[comp.sys.ibm.pc] AT, EGA, SMARTDRV

andyross@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Andrew Rossmann) (12/09/89)

  About a week ago, I asked about information on getting a TTL mono card to
work with an EGA board. Many people wrote mentioning that I needed to
change a switch in the computer. This turned out to be not true. My only
problem was finding the right DIP switch settings on the card. Once I got
them right, I had video!
  The double beep was not a video problem, but a setup problem. It had been
set up for 512K of extended memory, when there was none (all extra memory
is expanded.)
  I also mentioned that I had 'trashed' the disk running Norton's SpeedDisk
while SMARTDRV was active. This also appears to be untrue. The computer (a
6MHz AT) has a Seagate ST4096 in it. Since the BIOS does not have an entry
for it, it is formatted using DiskManager (v3.5). The BIOS thinks it is
type 12 (7 heads, 855 tracks.) Under DiskManager, the 'DOS' partition is
formatted in the way DOS thinks it should be (7 heads in this case), and
the rest is formatted normally (9 heads) and only accessable after loading
DMDRVR.BIN.
  It appears that, at least on this setup, the DOS partition is real
flakey. I loaded some programs into it, and they would not run right. The
computer would lock up and such. When I moved them to the other paritions,
there were no problems. I have reformatted the drive, so I know that is not
the problem.
  The SMARTDRV 'problem' was that I had optimized that DOS partition, and
many of the programs ended up not right. I still can't quite figure out
what the problem is, and am interested in theories.
  BTW, is it possible to put a third party BIOS (like Phoenix, etc..) in an
6MHz IBM PC AT? If so, how much would it cost? Alternatively, how much
would it cost to copy the ROM's and modify the drive table?

  Andrew Rossmann
  andyross@ddsw1.MCS.COM