As Jake mentioned it is like the 82c320 is stuck in a mode, maybe address lines or the remap registers are somehow borked.... can you take a close picture of the 82c320 ?
And yes that same mem controller was used with some early 386 boards too and should support lots a ram....

I'll do that tomorrow, now I'm off to bed.
I've just done the dishes, not the Todd's way though (quote. let's see who catches it).

Pics of the VL82C320.
Everything looks good, all continuities with ISA are good. I didn't test RAM, that's for another round.

Pic of the area.

When I got the board there were 4x parity chips but no RAM chips.
Maybe it needs BANKS 0 and 1 to be populated, after it checks SIPP? I miss 2x RAM chips to populate it all... it drives me maaaaad!! 🤣

It has to be th bios not setting up the configuration of the chipset correctly.

All you can do is search for other boards with the same chipset on TRW and try to find a matching bios (single chip versiok of course) and try programming some replacement eproms to see if they give you any different options.

For one of my 286 boards (HT12a based) I found about 4 different AMI bios files which gave slightly different options to tune in the bios (Ems enable, shadowing, wait states, etc). Not all bios images gave me all options, so I picked the one which gave me the best tuning options (and not Ems, since there is a driver to enable that from Dos).

Nexxen wrote on 2023-10-22, 13:25:

Pic of the area.

When I got the board there were 4x parity chips but no RAM chips.
Maybe it needs BANKS 0 and 1 to be populated, after it checks SIPP? I miss 2x RAM chips to populate it all... it drives me maaaaad!! 🤣

Do you have any more memory installed than whatever is visible ?

and have you tried doing a benchmark with shadow enabled vs disabled.
A speed difference would indicate whether or not the board is using the 384K of ram above the 640K line.

If you have no SIPP modules, soldering wires to some simm modules can work, or if you have some loose SIMM sockets, you could stick those into the sipp sockets and insert a sim module into them for extra memory.

edit: nevermind those two points, I read the first post again.

weedeewee wrote on 2023-10-22, 13:41:

Do you have any more memory installed than whatever is visible ? […]
Show full quote

Nexxen wrote on 2023-10-22, 13:25:

Pic of the area.

When I got the board there were 4x parity chips but no RAM chips.
Maybe it needs BANKS 0 and 1 to be populated, after it checks SIPP? I miss 2x RAM chips to populate it all... it drives me maaaaad!! 🤣

Do you have any more memory installed than whatever is visible ?

and have you tried doing a benchmark with shadow enabled vs disabled.
A speed difference would indicate whether or not the board is using the 384K of ram above the 640K line.

If you have no SIPP modules, soldering wires to some simm modules can work, or if you have some loose SIMM sockets, you could stick those into the sipp sockets and insert a sim module into them for extra memory.

edit: nevermind those two points, I read the first post again.

How do I test with and without shadow? I sound like a semi digital illiterate, I know... 🤣
All contributions are welcome.

megatron-uk wrote on 2023-10-22, 13:31:

It has to be th bios not setting up the configuration of the chipset correctly.

All you can do is search for other boards with the same chipset on TRW and try to find a matching bios (single chip versiok of course) and try programming some replacement eproms to see if they give you any different options.

For one of my 286 boards (HT12a based) I found about 4 different AMI bios files which gave slightly different options to tune in the bios (Ems enable, shadowing, wait states, etc). Not all bios images gave me all options, so I picked the one which gave me the best tuning options (and not Ems, since there is a driver to enable that from Dos).

There is one, for 386 cpu for this exact same board. But it has an Intel chipset and is split into ODD and EVEN. No idea how to merge them.
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/?showIma … es=1&name=A3286

ISA chipset is Intel, sys is still the VLSI VL82C320.
If the ISA bus is swapped fro intel, the bios should work. Some traces are cut to allow 286/386 cpu check (by design). Maybe...

I tried some 386 but they all hang at 02 POST code, max best was a 386 that went as far as 06...

Nexxen wrote on 2023-10-22, 13:49:

weedeewee wrote on 2023-10-22, 13:41:

Do you have any more memory installed than whatever is visible ? […]
Show full quote

Nexxen wrote on 2023-10-22, 13:25:

Pic of the area.

When I got the board there were 4x parity chips but no RAM chips.
Maybe it needs BANKS 0 and 1 to be populated, after it checks SIPP? I miss 2x RAM chips to populate it all... it drives me maaaaad!! 🤣

Do you have any more memory installed than whatever is visible ?

and have you tried doing a benchmark with shadow enabled vs disabled.
A speed difference would indicate whether or not the board is using the 384K of ram above the 640K line.

If you have no SIPP modules, soldering wires to some simm modules can work, or if you have some loose SIMM sockets, you could stick those into the sipp sockets and insert a sim module into them for extra memory.

edit: nevermind those two points, I read the first post again.

How do I test with and without shadow? I sound like a semi digital illiterate, I know... 🤣
All contributions are welcome.

You could test shadow if you install exactly 1mb of ram likely 512kb dipps in bank 0 and 512kb bank 1 (sips).
Your bios does appear to have the bios or video bios shadow settings in the list but the chart only mentions relocation working with 1mb ram.

Many old 286 boards would only use 640k of the 1mb due to the high mem area consuming it.

