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What can be the cause?

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Robin4

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Sep 25, 2011
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I have this computer 8088 - 8MHZ

DTK look a like PIM TURBO 640 Motherboard
Motherboard have a full 640Kb of system memory.
Clone IBM XT case. (No LEDs or TB switch) (but there on the motherboard (header)
Seagate ST-296N 84MB Partitioned:

C: 42MB
D: 39MB

With FDISK on MS_DOS 4.01 bootdisk

Seagate ST-02 SCSI controller (without floppy disk support)
Joincom HD floppy controller

360KB Chinon 5.25 inch drive
1.44MB Mitsumi drive.

Video7 VEGA 8BIT graphics adaptor.

Trying to install MS-DOS 4.01 on 720KB 3.5 inch diskettes (dutch language)

Had some trouble to get it booting. But i have fixed that already.
When the diskette boots it comes in the SELECT screen.
I want to install it from SELECT to the HDD on C: drive.


I have two things that will happen.

1. It goes to the Welkom screen. Hit ENTER and that goes to the INTRODUCTION screen.. And from there i cant go any further.. The system might be locked up. (booted with the original diskette)
2. And some times i cant get any further than the WELKOM screen..

System locks again and dont getting any further.

What can cause this problem? If i starting the game Testdrive 1 and Grandprix, the gamess are just running fine..

I cant see if the system turbo mode is on or off.. I also dont feel it on the system performance. Its neither slow or fast for my feeling.


I have made already a new floppy disk installation set. It hangs on the same spot. So it wouldnt MS-DOS diskettes related.
 
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I suspect the program that pops up this WELKOM and INTRODUCTION. Press F5 during booting and the PC will skip CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, thus ending in pure DOS. Then try some other programs, test programs or diagnostic tools.
 
I don't think DOS 4 supports skipping the config files, but maybe you can modify them on another machine and see if that helps.
 
I want to add to the topic, when the first select screen appears, that i only can push the keyboard button once and then locking up (why i dont know)
Tried also with ESC key.. And that works. But when i wanted to go back, everything froze again.

Already changed the keyboard of another XT one. But that didnt helped not much (same issue like before)

Now i removed the memory dram from the motherboard, and testing it right now.

Also going the swap a row chips from bank 1 (256K) dram) to bank 0.. And see if that makes a different.
Also found out that 256KB of memory isnt enough to boot SELECT.

If the memory is good, i will try the suggest what Ruud red here. Didnt know you can use F5 during boot.
 
Hak Foo said:
I don't think DOS 4 supports skipping the config files, but maybe you can modify them on another machine and see if that helps.
Click to expand...

I can just boot right away to dos prompt when using the dosshell diskette 3. But iam trying to install DOS to the HDD with SELECT with seems to be a system hang.
 
Ruud said:
I suspect the program that pops up this WELKOM and INTRODUCTION. Press F5 during booting and the PC will skip CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, thus ending in pure DOS. Then try some other programs, test programs or diagnostic tools.
Click to expand...

Which other programs, test programs / diag tools would you suggest?
 
Hak Foo said:
I don't think DOS 4 supports skipping the config files, but maybe you can modify them on another machine and see if that helps.
Click to expand...
If the F5 trick does not work, you can remove the floppy disk while the system tries to execute AUTOEXEC.BAT. You have to time it right, but if successful, you get the Retry - Abort - Fail message and can abort. Then re-insert the floppy disk to get to a command prompt.

This does not work with CONFIG.SYS but can be useful in a pinch.

Which other programs, test programs / diag tools would you suggest?
Click to expand...
I'd try CheckIt, but only because I am familiar with it. First make sure that your system actually works correctly - you may have faulty memory causing the hang, and fiddling with the keyboard won't help.
 
F5 does nothing.


First 512KB of ram (41256) chips i have tested with the DIY Chris `lets make stuff Dram tester`. I dont know how great such tester is. But it didnt gave me any error on these chips.
And it still locks up when running SELECT from dos diskettes.

Think the memory should (and other non-tested should be fine.

Other option would be test the LS Logic with my eeprom tester.. Maybe a bad chip might be visible.

Could also swap out the CPU... Maybe it had some torture in the past.
 
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A chip tester doesn't guarantee that the chip is working correctly in its target environment; if a memory chip is marginal, it may test fine but fail due to electrical noise (it may even work fine in a different system). The same is true for any other logic chip if its voltage output is marginal. If at all possible, I'd try to boot and run some serious diagnostic utility to rule out hardware issues first.

