Lenord]

Wow, in fact I came to the very similar conclusion but for that i had to find the manual for VLSI VL16C452-QC and ensure that it doesn't have any IDE but 2x serial ports. Nice that you've found concise description.

Unfortunately for switches or jumper this documentation does not teach us anything because the motherboard is too different from that of BM45.

Maybe we could compare its jumpers meanings to guess what ours could mean?

I've reverse-engineered most of SW1 and SW2 blocks.
Briefly, 7 of 10 switches in SW2 are just for IRQ allocation.
We have 4x onboard devices (COM1, COM2, Inport mouse and SCSI) and 4x IRQs (3, 5, 7, 15).
I will represent these results in a table soon.

Then the jumpers: J2 disconnects Y2 quartz crystal from aux Intel 8742 CPU (Z815)
I don't know why this was made because machine won't work without it and only one line can be disconnected.
J1 grounds 32 pin (P15) of Z815. Don't know what it could be.
One switch also grounds 33 pin (P16) of the same Z815.

JD01 should be MONO/COLOR switch for built-in graphics as i've supposed earlier.

I have troubles with 4x switches in SW1, each pair of their pins aren't going anywhere(
And I still don't know the meaning of 3x switches in SW2, all of them are going to Z904 logics.

[fneck]

Congratulations, you are progressing well

[fneck]

Here is a pdf of the doc concerning the configuration of the BM35. If that can help you understand the BM45.
https://system-cfg.com/scans/bull_micral35_config.pdf

[Lenord]

I've finished investigation of configuration panels:

Thank you for the manual, it helped a bit but the BM35 model is completely different.
I couldn't reveal the meaning of 3x jumpers at SW2 block, one at SW1 block (and 4x jumpers there are not going anywhere).
By default, we have SCSI at IRQ15, Inport Mouse at IRQ5, COM1 at IRQ3 and COM2 seems to be disabled.

[fneck]

Nice work

For my part I wanted to try to use your ROM in my machine ... it does not work. The computer does not boot, no even beep, absolutely nothing on the screen [edit 21h56] Now it works, see a little further ... [/edit]


Regarding the ROM, we cannot write the contents of the dumped ROM as it is written in 16-bit word on both EPROM (even and odd bytes on each chip). I modified the file accordingly with my EPROMs dump: https://software.system-cfg.com/bios/bull/

[Lenord]

That's not good. Even the modification didn't help you to run my ROM? Did your modified ROM dump run on your PC?
If you have flasher, could you dump your ROM directly?

By the way, I also revealed that the only chip that utilises battery power is Z802 (MC146818AP), that is where our CMOS settings (50 BYTES!All that time-consuming utility changes just 50 bytes!) are stored and also RTC. According to its datasheet, it could be powered with any voltage from 3 to 6V.
http://pdf.datasheetcatalog.com/datashe ... 6818AS.pdf
So if something happens with your resistor, it takes 7.2V of original battery which is not good)

[fneck]

I did not change my dump, just write it in a special way to distribute the content on both chips. I realized that I had to do this by reading my EPROM U1.2. But in fact the flasher can do that automatically. As said in the previous message, I uploaded the files of my ROM read directly with the flasher.

You know, a resistance can be cut but never goes short.

[Lenord]

Ok, i thought you've modified old ones you've got via DEBUG.
So, the same procedure with my ROM dump wasn't successful? I've also provided 2 files (ODD, EVEN).
Now its my turn to try your bios, but I have to get flasher first

You know, a resistance can be cut but never goes short.

It's true but i were worried by its flexible connection.

I've also fixed country.sys issue in your DOS image and added some software (Volkov Commander, tests) there.
I will provide the link later, when I check that.