stupid PC tricks

From: Don Maslin <donm_at_cts.com>
Date: Mon May 15 18:50:18 2000

On Mon, 15 May 2000, r. 'bear' stricklin wrote:

>
> Ok, a year or so ago I rescued a Compaq Portable II. Not exactly in line
> with my normal interests, but the owner had the right personality and
> convinced me to do it anyway.
>
> One thing she told me she had always wanted to do but never managed to get
> done was install a hard card in the box, which as she bought it, had only
> two 5.25" floppy drives.
>
> Friday I picked up an 80 MB Plus HardCard at a local PC recycler's. It was
> sold as-is, but for $1 I figured I'd take a chance.
>
> I'm having problems with it, and the problems I'm having don't seem to
> indicate a real hardware problem, but I'm not too familiar with hardcards:
>
> * The Compaq setup utility recognizes it as a "type 11" disk, but
> conveniently neglects to tell me anything about what this actually
> means. Thinking of it now, I should RTFM and see if this information
> is listed in any of the dead-trees docs I got with the machine.

My experience with hardcards, albeit somewhat limited, is that they
should not be setup in CMOS. Those that I have seen and worked with
have a controller with its own BIOS and are accessible or will boot with
no further action required. I have one now of 127mb that gets lazy
occasionally and requires booting from floppy and accessing for
DIR. Usually following that it becomes bootable.

The Hardcard has an accessible DIP switch on the top that allows setting
of some parameters, e.g. IRQ and BIOS address. I append some
information that I d/l'd from them that may be helpful.

                                                 - don
 
   [INLINE] [INLINE]
   Product Name: Hardcard IIEZ
   Serial Number Codes: GDF, GDG, GDH and GDJ
   Formatted Capacity:
   HC EZ42 42MB
   HC EZ85 85MB
   HC EZ127 127MB
   HC EZ170 170MB
   HC EZ240 240MB
   Average Access Time: From 19ms to 16ms.
   Interface: ST506; BIOS driven as IDE
   Driver Needed: ATDOSHC.SYS
   Must be installed in CONFIG.SYS as:
   DEVICE=ATDOSHC.SYS
 
   In order for the hardcard to work in a given system, the user must
   assign a unique IRQ and a BIOS address.
   The default for this card is IRQ 11, BIOS address C8000-C9FFF.
   SW8 is reserved for IRQ 14 (IDE MODE).
   Due to a bus timing issue, the hardcards are unable to work in most
   pentium and DX4 systems.
   Though they will work under Windows 95, they do so in `DOS
   Compatibility mode'. No enhanced mode driver exists at this time and
   there are no plans to produce one.
   If repairs are needed on this unit, please contact:
     * PCS
     * tel: (800) 653-3475
     * tel: (408) 263-4043
     * fax: (408) 263-4097
 
   IRQ
   ____________________________________________________
   ____________________________________________________
 
   IRQ SW5 SW6 SW7 SW8
   10 ON OFF OFF OFF
   11 OFF* ON* OFF* OFF*
   12 OFF OFF ON OFF
   14 OFF OFF OFF ON
 
   *These are default settings
     _________________________________________________________________
 
   ADDRESS SELECTION
   ____________________________________________________
   ____________________________________________________
 
   SW1 SW2 SW3 SW4 BIOS ADDRESS I/O ADDRESS DRIVE SELECT
   ON* ON* ON* ON* C8000-C9FFF* 170-177, 376-377 0
   ON ON ON OFF CA000-CBFFF 320-327, 32E-32F 0
   ON ON OFF ON CC000-CDFFF 170-177, 376-377 1
   ON ON OFF OFF CE000-CFFFF 320-327, 32E-32F 1
   ON OFF ON ON D0000-D1FFF 170-177, 376-377 0
   ON OFF ON OFF D2000-D3FFF 320-327, 32E-32F 0
   ON OFF OFF ON D4000-D5FFF 170-177, 376-377 1
   ON OFF OFF OFF D6000-D7FFF 320-327, 32E-32F 1
 
   *These are default settings.
     _________________________________________________________________
 
                                  [INLINE]
Received on Mon May 15 2000 - 18:50:18 BST