In your case I would buy some fast 1mb simms and make them fit in this way you should be able to avoid the whole himem shadow problem

Nexxen wrote on 2023-10-22, 13:49:

How do I test with and without shadow? I sound like a semi digital illiterate, I know... 🤣
All contributions are welcome.

use a program like norton sysinfo, checkit, landmarksystem speed test, speedsys to get some benchmark numbers
then change the BIOS options video bios shadow & main bios shadow, test again, and compore the number before & after. prefereably with an indication of which is what, ie before is shadow off, and after is shadow on, or vice versa.

edit: the video bios shadow & main bios shadow options are clearly visible on all four photos available on this post Re: 286 BIOS - 640KB only but 1MB installed

Nexxen wrote on 2023-10-22, 13:50:

There is one, for 386 cpu for this exact same board. But it has an Intel chipset and is split into ODD and EVEN. No idea how to […]
Show full quote

megatron-uk wrote on 2023-10-22, 13:31:

It has to be th bios not setting up the configuration of the chipset correctly.

All you can do is search for other boards with the same chipset on TRW and try to find a matching bios (single chip versiok of course) and try programming some replacement eproms to see if they give you any different options.

For one of my 286 boards (HT12a based) I found about 4 different AMI bios files which gave slightly different options to tune in the bios (Ems enable, shadowing, wait states, etc). Not all bios images gave me all options, so I picked the one which gave me the best tuning options (and not Ems, since there is a driver to enable that from Dos).

There is one, for 386 cpu for this exact same board. But it has an Intel chipset and is split into ODD and EVEN. No idea how to merge them.
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/?showIma … es=1&name=A3286

ISA chipset is Intel, sys is still the VLSI VL82C320.
If the ISA bus is swapped fro intel, the bios should work. Some traces are cut to allow 286/386 cpu check (by design). Maybe...

I tried some 386 but they all hang at 02 POST code, max best was a 386 that went as far as 06...

Apparently Winhex will do it:

Re: MG 286/25MHz Harris Headland ht21 help needed

Also, Romwak https://github.com/freem/romwak

weedeewee wrote on 2023-10-22, 14:06:

use a program like norton sysinfo, checkit, landmarksystem speed test, speedsys to get some benchmark numbers then change the BI […]
Show full quote

Nexxen wrote on 2023-10-22, 13:49:

How do I test with and without shadow? I sound like a semi digital illiterate, I know... 🤣
All contributions are welcome.

use a program like norton sysinfo, checkit, landmarksystem speed test, speedsys to get some benchmark numbers
then change the BIOS options video bios shadow & main bios shadow, test again, and compore the number before & after. prefereably with an indication of which is what, ie before is shadow off, and after is shadow on, or vice versa.

edit: the video bios shadow & main bios shadow options are clearly visible on all four photos available on this post Re: 286 BIOS - 640KB only but 1MB installed

I thought it was some other shadow... like a specific address, segment...
That I'll do.
Tx

Nexxen wrote on 2023-10-22, 18:14:

I thought it was some other shadow... like a specific address, segment...
That I'll do.
Tx

Well, technically, the main bios shadow is F000:0 and the video one is C000:0. It just copies the roms to ram and makes sure all memory accesses to those locations get directed to the copy in ram which normally speeds up the bios routines that get accessed during operation of the computer.
If the ram is there and usable then you should see a clear increase in performance with shadow enabled.

weedeewee wrote on 2023-10-22, 18:24:

Nexxen wrote on 2023-10-22, 18:14:

I thought it was some other shadow... like a specific address, segment...
That I'll do.
Tx

Well, technically, the main bios shadow is F000:0 and the video one is C000:0. It just copies the roms to ram and makes sure all memory accesses to those locations get directed to the copy in ram which normally speeds up the bios routines that get accessed during operation of the computer.
If the ram is there and usable then you should see a clear increase in performance with shadow enabled.

Usually 384kb extended was a worth trade for
Speed + UMBs

I had an ancient gigantic NCR 286 system and it was frustrating to no end that the thing had 1mb installed but it didn’t allow any form of relocation, just UMBs

I tried a few BIOSes. Either no boot or recognizes DIPP ram, nothing else. Lots of options but no controller action due to ISA bus chip not being the one expected.

HT12 based boards, no surprise it won't work 100%

Maybe a code transplant could solve this riddle?

Bonsoir mes chers amis,

the CF I was using started having issues when copying files. Replaced, the EMS driver provided on the TRW page works.
I don't really feel bad, it wasn't my fault.

Now it's reading correctly and I have the shadow ram above 640 up to 1MB.
At this point I think it's the max RAM I'll get with this BIOS.

I'm not done yet, I'll test all the available BIOS images that work with this board (but only see 512KB, no SIPP).

Edit: in pics it shows 288 because I enable shadowing in bios of vid card and bios.

Settings, maybe something can be done to go above 1MB?
I tried defaults, so 1MB.

Cool though it is that you got EMM working, I don't think that's going to give you any extended regardless of settings

maxtherabbit wrote on 2023-10-22, 23:05:

Cool though it is that you got EMM working, I don't think that's going to give you any extended regardless of settings

I.e. I'm stuck with this? Any magic to unlock the RAM above 1MB?
At this point I'm calling it a draw and be happy with it, if it can't be done it can't be done.
Unless it can be done and the guy who knows hops in.

This takes me back to my father cursing like crazy before buying a new 386. It was probably that... I'll ask him tomorrow.
It's incredible how hazy things can be 30 years after the events.