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ATI VGA Wonder 16 and the IBM PC 5150 ...

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Dizzy33

Member
Joined
Dec 21, 2011
Messages
42
Hello,

I saw on the web that a few people had connected an ATI VGA Wonder 16 to a 5151 monitor on their IBM PC 5150 successfuly.
I just bought an ATI VGA Wonder 16, but it does not work with my 5151 monitor connected to my IBM PC 5150 ... (I get a scrolling small green square on the screen).
I put the motherboard SW1 switches 5 and 6 to ON but the problem is still the same ...

I tried the ATI Wonder 16 on a Pentium motherboard, and it worked perfectly when connected to my 5151 monitor ...
So I guess my problem comes from the 5150 motherboard. I don't know why it does not work with it, I guess there must be a configuration problem somewhere.

Can anyone help me about this problem ?

Does anyone know where I can find the user manual of the ATI VGA Wonder 16 ?

Thanks !
 
Have you tried attaching a VGA monitor to the VGA Wonder in the 5150 ?
According to the ATI modes chart , the 5151 monitor should work.
What BIOS level do you have in the 5150 ?

Attached are a couple of scans of the VGA Wonder box showing the different
resolutions/monitors supported. If you'd like a copy of the full resolution scans
send me a PM with your email id.
 

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Thanks for your answer, in fact I already downloaded your scans from a previous post.
If I connect a VGA display (I tried with an LCD display) a message appears on the screen saying that this resolution cannot be displayed. I didn't try yet with a VGA CRT display.
I'm sorry but I don't know where to find the BIOS revision (I checked the chips on the motherboard but couldn't find any revision written on a chip). When I power up my 5150 with the MDA graphic card, no revision is displayed while starting.
All I can tell you is that my motherboard is a "64k-256k" with 256k on it.
Do you know where I can find the manual of the ATI VGA Wonder 16 ?
 
There's a link to the ATI VGA Wonder XL docs in the thread below....looks like the same basic installation info
as the VGA Wonder 16. I do have a hardcopy of the VGA Wonder 16 manual somewhere, will try to find that.
Do you have the utility disks for the VGA Wonder 16 ? There are some config programs on the diskette
that allows you to configure the card.

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?23649-ATI-VGA-Wonder-troubles/page2
 
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There's also some info about reading the 5150 BIOS level in that other post using MSD.EXE.
The reason I was asking about the BIOS, is that some early 5150's did not have the ability to
even load adapter card BIOS'es at boot time. I remember reading that somewhere, but cannot
find what the required 5150 BIOS level is.

One more question....did you try powering on the 5151 before powering on the 5150 to see
if that helps with the monitor detection process ?
 
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Unfortunatly for now I have no way to transfer files from my modern PC to the 5150 (I have no 5"1/4 drive on my PC). So I cannot execute MSD.EXE.
I don't think my 5150 is a early one as the most early ones had a "64k" motherboard. On mine it's written "64k-256k" with 256K on it.
My ATI Wonder 16 is a V5 Rev 2.

What I think about my problem is the 5150 forces the ATI Wonder to display a frequency which is not compatible with my 5151 (not even with my VGA LCD display !).
I don't know why the 5150 does that. I tried every position of the SW1 switches 5 and 6, with always the same bad result.
I will check the XL docs to see if there's something interesting for me, but I guess it won't help me a lot ...
 
Dizzy33 said:
Unfortunatly for now I have no way to transfer files from my modern PC to the 5150 (I have no 5"1/4 drive on my PC). So I cannot execute MSD.EXE.
Click to expand...
Buy or make a null-modem cable and use Interlink (assuming both PCs have a serial port and the 5150 is running DOS 3 or later).
 
You should try an older CRT VGA monitor if possible....the card should be outputting 640x480
Does the LCD monitor display any info about the resolution or referesh rate?
 
mikey99 said:
The reason I was asking about the BIOS, is that some early 5150's did not have the ability to even load adapter card BIOS'es at boot time.
Click to expand...
The first and second BIOS revisions. Because we now know that the motherboard is a 64k-256K type, we now know that the BIOS revision is the third and final one. So, no problem there.

Dizzy33 said:
I don't know why the 5150 does that. I tried every position of the SW1 switches 5 and 6, with always the same bad result.
Click to expand...
Because the card has an expansion BIOS, the setting must be 5=on/6=on.

