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Reply 20 of 30, by Liveandlearn

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lihinian wrote:

I have a a couple of Tulip disks yes
I will make some img files from the tulip disks.
There dutch so might be dutch language which isn't strange since Tulip was a dutch company 🤣

Very nice! please do, I won't mind the dutch because I speak dutch 😎
See my main update post about the battery, allthough I'm still unsure about the "battery on a chip" being a real configuration on this board. See https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/T/T … DC-DT-TC38.html.

Well this system was my brothers and I had the exacte same one. Only difference I had a 540mb hard drive. We never had to change any bios settings. So you can program a flash rom with the diskettes or the main board had some sort of storage way like battery on chip. I have seen more people struggling on YouTube wiyh sff pc's with no interchangable battery. Like I said turning the system off now means next boot enter bios settings again. But after working on the system for a whole day it kept the bios settings a couple a seconds.

I saw that webpage already and it was the first time jumper 14 was explained. I think non rechargable means 3xAA battery pack / 4.5v wich don't need changing. Btw my cr2032 buyton cell battery on other systems last like 10-20 years so a 3x penlite battery pack will suffice.

Oh btw im dutch to 😜

Reply 21 of 30, by Liveandlearn

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V1.04 Ok this image was made on a 1.44 diskette.
i used vpc to copy it from image to a diskette using the diskcopy command in dos.

Good luck

Btw if it doesnt run from boot you can run the file DIAGNOSE.EXE
that should do the same

and v2.05 in on a 720k Diskette

not sure which of the 2 I used on my system.

Addition to update 4
how the hell did you get such poor amounts of memory,
can you share you config.sys and autoexec,bat ?

btw I always manually tune my memory manually. Takes a little time but much better
at least run a multiboot and use emm386.sys and himem.sys.

Attachments

  • Filename
    Tulip Diagnostics V2.05.7z
    File size
    371.65 KiB
    Downloads
    72 downloads
    File comment
    Tulip Diagnostics v2.05
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception
  • Filename
    Tulip Diagnostics Setup Program V 1.04.7z
    File size
    825.76 KiB
    Downloads
    72 downloads
    File comment
    Tulip Diagnostics v1.04
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 23 of 30, by lihinian

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Thanks for the img files and links to more tulip downloads. Haven't looked around closely at that site enough I guess 😀

About the memory, I used the ms-dos starting pack by phil, and modified it a little bit. Suggestions for tweaks are very welcome, have you installed keen4 on your system?
I spend quite some time trying out different settings. Best results I got was with qemm, without loading dos into upper memory.
Btw, the qemm stealthing setting gave more memory but messed up music, songs would stop or give hanging notes.

Filename
CONFIG.TXT
File size
976 Bytes
Downloads
58 downloads
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception
Filename
AUTOEXEC.TXT
File size
302 Bytes
Downloads
56 downloads
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 24 of 30, by tabm0de

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Sadly after my project i put the computer in storage, now days i only use my compaq persario 433 aio/pentium 166 tower.

Nice that you found a matching screen for the computer 😀

Another fun thing todo would be to add scsi cdrom 😀 i would have done it if my compaq wasnt the main retro pc now ( well i did it to my compaq since it doesnt have cd also 😉 )

naa, nothing yet...

Reply 25 of 30, by Liveandlearn

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lihinian wrote:
Thanks for the img files and links to more tulip downloads. Haven't looked around closely at that site enough I guess :) […]
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Thanks for the img files and links to more tulip downloads. Haven't looked around closely at that site enough I guess 😀

About the memory, I used the ms-dos starting pack by phil, and modified it a little bit. Suggestions for tweaks are very welcome, have you installed keen4 on your system?
I spend quite some time trying out different settings. Best results I got was with qemm, without loading dos into upper memory.
Btw, the qemm stealthing setting gave more memory but messed up music, songs would stop or give hanging notes.

CONFIG.TXT
AUTOEXEC.TXT

To use upper memory block you try to use the biggest thing first and then put in a smaller item etc. So:

First tip dont put anything in common in the config.sys boot menu. Tedious maybe but those are all small things that need memory. Put them in every separate menu item last.

