From: chand@nyx.cs.du.edu (Chris Hand)
Subject: Windows 3.1 / AMI BIOS / mboards (SUMMARY)
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Date: Wed, 7 Oct 92 23:43:11 GMT

Thanks to all those who responded to my recent plea for help with               
getting windows 3.1 to run on my 386sx/25 PC:

  Neil Charness <charness@ca.uwaterloo.healthy>
  RICHARD KERSHENBAUM <RICHARD@edu.ukans.cc.kuhub>
  Sigurd Gl{rum <sigurdg@no.uio.ifi>
  romkey@us.ca.sf.asylum (John Romkey)
  exubrst@se.ericsson.exu (Brad Steele)
  schao@ca.UWaterloo.zeus (S.Chao)
  knipe@s576.dseg.ti.com (Richard Knipe)
  markst%news.chips.com%gatech@NET.UU.uunet (Mark Storkamp)
  H.Fictorie@nl.ptt.research (Henk Fictorie)
  REE700A@edu.maine.MAINE
  McCloud@gov.lbl.bev.bevsun

Several people said they'd had problems due to installing 3.1
as an upgrade over win 3.0 and this was overcome by deleting
the windows stuff and doing a "full" installation from scratch.

I had done this anyway (I must have installed 3.1 about 20
times in the past week -- I could do it with my eyes closed
by now).

I went ahead and upgraded my motherboard after all -- I got
a 386DX/40MHz for GBP 115.00 which is about 30 pounds *less*
than what I paid for the SX/25 motherboard last December!!
Windows now *seems* stable -- the only crash I had was a 
"Page Fault" (first time I've seen this), which occured when
I tried using 32-bit disk access.  Only time will tell I
suppose.

Anyway, to summarize the rest of the responses:

Some said they were running 3.1 on a machine with AMI BIOS
with no problem, others said it wouldn't run at all.  I *did*
however find some Microsoft documentation that describes the
state of BIOS compatibility.  It's in the docs for the Windows
Resource Toolkit, available for FTP from ftp.cica.indiana.edu
as pub/pc/win3/misc/wrk_doc.exe.  Amongst some other 
Trouble-Shooting Flowcharts, there's a page titled "Known Problems
with Computer BIOS".  Apparently 1987/89 AMI BIOSes are incompatible,
and the 1991 BIOS (doesn't say which exact date) has problems
with Serial Ports (mice/modems).  If you're having trouble
with 3.1 I'd recommend getting these docs, BUT they're in Word 
for Windows 2.0 format so you'll need some way of loading them
in to read or print them.

As for the AMI BIOS questions, most people pointed out that the
"ATCLK/<x>" settings configures the AT (ISA) Bus Clock to be the
system clock divided by <x>  and that the bus clock frequency
should be around 8MHz for safety (for example my IDE interface
won't work at anything higher :-( ).

Mark Storkamp from C&T pointed out that the switches for HIMEM.SYS
control how the A20 gating is done (which I understand allows the
switching to/from Protected Mode).  According to Mark, using
switch "1" (default) uses the 8042 k/board controller which is
most compatible but slowest, while "2" uses port 92 (PS/2 compatible)
which is faster.  I don't know about the other switches.

The BIOS on my new motherboard (AMI, dated 01/13/92) has an option
to set "Fast A20 gating".  This is not compatible with HIMEM's PS/2
setting though (haven't tried the other switches).

It appears that the "256k Relocation" setting in the AMI BIOS set-up
is used to move some of the RAM from between 640k and 1Mb to above
1Meg.  I can't see what use this is, but then again the longer I use
PC's the more brain-dead I realize the whole architecture is...

A few final snippets:

* Some machines that don't work with win3.1 can be persuaded by using
  386MAX instead of HIMEM.SYS.

* DR DOS 5.0 is incompatible with win3.1.  DR DOS 6.0 is only compatible
  if it's a release from March '92 or later.

* Starting win3.1 with "win /d:x" excludes all of the upper memory area
  from being used.  You can use this to see if your problems are caused
  by a conflict in that region.


I hope this helps somebody out there, and saves them from going through
what I had to this summer!  


Chris