Dizzy33 said:
I tried the ATI Wonder 16 on a Pentium motherboard, and it worked perfectly when connected to my 5151 monitor ...
So I guess my problem comes from the 5150 motherboard. I don't know why it does not work with it, I guess there must be a configuration problem somewhere.
Click to expand...
The ATI VGA Wonder 16 is a 16-bit card. When you place it in a 5150, the card is going into an 8-bit slot. In quite a few 16-bit video cards that can operate in an 8-bit slot, there are jumpers/switches that need to be changed in order to achieve 8-bit operation. Maybe the VGA Wonder 16 is one of those. Obviously, the manual (when found) will reveal if that is the case or not.
 
mikey99 said:
You should try an older CRT VGA monitor if possible....the card should be outputting 640x480
Does the LCD monitor display any info about the resolution or referesh rate?
Click to expand...
The LCD monitor does not display any information about the received frequency.
 
modem7 said:
The ATI VGA Wonder 16 is a 16-bit card. When you place it in a 5150, the card is going into an 8-bit slot. In quite a few 16-bit video cards that can operate in an 8-bit slot, there are jumpers/switches that need to be changed in order to achieve 8-bit operation. Maybe the VGA Wonder 16 is one of those. Obviously, the manual (when found) will reveal if that is the case or not.
Click to expand...

There are no jumpers or switches on the Wonder 16 card. According to the manual, the only thing we need to do for an XT PC is to modify the SW1 switch 5 & 6 to ON which has been done.
The only interesting thing in the manual is that they say a configuration utility can be used to modify the default start display type. But I don't believe it will help me as the card already starts with the right display type when it is connected to a pentium motherboard. Also in the manual they don't say it is needed for an XT PC.
I am gonna try anyway but it will take some times before I can do it.
 
I found the VGA Wonder 16 manual. I compared the text to the XL manual, for Chapter 5 installing the card,
its the same text as the XL manual..... just says 16 instead of XL :) So I don't think you're missing any steps.

On page 23 of the V1 XL manual, it describes the VSETUP utility. This utility configures the onboard EEPROM
based on your choices in the menu. You could try running VSETUP on the modern PC and see what the card is
currently set to for each of the defaults. Be careful though it may be possible to change one of the settings
that isn't compatible with the modern PC.

I attached a zip of the files/drivers for the VGA Wonder 16.....
 

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Thanks a lot for your informations ! Using the VSETUP utility will be my next step, I'm gonna try it today ...
 
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From the graphic posted above, it appears to me that the BIOS needs to be set to 8-bit operation (option C in the utility).
 
Here are all the tests I did using VSETUP :
- modified the bits option to 8 Bits
- Tried 4 different starting resolutions : EGA CE80, CGA, MDA 720×350, MDA 640x400
But still unsuccessfully ... The best result was when I choosed MDA 720×350, then I could barely read what was written on the screen, but it was displayed in a small window in the center of the screen and was scrolling quickly ...
I then tried different positions for SW1 switches 5 and 6 but it had no effect.
So whatever the resolution I choosed, the frequency sent to the 5151 monitor was wrong ... But the frequency sent to the 5151 is good if the card is inserted on the Pentium motherboard. I also tried every on 3 different slots of the 5150 motherboard with no success.

Now I have no more ideas of what I can do to solve my problem ...
 
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Which BIOS revision does your VGA Wonder 16 card have ? When using the
MDA mode were you able to even see the ATI BIOS logo appear on the screen ?
That would at least tell you the ATI BIOS is being loaded on the 5150.

In the other forum post I had tried using my VGA Wonder 16 (BIOS level V3M-1.05 )
on my 5150 with CGA and EGA monitors and it worked fine. Unfortunately I don't
have any 5151's. Several 5153 and 5154 but NO 5151 :-(

Did you try the LCD monitor with any of those alternate settings in VSETUP ?
It might still be worth trying a CRT VGA monitor on the 5150 if you have access to one.
 
The card is a V5 Rev 2. It's hard to tell as the screen scrolls, but I think it was displayed bios V5M 1.01.
I didn't try the VGA LCD display with the new settings.
 
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I feel really sad ... :( After many attempts I still cannot display anything correctly with my ATI Wonder 16 ...
I still can't understand why it works with my Pentium motherboard but not with the 5150, even when the card is configured to be working in 8 Bits mode ...

Any help ?
 
Have you checked all PSU outputs are good? Also, what frequency is the XT operating at?
 
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