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AST Premium/286 manuals

S

sqpat

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 21, 2009
Messages
168
Location
Seattle, WA
I'm wondering if anyone has the manuals to this machine. I've come across a number of inconsistencies in online jumper references and odd BIOS behaviors that I think I've mostly figured out (and will write up later), but I wonder if anyone has the manuals, or a scan of them. It might clear up a lot of issues for me. I can only find the advertisement online on the minuszerodegrees site, and the MS-DOS reference on archive.org.
 
Hi @sqpat - I have the following manuals that I don't need. I'd be happy to send them to you for cost of postage if you are interested.
 

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th3bar0n said:
Hi @sqpat - I have the following manuals that I don't need. I'd be happy to send them to you for cost of postage if you are interested.
Click to expand...
I'm interested and would try to scan them (time permitting) so it's available on the web. Please message me if possible. Thank you.
 
th3bar0n said:
Hi @sqpat - I have the following manuals that I don't need. I'd be happy to send them to you for cost of postage if you are interested.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I have since acquired the two AST User Manuals(but not the MS-DOS or BASIC ones). I confirmed the info I was looking for - specifically the serial addreses are mixed up on the online jumper settings for the board. So if @serigioag is willing to scan the manuals and upload them then that might be in everyone's better interest.
 
Sorry, I did eventually get the manual and forgot to post about it.

So, from memory - the jumper settings posted online for the serial the port 1 and port 2 addresses swapped. And, then, I found the option ROM was not bootable on this board. I had to hack the BIOS to make it work, but the manual said nothing about the peculiarities of the option ROM on the board. And then, finally, there were some comments on the internet somewhere by the BIOS designer for this board, and also some AST technical bulletins that suggested a few high level features (like shadow BIOS) were available on early AST 286es - but I found no evidence of this in the manual and couldn't get it to work.

The manual itself is pretty high quality and I like the machine a lot and have a few of them. Very cool to see it scanned and online.
 
sqpat said:
Sorry, I did eventually get the manual and forgot to post about it.

So, from memory - the jumper settings posted online for the serial the port 1 and port 2 addresses swapped. And, then, I found the option ROM was not bootable on this board. I had to hack the BIOS to make it work, but the manual said nothing about the peculiarities of the option ROM on the board. And then, finally, there were some comments on the internet somewhere by the BIOS designer for this board, and also some AST technical bulletins that suggested a few high level features (like shadow BIOS) were available on early AST 286es - but I found no evidence of this in the manual and couldn't get it to work.

The manual itself is pretty high quality and I like the machine a lot and have a few of them. Very cool to see it scanned and online.
Click to expand...
Good to know you actually solved it! One more question: would it be possible for you to send pictures, as higher resolution as possible, of the front panel PCB, both sides? I don't have a complete machine and, of course, no front panel, so I would like to reverse engineer a replacement for it. Thanks!
 
sergioag said:
Good to know you actually solved it! One more question: would it be possible for you to send pictures, as higher resolution as possible, of the front panel PCB, both sides? I don't have a complete machine and, of course, no front panel, so I would like to reverse engineer a replacement for it. Thanks!
Click to expand...

I just want you to know I haven't forgotten about this. The machine is on the bottom of a stack of 4-5 other plugged in machines, so it's going to be a bit of work, but I wanted to open it and change EMS/XMS allocation on the fastRAM card so I'll be getting to that soon.
 
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