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Applied Reasoning PC-GT 286 8088 to 80286 ISA Coprocessor

I

IBM Portable PC

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I just bought one of these on eBay, and of course there are no manuals or drivers.

This 80286 upgrade boards, like a few others, does NOT require the 8088/V20 to be removed. The board 'simply' slides into any available full length ISA slot and takes over from the 8088.

I believe the earlier version of the drivers had 'issues' which were later addressed.

Does anyone have any docs or drivers etc?

It may also have been known as "The PC Elevator".

Clem
 

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I'm glad somebody bought this card. I started a thread about that auction a week ago.

Be sure to hang onto the compadd 386 memory expansion board as well. Every now and then somebody on these forums comes looking for a proprietary memory expansion board.
 
stynx said:
I have drivers for a "Applied Reasoning" PC ElevATor that is a 286 Accelerator for PC XTs. The PC ElevATor has 2Mb 16bit Memory and 'takes over' the system (mo CPU-repacement) I haven't been able to get the card to cooperate ;-)
View attachment 19782View attachment 19783

-Jonas
Click to expand...

I will be trying this card in a Tandy 1000A sometime in the next 2-4 weeks.
 
Okay, I've now tried to get the card to work in my Tandy 1000.

When I enter up.exe the screen clears and I receive the message "SYSTEMHALT", the same error as Jonas I believe.

I have the Elevator board set to the factory defaults i.e. only switch 3 is on. I have not installed an 80287 whilst the board has 1MB of RAM on board.

The 80286 runs very hot after only several minutes, however if my memory serves me correctly, this is normal for 286's?
 
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Yes, the 80286 runs hot. If you have an infrared thermometer, check how it is running. The 80286 is good to 70*C. Other components might not be happy with how much heat is dumped there so consider improving air flow for cooling. I am not sure what would be best.
 
I'll try the card again from a literal 'cold' boot i.e. I'll boot and run up.exe immediately. I don't believe the issue is heat however.

I do have the PC Elevator in my IBM Expansion chassis (yes, I have an IBM 5161 working with my Tandy 1000, sacrilegious I know.....however it works, and in fact it works very well!) and of course the full length card won't fit in the 1000 directly for testing. Hmm, yes it will, I'll simply use my ISA buss extender card........
 
IBM Portable PC said:
When I enter up.exe the screen clears and I receive the message "SYSTEMHALT", the same error as Jonas I believe.
Click to expand...
I had the same problem... maybe the Software is buggy or defective? Maybe we could make a picture of the cards to compare them? I would like to try the Card at least for a speed comparison to the Inboard. I would try to upgrade the 286 with a IBM 486SLC2 if i could actually get it to work ;-)
 
IBM Portable PC said:
Perhaps it's the version of DOS? I'm probably pushing my luck with PCDOS 7. What version was current when the Elevator was released I wonder......
Click to expand...
DOS 3.2 or 3.3

BTW: i have a Copy II PC Option Board, give me a PM that i might send it to you.
 
Many moons ago I worked for Applied Reasoning.

I don't have the driver software, and I haven't been in touch with anyone from the company in a very long time. The company was located in Cambridge, MA, and was filled with MIT guys. It was a very humbling experience for me.

Here's a hint I just thought of: the PC Elevator is not compatible with EGA graphics. That might help with some compatibility issues. The reason for the incompatibility (if I can recall from about 30 years ago) had to do with the EGA register not being able to be seen from the bus, or something like that. This was a known limitation to the approach of not replacing the host machine's CPU as opposed to a fixable bug.

An advantage of not replacing the host machine CPU was the ability to use the host machine to perform the graphics calculations (this was before graphics processors on video boards), so the PC elevator could be used with certain software such as Autocad and have a tremendous advantage in processing speed when we sent vectors to the host machine and let it work out how to draw the shapes.

We had the notion of "Up" and "Down". When you were running on the native machine you ran the "Up" program to transfer control to the board and when running on the board you ran "Down" to go back to the native machine.

I can try to answer questions, but it was a very long time ago, almost 30 years.

We were very proud of that board... Good luck!
 
PS: I'm thinking it was DOS 3.0 and/or 3.1 based on Wikipedia's timeline and when I worked there. It was late 85 and early 86 with the 80286.
 
RonS said:
Here's a hint I just thought of: the PC Elevator is not compatible with EGA graphics.
Click to expand...

That may explain why It won't work for me with a Tandy 1000 i.e. Tandy's graphics are somewhere between CGA and EGA, or more like enhanced CGA I guess.

However at least one other person here is receiving the same error (see below in thread) and I'm certain he's not using it with a Tandy 1000.

Could there be an issues with MS/PCDOS beyond say 3.2?
 
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