From: keith@ksmith.uucp (Keith Smith)
Subject: Re: Coherent 4.0.1; some bad things
Organization: Keith's Computer, Hope Mills, NC
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 92 01:35:21 GMT

In article <9208120959.AA01930@dalek.mwc.com> "Coherent operating system" <COHERENT@indycms.bitnet> writes:
>> 4) The installation failed repeatedly on my machine with the cryptic:
>>
>> prepare_gift: not enough memory for parameters (?)
>> only 496 bytes are sent (?)
>>
>> I was rather surprised at the failure as this machine had had multiple
>> successful OS installations (Coherent, MS-DOS, DR. DOS) before and
>> never had any problems.  After some assistance from MWC tech support,
>> I was able to complete an installation only after extensive diddling
>> with the CMOS parameter settings.  What a pain!  Among other things, I
>> turned off the external 64 Kbyte cache, the internal 8 Kbyte cache,
>> and both video and BIOS shadowing.  Why?  There was no need for any of
>> this with earlier OS installations!  Even with 4.0.1 installed, the
>> "prepare_gift" diagnostic now flashes on a semi-random basis (max once
>> per boot).  The settings of caches do not appear to have a predictable
>> effect on this.  Furthermore, the install fails with the message "you
>> have to type either 'begin' or 'install'"

Same, Same 486/33 w/ OPTI Chipset AMI Bios?  Drop to low speed and it
will work. (16 Mhz, no cache,  Shadowing irrelevant.

>
>Of the equipment we've worked with... our stuff at mwc, our beta testers',
>our personal home systems... no one experienced these problems. To see
>problems arise that we had no way to anticipate is not surprising, in
>many respects, we've been through before... with IDE drives. We're
>doing our best to work these problems out, but it is difficult to do so when we
>can not duplicate the problem in house.
>
>We aren't making excuses, we are working on resolving this.
>

You need a Magitronic 486/33 with OPTI chipset.  Barfs especially bad
with an Adaptec Controller.  Again All 386's I've tested have been fine.
I have access to 3 "DIFFERENT" 486/33's here but all are actually the
same motherboard with different names stamped on them.

>4.0 has 2 curses libraries. libcurses.a is terminfo curses, libtermcap.a
>is termcap based curses. Try to compile this with -ltermcap.

Hehe,  ala SCO nicht war?

>> 10) Although advertised as "32 addressing compatible", 4.0.1 only
>> handles 24 bits and will not access above 16 Mbyte no matter how much
>> memory your system has.  This has been discussed before, but I thought
>> it might be fixed by now.  For those with doubts about the need for
>> fat memories, I suggest a review of the last decade's history and the
>> growth in PC memory capacity.  My machine allows for 32 Mbytes without
>> any expansion cards (another 32 Mbytes there), and many motherboards
>> allow from 64 to 256 Mbytes.
>
>IBM designed their (ISA) hardware such that DMA above 16Megs isn't possible,
>hence, Coherent 4.0 has this limit. EISA machines are a different
>story. We hope to have this limit removed for EISA machines for 4.1.
>

Yea,  SCO has a lot of weirdness for maintaining buffers below 16MB to
compensate for all this.  This should not be a problem with Programmed
I/O though, so I don't really understand it as the only DMA card you
support is the Adaptec board.  BTW.  SCO also had this limit for a LONG
time when using the 1542B.

My only real gripe is the keyboard (we all have our pet peeves eh?)
drivers.  I LOVE the virtual screens.  Great job, but I have some old
enhanced keyboards laying around to run this on.  This time we're good
enough to leave it on a machine.

BTW.  MST SVR4 won't run on that 486/33/OPTI beastie either.  It 0xE
page faults.  Might get hold of an AIR 486/33 and see if it will run on
that.  I dunno.
-- 
Keith Smith          uunet!ksmith!keith            5719 Archer Rd.
Digital Designs      BBS 1-919-423-4216            Hope Mills, NC 28348-2201
Somewhere in the Styx of North Carolina ...