Hacking /Repurposing Wyse 3315se and Toshiba TC58V32AFT (long)

Hello,

I have obtained an Wyse 3315se with the intention of repurposing it - I wanted to make an MP3 jukebox. I was inspired by the article at

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but it seems this terminal I have is different since the one above uses a Cyrix MediaGX type processor with CS5530 companion. Although probably not powerful enough for my jukebox app it wasnt expensive and is fun to carry on messing with it.

I intend to produce a web site when I finish but if not at least this post will be archived.

Hardware The processor in my Wyse 3315se is an AMD ELan SC400 66mhz BGA (486 a like with extra peripherals). It is connected to a Crystal CS8900 ethernet and CS4231 Sound chip. A 16C550 in addition to the built in C550 compatible UART in the ELan provides two serial ports on the back. An 82C42 keyboard controller is also mounted. Graphics are taken care of with a Cirrus GD5440 with 1Mbyte EDO Dram. An Atmel 29C020 houses the boot rom and 16V8 I assume is for address decoding.

8MByte of EDO DRAM is provided on board with a 36 pin double sided mini SIMM, on mine loaded with another 8mbyte to give 16mbyte total.

An Intel 28F160 2Mbyte (16 by 1M) I assume houses the WinCE kernel and a Toshiba TC58V32AFT 4Mbyte serial device I assume provides the file system.

Although the Elan provides an IDE interface, it is not conventionally pinned out. There is a large block of Pads in the centre of the board but I havent worked out what they are for yet.

A PCMCIA interface is provided, since the Elan directly offers a PCMCIA interface. The AMD website says it is possible to boot from PCMCIA linear SRAM and the Alios project at

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provides a method to get Linux Booting on an AMD Elan Evaluation system. I inted to try this as soon as I get a memory card from Ebay, but it is not clear if the sram memory card needs to be 8 or 16 bits wide. Booting from PCMCIA lets me bypass the boot rom and Kernel flash (28F160), until I have figured out how to access or modify the flash, if at all. I just have to hope the Wyse designers liked this feature and implemented it, then determine which link on the board lets me do this.

The toshiba 4Mbyte EEprom is puzzeling me - it is accessed in a paged manner, not linear, like a cube. More info is currently available at

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Questions I am assuming the board follows PC architecture so teh x86 linux Kernel will run without any modifications. ANy reason not to assume this? I am going on pragmatism - If I were to design something similar I would like to stick as close to the reference designs from AMD.

Is it really that easy to boot from PCMCIA SRAM (once I have found the correct link) with the Elan using Alios? Does the memory card need to be 16 bit? I assume the reset vectors work since the 2mbyte memory card wraps around so will always be present in the right area of the memory?

Does the Toshiba EEprom just connect to the memory space via a few latches or Am I missing something i.e Is there an IDE emulation mode for this device? I notice some reference to 58V32 in the Linux MTD kernel archives but it is not complete, any suggestions?

Will the Kernel recognise the Cirrus graphics chip without the Video Bios?

Many Thanks, Vincent

Reply to
Vincent Crabtree
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The Elan should _JUST_ be powerful enough. But you might have to buffer the entire file in RAM.

It's NAND flash, essentially a SmartMedia card in TSOP packaging.

Absolutely not, you need to do it in software. The MTD layer in Linux should support it (certainly does on other, non-x86 platforms).

Probably not. Int 10h calls are used to query stuff before the kernel starts up. It should be possible to modify the appropriate framebuffer driver, but why do you want to dump the video BIOS anyway? It will make bringup much easier.

Reply to
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards

For reference, when I last tried to decode MP3s on a 486/75, it would do it at about 75% of real time speeds. A 486/66 may well not cut it, even with better software. On my 486/75 laptop, I had to decode to a wav file, then play that, with the player starting when the decoder was some 1/3 way in.

Reply to
Ian Stirling

A web page of progress now exists at

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Reply to
Vin

To get better (nonglare) pictures either use bright ambient light and disable your digicam's flash (exposure tinkering may be necessary) or use a flatbed scanner (could be difficult on your particular board due to the exceedingly tall backplate).

Reply to
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards

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