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IBM AT 5170 Memory Error / parity error 2

I dumped the bios again, this time with no header from the PCJRCART program.
https://app.box.com/s/ozjc903f0hmpjudmamx0
I confirm that that is a byte-for-byte match with the final 5170 BIOS revision, dated 11/15/85 (the second variation of).

Could the SETUP program, although dated in the same year ("Copyright 1985") predate 11/15/85, and that is the cause.
 
Still no luck. I must be having some I/O address conflicts.

14234863556_5801628f5e_b.jpg
 
I found this on Google's cache of Intel's support site.

16-BIT VIDEO BOARD COMPATIBILITY


If your Intel Above Board ISA supplies expanded memory, there could
be a conflict with 16-bit VGA boards in the address range C000-DFFF.

The solution is to set the video board to work in "8-bit" mode (This
will not degrade or slow down the VGA if a cache is provided), and
exclude the video board reserved memory address on the ISAEMM.SYS
line in the CONFIG.SYS file. For example, if you have a VGA
video card with a 32K ROM starting at C000, your ISAEMM.SYS line
would be:

DEVICE=ISAEMM.SYS EP=C000-C7FF

The PCJRCART dumping program also dumped a file called C000.bin which looked like the EGA bios as I previously posted. But, it's not VGA like the instructions above say. I wonder if that's why I'm having this conflict.
 
It's a genuine ibm ega card. I removed the ega card and put a cga card in. Now when I run pcjrcart it does not detect anything at c000.

The bad news is that when I keep the cga card in and put the above board card in, the setup program didn't detect the card still. Ugh.

I guess I'll try dos 3.0 but I don't think that's the issue. Not sure if the card is shot or what. It works enough for it to detect the ram so I don't get it
 
OMG........


It works. Mikey99, you were right all along. I finally got an image of MS-DOS 3.10 ready to go and booted the machine. It didn't work any other drivers except those early v1.0 circa 1985 drivers you sent me in DOS 3.10. I didn't try the other newer drivers in DOS 3.10, because what's the point? They don't work for newer DOS versions so why bother.

WHY WHY WHY? Why would they only make the card compatible with one set of drivers that only work on DOS 3.0 or 3.10? Now we're limited to those versions if we want to use our Above Boards?

What I finally did just to test and see if it worked, was booted from a DOS 3.10 diskette, and inserted the earlier driver disk. I ran the setupat.exe program, when it asked me which disk, I selected other. This time it didn't give me the error message that it couldn't find the card so it seemed promising. It finished and then quit the program. It edited the config.sys and autoexec.bat files on my c: drive. I copied those over to the A: DOS 3.10 boot diskette. There wasn't much room left so I only copied emm.sys to the A drive to boot and see if it worked.

I booted from the A drive and it loaded. EMM.sys tested the memory after dos booted. Apparently, MEM must not be a command for DOS 3.10 so I went on my C drive where my newer driver files for Above Boards were and ran chkmem.exe. Thats the pic below.

Now it seems to be working, but it sucks that only dos 3.10 is supported. I never got any messages about it not being supported in DOS 6.22 like mikey99 did, it just said card wasn't detected. WTF.

Anyone recommend a better supported memory board for AT's?


14073258820_fd7c66d821_b.jpg
 
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That's great news......

Actually the drivers (EMM.SYS, QUIKBUF1, QUIKMEM1) work fine on my DOS 3.3 boot drive.

It's just the setupat.exe program that wouldn't work on DOS 3.3.
 
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I copied the drivers to a DOS 5.0 boot diskette.

When booting from that diskette, the EMS.SYS driver fails with a message saying my computer isn't
fully compatible with the PC/AT. So it appears the DOS version is causing the error you're seeing.
 
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If you don't *need* EMS, just use XMS cards. No drivers or mucking about.
I'm using an AST RAMVantage (up to 3MB) on my AT now, and it'll back fill conventional without any wastage. No driver needed except HIMEM.SYS. The only disadvantage is many programs from that era can't use the extra RAM - but you can still load DOS=HIGH at least. Fine for me because Windows 3.1, Smart Drive, NWLite Cache all support XMS.

I'd also expect, somewhere out there, is an updated Above Board driver. Surely Intel would've patched that issue at some point?

Edit: try SETVER and tell it to pretend to be DOS 3.1 for EMM.SYS and SETUPAT.EXE etc.
I have to do this to run Windows 2.11 under DOS 6. I didn't mention it before because I forgot you load it in CONFIG.SYS (before EMM.SYS ;) )

C> SETVER EMM.SYS 3.10
C> SETVER SETUPAT.EXE 3.10
add
DEVICE=C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
above emm.sys in your config.sys file

Worth a try.
 
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Just for Kicks I swapped out the 64K bank of chips for 256K chips. Detected a bad module, but replaced it and it's working OK now. With DOS 3.3 that is.
 
I tried to use QRAM but it tells me that my EMS board only has a 64K page frame available for mapping in high memory. For QRAM to create High RAM in the current configuration, you need to use the QRAM parameter: FL=0 This would disable the ability for applications to use expanded memory.

Then it doesn't map anything high. Should I flip the dip switches and set 1MB to Extended Memory?
 
For a 286 DOS 5 or higher is good. It lets you load DOS into the high memory area. It might let you put some TSRs there as well.
 
For a 286 DOS 5 or higher is good. It lets you load DOS into the high memory area. It might let you put some TSRs there as well.

That would be great...except that the horrid Intel drivers for the Above Board are horribly incompatible with anything that's not DOS 3.*.
 
You need an EMS 4.0 driver specific to the expansion card installed to have any chance of loading drivers high. Very early Above Boards are only capable of handling EMS 3.2 and can not load high no matter what driver is installed. Some Above Boards were shipped with EMS 3.2 drivers but were capable of implementing most of EMS 4.0 with updated drivers; these won't be as good as cards designed after EMS 4.0 but loading one or two drivers high should be possible.

I think Intel had updated their drivers to work with DOS 5 and 6 but I don't have those drivers and I don't know of any archive of the Intel BBS. Edit: See ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/misc1/PEROPSYS/MSDOS/KB/Q78/2/90.TXT for confirmation.
 
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That would be great...except that the horrid Intel drivers for the Above Board are horribly incompatible with anything that's not DOS 3.*.
I think once they're installed (with DOS 3.x) you can upgrade DOS and the lame Intel crap will still work. It's only the install program that's DOS 3.x specific.
 
I think once they're installed (with DOS 3.x) you can upgrade DOS and the lame Intel crap will still work. It's only the install program that's DOS 3.x specific.

Yes the install progam crashes. But, I've tried EMM.sys on DOS 6.22 and even the driver wouldn't work on that version. Using the same version of the driver I only got it to work with DOS 3.
 
I tried the newest drivers from here http://ibm-pc.org/drivers/memory/memory.htm

Still nothing, won't detect card even if I replace my existing emm.sys driver with this newer one.
It's so odd, because the TestAB program is never on this version, and this version can even detect what the dip switch settings are. ... So it obviously knows my card is present. But the setupcard program still bombs out, and so does emm.sys.

I changed the dipswitch settings and tried every single IO address combination it has available. Still won't detect. I'll try the other version of drivers that site has...but this is getting annoying.
 
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