Wanted: image dumps of both 1.43 ROM BIOS EPROMS of an AT&T 6300 or an Olivetti M24

[digger]

Wanted: image dumps of both 1.43 ROM BIOS EPROMS of an AT&T 6300 or an Olivetti M24

Hello everyone,

Is there anyone out there who has an EPROM reader and happens to have an AT&T 6300 or Olivetti M24 (different brands, same machine) with ROM BIOS 1.43 (no less than 1.43)?

And if you do, could you please be so kind as to dump the contents of both 64kilobit EPROMs that make up the ROM BIOS of the machine and mail them to me or post them on this forum? And when you're done, please don't place them back in your machine backwards, because then I would feel terribly guilty.

I need these images so I can upgrade the BIOS version of our M24 from 1.36 to 1.43. Naturally, I will write the images to new EPROM chips and store the old ones as backups.

I assume that the reason why the ROM BIOS is stored on two EPROM chips, is because the 8086 in the 6300/M24 has a 16bit data bus, and most EPROMs have an 8bit data bus. Therefore, two 64kilobit EPROMS were probably placed in parallel to form a combined 128kilobit ROM BIOS with a 16bit interface. The fact that one of the EPROMS is marked with an 'H' and the other with an 'L' makes this even more probable.

Alternatively, if someone could simply give me a single software dump of the 1.43 ROM BIOS, I guess I could figure out how the BIOS data is interleaved between the chips by assuming that the H-EPROM indeed has the higher byte of the data bus and the L-EPROM has the lower byte. I could then also corroborate that by checking how the current BIOS (1.36) on our M24 is divided between the two chips.

But I would feel more comfortable with separate dumps of the two 1.43 EPROMs, because that would be certain to work.

As soon as I have the images, I'll just go to an electronics store and have the images written to new EPROMS.

Can anybody help me out with this? It would be much appreciated! Also, archiving the 1.43 EPROM images and making them available for any 6300/M24 owner to download would be a wise move in general. As a matter of fact, we should set up a repository somewhere with drivers and ROM images such as this one, which are becoming increasingly hard to find. That would be very valuable for the vintage community!

Thanks.

 

[Trixter]

I assume that the reason why the ROM BIOS is stored on two EPROM chips, is because the 8086 in the 6300/M24 has a 16bit data bus, and most EPROMs have an 8bit data bus. Therefore, two 64kilobit EPROMS were probably placed in parallel to form a combined 128kilobit ROM BIOS with a 16bit interface. The fact that one of the EPROMS is marked with an 'H' and the other with an 'L' makes this even more probable.

You are correct.

Alternatively, if someone could simply give me a single software dump of the 1.43 ROM BIOS, I guess I could figure out how the BIOS data is interleaved between the chips by assuming that the H-EPROM indeed has the higher byte of the data bus and the L-EPROM has the lower byte. I could then also corroborate that by checking how the current BIOS (1.36) on our M24 is divided between the two chips.

But I would feel more comfortable with separate dumps of the two 1.43 EPROMs, because that would be certain to work.

I don't have a EEPROM reader, but I'd be happy to dump the ROMs for you. I need to set up my 6300 first, though, and I only have room for one setup at a time and currently I'm finishing up restoring one of two (yay!) 6300 WGS machines I've been able to obtain. When I set up my 6300 I will run Brutman's ROM dumper and that should give you what you need.

 

[digger]

Whoohoo! :D

Whoohoo! :D

I don't have a EEPROM reader, but I'd be happy to dump the ROMs for you. I need to set up my 6300 first, though, and I only have room for one setup at a time and currently I'm finishing up restoring one of two (yay!) 6300 WGS machines I've been able to obtain. When I set up my 6300 I will run Brutman's ROM dumper and that should give you what you need.

Awesome! Thanks a bunch! :-D

So this ROM dumper can somehow extract the data from each EPROM separately? It does the address calculation automatically or something? Impressive little tool then.

I'm looking forward to downloading the ROMs. It's much appreciated.

I'm still serious about setting up that repository, by the way. I could even help out with hosting it if that would be a problem.

 

[Trixter]

So this ROM dumper can somehow extract the data from each EPROM separately? It does the address calculation automatically or something? Impressive little tool then.

No, it just reads the entire ROM address space and dumps into a file. I could do the same

I'm still serious about setting up that repository, by the way. I could even help out with hosting it if that would be a problem.

Search for VintageATT here, he's already trying to start one. I think the URL is http://vintageatt.vintageibm.net/

 

[macekmacek]

Hi, here are your ROM dumps from olivetti M240 (M24 with 20 Mb disk). Have fun. Those are the 27128 16k EPROM chip. Two - one for odd and one for even byte.
Anyone can tell me how to toggle the turbo mode in M24? Is it possible?
Best,
Jon

 

[per]

So this ROM dumper can somehow extract the data from each EPROM separately?

