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Old 286

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 2:36 pm
by jvas
Hi,
Sorry, if I'm in a wrong forum, I'm new here.
I have an Atari PC4. It is a 80286 computer equipped with an AMI NEAT BIOS. (the BIOS ID starts with "DNET").
My problem is that some of the BIOS parameters (e.g. installed memory type) cannot be set via the BIOS's setup, but only with an external utility called "NEAT.EXE". This is what I'm missing. Do you know somebody, who can help me to find out which of the CMOS's memory location need to be altered in order to set these BIOS parameters? I can DUMP the original BIOS, but my technical knowledge ends here...
Thanks in advance!
Cheers,
Jozsi

Re: Old 286

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 3:58 pm
by edwin
Try gsetup.zip (generic setup) as it seems to work on most AT 286 machines

http://motherboards.mbarron.net/download/

Re: Old 286

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2012 7:55 am
by jvas
edwin wrote:Try gsetup.zip (generic setup) as it seems to work on most AT 286 machines

http://motherboards.mbarron.net/download/
Hi,

I tried that, but I cannot set the "extended" BIOS parameters with that.
In the meantime I could find some information about this BIOS. Please find it attached. I think I can write a small exe with which I can set these parameters.

Re: Old 286

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2012 1:39 pm
by edwin
info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEAT_chipset

datasheet:
http://www.datasheetcatalog.org/datashe ... 9219_1.pdf

bits of source code:
http://git.redump.net/mess/plain/src/me ... e/cs8221.c

and maybe, just maybe, this puppy has the original setup disks:
http://www.pcmuseum.ca/details.asp?id=44
ask them...

And if you succeed in making the settings program, by all means publish it :)

Re: Old 286

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2012 2:21 pm
by jvas
edwin wrote:info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEAT_chipset

datasheet:
http://www.datasheetcatalog.org/datashe ... 9219_1.pdf

bits of source code:
http://git.redump.net/mess/plain/src/me ... e/cs8221.c

and maybe, just maybe, this puppy has the original setup disks:
http://www.pcmuseum.ca/details.asp?id=44
ask them...

And if you succeed in making the settings program, by all means publish it :)
Thanks,
I've found datasheet's pdf too (I'm still searching for info). I also sent a mail to pcmuseum (it was a good idea).
The only thing I still don't know, is which part of the CMOS is used during the boot process to set up the registers of the NEAT chipset. I dumped my CMOS, and there are 0 at every place where I though there had to be something .... But maybe the dumping routine is bad (since it doesn't recognize the BIOS type), I'll try to write one myself.

I'll definitely let you know the result of this research ;)

Cheers,
Jozsi

Re: Old 286

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2012 1:07 pm
by edwin
what program are you trying to use for the cmos dump?

Re: Old 286

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2012 3:35 pm
by jvas
edwin wrote:what program are you trying to use for the cmos dump?
I tried several ones, I don't remember their names + I wrote one myself. I got the very same output in every case. Why do you ask?

Re: Old 286

Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 12:57 pm
by edwin
Can you zip up the resulting file and attach it?

Re: Old 286

Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 1:30 pm
by jvas
edwin wrote:Can you zip up the resulting file and attach it?
Here you are ...

Re: Old 286

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 1:59 pm
by edwin
128 bits? That's not what i expected. I'll try and find something to make a complete dump of the bios/cmos area...

Re: Old 286

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 2:55 pm
by jvas
128 Bytes. I don't think the CMOS area is bigger. Or do you need the dump of the BIOS too?

Re: Old 286

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2012 8:10 pm
by jvas
I found the following program, which does the job:
NEATSET.ZIP
(11.53 KiB) Downloaded 764 times

Re: Old 286

Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2012 8:58 am
by edwin
Thanks for the feedback! Is there more stuff like that on the location? We always like to find vaults of old bios utilities...

Re: Old 286

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2012 9:29 am
by jvas