Message-ID: <000701c0f5f5$f75661c0$cd08e289@mpaul> From: "Matthias Paul" To: 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 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by delorie.com id TAA30744 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 ; http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html; http://mpaul.drdos.org