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Latest Tandy Problems

Z

Zombie

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 22, 2011
Messages
125
This is going to be a long haul to explain. So bear with me, as I try and explain all this.

I have a Tanddy 1000 TL with the following hardware

80286/80287 Math Co-processor
768 K RAM (640 Usable by DOS)
A Western Digital 8003E With a AUI to UTP Tranciever for Ethernet.
a Hargle XT-IDE Hard Disk card with an IDE to CF Adapter
A Cirrus Logic VGA Card
A Lo-Tech 2MB Capacity EMS Card.

The following hardware is believed to be non-operational:
The 720K Floppy Drive. It is very dirty with age.

The Tandy is networked to several Linux machines. I am having issues with machine stability since the installation of the EMS card.
Only Wolfenstien 3D seems to actually be able to use the EMS card. I can tell it to Allocate Ram, but I seem to be unable to use it.

An overview of the networking setup for the Tandy.

The tandy uses a WATTCP Packet Driver to connect to the network card.

The Tandy uses XFS 1.91 to connect to a Linux based PC-NFSD Server. The connection is fast enough such that it can run DOS Programs directly off a mapped network drive. It can also use FTP to send and recieve files. The reason for this, is the difficulty in duplication of the MS-DOS 5.0 installation on the CF Card. While all of the Tandy's data has been backed up to the modern computers, the number of write cycles the CF Card has is limited. The CF card is a generic Knock off.

The Tandy can connect to a local IMAP4 Server using PC-Pine 3.96.
The Tandy can connect to a bitlbee powered IRC Server which acts as a relay for modern networks. (More on this later.)

The Tandy generally does fine with getting the EMS Started and it shows up when the MEM Command is in use. However, it seems there is no way to load device drivers like the Packet Driver, or doskey, or anything else, into that RAM as if it were XMS RAM.

When the EMS Driver is loaded, the Network card doesn't function correctly. In some cases it will make the machine hang, it does this with PC-Pine 3.96. Other times, it does things such as, if I attempt to load PC-NFS and XFS 1.91, attempting to access the network drive results in a persistent "Drive not ready" error. Regardless of whether the EMS Driver is loaded or not. Neither of these things happened before the EMS card was installed.

FTP to and from the server seems to still work.
I am under the impression there is a Memory conflitct of some variety in the Tandy, I hae tried tto diagnose that issue using MSD and PC-Config. It hasn't helped.

Any help given would be wonderful.
 
Checkit for DOS Displays Rom Area C600 to D000 as free. I can initialize the network card at CC00 and CE00. If I initialize the network card at CC00 PC-Pine will hang. If Initialize it CE00, PC-Pine will cause the mnachine to immediately reboot.
 
I got the NFS part of this to work again. After resolving the RAM Conflict, I had to add the following settings to /etc/nfs.conf to enable NFS v2 and UDP mode. Modern NFS Servers only enable v3 and v4 support and TCP mode.

[global]
[nfsd]
vers2 = on
vers3 = on
vers4 = on
vers4.1 = on
vers4.2 = on
UDP = on
 
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Zombie said:
a Hargle XT-IDE Hard Disk card with an IDE to CF Adapter
Click to expand...
So an XT-IDE rev 1? Are you using Hargle's BIOS or XTIDE Universal BIOS? Not that it really matters, I'm just curious.

The tandy uses a WATTCP Packet Driver to connect to the network card.
Click to expand...
AFAIK, WATTCP is a TCP/IP stack only. Presumably you meant FTP Software's PC/TCP stack? They are the people behind the packet driver specification.

The Tandy generally does fine with getting the EMS Started and it shows up when the MEM Command is in use. However, it seems there is no way to load device drivers like the Packet Driver, or doskey, or anything else, into that RAM as if it were XMS RAM.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's normal. Device drivers and TSR's in general are programs "running in the background" - they are activated via hardware events (AKA interrupts). When such an interrupt occurs there's no guarantee that the data or code is still available in the EMS frame - it might have been swapped out by another program. So for a TSR to be able to use EMS memory it needs to have a small stub in conventional memory that, if needed, loads the correct page into the EMS frame. In short, the TSR must be written specifically with EMS support in mind. Of course, if the EMS driver isn't loaded then you can use the EMS frame as a regular UMB and load TSRs into it.
 
It is one of the old XT-IDE Universal BIOSes.

The issues are the remaining problems the Tandy has.
With the LTEMM Device Driver loaded, the Tandy will immediately reboot upon running PC-Pine 3.96. (I have an Internal IMAP DoveCot Server. No Postfix server.)
If I do not load the LTEMM EMS Drier, PC-Pine will work.

Only a hand full of games seem to be willing to use the EMS Ram, Wolfenstien 3D Will (The game is a Slide show. but it runs.)
BioMeanace Will.

