[comp.sys.ibm.pc] 2 hard disks and ega puzzle

rds95@leah.Albany.Edu (Robert Seals) (03/10/89)

Hi -
I got a problem with my dell 310, a 20 mhz 386 machine. I have just
added another mfm drive to it, for a total of 2. Drive 0 is a 45 meg
miniscribe, with 2 partitions; drive 1 is a 71 meg micropolis with
3 partitions. I am using (temporarily; an ati vgawonder and nec
multisync 2a are coming next week, I hope) an ega board with a
mitsubishi multi-whatever monitor. When the second drive is not
installed, I can have groovy 640x360 16 color graphics; but when the
second drive is in, whenever I try to do ega graphics, the system
goes to lunch. Specifically, turbo c 1.5 programs that use the
egavga.bgi graphics driver will start, then finish prematurely and the
system hangs. Windows (2.03) runs ok, then when I exit, the system
hangs in the same way. BUT "fract386" runs ok in 640x350x16 mode.
The Dell techperson suspects that the second drive and the ega
memory are competing somehow, which makes sense.
Anybody know whats going on? Does vga use the same address space as
ega? Is there a way to get rid of this 5-partition nonsense?

rob