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Mail Archives: opendos/2001/06/15/19:51:31

Message-ID: <000701c0f5f5$f75661c0$cd08e289@mpaul>
From: "Matthias Paul" <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
To: <opendos AT delorie DOT com>
References: <20010613091334 DOT KVQT27981 DOT mta3-svc DOT virgin DOT net AT leo>
Subject: Re: multitasking gives blank screen
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 01:48:50 +0200
Organization: University of Technology, RWTH Aachen, Germany
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Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com

On 2001-06-13, Richard Adamson wrote:

>> You should see some copyright strings there.
>> What do they read?
> ??
> -d c000:0000
> 
> U.0....M....s..8
> ...3....C.....IB
> ME.s..!....@.&.?

IBM

> -d e000:0000
> 
> U.0....M....s..8
> ...3....C.....IB
> ME.s..!....@.&.?

IBM

>> Can you send me (via private mail) memory dumps
>> of C000-C7FF and E000-FFFF? 

Thanks, I have received them.

C000-C7FF: clearly is a VIDEO BIOS

Copyright COMPAQ Computer Corporation, 1982, 90
All rights reserved
RWS*PNA*NPB*DJC*CAB*CDM*DSJ*
V7G 12COMPAQ 07/30/90 B

E000-E7FF: unknown BIOS, but it looks a
little bit like a video BIOS as well... Does
this make any sense??? Anyone else with a
Compaq who could give me a short summary
on these machines?

Copyright COMPAQ Computer Corporation, 1982, 90
All rights reserved
RWS*PNA*NPB*DJC*CAB*CDM*DSJ*
V7G 12COMPAQ 07/30/90 B

F000-F7FF: COMPAQ SETUP and DIAGNOSIS
No copyright string, but this is clearly separated from
the core BIOS below.

F000-FFFF: CORE BIOS
(C)Copyright COMPAQ Computer Corporation 1982,90
08/23/90

Unfortunately, I couldnīt find anything outragously looking
odd, only the used address range is very unusual.

Thatīs why I would also like to have a look at the remaining
address range C800..DFFF to complete the picture. Can you
(in F5 mode again) create these three images with DEBUG,
please:

M C800:0000 L 8000 CS:0100
RCX=8000
N C800.BIN
W
M D000:0000 L 8000 CS:0100
N D000.BIN
W
M D800:0000 L 8000 CS:0100
N D800.BIN
W
Q

and send me the C800.BIN, D000.BIN, and D800.BIN files?
Thanks alot.

So far we know:

EMM386 /EXCLUDE=C000-C800,E000-E7FF,F000-FFFF
is mandantory, leaving only C800-DFFF for experiments,
but it could still be used up by some stuff on this machine...

>> Is it really true that the DR-DOS SETUP
>> inserted this?
> 
> I originally specified task SWAPPER when I ran SETUP.
> SETUP asks for the path to the swap file, and puts up a
> dialog box. I cant remember if there is a default path in
> there already, I think not, or I would have been less inclined
> to change it. Anyway "c:swap" will be exactly what I typed in the 
> dialog box. Since it asked... its my preference that all temporary file 
> directories are off the root. Setup created the directory alright.
>   On an install where I specified multitasking straight away,
> I wasnt asked for a swapfile path, as I remember.

Yes, the multitasker does not support virtual memory
(paging to disk) yet.

The problem with the directory you specified was that you
did not include a backslash. "c:swap" means a subdirectory
starting from the current directory of drive c:, if you are
in c:\drdos, it means c:\drdos\swap, if you were in c:\
it would mean c:\swap, and so on. So the swap directory
does not exist in most places, hence it is wise to specify
it with an absolute path, c:\swap, or c:\drdos\swap, just
as you like, but absolute.

Regarding the actual problem. Difficult, I have no Compaq
here to test, and these beast are known to be rather proprietary
(and from my work on RBIL I know that some of them had
quite serious BIOS bugs)

I cannot see a connection, but can you add to CONFIG.SYS:

STACKS=9,512 or even 9,1024
DEBLOCK=0
DOS=LOW,NOUMB

and temporarily remove the DPMS, ANSI, SHARE,
and NWCACHE drivers, just leave HIMEM, EMM386,
and COMMAND.COM. EMM386 with everything
excluded but support for the multitasker loaded.

I just want to make sure, nothing else is in there and we
load DOS low in case this is kind of a DMA problem.

In case TASKMGR objects about SHARE, load it low:
SHARE /ML.

I hope we will be able to see something changing,
so we could start to build up the configuration again...

Greetings,

 Matthias

-- 

Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany
<mailto:Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>; <mailto:mpaul AT drdos DOT org>
http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html; http://mpaul.drdos.org



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