Pocket 386

[hunterjwizzard]

Sell it on eBay for a whole lot less than what I paid. I don't know it.

You could actually probably get back what you paid for it less shipping, especially if you write up a nice description of how you bought it, used it, the things you liked about it, etc. They are being listed on eBay for the same price.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Power cycling will leave you back to the last value you set the RTC's time.

Is it literally to the second the last time it was when you set the DOS date/time? To me that sounds like the 32khz clock crystal that should be driving the hardware RTC isn't working. (I'm fairly certain that in AT-class machines the time/date in DOS is maintained independently to the hardware RTC the same way it is in XTs, IE, by counting clock timer interrupts; the only time it touches the RTC is when it's read on bootup and any time it's explicitly set.)

 

[OrangeTide]

Is it literally to the second the last time it was when you set the DOS date/time? To me that sounds like the 32khz clock crystal that should be driving the hardware RTC isn't working. (I'm fairly certain that in AT-class machines the time/date in DOS is maintained independently to the hardware RTC the same way it is in XTs, IE, by counting clock timer interrupts; the only time it touches the RTC is when it's read on bootup and any time it's explicitly set.)

Yup. That's what I see. I think the oscillator isn't running at all. It could be the crystal or it could be something complicated from the rather sketchy looking power circuit for the RTC. When I'm not incredibly swamped with real life nonsense, I'd like to get an oscilloscope on it and eliminate or confirm some of our guesses.

 

[Frunzl]

Yep, using the Femto style card. I’d like to build more to sell due to the increased interest due to the release of the Pocket 386, but I do worry about people blaming it for losing their CMOS settings. But it seems like people are losing their settings anyway, regardless of what’s plugged in.

PLEASE make more of the Femto Edition!
I've been waiting for a new batch for weeks. Imho, this is the biggest flaw of the Pocket386 (not having digital audio).

As you said, the device loses cmos settings anyway. Mine does it eratically and very frequently, even without any isa cards installed.

If you need someone for testing, I volunteer immediately

 

[Frunzl]

By the way, for anyone, who is as frustrated as I am, having to disable the floppy drive and to enable mouse support every single time after a cmos-reset, I have attached a modified bios (made using AMIBCP).

This one includes:
- Floppy disabled by default
- Mouse support enabled by default
- All "hidden" settings visible, however, I don't know if they do much. Feel free to test.

Use at your own risk. I don't know, which tool is appropriate for flashing, I ended up taking the chip out and using a programmer, so again, please be careful.