GoldenGate vortex 386

[Dale423]

Thanks to Niezgodka who has lent me his manual, I have been working on scanning the English portion. 2 things to note, the manual has seen better days (Not a complaint at all) and my scanner seems to be adding some weird light blurring, but all in all it is readable. Any suggestions on where to upload this once completed?

 

[levo-ace]

The blurring looks like your scanner could do with a clean. The blurring is from oil on the glass . USE GLASS CLEANER not a bleach or multi surface spray , if you have glasses and use a spray or wipes for those they would be excellent!!

 

[Dale423]

That is the issue, it isn't the glass. I cleaned it with glass cleaner and it isn't the glass. Its a cheap multifunction printer and I think it just sucks. I have cleaned the glass and re tried on several pages and I cannot correct it.

The blurring looks like your scanner could do with a clean. The blurring is from oil on the glass . USE GLASS CLEANER not a bleach or multi surface spray , if you have glasses and use a spray or wipes for those they would be excellent!!

- - - Updated - - -

In reading up it would appear perhaps it is from external light getting in, since the book is thick the scanner cannot close all the way.

 

[levo-ace]

yes that would do it , lay a towel ,or something fairly thick over the top before scanning to cut down the incident lighting.

 

[Dale423]

Manual is scanned, where should I put it?

 

[Dale423]

Here is the file.

https://mega.nz/file/pw8CTDKB#2lptEnYBoBi0MCFvsPjvYR-tvyxXzhjOhgD4BJJ7ssw

 

[Xanxi]

Hello there.
Digging this old thread to get help with my GG386.

Actually, my A4000 usually sports a Commodore A2386 but it has some troubles and is going for repairs soon.
So i have turned to my GG386. I have been using this one in my A2000 at some point but that was circa 2011-2012 and i can't remember much. I think it was working with the duplicated hardfile of my A2386 but i don't remember how i did this.
So far, the card is working to the bios setup.
I would like to set up a french keyboard but it does allow only german or english.
My floppy drive seems to work. Looking for a way to point to an existing hardfile without creating one. Due to lack of room in the computer, i prefer not to use the onboard IDE controller.
I was also under the impression i used to have 16 MB of RAM on this board but only 4 MB are recognized in the BIOS. I can't be sure if my (brain) memory is failing or my (computer) RAM is not fully recognized because it seems the clips on my SIMM sockets are all broken (a plague i have been used to on several boards including A4000 mobo).

Anyway, it is temporary until i have again a working A2386, i think the Commodore bridgeboard is better integrated into the Amiga system.

 

[Xanxi]

Finally, i have reinstalled MSDOS6 on a new 256 MB hardfile (the GG386 seems to max out at 256 MB) because i haven't been able to make it use my 400 MB commodore hardfile.
Seems the board only has 4 MB after all with 1 MB SIMMs. The manual says it needs at least two SIMMs so it can't be that only one 4 MB SIMMs is recognized.
Now, problem is i can't get my audio card (MK8330) to work because there is no free IRQ. I would like to remove COM2 and LPT1 which are useless to me but the GG always attribute them the IRQ. Any idea about that?

 

[trixster]

Interested that you think the C= bridgeboards are better integrated than a Goldengate.

With a MonitorMaster (or other switch) I’d say the GG is moreorless perfectly integrated, only lacking a windowed mode on the workbench. But you can multitask and Amiga+Q to switch between Amiga desktop and the PC. The way it handles file transfer between Amiga and pc is excellent, shared resources (keyboard, mouse, ram) works without issue too.

 

[Xanxi]

Well it may be that i am more used to Commodore bridgeboards, but yet the Commodore ones operate by themselves when the Amiga boots and can be called back and forth, the GG has to be launched from WB or CLI. Janus software seems to me more easily integrated, that's why there is a useful tool like Etherbridge. They leave the serial port and the parallel ports to the Amiga unless given to the BB in the settings, while the GG seems to take control of them no matter what i do, which leave me with no free IRQ and won't let me use them from the Amiga side when launched (for instance MIDI music through MIDI serial adapter and external synth or MAS Player on parallel). It seems the GG mouse has some compatibility problem. Just tried Dune so far and the mouse went crazy. The AMouse from Commodore has no problem of compatibility except in Norton Commander. The A2386 also have a video switcher option, which should plug into the external port generally mistaken for a ps2 port.

Still, i can't fathom how to remove COM2 and LPT. The bios setting are only to map them to the Amiga or to an ISA controller, but even with no ISA controller the GG gives them 2 IRQ. Surely someone has succeded in using an audio board before.
I need IRQ5 for the SB mode, IRQ2 for the MPU401 interface and my card can use another onboard MPU401 interface allocated to a waveblaster board which needs another IRQ and port (the great MK8330 from Keropi and Marmes, awesome card).
The GG bios won't let the user see the IRQ list, i used Norton Sysinfo to check them.

