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IBM AT 5170 Memory Error / parity error 2

I don't like having that 386 card in the machine. It takes up a slot, and it's a pain to remove since it plugs in the CPU socket. I want to just keep it a 286 machine.
 
offensive_Jerk said:
So according to mikey99, the intel driver needs to load for the rest of the ram to be available.
Click to expand...
I guess the question is, does mikey99 have knowledge about this specific card, or was he making a comment based on what he has seen some other cards do?
If the latter, then unless someone comes forward with documentation on or knowledge about your card, then you need to experiment.
 
My comment was not based on this specific card but on other memory cards used in my PC/AT.
I wasn't aware that any of the expanded/extended memory cards counted the additional memory at boot time in a PC/AT.

I also have an INTEL Above PS AT board, but it looks somewhat different than your pictures. Mine also has serial/parallel
ports.

I have an Intel 386 board too, but I have never tested this one. I really need to dig out my PS/AT and test both of these cards !
 
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After closer inspection it appears to have six banks of 256K chips plus two banks of 64K chips which would be 1.625 MB.
 
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Stone said:
After closer inspection it appears to have six banks of 256K chips plus two banks of 64K chips which would be 1.625 MB.
Click to expand...

OK, that makes more sense. I was able to find some data sheets for most of the chips and the numbers weren't adding up to your initial assessment.
 
I think the Above board I have is the same except it has a serial/parallel port and holds only 1.5MB.

I tried the Above board in my PC/AT yesterday, but found that the card had a short on the -12V line
preventing the PC from even powering on.....argh. While looking at the card last night I found a shorted
tantalum capacitor on the card which I removed..... I'll try this again later today. My card only has two
banks of 256K chips installed. I need to determine how to set the switches first.
 
mikey99 said:
I think the Above board I have is the same except it has a serial/parallel port and holds only 1.5MB.

I tried the Above board in my PC/AT yesterday, but found that the card had a short on the -12V line
preventing the PC from even powering on.....argh. While looking at the card last night I found a shorted
tantalum capacitor on the card which I removed..... I'll try this again later today. My card only has two
banks of 256K chips installed. I need to determine how to set the switches first.
Click to expand...

Let me know if you find a manual.

I'm trying to use some Above Board drivers I found, but they are software configured and don't work with mine that has dip switches. Search continues.
 
mikey99 said:
I think the Above board I have is the same except it has a serial/parallel port and holds only 1.5MB.

I tried the Above board in my PC/AT yesterday, but found that the card had a short on the -12V line
preventing the PC from even powering on.....argh. While looking at the card last night I found a shorted
tantalum capacitor on the card which I removed..... I'll try this again later today. My card only has two
banks of 256K chips installed. I need to determine how to set the switches first.
Click to expand...



Not sure if this is what you're having but I found this in another thread:
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?41462-Intel-Above-Board-16-bit-card-in-8-bit-slot

He's probably referring to ABISA not detecting it.. He's testing the card that I bought from him (it's going in a Tandy 1000SX). He's going to try the on that I was looking at that implicitly mentions the PS/286 / Plus / Plus I/O, etc.. Apparently if you put in the shunt, when it's in 16bit mode, the machine won't even boot.. Weird.
Click to expand...
 
I think the drivers I need is ABISA.EXE. Intel must have changed their site up and now they can't be downloaded.

Anyone have ABISA.exe?
 
I have ABISA.EXE, but its too large to upload to the forum. Send me a PM with your email id and I'll send it over.
 
After removing that shorted capacitor......&#&#$##
I was able to get my PC/AT with Above board to count up to 640K which means its
using 128K to backfill to 640K. I have 4 (out of 6 banks) populated with
256K chips. Any values I enter in the PC/AT configuration for extra memory
gives a memory error at boot. I'm thinking 512K is the correct value to use for
extra memory in the configuration problem. I'm planning to replace the bad capacitor
....it might actually be needed in the circuit......maybe thats causing a problem.

ALSO, I noticed on my Above board, the left switch block has all the switches set to OFF.

Wheras yours has them set to a different value: 1000 1011

EDIT: I think the switch settings may be causing the problem on my card. SW1 (left switch)
needs to be set for the correct amount of memory.
 
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I tried ABISA.exe and that does not recognize my card either. Not sure if there are some dip switch settings that are moving the memory address around since they had this card and the Intel Inboard 386/AT card installed which also has memory onboard.

Do your drivers detect the card?
 
I ran the ABISA.EXE to extract the drivers. I then ran the hwsetup.exe and it displays a message saying
An Intel Above board was not found in the system. So I guess this isn't the correct driver. I also tried
the ABOVE.EXE, extracted the drivers but these are for a newer card without switches.

I still cant get my card to do anything other than backfill to 640K.

I was looking at the switch settings again, and now I see that SW1 (left switch) determines the setting for
expanded or extended memory. My card has all switches off, which means use expanded memory.
Yours has 1000 1011 , which indicates the amount of extended memory.

I found the following table on a website, but your switch settings don't match any of these.
Did you set those based on some other documentation ?

EXTENDED MEMORY CONFIGURATION

Size SW1/1 SW1/2 SW1/3 SW1/4 SW1/5 SW1/6 SW1/7 SW1/8

None Off Off Off Off Off Off Off Off

1MB N/A N/A N/A N/A On On Off On

1.5MB On On Off Off On On Off Off

2MB On Off On On On Off On On
 
I am in the exact same boat as you with the driver issues.

As for the switches, I didn't touch them. That's how they came.
 
I found another set of drivers here :
http://timeguy.com/cradek/at

View attachment ABOVEBRD.ZIP

Run the setupAT.exe program to configure the memory.
One problem is, it only works with DOS 3.0 or 3.1 !
So maybe there's a newer version around somewhere that will
work with DOS 3.3.

But at least it does recognize my card, and with 128K used to backfill
it says I have 896K expanded memory ! The expanded memory is NOT counted
at boot time, it only counts to 640K.
 
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Thanks for those drivers, Mikey99. Seems I'm finally making some progress. I'm running DOS 6.22 and so far I can run the TESTABAT.EXE file but I get stuck since it detects a bad RAM chip.

I'm going to try to remove a chip from my Inboard 386/AT. I need to look up that chip and make sure it's spec'ed the same.

RAM from Inboard 386:
14057272360_456e1a5d26_b.jpg


Bad RAM detected:

14241662042_e7cfd8e6c1.jpg
 
I swapped a chip and I'm not getting the memory error anymore.

But now when I run the SETUPAT.EXE it says that your computer is not completely compatible with the IBM AT. Funny, since it IS an IBM AT. Maybe the switches are out of wack or something.
 
offensive_Jerk said:
But now when I run the SETUPAT.EXE it says that your computer is not completely compatible with the IBM AT. Funny, since it IS an IBM AT. Maybe the switches are out of wack or something.
Click to expand...
It's got nothing to do with switches on the card. Machine compatibility is in its BIOS. If the BIOS has something in it that the program (setupat) is not expecting then it might generate that message. Does your AT have the original IBM BIOS? It might have been replaced or might even be corrupt.
 
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