Mail Archives: opendos/2001/06/06/23:59:35
Please see below ...
Joe.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matthias Paul [SMTP:Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de]
> Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2001 1:28 AM
> To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
> Subject: Re: multitasking gives blank screen
>
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> Sometimes I just get a black screen instead of a DOS prompt when
> I start a task with INS, but if I press CTRL+ESC again, I usually get
> the TASKMGR menu again, with one task named "TASKMGR"
> instead of "COMMAND", so TASKMGR somehow hung before
> it could launch or create an instance of COMMAND.COM.
> Sometimes I also get a page with a disturbed character font,
> but still, if you press the keys blindly, if works... As long as
> I donīt select this hanging task, I can still use the other tasks,
> but - of course - the system will hang when I am shutting down.
>
> Has anyone else seen the behaviour Robert is describing? Maybe
> we can find some trigger conditions.
>
[Joe da Silva]
Yes. I had similar problems with the 486 machine I used
to have, before this Pentium II. I could do ordinary task
switching OK, but any attempt to use the multitasking
stuff would just hang the machine (DR-DOS 7.02+updates).
Shortly after this, we changed to this SMB/NT network,
which meant there was no longer enough free memory
for such "frills". The 486 was re-deployed, but I'm not sure
which machine it is now ...
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> Ok, your MEM /A dump shows some unusual ROMs in the
> UMB range. You can use MS-DOS MSD to find out whatīs
> up with them. Alternatively you could do a F5 clean boot,
> start DEBUG, and have a look at a memory dump at
>
> D C000:0000
> D
> D E000:0000
> D
> D F000:0000
> D
> Q
>
> You should see some copyright strings there. What do they read?
>
> Can you send me (via private mail) memory dumps of C000-C7FF
> and E000-FFFF? Therefore you would need to fire up the
> *DR-DOS* DEBUG and type in the following:
>
> M C000:0000 L 8000 CS:0100
> RCX=8000
> N C000.BIN
> W
> M E000:0000 L 8000 CS:0100
> N E000.BIN
> W
> M E800:0000 L 8000 CS:0100
> N E800.BIN
> W
> M F000:0000 L 8000 CS:0100
> N F000.BIN
> W
> M F800:0000 L 8000 CS:0100
> N F800.BIN
> W
> Q
>
> You will then find five files named C000.BIN, E000.BIN, E8000.BIN,
> F000.BIN, and F800.BIN (each 32768 bytes) in the current directory.
> They contain a 1:1 dump of the BIOS ROM contents on your machine.
> Please pack them with PKZIP and send them to me for analysis purposes
> (to one of the addresses stated in the signature). I need to know why the
> memory managers classify two of the ROMs to be 24 Kb instead of
> 32 Kb (this is not impossible, but it is at least unusual, so we should
> track this down)
>
[Joe da Silva]
You can also try my "findrom" and "getmem" programs, from
"http://jds-freeware.hypermart.net/util1.zip". The "findrom"
program will provide a double-check for those ROM addresses
and their size. Note that you should do this stuff in real
mode, without EMM386 or equivalent. Otherwise the memory
may "look" different!
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