All other Internet applications seem to be oblivious to the EMS card.
The Tandy has never worked with HIMEM.SYS. If you try to run it, even though it is a 286 , the system will lock up. it really behaves more like an 8086.
MSD sometimes spuriously reports that the system has 64K of XMS it really doesn't.

It has 768KB of Conventional Ram. 640KB is accessible to DOS, 128KB is resevered for Tandy Graphics.

I have heard that DR-DOS had the ability to do sort of the reverse EMM386 does, and simulate XMS Ram out of EMS Ram.
 
Zombie said:
With the LTEMM Device Driver loaded, the Tandy will immediately reboot upon running PC-Pine 3.96. (I have an Internal IMAP DoveCot Server. No Postfix server.)
If I do not load the LTEMM EMS Drier, PC-Pine will work.
Click to expand...
Do you know if PC-Pine supports EMS? I'm guessing it doesn't. Perhaps it's trying to use the EMS software interrupt (67h)? BTW, which interrupt are you using for the packet driver?

All other Internet applications seem to be oblivious to the EMS card.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that is to be expected - TCP/IP networking (for PCs) became popular long after the era of LIM EMS.

The Tandy has never worked with HIMEM.SYS. If you try to run it, even though it is a 286 , the system will lock up. it really behaves more like an 8086.
Click to expand...
Tried using USE!UMBS.SYS instead? Or some other software capable of providing UMBs? I'm assuming that is the reason you want to use HIMEM.SYS.
 
Krille said:
Do you know if PC-Pine supports EMS? I'm guessing it doesn't. Perhaps it's trying to use the EMS software interrupt (67h)? BTW, which interrupt are you using for the packet driver?


Yeah, that is to be expected - TCP/IP networking (for PCs) became popular long after the era of LIM EMS.


Tried using USE!UMBS.SYS instead? Or some other software capable of providing UMBs? I'm assuming that is the reason you want to use HIMEM.SYS.
Click to expand...

What I want is to load things into the EMS RAM.
If I start messing around with the UMBs past 640K, I'm really messing with the Video Ram for Tandy Graphics, I'm not real sure. You have to take into account the non-standard layout of the Tandy's RAM.
I don't think PC-Pine supports EMS. But I also don't know what Interrupt the Packet Driver uses. I've seen Checkit mistake the Packet Driver for XMS.
 
Some of the addresses used by USE!UMBS.SYS are occupied by Tandy Rom DOS.
 
keenerb said:
With use!umbs.sys you're supposed to hexedit your own addresses into it, aren't you?
Click to expand...

It has Parameters for the Hex addresses. Which are still driving PC-Pine up the wall, and not letting me use the EMS Memory for anything.
Add to that, BioMenace is locking up.
 
Zombie said:
Look as I said, I want to better utilize my real EMS Memory.
Click to expand...

I guess I'm confused by what you mean when you say "Better utilize my real EMS memory".

Not a lot of apps that will run on a Tandy 286 system will really benefit at all from EMS. The only real use I've gotten out of it myself has been with dosshell and DR-DOS taskmgr multitasking. I dont' think anything will provide XMS memory on a Tandy 286.

If you want to free up some of your 640k ram, you'll need to configure the 64kb EMS window as an upper memory block and load your mouse driver/etc. into that upper memory block.

If you have MS-DOS installed locally, I would remove your NIC and test the EMS card extensively.

First, remove the LTEMM.sys driver completely. Run the testumbs.exe from the use!umbs package and verify that it sees the 64kb page window at the address you expect.

Install LTEMM.sys driver, and run DOSSHELL and configure it for task switching and use EMS memory, and run three or four apps side-by-side, including some simple CGA games, see if you have a stable system.

Reinstall the NIC, and run the above tests again, and see if behaviour is different.

I have a Tandy 1000TL with a LoTech 2MB EMS card installed and it seems to work fine. I have it configured with boot options to either use EMS, or use the 64kb page window as an upper memory block. When I need EMS it boots with the LTEMM.SYS driver loaded and I have about 500kb of lower memory + 2mb EMS memory. When I need maximum 640k memory I reboot into the upper memory block configuration, where use!umbs.sys is loaded and I have mouse and NIC driver loaded into upper memory block giving me about 610kb DOS memory and zero EMS memory.
 
Zombie, perhaps I wasn't clear before - EMS can only be used by software written specifically for it.

Zombie said:
Some of the addresses used by USE!UMBS.SYS are occupied by Tandy Rom DOS.
Click to expand...

keenerb said:
With use!umbs.sys you're supposed to hexedit your own addresses into it, aren't you?
Click to expand...

