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The Tandy Returns

Z

Zombie

Experienced Member
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Apr 22, 2011
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125
The Tandy 1000 TL Returns. Well, I finally solved a contact issue that prevented it from turning on. My current issues are networking, and EMS related.
Special thanks to the Glitch Works for all his help.

The Tandy seemed significantly less stable and would lock up on some occasions when its network card was in use. I finally found out why. The Network card was using D400 which was in the middle of the Address space for the RAM Paging for the EMS card. Moving it to CC00 seems to alliviated some of it. There are still some problems.

1. PC-Piine 3.96 still hangs when the EMS card is loaded.
2. XFS 191 Seems to always think the remote volume is in a "Drive not Ready" state. This is new. It didn't do this last time.

Wolf3D detects the EMS RAM fine. But I can't seem to get anything else not expressly made for the EMS ram to make use of it like TSR Programs such as DosKey. LoadHigh is no help. So. Any suggestions how to fix this?
 
Zombie said:
The Tandy 1000 TL Returns. Well, I finally solved a contact issue that prevented it from turning on. My current issues are networking, and EMS related.
Special thanks to the Glitch Works for all his help.

The Tandy seemed significantly less stable and would lock up on some occasions when its network card was in use. I finally found out why. The Network card was using D400 which was in the middle of the Address space for the RAM Paging for the EMS card. Moving it to CC00 seems to alliviated some of it. There are still some problems.

1. PC-Piine 3.96 still hangs when the EMS card is loaded.
2. XFS 191 Seems to always think the remote volume is in a "Drive not Ready" state. This is new. It didn't do this last time.

Wolf3D detects the EMS RAM fine. But I can't seem to get anything else not expressly made for the EMS ram to make use of it like TSR Programs such as DosKey. LoadHigh is no help. So. Any suggestions how to fix this?
Click to expand...

EMS can't be used for device drivers, can it? You'll have to use the 64k EMS window as upper memory to load device drivers into it, which can be done with DR-DOS himem.sys or use!umbs.sys.
 
The Tandy can't use himem.sys. It doesn't have extended memory.
 
Zombie said:
The Tandy can't use himem.sys. It doesn't have extended memory.
Click to expand...

DR-DOS himem.sys can use the 64k ram window on most(?) EMS cards as extended/upper memory and load device drivers high. I am running it on my Tandy 1000TL right now.
 
The point is, I want to try and utilize the EMS card more.
It is a limitation of 286s, that you cannot run both EMS and XMS at the same time.
 
Last edited:
keenerb said:
DR-DOS himem.sys can use the 64k ram window on most(?) EMS cards as extended/upper memory and load device drivers high. I am running it on my Tandy 1000TL right now.
Click to expand...

Can you direct me to a Link where I can get said Memory Manager?
 
The EMS card decided it would just "stop working" after a problematic reboot with PC-NFS. There are now two blocks of Rom extensions in DC00 according to MSD.
 
Zombie said:
It is a limitation of 286s, that you cannot run both EMS and XMS at the same time.
Click to expand...

You can certainly access the first 65520 byte of XMS as high-memory (HMA) by ungating A20 on a 286. That doesn't interfere with anything related to LIM-EMS. I don't think the TL has XMS, so it's moot. But EMS and XMS as HMA can co-exist.
 
As suddenly as it stopped working, it started working again. PC-Pine 3.96 locks up when EMS is loaded.
 
Zombie said:
As suddenly as it stopped working, it started working again. PC-Pine 3.96 locks up when EMS is loaded.
Click to expand...

Seems like a classic example of ROM address overlap. You even mentioned diagnostics reported two devices using that same memory block, right?
 
keenerb said:
Seems like a classic example of ROM address overlap. You even mentioned diagnostics reported two devices using that same memory block, right?
Click to expand...

keenerb said:
Seems like a classic example of ROM address overlap. You even mentioned diagnostics reported two devices using that same memory block, right?
Click to expand...

I had the NIC running on D4000 but the EMS card ran at D000. So I changed the NIC to run at CC00. It cleared up all but two problems:
Pine 3.96 locks up if the EMS card is running. If I disable the EMS Drivers in config.sys, then Pine runs normally.
XFS 191 displays "Drive not ready" Status on remote Linux NFS Volumes. With or without the EMS card running. So, I can't share networked files with the Tandy, I'm not sure if the remote NFS server is the problem. It runs pcnfsd 1.6

D000 is the XT-IDE Controller.
E000 is the Tandy Rom.
C000 is VGA Video I think.
CC00 is the NIC.

From what I can tell, only Wolf3D can actually see the EMS. No other program I have has managed to actually utilize it. I don't seem to be able to load Device Drivers into it, I don't think DeskMate can see it.
 
I still need assistance fixing XFS 191 or finding alternatives.
 
EMS requires 64K of memory to act as the page frame. This defaults to C000, D000, or E000 but can be overridden by the EMS driver and put at any contiguous 64K area, although aligning to a segment boundary is typical.

You might have crammed too much into the system. Your upper memory probably looks something like this:

A000-AFFF: VGA graphics memory
B000-B7FF: unknown, B800-BFFF: VGA text memory
C000-????: VGA BIOS ROM, CC00-CFFF: NIC
D000-????: XT-IDE Universal BIOS
E000-????:
F000-FFFF: Tandy ROM

Use a program like Norton sysinfo (6.0 or later), Quarterdeck Manifest, Microsoft MSD, or InfoPlus to determine the start and stop of everything above A000 and that should let you consolidate where things are located such that you can configure the EMS card where it can put its 64K page frame.

I don't think you have any ROM at E000. That area is usually free. The Tandy TL/2 BIOS ROM is only 64K.
 
I have used MSD and a program called PC-config. GlitchWorks was the one to configure the card to Co-exist with the Hardle XT-IDE. (My Cousin burned out an IC on the card once and GlitchWorks had to repair it.)

I want to restore Maximum possible functionality to the Tandy. This means:
The Tandy should be able to Check E-mail from my Internal DoveCot IMAP Server I have setup. (The POP2 Services it did use are long gone)
I'd like to be able to Use NNTP with it again, by some means.
I want to be able to use NFS again.
 
Zombie said:
I have used MSD and a program called PC-config. GlitchWorks was the one to configure the card to Co-exist with the Hardle XT-IDE. (My Cousin burned out an IC on the card once and GlitchWorks had to repair it.)

I want to restore Maximum possible functionality to the Tandy. This means:
The Tandy should be able to Check E-mail from my Internal DoveCot IMAP Server I have setup. (The POP2 Services it did use are long gone)
I'd like to be able to Use NNTP with it again, by some means.
I want to be able to use NFS again.
Click to expand...

I'll power on my 1000TL this evening I have basically an identical setup to you, with a LoTech 2MB EMS card. Mine has not had any issues. I have it packed away since we're in the process of moving. I actually just telnet into a raspberry pi zero w for alpine/slrn/lynx and and tell myself it's an isp shell account, my EMS memory is used mostly for drdos TASKMGR memory, so I can do basic multitasking.
 
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