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5160 BIOS Source Code

That is correct. I am actually working on an "expansion" BIOS for the 5150 that will plug into U28 and give you HD floppy support and cassette support/emulation. The cassette emulation supports FAT12 so you can read/write files to floppy disk using ROM BASIC.
 
ibmapc said:
So far so good. I have not been able to find anything that won't run with the new version. There is onr thing that needs a Cntrl-Alt Del before it will run. SMS.COM is the uttillity that changes the mode on my EGA Wonder. If I type SMS /ENAB (enables advanced features of the card) immediatly after power on, the system freezes. If I do the three finger salute before executing the command, it works fine. Other than that I can't find any problems. I'll keep trying.
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So I tried sms.com and can't get it to freeze...but I don't have an EGA Wonder. Tried my VGA Wonder and still no luck.

Do you have anything starting up in your autoexec.bat/config.sys before you attempt to run sms? If you boot the computer up but hit ctrl+alt+del before DOS loads does sms still work? When sms freezes does the computer need a hard reboot or does ctrl+alt+del still work?
 
Plasma said:
Do you have anything starting up in your autoexec.bat/config.sys before you attempt to run sms?
Click to expand...

It freezes even with a clean boot, no config.sys or autoexec.bat.

If you boot the computer up but hit ctrl+alt+del before DOS loads does sms still work?
Click to expand...

No, Dos needs to load complete and then ctrl+alt+del . Then SMS ENAB will work.

When sms freezes does the computer need a hard reboot or does ctrl+alt+del still work?
Click to expand...

If ctrl+alt+del is issued after it freezes then occasionaly ,not every time, "PPARITY ERROR AT ????"(yes that is two P's) is repeatedly displayed, and the system must be powered down to recover. I'm thinking the video memory is not blanked completely untill reset since were not checking video mem on EGA. Note that other functions of SMS work fine, only SMS ENAB freezes the system.

One thing I've noticed. With Your BIOS, the Video Bios message is displayed, then the Hard Drive controller bios message, then Super XT Bios Message and it starts counting memory.

With the IBM Bios, The Video Bios message is displayed, then the memory counts, then the Hard Disk Bios message, Then boot. I wonder if the order of things affects the way the EGA Wonder is initialized?

Thannks for your continued support!!

Greg
 
What version of DOS are you using?

The EGA BIOS should be initializing the video memory. The IBM BIOS doesn't check video memory on the EGA either since it is not EGA-aware.
 
Plasma said:
....
The EGA BIOS should be initializing the video memory. The IBM BIOS doesn't check video memory on the EGA either since it is not EGA-aware.
Click to expand...

I'm wondering if the problem could be that the video bios is not completing it's initialization since the Hard drive controller bios is coming up immediatly after. As I mentioned previuosly, the IBM bios does the mem count in between. If I'm right, a short delay after the video bios comes up should do the trick. What do ya think?
 
I don't think that's the problem. The video BIOS will not return control back to the system BIOS until it's done initializing. The hard drive BIOS init is not interrupting it.

I have attached a small program which will dump your system memory to a file. Can you do a cold boot, load DOS and nothing else, then run "memdump cold.bin". Then do a cold boot again, wait for DOS to load, hit ctrl+alt+del, load DOS again, and run "memdump warm.bin". Attach cold.bin and warm.bin and I will see what's different.

View attachment memdump.zip
 
I made the memory dump files but they are to large to attach here. The forum has a silly limit of 97.7K and these files are bigger than that, even zipped up. If you send me a PM with your EMAIL address, I can send them to you as an email attachment.
 
Email sent. Let me know if you find anything. No big rush on this as the Super XT BIOS is really working very well asside from this one issue.
 
Plasma is to be commended here!
Super PC/Turbo XT BIOS 2.5 is up and running on my "Hot Rodded" IBM 5155. I have yet to find a problem with it. It speeds up the boot process considerably and appears to be completely compatible with the latest IBM Bios, in that all the apps and games that I ran with the IBM Bios run Perfectly with Super PC/Turbo XT BIOS 2.5
I haven't documented it, but I think most apps seem to load and run faster than they did with the IBM Bios. Some time I'll have to run some tests with a stopwatch to find out for sure.

Thanks Plasma for all your hard work and patience!

p.s. I decided to set UMA_START = 0A000h, UMA_END = 0F000h so that if I decide to use my CGA adapter instead of the EGA Wonder, I can map more upper memory for UMB without having to change the Bios. I think it slows the boot process slightly by attempting to clear memory that's not mapped, but probably only a second or two.
 
Glad to hear there are no more problems :)

If you are using a CGA, the optimal setup would actually be to set MAX_MEMORY = 736, that way conventional memory can extend all the way to B800 (assuming you modify your GAL to map A000-B7FF to system RAM).
 
Plasma said:
Glad to hear there are no more problems :)

If you are using a CGA, the optimal setup would actually be to set MAX_MEMORY = 736, that way conventional memory can extend all the way to B800 (assuming you modify your GAL to map A000-B7FF to system RAM).
Click to expand...
The GAL is programmed to map several different regions based on the way the motherboard switches 3 and 4 are set. Right now, they are both open so it maps 640k of base memory plus segments D and E. If sw 4 is closed and sw 3 is open, it maps 640K base plus Segments A, D, and E. So I could set MAX_MEM to 704. Then if I add a jumper to the motherboard (e2: 2-3) sw 4 closed, sw 3 open, it maps 640K plus Segs A, B, D, & E. Then I could set MAX_MEM=736. Supposedly, the CGA can still use the upper half of segment B, even though the GAL has all of B mapped to ram. But I have yet to test this, so I would most likely set it to map segments A,D and E.
 
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Hi,
I have installed pcxtbios 3.1 on my IBM 5155 4.77Mh 640k, it work fine, but when i boot it say Game port found at 201h, i haven't Game port
I have only CGA card original, FDC controller original IBM for floppy 360k and Parallel card original.
Any idea ?
Thanks
 
Something else must be responding to port 201h reads. Unfortunately I do not have a 5155 so I can't troubleshoot further. You can prevent the game port from showing detected by removing line 802 (directly after @@found_game).
 
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