Text 1074, 119 rader
Skriven 2009-01-08 19:45:58 av Mike Luther (1:117/3001.0)
Ärende: DOS-VDM Videomem Help?
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In house at the moment is what I think may wind up being the first actually
certifiable EMP pulse safe relay rack case industrial SMB server system.  I and
two very long-time suppliers for me have been working at this for almost a year
now.  For years now I've been using the original Intergrand full pig-iron
isolation transformer linear power supply cases which the Tri-Mag outfit bought
out and continues to offer as this very special case.

Originally I went totally into this operation because it is, with other work
also of course, a totally reliable way to stop damage to the computer system
from lightning strikes to radio transmitter sites.  I'm a Narte certified
Master Engineer in the telecomm operations from way back in the 1960's plus.  I
really have had the blessed opportunity to learn a LOT about lightning from
both years of telecomm work in the Texas A&M University Oceanography Department
as well as being a broadcast engineer and so on.  My 24 hour all the time up
connected ham site gets hit directly by lightning at least a couple times a
year.  With the help of this crew and a lot of other mitigation work I have
never lost one system out there from my training.

But now, the whole thing about Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) issues is a whole
major defense protection issue for us, though solving the problem harks back to
lightning strike protection.

The industrial computer board and passive backplane supplier for us for years
has been the Modular Industrial Systems operation.  Together with the special
relay rack cases described above the entire system has a very demonstrable
100,000 hour Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) average performance certification.
 That's significant.  And even more so here, the entire operation has, until
recently, been totally OS/2 compatible as to operational interfaces and
support.

In addition to lightning protection for me and EMP protection for defense
department purposes for all of us, the goal is to be able to obtain a
continuing source of hardware which will carry even OS/2 all the way back for
whatever we are doing to the 1980's as to four COMM port operations, full
IDE/ATA/SATA operations, full PCI slot use, even full ISA slot operations if
needed, the usual parallel port stuff, full SCSI interfaces if wanted, all the
old floppy drive options, USB as desired and integrated OS/2 compatible
networking and video, plus at least a few years from now forward with Intel CPU
hosting.

OK, the very latest MIS SMB-9455 computer board, together with their 7062
Passive Backplane, is now in test here after some eight months of work at lots
of things, in a new Tri-Mag case.  The main mess in this was the fact that the
old linear power supply cases simply would not work with the very heavy initial
surge current new ATX motherboard designs.  Thus a complete new case design and
the new special surge protection plus absolutely unique interface of that to a
100,000 hour MTBF switching power supply took a long time to interface.

I finally have this latest everything Intel latest CPU operation running on
OS/2 MCP2 latest everything.  The on-board Intel 945 Video chipset apparently
works perfectly with the final SNAP free video release and the public key.  The
on-board Intel PRO/1000 82573 network chipset is finally working apparently
fine now with a real help contribution from the Genmac operations. 
 It is working as an unsupported unit, but it looks like the later releases of
the Genmac library stuff will support the chip.  The MIS SbLive 5.1 AC97 audio
daughterboard is working just fine with an older Uniaud driver release. 
 In test here will also be an addtional four port COMM port daughterboard which
looks like there will be no problem adding an addtional two COMM ports to the
standard two on the SMB.

There are still issues with the full use of the SEVEN PCI slots available. In
my case with the OS/2 operations, all I can use are one of the three primary
PCI slots and one of the four secondary PCI slots so far.  I have the complete
Adaptec SCSI operations going fine with one PCI card.  I also have been able to
pack a second NIC in one of the bridged secondary PCI slots and have both NICs
working with OS/2 so far with no trouble.  I haven't tested it with SATA drives
yet, but I don't think there will be any problem there.

So now to the subject of this post.

I cannot get the OS/2 DOS video session settings to go to CGA video so as to
release the extra memory in DOS to open the 640K 'standard' DOS up to the
675K-725K low memory option.  Similar to the way this originally did not work
with the IBM ThinkPad notebooks.  Which eventually with the wonderful help from
Veit Kannegieser, IBM's development crew in Austin,Veit managed to offer an
option in his PMVDMCC ThinkPad tool to free up what is called the '2KSTACK'
which somehow occupies a full 2K of DOS memory right at the top of the 640K
'standard' DOS.  That solves the problem in the ThinkPad's here which then will
switch to a CGA video more in DOS-VDM use.  And gets me all the extra memory I
must have for some complicated things that still have to be in DOS for us.

What I have discovered after many hours of research and many different old DOS
memory analysis tools, is that all the DOS-VDM implementations of OS/2 report
that there is a 1K chunk of DOS memory missing from the 640K 'standard'.  And
that works just fine with everything for years. That other than the ThinkPad
deal above.  On box after box with everything from Intel 915GAVL mobo's to AMD
CPU and even way back when mobo's report 639K of DOS memory.  That's with the
reported -1K gone from every one of them.  But with the memory tools I have I
can't really tell where this IK of memory is being used.  I think it is right
up near the top of the 'standard' 640K but I don't really know that.

OK, but in this case with the new SMB-9455 BIOS there is 4K of memory missing
leaving only 636K of 'standard' DOS-VDM memory.  Which I suspect is exactly why
we can never see anything but the VGA video memory footprint with this new
system.

OK, is the anybody here who knows enough about this to help teach me what
people use this little memory at the top (?) of DOS 640K for?  Even Veit posts
he doesn't know what the '2KSTACK' is for in his documentation!  Can anyone
here suggest some kind of a DOS memory analysis tool that will display this? 
Will tell us what is going on here and to what the use of this '4K' of memory
is related?

I'd rather go back to the MIS crew with as much learning as I can.  They have
been of massive help over the years.  But the more I can learn before I go
further into this, the better it should be.

And this is the last step, I think, from getting us another 100,000 hours into
the future with OS/2 like it is today.  Or anyone else that really needs to be
supported this way.

Thanks!

--> Sleep well; OS/2's still awake! ;)

Mike @ 1:117/3001

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