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- Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
- Path: sparky!uunet!rde!ksmith!keith
- From: keith@ksmith.uucp (Keith Smith)
- Subject: Re: Coherent 4.0.1; some bad things
- Organization: Keith's Computer, Hope Mills, NC
- Date: Sat, 29 Aug 92 01:35:21 GMT
- Message-ID: <1992Aug29.013521.3370@ksmith.uucp>
- References: <9208120338.AA18525@relay1.UU.NET> <9208120959.AA01930@dalek.mwc.com>
- Lines: 75
-
- In article <9208120959.AA01930@dalek.mwc.com> "Coherent operating system" <COHERENT@indycms.bitnet> writes:
- >> 4) The installation failed repeatedly on my machine with the cryptic:
- >>
- >> prepare_gift: not enough memory for parameters (?)
- >> only 496 bytes are sent (?)
- >>
- >> I was rather surprised at the failure as this machine had had multiple
- >> successful OS installations (Coherent, MS-DOS, DR. DOS) before and
- >> never had any problems. After some assistance from MWC tech support,
- >> I was able to complete an installation only after extensive diddling
- >> with the CMOS parameter settings. What a pain! Among other things, I
- >> turned off the external 64 Kbyte cache, the internal 8 Kbyte cache,
- >> and both video and BIOS shadowing. Why? There was no need for any of
- >> this with earlier OS installations! Even with 4.0.1 installed, the
- >> "prepare_gift" diagnostic now flashes on a semi-random basis (max once
- >> per boot). The settings of caches do not appear to have a predictable
- >> effect on this. Furthermore, the install fails with the message "you
- >> have to type either 'begin' or 'install'"
-
- Same, Same 486/33 w/ OPTI Chipset AMI Bios? Drop to low speed and it
- will work. (16 Mhz, no cache, Shadowing irrelevant.
-
- >
- >Of the equipment we've worked with... our stuff at mwc, our beta testers',
- >our personal home systems... no one experienced these problems. To see
- >problems arise that we had no way to anticipate is not surprising, in
- >many respects, we've been through before... with IDE drives. We're
- >doing our best to work these problems out, but it is difficult to do so when we
- >can not duplicate the problem in house.
- >
- >We aren't making excuses, we are working on resolving this.
- >
-
- You need a Magitronic 486/33 with OPTI chipset. Barfs especially bad
- with an Adaptec Controller. Again All 386's I've tested have been fine.
- I have access to 3 "DIFFERENT" 486/33's here but all are actually the
- same motherboard with different names stamped on them.
-
- >4.0 has 2 curses libraries. libcurses.a is terminfo curses, libtermcap.a
- >is termcap based curses. Try to compile this with -ltermcap.
-
- Hehe, ala SCO nicht war?
-
- >> 10) Although advertised as "32 addressing compatible", 4.0.1 only
- >> handles 24 bits and will not access above 16 Mbyte no matter how much
- >> memory your system has. This has been discussed before, but I thought
- >> it might be fixed by now. For those with doubts about the need for
- >> fat memories, I suggest a review of the last decade's history and the
- >> growth in PC memory capacity. My machine allows for 32 Mbytes without
- >> any expansion cards (another 32 Mbytes there), and many motherboards
- >> allow from 64 to 256 Mbytes.
- >
- >IBM designed their (ISA) hardware such that DMA above 16Megs isn't possible,
- >hence, Coherent 4.0 has this limit. EISA machines are a different
- >story. We hope to have this limit removed for EISA machines for 4.1.
- >
-
- Yea, SCO has a lot of weirdness for maintaining buffers below 16MB to
- compensate for all this. This should not be a problem with Programmed
- I/O though, so I don't really understand it as the only DMA card you
- support is the Adaptec board. BTW. SCO also had this limit for a LONG
- time when using the 1542B.
-
- My only real gripe is the keyboard (we all have our pet peeves eh?)
- drivers. I LOVE the virtual screens. Great job, but I have some old
- enhanced keyboards laying around to run this on. This time we're good
- enough to leave it on a machine.
-
- BTW. MST SVR4 won't run on that 486/33/OPTI beastie either. It 0xE
- page faults. Might get hold of an AIR 486/33 and see if it will run on
- that. I dunno.
- --
- Keith Smith uunet!ksmith!keith 5719 Archer Rd.
- Digital Designs BBS 1-919-423-4216 Hope Mills, NC 28348-2201
- Somewhere in the Styx of North Carolina ...
-