That's correct for the original version (2.0) written by Marco van Zwetselaar but the post I linked to earlier has an attachment containing the original as well as versions 2.1 and 2.2 - both written (by me) to use command line parameters in config.sys instead. There are other improvements of course - it's all listed in the source files which are included as well.

So to use a 64 KB EMS frame at D000h (assuming that's where it is) this is the command line you would need to add to config.sys;
Code: 
DEVICE=USE!UMBS.SYS D000-E000
Any additional ranges can be added to the command line in any order. And you obviously can't load the EMS driver if you use the EMS frame as an UMB.

Hope this helps!
 
Krille said:
That's correct for the original version (2.0) written by Marco van Zwetselaar but the post I linked to earlier has an attachment containing the original as well as versions 2.1 and 2.2 - both written (by me) to use command line parameters in config.sys instead. There are other improvements of course - it's all listed in the source files which are included as well.
Click to expand...

Fantastic!
 
BioMeanace and PC-Pine

BioMeanace and PC-Pine

It appears that the BioMenace lockups may be related to STACKS on the Tandy. As no other game seems to exhibit the symptoms of BioMenace.
PC-Pine still locks up when the ltemm.exe driver is loaded. If it is not loaded, PC-Pine is stable. No other application suffers from the sypmtom as PC-Pine:

Tested:
Bobcat (Lynx) - works fine
XFS 191 - works fine.
ftp - works fine.
Aracheo IRC - works fine.
PC-Pine - Reboots.

Wolf3D - Is a slide show, but can see the EMS.
Biomenace - Appears to see the EMS, with network card active, seems to think it can see 64 KB XMS.
MSD - Sees 640 KB EMS. 64 K XMS when Network Card Packet Driver is loaded, 2 MB EMS.

I don't have Windows 3.0 installed. I don't know if Deskmate can see EMS at all.
Checkit also seems to believe there is XMS when the Network card is active.
 
PCConfig tends to crash at 0264. (Runtime error) with ltemm loaded but Network card not loaded. 0264 is the base address for EMS card
Wolf3D seems to be the only game that can conclusively see the EMS.
BioMenace sees 64 K of non-existent XMS.
MSD sees 64 K of non-existent XMS. (Network card Disabled)
Checkit sees 64 K of non-existent XMS when Network Card is loaded only. Otherwise just the Conventional and EMS.

All other games seem to function normally with no crashes.
I don't know how to configure Dosshell to use EMS.
 
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PCConfig tends to crash at 0264. (Runtime error) with ltemm loaded but Network card not loaded. 0264 is the base address for EMS card
Wolf3D seems to be the only game that can conclusively see the EMS.
BioMenace sees 64 K of non-existent XMS.
MSD sees 64 K of non-existent XMS. (Network card Disabled)
Checkit sees 64 K of non-existent XMS when Network Card is loaded only. Otherwise just the Conventional and EMS.

All other games seem to function normally with no crashes.
I don't know how to configure Dosshell to use EMS.
The EMS Card uses D000 to E000
With the network card enabled, it registers a small UMB around 8K in size at CE00 to D000 - this is actually the network card.
128K of VGA Video Ram from A000 to C000
C000 to C600 I believe to be the VGA Card's Rom
E000 to F000 has a Rom (Tandy Rom DOS?)
F000 to F200 has a Rom
Network card has a base address of 0x280
EMS card has a base address 0x264
 
Zombie said:
PCConfig tends to crash at 0264. (Runtime error) with ltemm loaded but Network card not loaded. 0264 is the base address for EMS card
Wolf3D seems to be the only game that can conclusively see the EMS.
BioMenace sees 64 K of non-existent XMS.
MSD sees 64 K of non-existent XMS. (Network card Disabled)
Checkit sees 64 K of non-existent XMS when Network Card is loaded only. Otherwise just the Conventional and EMS.

All other games seem to function normally with no crashes.
I don't know how to configure Dosshell to use EMS.
The EMS Card uses D000 to E000
With the network card enabled, it registers a small UMB around 8K in size at CE00 to D000 - this is actually the network card.
128K of VGA Video Ram from A000 to C000
C000 to C600 I believe to be the VGA Card's Rom
E000 to F000 has a Rom (Tandy Rom DOS?)
F000 to F200 has a Rom
Network card has a base address of 0x280
EMS card has a base address 0x264
Click to expand...

I'll give pcpine a shot. I wasn't aware it used ems; are you using a specific command line to launch it?
 
To the best of my knowlege, PC-Pine does not use EMS.
If the EMS driver (ltemm.exe) is not loaded, PC-Pine will start and run.
I do not use any command line parameters.
P-Pine 3.96 communicates with an internal, LAN Dovecot server setup to offer unencrypted IMAP4 to LAN Nodes only behind a NAT.
 
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