 

[trixster]

Hmm, interesting irq issues. I’ve used a SB AWE64 without issue and am currently using an ESS 1868f with an ET4000AX concurrently.

 

[Xanxi]

Do you have COM/LPT activated in the bios settings?

 

[trixster]

I’ll check and let you know.

 

[Timtheloon]

I believe @BlindGerMan (Mr bridgeboard ) always say the commodore bridgeboards are better.

I myself Prefer the GG, but that because I've never had a working Commodore one, got 2 naff boards sadly.

The Monitor master is great but seem very rare maybe it could easily be reversed engineered so others can own one it's a great addition to the Amiga with a GG

 

[Xanxi]

Monitor Master and the Commodore similar device have become useless to me by 2020+. Now my Amiga computers are almost all HDMI out (RTG or ECS/AGA as well), while the VGA board of the BB/GG are still VGA. Old VGA switches are useless. Instead i switch with one or two buttons between the video inputs of my modern LCD monitors.

 

[trixster]

C= bridgeboards with the ATI can be clocked higher due to a separate xtal for the bus clock.

There was a guy on here years ago who made and sold replica MonitorMasters - i bought one from him and it works great. Can’t recall his name offhand though.

 

[Xanxi]

Ok, trixster don't bother going to check your IRQ list, case solved.
I think Norton Sysinfo is mistaken in the IRQ list because it lists ports that are closed in the GG Setup. I guess that if i set COM2 or LPT to ISA bus and there is no ISA controller, there is no COM2 or LPT at all, unlike if they are set to the Amiga ports.
It seems the stock driver of my audio card doesn't work at all with the GG and MSDOS 6 and never find the card BUT Unisound generic driver does and i have been able to setup everything.
About the mouse, i need to install a driver from Microsoft because the GG emulated a serial Microsoft mouse but does not give any driver (unlike the Commodore BB which comes with 3 mouse drivers for DOS and Windows).
So far i can just see with benchmarking tools that the GG386 is a bit slower than the stock A2386, even with 10 MHz bus option, Zero Wait State and bios caching. Maybe because of the different architecture or because of the AMD vs Intel 386sx cpu.
As for hardfiles, the GG does not accept more than 256 MB. The A2386 takes just below the 500 MB limit (the manual says 32 MB but it is because it is still related to MSDOS3 which had 32 MB limit).

 

[Xanxi]

Me again about the GG386 and my MK8330 soundcard.
As i said, the Unisound driver initialises the card just fine and can set up IRQ, DMA, etc but the CMI8330 drivers that work with this card on the A2386 just don't find the card.
Most games works as is but some can't use the card that way, like Dune (accepts the setup and plays music but setup tool complains about not finding the board, and then there is no digitalized sound effect with the music such as no sound for worms and ornis) or Al Qadim Genie's Curse (setup program won't find anything including sound and music even on external synth and won't play any sound).
I think this GG386 has troubles with PnP cards which the A2386 had not. I have no time to open the computer to try another audio card and i need this one to operate all my MIDI stuff.

Yet @trixster said he's using a SB AWE 64 and i think this card is PnP and starts with the CTCM TSR software from Creative Labs.

Apart from this, everything works fine now on my setup.

 

[trixster]

Hi, yeah, AWE64 is Pnp and works fine with the CTCM software. I’ll try to find time today to see if I had to manually configure it though.

Regarding your previous post - I have never used a hardfile on GG, I use a DOM on its ide header, so can’t provide any insights there.

Mouse - yes the manual says to use mouse.sys, loaded in Config.sys. This works but is rubbish. I have used mouse.com and ctmouse and both work fine with the Amiga mouse being used as a serial mouse.

I think BlindGerman’s benchmarks agree with you in that C= boards are slightly faster than GG clock for clock in benchmarking but overall both felt the same speed. He has managed to overclock his C= fast than GG can though. The best I can do is 50mhz, he has his Ti A2386 at 66mhz

 

[Xanxi]

I have noticed another quirk with the GoldenGate 386.
When playing ingame music, sometimes the music slows down with no reason, even on static screen like on Dune.
A 386sx/25 is more than enough for Dune and i never had problem before.
Keropi did also mentionned this on some old posts about Soundblaster cards and his old GG486SLC2 so it is not a matter of CPU but rather something about the design of the GG.
It does happen on mine with the ISA bus on slow at 8 MHz or on fast at 10 MHz. My ISA boards (STB Nitro 2MB and MK8330) should me more than able to cope with a (little) accelerated ISA bus.