From: dave@frackit.UUCP (Dave Ratcliffe)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: DTK BIOS/Chipset systems...
Keywords: FAILED MAIL TO ROGER ABRAHAMS
Date: 14 Nov 92 20:05:23 GMT
Organization: Data Factory Services, Harrisburg, Pa.

ATTENTION ROGER ABRAHAMS - - - Tried 3 times to reply by Email using
different routing each time and all bounced higher than the national
deficit.  I'll try this in public and hope you get it. 

Apologies to the net.at.large for the interruption..

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Roger Abrahams says:
>
>In article <1737@frackit.UUCP> you write:
>>
>> In article <Bw8yJw.Ayn@booth.uucp>, roger@booth.uucp (Roger Abrahams) writes:
>
>That's me , much deleted.

Hope it didn't hurt much <g>


>Well I didn't even get that far, as the DTK stock bios would not allow my
>Adaptec 1542B to boot Unix at all, so I switched to a later model AMI bios 
>and did succeed in running Interactive 3.0 BADLY on it.

Started out out using a Western Digital MFM card here (WD1003-WA2) but
eventually upgraded to a DTC 7287 RLL and kept the same drives (Maxtor
XT-1140). Still using the same controller now and still using Maxtor
drives (XT-2190 and XT-1085). 

>Now that machine is
>strictly for DOS, the DTK 486/33 is the Unix box.  Still, the KEEN-2000
>will sometimes give parity errors and halt, particularly under Windows
>3.1.

Oh joy. Hope I don't have THAT to look foreward to. Although I
understand Windows really runs the hell out of the RAM so you might have
a bad chip in there that's marginal and not bad as far as the
boot-RAM-check is concerned. I run into an NMI error every time I boot
Unix now. Microport says it's normal. Nothing crashes and the box keeps
on trucking. 

>Exactly what is the signon from the Phoenix bios you have, that might
>be the answer.

BIOS is version 1.10 00 dated 1988. Setup version is 4.02

>We have sent about 4 memory expansion boards back to
>DTK, only one of which was returned working even vaguely well enough
>for Unix, and that one would not work if fully populated. 

Are they the DTK RAM cards? I had some problems getting both to work
together and only have one card in now. After I move this beast to DOS
I'll play with adding the second card again. Doncha just love the way
they set up the addressing on the card? 

>board, that gave me 5 megs total, just enough to run Unix, but not
>enough for X.

Same problem here. I hate when the swap area gets hit. 20 meg is slow
when the hard drive is getting accessed that much. Makes it murderous to
compile anything when news is unbatching and a dial-up user is
downloading a large file. I tried to run XWindows on here a few weeks
back just for grins. It hurt too much so I took it off again :)

>I would also be curious as to which memory expansion
>card you have in the KEEN 2000.

I currently have 1 DTK PEI-301 with 4 meg in one bank and 1 meg in the
second. With the meg on the mom board I'm up at 6.144 meg. I have
another meg on a second card (also a PEI-301) that I'll play with when
it's a DOS machine. I also have a PEI-306 RAM card that has a 16 meg
limit and uses SIMMs instead of DRAM chips. I suppose I'll eventually
plug that in in place of one or both of the 301's. For now it's empty
and occupying space on the shelf. 

Just sold my old 286 this past weekend at a hamfest so maybe I'll have
the new Unix machine up by Christmas (hope-hope). 

         Dave

-- 
 ...uunet!wa3wbu!frackit!dave -or-                       |  Dave Ratcliffe  |
 frackit!dave@uunet.UU.NET -or- dave@frackit.uucp -or-   |  Sys. <*> Admin. |
 vogon1!compnect!frackit!dave@psuvax1.psu.edu            | Harrisburg,  Pa. |
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386