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Love err… Vintage Restoration of an AMI Enterprise III in the Time of Corona

I have a mirror of ftp.ami.com. I will try to up it to archive.org sometime, but last time with ftp.necam.com i had to split it as it timed out around 3GB. What is going on with ftp servers? They're all going down:-(. does anyone have the Epson ftp?


I don't know but it is an epidemic. It might be a security issue or that it is just easier to maintin a web site? For HP it seems ot be about money. Some of the BIOS/FW updates that used to be freely available on the Compaq FTP are now behind a paywall. See my post above. Archive does have a copy of the AMI ftp. However, I am not sure when it is from.

Very nice system, had my eye on one of those for years, as well as the systempro. You seam to be able to get anything in California.

Thanks. The whole thing had potential when I saw it but it was beat up. Also it was listed with lots of problems/nonworking parts. I took a gamble that the seller just didn't know what he was doing and most of it was actually working. Luckily it paid off. After the case was restored it almost looks brand newish.

As for California, trust me both of those systems are imports from back east. :D When it comes to vintage, aside form one or two monitors and my Laserjet Printers, I have never found anything good out here for a reasonable price. I am usually shipping and sometimes and I have to pass on stuff. I do regret not picking up the IBM 7531 and the NIB IBM 7534 but the prices were just ridiculously high for me. I also passed on a 6x6 a while back. Glad I did, the seller was PITA and in retrospect I am sure the deal would have been a total disaster. Hopefully, those systems are finding good homes even if no one is mentioning them...

I have a couple of other cool/interesting systems in the wings still. My next big project is going to be the Compaq 9000 Rack... If I have time to document it I will post about that restoration. However, that is a huge project and I have been hammering at it for a while now so it will be much less detailed then this. I still plan on doing a post on the Compaq Systempro/XL as well so keep an eye out for it!
 
O.k. so the .MAN files are truly Word Perfect 5.1 WPD files. The files are also good w/ no issues. The problem is the converter built in Word (at least Word 2007). Using a different converter (or WP 5.1 in DOS) the files load just fine!
 
Archive does have a copy of the AMI ftp. However, I am not sure when it is from.

I couldn't find it on there so I upped it anyway:
https://archive.org/details/ftp.ami.com

Hope you can read those WP files, the whole ami ftp was just frustrating when I trawled it for .CFG files.

As for California, trust me both of those systems are imports from back east. :D When it comes to vintage, aside form one or two monitors and my Laserjet Printers, I have never found anything good out here for a reasonable price. I am usually shipping and sometimes and I have to pass on stuff. I do regret not picking up the IBM 7531 and the NIB IBM 7534 but the prices were just ridiculously high for me. I also passed on a 6x6 a while back. Glad I did, the seller was PITA and in retrospect I am sure the deal would have been a total disaster. Hopefully, those systems are finding good homes even if no one is mentioning them...

I have the same problem here, but its the import tax that kills it for me. Shipping is one thing but oh that tax, can't get my head around why we have to pay tax on a motherboard from 1991. Perhaps this supposed trade deal will cheapen things. I do find quite a lot of stuff in Germany though.

I still plan on doing a post on the Compaq Systempro/XL as well so keep an eye out for it!
Send naked pics! I wanna see those hot hot CPUs:)
 
FWIW, LibreOffice Writer was able to open S44.MAN and export it as pdf. See attached file for proof.
(stupid size limit, I had to extract the first five page of the pdf)
 

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I couldn't find it on there so I upped it anyway:
https://archive.org/details/ftp.ami.com

Hope you can read those WP files, the whole ami ftp was just frustrating when I trawled it for .CFG files.



I have the same problem here, but its the import tax that kills it for me. Shipping is one thing but oh that tax, can't get my head around why we have to pay tax on a motherboard from 1991. Perhaps this supposed trade deal will cheapen things. I do find quite a lot of stuff in Germany though.


Send naked pics! I wanna see those hot hot CPUs:)

Thanks. I looked through yours and it seems to match the mirror for the ftp.megatrends.com. As such it only has the 6/30/93 BIOS. I have one other lead on this and I am hoping it will pan out but it looks unlikely.

I may have to PM you Compaq pics LOL!
 
FWIW, LibreOffice Writer was able to open S44.MAN and export it as pdf. See attached file for proof.
(stupid size limit, I had to extract the first five page of the pdf)

Good to know. Did LibreOffice show the images in the WP 5.1 file?
 
My process for getting AMI's manuals to something readable involves using WP 5.1 DOS with a color Postscript printer driver. Save the output to a file and distill to PDF. It looks like the 6/30/93 BIOS is the latest. The Enterprise IV's last BIOS is dated 1994, but still not new enough for LBA support. No surprise since it too uses the 11/11/92 HiFlex core.

As for the 64MB issue, that is likely due to the version of HIMEM.SYS included with DOS or Windows 3.1x. Later revisions or 3rd party memory managers properly support more extended RAM.
 
It looks like the 6/30/93 BIOS is the latest.

As for the 64MB issue, that is likely due to the version of HIMEM.SYS included with DOS or Windows 3.1x. Later revisions or 3rd party memory managers properly support more extended RAM.

