Pangolin goodness!

[telmnstr]

I bought some bits off of OSR @ SELEM and have finally managed to find the exact style computer I was after to put them in. I haven't made the cable yet to convert the pre-ILDA to ILDA output from the QuadMod32 ISA card into one of my projectors yet, but am getting close!

Pentium 166MMX, 32MB of RAM, Promise UltraATA PCI card that provides it's own BIOS for disk geometry overriding the built in Award BIOS, 16GB SD card emulating PATA IDE drive, QuadMod32, and Gravis Ultrasound Classic! I did put a USB controller in it so I could get a mouse. Getting a mouse on the thing was the most challenging part. It has a custom ISA card that drives the internal LCD panel (fixed at 640x480) or an external monitor.

I grew up playing with computers, originally Atari 8bit then MS-DOS systems. I followed the PC demoscene and tinkered with music trackers quite a bit. I figure most of the people in the laser show hobby are also pretty big music fans, the laser hobby is visuals to go with great music so I'm sure some will relate!

I'm hoping the QM32 card is good. I know Steve said it may have a DAC issue, and I can see the DAC IC has been replaced. I'll throw an oscope on it if there are issues if any persist.

But here are some pics of the system!

http://i.imgur.com/eqlImfM.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Ccyhl6k.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/GsyJc2b.jpg

[buffo]

Cool!

I've got an old QM-32 as well. I installed it into a docking station for a Pentium 3 toughbook. It worked really well for me, before I got my QM-2000.

Long live the QM-32!

Adam

[telmnstr]

Nice! I had an IBM Thinkpad that had a docking station that had a PCI and ISA slot on the back, but the internal MWave audio/modem crap and other things ate all the DMA and IRQ channels. Plus the card just hung off the back unprotected. Ended up selling it on eBay, didn't think I'd ever care about ISA again.

So tonight I whipped up a QM32 DB25 to ILDA DB25 adapter. First shot it didn't work right but then I noticed the ILDA interlock loop that was needed so did a jumper from 4 to 17 and Pluto II was happy.

However, when I run content from the QM32 two things seem to be off. First, there are always some really serious trails from the upper right down into the scanned image. I'm guessing each frame might start in that position and for some reason the blanking isn't kicking in. The other issue is there is this slow rolling effect where everything isn't scanned at once, rolls. Like the colorful pangolin logo. It will have 2 or 3 letters at a time and roll through them. I assume this isn't an effect but not sure. Or maybe it's caused by the unblanked lines going to the upper right.

I can see output, and messed with the adjustments that were exposed via the GUI.

The hard drive I have from the computer the card was in has two copies of LD I think, one "new" and one old. I had a few issues getting it running originally, perhaps there is something mismatched (the QM32 software loaded into card versus the LD/Showtime app?). Originally it was complaining that the date was wrong on I think the QM32.DLL but it was right. The error went away once I tried to launch it with the actual card installed.

Funky stuff. Oh me gherd Creation! I can almost play Creation!

Did you ever run your QM32 with a diode projector?

[telmnstr]

Okay, so spent a few minutes with the rig!

Installed Update19 which re-did version 3.10, so I hope that reset the files.

There is some error where the output is swinging super hard right and bottom, like way out of bounds of the normal scan area. This is really the only issue I'm having with the setup. Might be an issue with the board.

I re-arranged the SIMMs on the QM32 just in-case it was a memory issue, no change.

Looking at the board I assume the two bigger AD DACs handle X+Y and then the 3 smaller ones handle the color channels, although I think this is a 6 color channel capable board (or more?) so maybe they're dual DACs. One of them has been replaced + socketed, and Capacitor at CB26 is missing. That's probably noise filtering on the +5vdc line but not sure. Will add one of those to the huge order of capacitors I'm doing for the arcade monitor fix ups I'm working on and replace it.

I also tried taking DB25 shield to ground on the computer case just to make sure it wasn't some grounding issue, that didn't seem to work.

I'll have to poke at it with oscope or something.

The frames show up but it's interrupted by the dot way off screen. Afraid that the frame data is somehow damaged on X+Y positions

Might try a different base address on the ISA card just to be on the safe side. If fail will ask around about trading it for a presumed working card.