SoundLight ISA family

The 1512 series from SoundLight including the Lightline interface from Elrad magazine.

Hardware configuration

SLH1512A and SLH1512B-LC

For the Lightline, SLH1512A and SLH1512B-LC please set the jumpers on the card as follows, where the switches 1 and 2 can be set as described in the table below.

Where ON is the upper position and OFF is the lower position.

SLH1512B and SLH1512C

If you have a SLH1512B or SLH1512C you have to set the jumpers on the card as shown in the following picture, where switches 1 and 2 are to be set as decribed by the table below. Some users had the expierience that their machine has crashed for an unknown reason if the IO-Address has been set to 0x100. If you have that same experience please check out another address and send us a small note.

Where ON is the upper position and OFF is the lower position. SW4 is used to choose between the on-chip firmware and the firmware load into the RAM. It must be set to ON because we upload out own firmware that has some enhancements such as the usage of interrupts if available, which speeds up things a bit. SW3 on the SLH1512C is connected to an IO-Pin and can be read by the firmware. Please make shure that it is set to the ON position.

Hardware patches

Readback register

The SLH1512A, SLH1512B/LC and SLH1512B can be extended to have a one byte readback register to the host. Connect the outputs to the ISA-Data-Bus and the Inputs to P0, this can be done by placeing the 74574 in oposite direction on top of the bus driver (the 74245). Connect the -OE pin of the 74574 to pin 10 of the 74155 (2Y1). Connect the -CP pin to the output of a NAND as shown above. This hack can only be done for the old style cards, that does not have the SMD chips. It's more hard to make this on the SMD based cards.

If you make a read to BaseAddress+3 you read out the content of the Latch.
So in one bit you can for example store the interrupt status that tells you that an interrupt comes from that card. In that way you are able to implement interrupt sharing.

This hardware enhancement is autodetected and used by the DMX4Linux drivers.

                .-----7400-----.       +5V
                |        +---+ |        |
A15 AC1/pin28  ----------|   |   +------+------+
                 +---+   | & |O--|-CP  Vcc  -OE|----- IC5/pin10 (74155)
               .-|   |O--|   |   |             |
-WR IC5/pin10 -+ | & |   +---+   |-------------|
               `-|   |           |             |
                 +---+           |    74575    |
                        P0  o----|             |----o  ISA-D0
                        P1  o----|             |----o  ISA-D1
                        P2  o----|             |----o  ISA-D2
                        P3  o----|             |----o  ISA-D3
                        P4  o----| D         Q |----o  ISA-D4
                        P5  o----|             |----o  ISA-D5
                        P6  o----|             |----o  ISA-D6
                        P7  o----|             |----o  ISA-D7
                                 |     Vss     |
                                 +------+------+
                                        |
                                       GND

Interrupt/IRQ support

The SLH A,B,B/LC have interrupt support. To enable interrupts you simply have to connect one(!) of the interrupt pads. SLH A,B,B/LC only support IRQ 3 and 4, which are normally used by the serial ports. You should disable the appropriate port (Serial 1 uses IRQ4, Serial 2 uses IRQ3) and you have to declare the choosen IRQ to be used by ISA cards in your bios. The new SMD versions of these cards have support for IRQ 3,4,5,9. IRQ5 is uses by the second parallel port, thus free if you have only one. IRQ9, which equals IRQ2, is normally not used. We recommend using IRQ9. Please remember to adjust your bios settings, so IRQ9 (or any other) is used by ISA cards.
If you have enabled the IRQ, it is autodetected and used by the DMX4Linux driver automatically.

Disclaimer for the above Hardware patches

Don't do this unless you know what you are doing and do it on your own risk. Neither the company Soundlight nor I, the author, can be made responsible for this hack. It is just an idea how to improve the cards.