As far as software issues go, it is possible that your installation floppy (e.g. SELECT itself) is corrupted. Verifying that the floppy reads correct data definitely doesn't hurt, either. I'd try a different DOS version just to verify that there is no incompatibility with your system, either. A Gotek may not be a bad idea, either (even if temporary).
 
Svenska said:
A chip tester doesn't guarantee that the chip is working correctly in its target environment; if a memory chip is marginal, it may test fine but fail due to electrical noise (it may even work fine in a different system). The same is true for any other logic chip if its voltage output is marginal. If at all possible, I'd try to boot and run some serious diagnostic utility to rule out hardware issues first.

As far as software issues go, it is possible that your installation floppy (e.g. SELECT itself) is corrupted. Verifying that the floppy reads correct data definitely doesn't hurt, either. I'd try a different DOS version just to verify that there is no incompatibility with your system, either. A Gotek may not be a bad idea, either (even if temporary).
Click to expand...
I already made a copy of MS-dos 4.01 from internet in English.. But that select program did exact the same. (the first set i have here are the original MS-DOS 4.01 Dutch version)

I could test that select program perhaps on an other motherboard and seeing if the symptoms are the same or not.
If it may work on a different mother, there should be something wrong on the one iam currently using now.

Other programs are running fine.. Yesterday i used checkit ver 2.1 and there was no error to be found.
I dont know if i replace those 256K chips in bank 0 or 1 would fix the problem (but iam guessing it may not.
 
Did you test everything with Checkit successfully? Because you may suffer from an actual incompatibility between your system (specifically, your BIOS) and MS-DOS 4.01. In that case, there is very little you can do. However, it is unlikely and I am running out of ideas.

I suggest that you move the goal posts:
* Can you install and use MS-DOS 3.x correctly? What about MS-DOS 5.0 or 6.x?
* Can you install and use Windows 2.x or Windows 3.0 correctly?
* Can you run some other games successfully?

All of these will stress your system in different ways. Maybe something else will fail and point out what could be wrong.

Also, you mentioned that you don't know whether Turbo is enabled or not. The performance difference should be very obvious, but you can use Landmark to check it. There is likely a keyboard shortcut to enable/disable Turbo mode on your system (e.g. CTRL NP+ or CTRL NP-), and it may cause a beep when switched.

Addendum: You may be able to try a diagnostic ROM which tests most functionality, which your BIOS may not. But failures there may be corect and lead to more confusion...
 
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Iam thinking of swap out the cpu and put one of my NEC v20 in it, so can test if its stable then or not.
 
You don't need SELECT.

1. create primary DOS partition & activate it (fdisk)
2. format c: /s

That's it. Your system now boots MS-DOS from the hard disk. Of course, most people want at least some of the additional DOS files on their hard disk, too. That's fine. Copy them. Create a config.sys and/or autoexec.bat, too, if you like. Or don't.
 
Is it possible that the system might be hang because i didnt set the parity jumper on my Seagate SCSI ST-296N hard drive?
 
Svenska said:
A chip tester doesn't guarantee that the chip is working correctly in its target environment; if a memory chip is marginal, it may test fine but fail due to electrical noise
Click to expand...
Another reason: a chip can become slow and won't meet the timing requirements anymore. A chip tester uses in general I/O in the form of latches to address the IC. In reality it can be something much faster like an address bus.
My own experience: an EPROM. It appeared OK according the programmer and when going single-step through the program from the reset on, the program worked fine. But at the real real speed it hang already on the first instruction.
 
I have already been busy to work on an Retro Chip tester pro..
Still need to be waiting on the parts to arrive.

Zener diodes and the rest of parts are already shipped.
Waiting on the pcbs to be send.
 
bear said:
You don't need SELECT.

1. create primary DOS partition & activate it (fdisk)
2. format c: /s

That's it. Your system now boots MS-DOS from the hard disk. Of course, most people want at least some of the additional DOS files on their hard disk, too. That's fine. Copy them. Create a config.sys and/or autoexec.bat, too, if you like. Or don't.
Click to expand...


But it still should be working for installation on diskettes or HDD without freezing the whole system.
 
Robin4 said:
But it still should be working for installation on diskettes or HDD without freezing the whole system.
Click to expand...
Sure.

But taking the long way is more likely to give you information about the nature of the problem, instead of "well, something doesn't work."
 
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