koenig@topaz.rutgers.edu (Evan M. Koenig) (11/01/87)
Has anyone experienced any problems with booting up in the pc mode using a UCI Easy PC? What I would like to know is if it is picky about using IBM's Pc-dos? You can boot up most of the time without any problems but every so often the screen will go bizarre the second you boot it up or wait untill you run a program in the pc mode. As for my disk drives they seem to be fine because they always work with no problems in the Z100 mode so the big question is DO I HAVE TO USE ZENITH'S MS-DOS FOR THE Z150 IN ORDER TO CORRECT THIS PROBLEM ? -Evan Koenig
SAC.HQSAC-ACMI@E.ISI.EDU (11/02/87)
I have been using the UCI Easy PC board, in a low profile Z-100, for a little over a year now. I started with Zenith's version 2.x and am now using V 3.2 of MS-DOS. I have had very few problems in PC mode. Since I had bought the UCI board from Zenith, I had gotten one that did not have the latest updates. At first there were some problems, like the system freezing up with strange screen displays and such. I also had to change a few ICs on the motherboard (one was U241 but I don't remember what I changed it to, and another is U221 was changed to a 7432) According to UCI this was necessary to correct some timing problems. I have never tried PC-DOS as I feel more comfortable with Zenith's versions. When I added an ST-225 harddisk I thought there might be some new problems, but after 5 months nothing has gone wrong (knock on wood). The 100 side has 2K clusters and the PC side uses 4K clusters, other then that I can run most anything that can be used on a PC (software only of course). For those wondering why I went with UCI instead of ZPC: I just don't care to patch software if I don't have to. Also at the time I bought my 100 the price for the UCI board set was only $300 (if purchased within 90 days). I tried the Gemini board but was disappointed with the reduction in speed and the fact that the board I had just would not work correctly at 8Mhz. (It destroyed my working copy of DOS and my backup when I tried booting so I traded it in for the UCI). I might also suggest you call David Chung an UCI and explain your problem. He has been very helpful when I have called. Also if you have 8 inch drives, or AT style drives connected to the 8 inch port, UCI is working on an 8 inch driver. It should be ready around Christmas. ----- Marc