The Tandy 1000 TL and QRAM

[Zombie]

I had taken a break from working on the Tandy 1000. I need some advice.

I have managed to scavange a copy of QRAM 1.01, and I'm trying to figure out just how to use it. My goal is to load TSRs like the Tandy's WATTCP drivers (Packet Drivers) and other things into the EMS memory card to free up Conventional RAM. Can anyone assist with this?

 

[Stone]

IIRC, QRAM is only really effective with the C&T chipset. Without that you're only going to get some peripheral advantages. A 286 might also be helpful. You might do better with USEUMBS which should work with any chipset as well as an 8088.

 

[krebizfan]

Which EMS card are you using? Unless the card supports EEMS or EMS 4.0, QRAM won't do anything. Also note that while the TL has a 286, the TL does not support extended memory so all the XMS techniques are unavailable. Try running Manifest and see if it shows any possible options to load high.

The best option is to check if the software being used has a EMS option. Not as effective as loading high since a small stub has to be kept in conventional memory.

 

[Zombie]

Its one of the Lo-Tech EMS cards. it has 2 MB of Expanded Ram. (Lim EMS 4.0)
QRAM can see the EMS card, and can even allocate pages. But it can't LoadHi.
It has 768 KB of RAM, 640 KB is usable as Conventional RAM. There is also a 256 KB VGA card installed.
What I want to do is able to load TSRs into EMS ram, like the Packet Drivers, and Deskmate, among other things. But so far, the only thing that can see the RAM is QRAM's EMS program, and Wolf3D

 

[krebizfan]

Lo-Tech cards don't implement the full EMS 4.0. It has come up in previous threads there.

What does Manifest show? It should list all the occupied upper memory regions. VGA uses 128 kB of address space and IIRC the BIOS another 32kB address space. The TL also has DOS and Deskmate in ROM; I am not sure how to overwrite those addresses with additional EMS windows. A single 64k EMS window for data may be the best that can be done. There are only 384k of upper memory addresses available and at least 224k are known to be allocated with even more possibly used by the ROM software, disk controller, and network card.

Deskmate does not list any EMS usage command line switch. Some network drivers did but I don't know if any of the ones you are using do.

 

[keenerb]

Its one of the Lo-Tech EMS cards. it has 2 MB of Expanded Ram. (Lim EMS 4.0)
QRAM can see the EMS card, and can even allocate pages. But it can't LoadHi.
It has 768 KB of RAM, 640 KB is usable as Conventional RAM. There is also a 256 KB VGA card installed.
What I want to do is able to load TSRs into EMS ram, like the Packet Drivers, and Deskmate, among other things. But so far, the only thing that can see the RAM is QRAM's EMS program, and Wolf3D

Use!UMBS.sys can use the 64kb EMS window on Lotech 2mb EMS cards as an upper memory block and let you relocate TSRs if you're running a version of MSDOS that supports umb.

 

[Zombie]

Lo-Tech cards don't implement the full EMS 4.0. It has come up in previous threads there.

What does Manifest show? It should list all the occupied upper memory regions. VGA uses 128 kB of address space and IIRC the BIOS another 32kB address space. The TL also has DOS and Deskmate in ROM; I am not sure how to overwrite those addresses with additional EMS windows. A single 64k EMS window for data may be the best that can be done. There are only 384k of upper memory addresses available and at least 224k are known to be allocated with even more possibly used by the ROM software, disk controller, and network card.

Deskmate does not list any EMS usage command line switch. Some network drivers did but I don't know if any of the ones you are using do.

Manifest does show the EMS as present.
A000 - AFFF VGA Graphics
B000 - B7FF - Unused
B800 - BFFF VGA Text
C000 - C5FF Says Video Rom
C600 - C7FF Unused
C800 - C9FF - Rom (Network Card)
CA00 - CFFF - Says unused.
D000 - DFFF EMS Page Frame
E000 - EFFF it says unused but I happen to know that is where the Tandy Rom boot is.
F000 - FFFF System Rom (Bios?)

Strange things tend to happen with EMS and the Network card:

PC-Pine 3.96 will hang establishing IMAP Connections to its Internal Linux IMAP server.
XFS191 for DOS will connect to the Linux PCNFSD instance on the internal network, but if you try and access anything you will get a "Drive not ready" error.