Bull Micral 45 - revival

Pour tout ce qui touche au PC d'IBM et ses nombreux descendants. Attention tout de même, au delà de quelques MHz la discussion devient vite hors sujet.

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Lenord
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par Lenord »

fneck a écrit : 29 mars 2019 20:37 Are you careful about the hole present or not on the 720 Ko or 1.44 Mo disk?
I am using 1.44Mb 3.5" drive and 1.44Mb diskettes.
All of them have this hole present.
For example, that given DOS floppy image was 720kb. I've converted that into 1.44Mb in WinImage, but even in this case it gave error on boot.I could cover that hole to simulate 720k, but that won't work with 360k image (most software will refuse to write that) and my USB FDD might not have any detector, so it's useless.

Does this disk boot OK in your PC?
Have you tried to boot with any of 3 images I've mentioned earlier?
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par fneck »

That's what's wrong.

A Ms-Dos lower than version 3.3 does not recognize 1.44 MB floppy disks. Forget the 360 KB, it's 5.25 " size. On the other hand, for the 720 KB you have to plug the hole and format it as such. Often USB drives do not know how to format 720 KB, usually you have to open a command window and type:
FORMAT A: /T:80 /N:9
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par Lenord »

Forget the 360 KB, it's 5.25 " size.
I had same troubles with configuration diskette.
Remember, originally it was 360k image. All known software refuse to record such images, except Rawwritewin. But I don't know what it actually did because when I've recorded two disks (with USB FDD and with normal FDD in another PC), none of them worked. I even tried to format it by writing in commandline "Format A: /F:360" and "Format A: /F:720" but it said that this is not supported by drive and/or disk. Then I tried to cover that hole but there wasn't any difference.

Until I've found WinImage and converted that 360k image in 1.44Mb format before recording, i couldn't run that.

I've tried your parameters now:
Image
It says the same - "specified parameters aren't supported by disk, format error".

Also, I've tried not only DOS 3.3 - all 7.xx and most of 6.xx variants don't boot. I've offered 3 examples earlier.
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par fneck »

Okay, I have a little trouble keeping track of your floppy disks. If I understand correctly anyway you can not write a floppy 720 kb. I looked at your links for boot floppies, they are not very clean and do not boot because they use programs that do not work on a 286. For example the DOS 3.30 works correctly if you remove commands that seek to install a CD-ROM drive.

I sent you by email a disk image of a Ms-Dos 6 minimal boot (in French). On top you will also find the Bull configuration program, the ROM files and the SPEED program.
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par Lenord »

I also think that some software prevents them from starting normally. It's hard to determine what hangs startup, lots of software i know works only at 386+. Also, maybe problem of conversion is connected with 5.25" 360k images on 3.5" drives, as I remember I've chosen them for BM configuration.

I were able to write your image with both Ultraiso and WinImage without any conversion. Both variants work, but give error at country.sys.
SPEED.EXE works, BM45 condiguration works.
Image
In addition, I've left EMT utility for some time and it gave no errors. So, those 2048k really work.
Image
But I am worried about the CPU.
It works at 8MHz but its temperature is rather high. Almost 70°C, i think it's even more because that thermocouple has large surface area. 70-85°C is max operating limit for 80286 by specs, but it's the slowest CPU and it's so rare that i couldn't find any other users.
Image
And those strange problems with Turbo and memory recognition...
In fact, I can use those 2048k but with very strange and specific configuration.
As I remember, you also couldn't get more that 3072k even with 6x1Mb SIMMs?
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par Falkor »

Lenord a écrit : 30 mars 2019 16:04But I am worried about the CPU.
It works at 8MHz but its temperature is rather high. Almost 70°C, i think it's even more because that thermocouple has large surface area.
Why not trying to put a fan / heatsink on it ?
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par fneck »

Lenord a écrit : 30 mars 2019 16:04 (...) but give error at country.sys.
It's normal and it's my fault. I decided to remove COUNTRY.SYS but forgot to remove it from the CONFIG.SYS file.

[edit] Can you give me the memory test program that you use ?
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par Lenord »

Falkor a écrit : 30 mars 2019 17:00 Why not trying to put a fan / heatsink on it ?
I will but i think this won't fix those memory issues.
And it's my first ever 286, I didn't expect them to heat that much at 8MHz...when i got that board, i hoped that there is 16 or even 25MHZ inside)
[edit] Can you give me the memory test program that you use ?
I've collected some useful software I've tested to work on 286, here is the link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/130fwUT ... sp=sharing
This memory testing program is called "Extended memory test", run EMT51.exe from that archive.
It was created for MAXUM computers and is able to test up to 16Mb of extended memory.

System Check was the closest analog of ASTRA/HWINFO which works at 286.
Maxspeed shows current speed of your PC (try that in Turbo and non-turbo modes, I am interested if that shows not 12MHz after SPEED /+ or SPEED /- command)
The other two are useful for dumping bios without DEBUG but include other features (for example, BIOSUTIL can add one more HDD type into BIOS)
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par Lenord »

Concerning manual for BM45.
I've found the only place with that. :(
https://www.irif.fr/~yunes/divers/scrapyard/bull.html
This guy had all manuals and disks,
ImageImageImage
What if he still has them? He has a homepage and it's not abandoned.
https://www.irif.fr/~yunes/
He has facebook and other social media, maybe there is a way to contact him? He is French, i don't have fb accounts, so i hope somebody could do that better than me...
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par fneck »

Fine, I look to contact him 8)

[edit] Done...
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fneck
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par fneck »

All is OK :D

ImageImage

Image
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Lenord
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par Lenord »

Done...
Thank you, let's wait for him.
All is OK :D
Nice. Maybe my CPU just can't underclock lower than 8MHz?
Or somebody has replaced original 12MHz CPU and now system just can't clock this to 12? That could explain why it's counted as non-turbo.
I have same motherboard, same settings, same 48MHz quartz oscillator. But my speed is always 8MHz...
Am I right that 3072k is max amount you of RAM you could get (even with 6x1Mb SIMMs)?

I've just completed investigating the pinouts. There are P4, P17, PSU and other connectors.
Image
It seems that our "IDE" has ~9x data lines and that number is close to XT-Bus IDE (8x).
Image
XT-IDE pinout I've taken here (table 15.8-15.9) http://1123581.tripod.com/id16.html
Buti don't know how to determine each. Was there anything similar in the manuals of other BM machines?

I have no idea what is P17. Half of these pins are just GND.
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par fneck »

I have an idea for P17 (or P4 ?). All Micral could accommodate an optional smart card reader called CP8. This one may have been connected due to this 20-pin connector. I currently have no certainty but it's just a idea.

More info on Google https://www.google.fr/search?q=bull+cp8 ... q=bull+cp8

Image
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Lenord
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par Lenord »

Nice assumption, I've never seen anything like that cardreader. Found a description of card's interface.
My other version is that proprietary IDE uses P14 and P4 both.
Because none of them has enough data and control lines (20) for XT-IDE, but together they might have.
Dernière modification par Lenord le 31 mars 2019 19:05, modifié 1 fois.
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Re: Bull Micral 45 - revival

Message par fneck »

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. But it will not be for now, we must give him some time to find...
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