jrd@cc.usu.edu (11/20/90)
Peter Holsberg reported that his AT&T 386-33 machine booted extremely slowly during the POST sequence if the serial port was attached to another machine. He wondered if the other machine was providing a login: msg or similar. Well, I have the same machine and the serial port is attached to a serial printer (Epson FX850). If the printer is plugged in then, as Peter experienced, the POST menu (hwd stuff) grinds out one character every few seconds until done or I have had enough. Unplugging the printer lets it zip through at normal speed. My best guess is the Phoenix Bios in the machine is very unhappy with signals being asserted on the serial port during POST and eventually times out to progress. But why should it work so slowly through the entire boot up screen?? The printer is not sending anything. Intel itself made the motherboard, with it's embedded serial ports. Joe D. (misery loves company)
bchen@wpi.WPI.EDU (Bi Chen) (11/22/90)
I may meet a relevent problem on the damed BIOS too on a AT&T 6300. I used "bioscom" in Turbo C2.0 to talk to HP ColorPro Plotter. It takes a second or so to get status from RS232 and about the same time to read the Plotter's response. The command send to the Plotter seems to work OK. I used Turbo BASIC to do the same thing without any porblem. Turbo BASIC must have its own routine bypassing the BIOS. Does anyone has any suggestion? Thank you in advance. Bi Chen bchen@wpi.wpi.edu
cs161fhn@sdcc10.ucsd.edu (Dennis Lou) (11/22/90)
How do you get to the CMOS/XMOS setup menu with a Phoenix BIOS? Is there a keystroke to execute while it's doing its power up memory check? E-mail please. I'm going out of town for Thanksgiving weekend... -- Dennis Lou | "But Yossarian, what if everyone thought that way?" dlou@ucsd.edu | "Then I'd be crazy to think any other way!" [backbone]!ucsd!dlou +---------------------------------------------------- dlou@ucsd.BITNET cs161fhn@sdcc10.ucsd.edu | Woz went to my high school.