No there is at least one more. The FTP (or at least the mirrors so far) are missing some files that used to be on the AMI BBS:

Code:
S68BIOS.ZIP     58774  12-13-93  S-68  Enterprise III     / Flash BIOS
                                 EC070693 update to 063093 BIOS date
                                 Fixes minor boot problems with some floppies
S68CFG.ZIP       2511  03-18-93  S-68  Enterprise III New CFG & OVL files to
                                       allow Windows to see over 64meg memory
S68MAN.EXE    1004589  04-13-93  S-68  Enterprise III Eisa manual     W.P. 5.1
TT-68.001         938  02-26-93  Series 68 Enterprise III
                                 Possible problems using the Series 73
                                 with burst timing.
TT-68.002         263  03-08-94  Series 68 Enterprise III
                                 20 MHz jumper settings
TT-68.003        1599  08-04-93  Series 68 Enterprise III
                                 Using the Series 65 in Slot 6

As for the 64MB memory error if you are referring to the "parity errors" himem.sys has nothing to do with them. These are occuring on POST/accessing the BIOS long before himem.sys comes into play.
 
AMI Enterprise III and IV are pretty darn similar feature wise, and they both use the same SiS chipset. The only major differences that I can see is that the III is full size AT, and the IV has integrated I/O. The integrated I/O settings can probably be ignored or disabled. You should try the IV BIOS in your III and see what happens. I remember trying an AWARD EISA BIOS from an SiS board made by a different company, and it more or less worked in my Nice SuperEISA. The only problem I could find was that it wouldn't detect more than 512kb of L2 cache.
 
AMI Enterprise III and IV are pretty darn similar feature wise, and they both use the same SiS chipset. The only major differences that I can see is that the III is full size AT, and the IV has integrated I/O. The integrated I/O settings can probably be ignored or disabled. You should try the IV BIOS in your III and see what happens. I remember trying an AWARD EISA BIOS from an SiS board made by a different company, and it more or less worked in my Nice SuperEISA. The only problem I could find was that it wouldn't detect more than 512kb of L2 cache.

That is a thought. Assuming the loader even works with it there is the risk of bricking the board. I am not sure I am willing to risk it.
 
O.k. so my other source also fizzled out and given this was AMI tech support I am pretty confident in saying that the 063093 BIOS is probably the last surviving revision of this BIOS. The gentleman in tech was very helpful and did it a complete search of their archives as well as the FTP (which is now only for internal use - something to do with an ISO certification) and found two copies of the same 063093 BIOS and other files we already have in the mirror - including his own personal archives of the files. He even got me in touch with one of the VPs at AMI who was the original HW engineer on the board and he could not recall any more details either or if in fact there was a later revision of the BIOS. The original BIOS designer unfortunately had a stroke and is no longer with AMI.

Also found a nice Byte article (courtesy of NJRoadfan on Vogons) showing prices and interestingly only 8/16 memory slots filled. This was a ridiculously expensive mother board....
 
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Future Plans
  • Possibly Impossible

    • Resolve memory issues: I would really love to get the system fully loaded with 256MB of RAM. However, my guess is that there is a component fault of some kind on the motherboard resulting in the parity error. This could be a result of age or it could be why a second revision of the board was issued. In either case this would be well beyond me to repair.

For anyone following this thread an update on the memory issue:

I was able to get my hands on a second AMI Enterprise III motherboard for testing. Unfortunately, I have to report the same issues occurred with that motherboard. I have now tested two motherboards, based on SN the first one is in the first 500 and the new one is a much later production of the same revision board, with different CPUs (speeds and classes), video cards, controllers, and SIMMs and they exhibit the same problem: memory more than 128MB causes a parity error and a hard crash.

At this point I can only think of two causes:

1. The board is very particular as to the type of RAM it needs to get to 256MB and only works with certain brands. I am using 16MB 30pin SIMMs w/ parity.
2. The board was designed to handle 256MB of memory but was never tested/certified and it can not/will not do 256MB of memory.

I would love to test out the later revision board (with the PS2 mouse headers) and see if the issue was resolved later.
 
For anyone following this thread an update on the memory issue:

I was able to get my hands on a second AMI Enterprise III motherboard for testing. Unfortunately, I have to report the same issues occurred with that motherboard. I have now tested two motherboards, based on SN the first one is in the first 500 and the new one is a much later production of the same revision board, with different CPUs (speeds and classes), video cards, controllers, and SIMMs and they exhibit the same problem: memory more than 128MB causes a parity error and a hard crash.

At this point I can only think of two causes:

1. The board is very particular as to the type of RAM it needs to get to 256MB and only works with certain brands. I am using 16MB 30pin SIMMs w/ parity.
2. The board was designed to handle 256MB of memory but was never tested/certified and it can not/will not do 256MB of memory.

I would love to test out the later revision board (with the PS2 mouse headers) and see if the issue was resolved later.

Is it possible that RAM speed could have something to do with the parity situation?
 
I recall that some motherboards could get pretty finicky about 9 chip versus 3 chip SIMMs--and also about matching pairs.

I have tried both 9 chip and other types of memory with the same results:



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What's with the GAL chip? I have 16MB parity modules here in my EISA/VLB systems and they do not have any additional GALs on them, just DRAM. What I don't have is 256MB of 30-pin SIMMs to fully populate the Tyan and NiCE SuperEISA boards to see if they support all that RAM. Both boards use AMI HiFlex BIOS cores and the same SiS chipset as the Enterprise III.
 
What's with the GAL chip? I have 16MB parity modules here in my EISA/VLB systems and they do not have any additional GALs on them, just DRAM. What I don't have is 256MB of 30-pin SIMMs to fully populate the Tyan and NiCE SuperEISA boards to see if they support all that RAM. Both boards use AMI HiFlex BIOS cores and the same SiS chipset as the Enterprise III.

No idea. Those SIMMs are weird. They are a sandwich design with chips on both sides of the two boards. The other set though are pretty std stuff.
 
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