I made a tool able to do that in Javascript (DHTML).

How to use it:
0. Open the HTM document in your favorite internet browser.
1. Open the ROM/binary dump(s) in a hexadecimal-editor (I am using HxD).
2. Copy and paste the contnent of the file (hexadecimal data, seperated in bytes) to the corresponding text fields in the HTML document.
3. Type in the seperating unit, default is a space (as used by HxD).
4. Type in the fill unit, default is a space (can also be called "output seperating unit").
5. Click the function you want.
6. Copy and paste the output to a new file (by using the hexadecimal editor of course).
7. Save the file.

 

[digger]

Thank you, people

Thank you, people

Hi everyone,

Sorry I haven't been active on this forum in a while.

Thank you all, so far!

But macekmacek, The M240 and the M24 are quite different machines, even though they're both from Olivetti and they both have a 8086 CPU. I'm sure the M240 BIOS would not work in an M24. But I still appreciate the effort, and it's good that the bios of the M240 is also preserved for historical (as well as vintage tinkering) reasons.

However,

Maybe you can help me with something else: would you happen to know where I can obtain the graphics card of an M240? I don't want to break a perfectly functioning set, so I'm looking for either a card salvaged from a defective M240, or a card that is available because it was replaced by an EGA- or VGA-card because the original monitor died.

If you or anyone else could help me with this as well, that would be awesome.

Thank you again, people!

Take care,

Digger

 

[digger]

Still looking for the ROM dumps...

Still looking for the ROM dumps...

Hi everyone,

Wow, it's been nearly a year since I opened this thread. It's scary how fast time flies somehow.

Although of course it's not a priority, I would still appreciate it if someone could dump the M24/6300 1.43 ROM BIOS to a file and post them here. Thanks.

Best of wishes to everyone,

Digger

 

[billdeg]

Is this the correct system?
http://vintagecomputer.net/browse_thread.cfm?id=171

 

[digger]

Correct, billdeg.

That's exactly the system I'm talking about. The AT&T 6300 and the Olivetti M24 are completely identical systems. Only the outside logos are different.

Neither the site you linked to nor the "AT&T 6300 Shrine" at http://sites.google.com/site/att6300shrine/Home/downloads have this ROM BIOS available for download, unfortunately.

 

[Old Thrashbarg]

I used "saverom att143.rom 16" to make a 16KB file... hopefully it grabbed the right thing.

So, I offer no guarantees that the file will work, but I have it for you to try. You'll need to split it in order to write it to chip, but that shouldn't be too difficult. If you do not have success with it, get back to me and I'll make an attempt at a different method of dumping it.

 

[digger]

Yay!

Yay!

Thank you for providing this, Old Thrashbarg.

As soon as I have the opportunity, I'll give it a try. I'll let you know if it works, or if the ROM needs to be extracted in a different way.

 

[Echoes]

Nothing new with the bios?

I've recently acquired an M24 in perfect condition, with 640KB RAM and a 20MB HD. Will the bios work for this too?

What are the changes from the 1.3x bios?

 

[digger]

Nothing new with the bios?

I've recently acquired an M24 in perfect condition, with 640KB RAM and a 20MB HD. Will the bios work for this too?

What are the changes from the 1.3x bios?

I attached a zipped PDF file (PDF file was slightly too large to attach unzipped, sorry), which might be interesting to you.

The document mentiones the following three features that ROM BIOS 1.43 adds or fixes:

• MFDU 3.5" 720 KB
• Token Ring L.A.N.
• EGA Compatibility

In the specific case of EGA support, bear in mind that the difficulty of installing an EGA card in an M24 or 6300 depends on the board revision. In the best case, it's a matter of disabling the on-board video through a dipswitch or jumper (I need to look it up, I have a document somewhere detailing this). But in the worst case, you'll have to go hunting for a very specific (hardware) upgrade kit, which will be extremely hard to find.

I downloaded the attached document from the following link (which I found through Google):

www.1000bit.it/support/manuali/download.asp?id=350

 

[Echoes]

oh, thanks, that's a good manual and the changelog is very promising.

Now, I could try to update it (obviously not overwriting the original bios!), but... no idea of what eeprom I could use?

 

[Trixter]

I attached a zipped PDF file (PDF file was slightly too large to attach unzipped, sorry), which might be interesting to you.

The document mentiones the following three features that ROM BIOS 1.43 adds or fixes:

• MFDU 3.5" 720 KB
• Token Ring L.A.N.
• EGA Compatibility

Microsoft Word for DOS 4.0 also required 1.43 ROMs -- not necessarily for the 400-line graphics mode to work but for the program to work AT ALL, which is surprising. Word for DOS 5.0 doesn't mention this as a requirement in README.DOC, but I don't know if that means they forgot to mention it or if they fixed their code.