DCI 5250 ISA card Twinax drivers

[jc179]

Hello,

Would anyone happen to have the drivers for a DCI 5250 ISA card?

I recall (about 20 years ago) I using something from affinity systems called stepsaver v4.11, but seems the disk is corrupt and with that lost most of the files.
There are some utilities that weren't corrupted and still run, but as luck would have it I am missing the rest I recall was once there.

I am missing the setup.ins, CEM5250.VXD, TwinaxOEM.sys, CEM5250.386 probably other stuff too... Maybe it was never there and my memory is toast.

The info the utility detects the card is as in the attached screenshot.

The card looks like this (pretty close at least) :

retronn.de Hardware Gallery

pdf to config it:

https://www.perle.com/support_services/documentation_pdfs/afinity.pdf

I googled archive.org and intext but came up empty handed so far...

thanks for any help here
Jonathan

 

[doshea]

I don't have any drivers specifically for that card, but some adapters are compatible at a register level with IBM adapters. The details shown in your screen shot look similar to those for my adapter from Maple (I can't check the exact values right now) so perhaps your card emulates an IBM Enhanced adapter like mine, in which case you could just use IBM software with it.

 

[jc179]

You could be very right on that, I was trying to configure pcomm but there is no valid IO address matching 2718 -> 318H hex



Seem to have a range of 11A, 21A,
240A -> 24AA, 24BA, 24CA, 24DA, 24EA, 24FA,
250A -> 25AA, 252A etc
260A -> 26AA, 26BA, etc
270A -> 27AA, 27BA
31A
41A

Feel like im missing something here then...

I/O Board ConfigurationThe default selection for I/O address is 2718H (318H in the 10 addressbit terms used by most other PC adapter manufacturers).The Interrupt level and Memory address defaults are set by the softwareand set for IRQ 5 and Memory address DC00H.

 

[doshea]

That seems strange! What version of pcomm are you using? Under Windows 95 I'm pretty sure that I had success with version 4.3.

Edit: I checked the manual for the card I'm using and it says the default I/O address is "271X"/"31X" and I recall making sure it was set to the default.

Edit again: Have you tried picking 271A or 31A? Perhaps XXX8 is the base port number and XXXA is just one of the ports in the range that the software uses and pcomm happens to show that one instead of the base or an "X". I can't recall what exactly I picked in pcomm myself.

 

[jc179]

I'm using Pcomm 4.3 under Windows 95, lots to me is strange here, last I used this stuff was 20 years ago, literally its been in a box since then, and my memory isn't fresh on this anymore.

I did install the pcomm to a fresh PC and try that using the default, which I do believe is 271A .

When I do connect in PCOMM now, using address 271A, I no longer get an error message but pcomm sits at "Connecting ..." and I get nothing further : ( (machine boots up to A9002000 so I should be getting something ).
Machine is plugged into the the first port on the twinax hub, station address of 0, etc.

Presently, my card fails the diagnostics (in dia-ea.com, "Error 0040 - Wrap data latch did not set during offline test" - PDF mentions to check -5v rail - I confirmed that's OK, so... I don't know how indicative this is ).

At the moment it seems my 5250 card is dead : ( ... maybe I'll get lucky and find one for non ebay prices and can try again...

Let me know if anything else comes to mind! I can provide additional screenshots if it would be helpful ...

thanks,
Jonathan