Second i only see the emm386 used once with ram option. I use emm386 if different manners in all options and I use the monochome memory part which is reserved for the bios but not used.
Second to manually edit I suggest som longer names for when you edit much easier toward the future especially when you work on the autoexec file.
Then some games don't use soundblaster. Is have an option to boot without sb. And I have lan so bootoptions for that to.
Last soundblaster isn't loaded high which you easily can. Only point where i can't is when i load lan drivers in dos. There quite big unfortumate

I'll post my boot files in a moment. Need to boot up a pc with a cf reader.

Reply 26 of 30, by lihinian

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Thanks for the great suggestions, tried to implement as many as I could in my new configuration.

I now utilize the monochrome memory part in my main boot configurations. That in combination with DosMax made quite a big difference.
What I couldn't figure out is how to load my sound blaster driver in high memory.

Filename
CONFIG.TXT
File size
2 KiB
Downloads
48 downloads
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception
Filename
AUTOEXEC.TXT
File size
709 Bytes
Downloads
49 downloads
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception

MEM:
BKnmWfs.jpg
lvhkcOx.jpg
MEM /F:
zW9rflQ.jpg
RnFgLi9.jpg

Reply 27 of 30, by Liveandlearn

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For every item in config.sys you put devicehigh on front of it. And autoexec you put LH in front of it.
I use REM a lot to write some info.

This is my memory
20180731_210545.jpg

My tulip only has a soundblaster and a network card but the latter of the two isn't tested yet.

This is the autoexec.bat and config.sys. Stil finetuning since I first start to make the heaviest menu item first. Booting without sb for example just creates more memory so there isn't much reason to finetune the lesser items
I put the audio in an external file since for me its always the same
20180731_210635.jpg
20180731_210701.jpg
20180731_210716.jpg

As you can see a mess still finetuning.

I started with the files from another dos/win311 machine of mine.
This is my menu from the other pc
20180731_211037.jpg
AUTOEXEC
(As you can see I made loads of notes because in 6 months I will have forgotten which thing does what. For example how the prompt is changed)
20180731_211154.jpg
CONFIG
Same here for more emm386 options some explanations.
20180731_211235.jpg

MEMORY LAYOUT FROM OPTION 5 IN THE MENU
20180731_211122.jpg
20180731_211127.jpg

As you can see below the common items in your menu use memory to.

20180731_210620.jpg

Lastly is use mem in 3 manners

Mem /d /p for diagnose to see where which item resides in the memory.
Mem /c /p to quickly see all items in memory
And
Mem /f or /h
I forgot but it shows the amount of upper memory.

What I do is run nothing high then reboot.

Run mem /c and note all the items that i have loaded and the amount of memory used.

Start with config.sys

Then I load high biggest item first. Reboot check memory. Then second biggest and so forth.

After that same with autoexec.bat.

Right now the tulip has 668 under 1m which is plenty.

My other dos pc with the matrix prompt has enough aswell. But it really drops a lot running de network drivers otherwise im always above 640k. Which lets me run almost anything.

I have a few games which ask EMS memory so I have a specific option for that.

Last thing I love playing around with different prompts amd love to use the 50 lines screen so there is more info on it.

Reply 28 of 30, by Liveandlearn

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For everyone, any tips are welcome I'm quite new in memory management under dos.

And I prefer dos 6.22 out of nostalgia reasons. Same for using the cdrom and mouse drivers of that time. I could save memory with another dos version, and more modern and smaller cd rom and mouse drivers

Reply 30 of 30, by PD2JK

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lihinian wrote on 2018-02-21, 17:59:

Tulip TC38 machine

I like what you've done with it, my compliments. 😀

I would like to know if 33 MHz is possible, I have the same machine and maybe we can get it to run at 33/66/100 MHz with DX/DX2/DX4 respectively.

If you have time, can you make some photo's of the CPU? Maybe we need to relocate some resistors. Here is mine:

DSC_6989.JPG
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i386 16 ⇒ i486 DX4 100 ⇒ Pentium MMX 200 ⇒ Athlon Orion 700 | TB 1000 ⇒ AthlonXP 1700+ ⇒ Opteron 165 ⇒ Dual Opteron 856