Tandy TL/2 and HIMEM.SYS

[Chuck(G)]

EMS is much higher performance than XMS anyway; on a hardware board, window switches are instant, whereas all versions of XMS copy memory around in blocks. So other than getting a program to run that wouldn't, there's really no reason to do this

So, you can't run PM apps on a TL/2? Even using LOADALL? I never paid much attention to the Tandy stuff after clones started appearing, so forgive my ignorance.

 

[Trixter]

DEVICE=C:\RAMUTIL\MM.SYS /S=D000 /L=B000-B7FF /M=16384 /IO=218 /W=8 /X=C000-C5FF /X=CC00-CD7F /X=E000-EFFF /H=32 /Z

This just answered a ton of questions for me; I'm setting up a RampAT! card (NOT plus) and the MM.SYS driver came with no instructions at all, and the manual didn't have the list of switches either. I can figure out some of these, but do you have a full listing of the MM.SYS switches and what they mean?

Edit: Never mind, the version of MM.SYS that works with the RampAT! (not -plus) only supports the size of EMM, and it puts the page frame in the lower DOS 640K and there's no way to change that, it's hard-coded. I'm guessing the RampAT! Plus has the ability to relocate RAM to various areas of the system, whereas my older board does not.

 

[pearce_jj]

Does anyone know if there is a special version of Lotus 1-2-3 for the Tandy? Graphing doesn't appear to work with the Tandy 16 color format.

Yes, there is Lotus 123 for Deskmate.

 

[vwestlife]

It was actually called Lotus Spreadsheet for DeskMate, not 1-2-3.

 

[dlightman]

There is a copy of Lotus Spreadsheet for Deskmate in the tvdog archive: ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/tvdog/tandy1000/wares/Lotus-Spreadsheet-for-DeskMate/

We're lucky that Jeff archived a bunch of Deskmate apps. The few still missing are listed here: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthre...-tvdog-Tandy-1000-archive&p=468926#post468926

 

[wondow]

As an interesting parlor trick, I was able to to allocate 8MB of expanded memory as extended memory using Quarterdeck's EMS2EXT.SYS driver, and afterward leveraged QEXT.SYS to manage that as XMS. Granted, it's not actually usable as such, but it did fake out at least one program that had previously refused to start otherwise.


What's really a shame is that the DRAM controller used in the TX and TL systems supports an additional megabyte of memory in the 100000-1FFFFF range. This capability went unused, but appears to have at least been partially implemented with the TX motherboard...

This is mostly conjectural, but per the technical reference manual, it looks like 128K of extended memory can be had in the TX by:

- Installing four 64K x 4 DRAM chips in the unpopulated/unmarked positions beside U54, U55, U56, and U57.

- Installing a jumper at E7-E8, thereby selecting "Memory Configuration 4," which is defined as follows:

BANK0	BANK1	BANK2	CONTROL	ADDRESS RANGE
512K			Ras0	000000-07FFFF
	128K		Ras1	080000-09FFFF
		128K	Ras2	100000-11FFFF

- Enabling the A20 gate, using the aforementioned port 68h control (through a modified handler).

BAM!

So.. after all these years, did you finally attempt to break the 640 KB barrier of the 1000 TX by adding extended memory?