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MS DOS for XT computer / other stuff

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First post, by Stojke

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I have an Philips NMS 9100 XT Computer with 768kB of RAM.
I am wondering a few things about it, since i never had an XT computer before.

The specification is the following:
8088 Microprocessor 8MHz , 768kB RAM , Video 7 VEGA VGA 256kB

I am wondering which is the most fiting MS DOS operating system for an XT computer of such specification?
I am planning on playing ZZT only.

Also I am wondering is it possible to use an 1.2MB 5.25 Disk drive with this computers onboard controller?
What are interesting games i can play on such a computer? I have an MT32 and Sound Blaster CT1350. I also have an IDE-XT HDD controller, but i think the hard drive is dead (missing cap on the rotor, i made a thead about this).

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Reply 2 of 22, by Zup

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I guess MS-DOS 3.31a would be a better choice. It supports partitions > 32Mb and still has a small memory footprint.

I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...

I'm selling some stuff!

Reply 3 of 22, by Robin4

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I think you need MS-Dos 5.0 if you want to use the upper memory.. If you dont want that, the best option is MS-dos 3.31 (also having support for 1.44MB floppys.)

For using an 1.2MB 5 1/4 drive you need a high capacity floppy controller card.. (doesnt matter if that controller also supports 1.44MB or not..)

Iam also have a MIDI controller board to drive an Roland MT32 old version.. And also have a Creative soundblaser 1.5 1320C with CMS chips installed (more sound devices is not needed)

Which games are intressing is hard to say.. I think that everyone have its own games that he likes.. If you dont born in that period, i would recommend to find some and test them out.. Maybe you like it, or maybe not..

For me the ones i know are; space racer, outrun, tapper, elevator, pacman, frogger, Testdrive 1

Rocket lander (1982)

Ax91QtC.gif

Falcon (1989), Paratrooper, Subchase, digger, Pango, Space commanders. Alley cat, bounching babys, tic tac toe, Davids kong, Artic adventure, Sopwith,

~ At least it can do black and white~

Reply 4 of 22, by Stojke

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So MS DOS 5 is the way to go, ok.
So its not possible with out an HD floppy controller?, in that case im better off with two 3.5 drives, one 720kB and one 1.44MB.

Are there any VGA games for XT sustems? CGA games arent really interesting (Besides games like ZZT).

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Reply 5 of 22, by Zup

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I played Elf and Wing Commander on a Olivetti PCS86 (Nec V30 / VGA).

I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...

I'm selling some stuff!

Reply 6 of 22, by carlostex

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Robin4 wrote:

For using an 1.2MB 5 1/4 drive you need a high capacity floppy controller card.. (doesnt matter if that controller also supports 1.44MB or not..)

There is a way around that. All you need is a floppy controller that supports 1.44MB that either has BIOS extensions, or even if using one that doesn't there's a software TSR tool i used back in the day called "2M" which allowed to squeeze 2MB of data into a 1.44MB floppy. That tool includes some extensions that should allow you to have 1.44MB support on your system.

Reply 7 of 22, by Scali

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Stojke wrote:
I have an Philips NMS 9100 XT Computer with 768kB of RAM. I am wondering a few things about it, since i never had an XT computer […]
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I have an Philips NMS 9100 XT Computer with 768kB of RAM.
I am wondering a few things about it, since i never had an XT computer before.

The specification is the following:
8088 Microprocessor 8MHz , 768kB RAM , Video 7 VEGA VGA 256kB

I think I have the same one, or at least a similar one. Mine is a "P3105" model.
The VGA card is aftermarket I suppose. Mine has an ATi Small Wonder card, which is Hercules/CGA compatible.
Mine came with the original 3.5" 720K Philips floppy, with a special branded version of MS-DOS 3.21.
I can give you a floppy image if you want.

On the floppy there is also a tool to enable the turbo mode (it boots to 4.77 MHz, you manually need to switch it to 8 MHz). It's convenient for including in autoexec.bat.
I believe there is also a key-combination to switch the speed, but I don't know it offhand. I have the original manual though, so I can look it up tonight.

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 8 of 22, by jwt27

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I'd try FreeDOS first, there's a 8086 version of the kernel without FAT32 support. Although some ancient version of MS-DOS is probably better suited for memory-limited machines.

Here's an inexpensive solution to add RAM on 5150/XT class machines: http://www.lo-tech.co.uk/wiki/1MB-RAM-Board

Reply 9 of 22, by Scali

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jwt27 wrote:

Here's an inexpensive solution to add RAM on 5150/XT class machines: http://www.lo-tech.co.uk/wiki/1MB-RAM-Board

That card is mainly useful for real 5150s, as they shipped with 16K-256K memory (there are 2 motherboards, the first can only take 64K max, the second only 256K max).
Most clones ship with the full 640K of memory. This Philips is rather unique since it actually ships with 768K. I am not sure where the extra 128K is actually located though, and conventional software will not make use of it anyway (the range above 640K is reserved for ROM and memory-mapped devices, such as videomemory, network cards etc).

The only useful expansion past 640K for an 8086/8088 machine is via EMS. But the card you linked to does not support EMS as far as I can tell (it is a 'windowed' memory system: you have a 64K segment that is a 'window' to your memory. By writing to registers on the EMS controller you can move that window around in the expanded memory range. This circumvents the 1 MB address limit on 8086/8088 CPUs).

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 10 of 22, by Stojke

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Scali wrote:
I think I have the same one, or at least a similar one. Mine is a "P3105" model. The VGA card is aftermarket I suppose. Mine has […]
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I think I have the same one, or at least a similar one. Mine is a "P3105" model.
The VGA card is aftermarket I suppose. Mine has an ATi Small Wonder card, which is Hercules/CGA compatible.
Mine came with the original 3.5" 720K Philips floppy, with a special branded version of MS-DOS 3.21.
I can give you a floppy image if you want.

On the floppy there is also a tool to enable the turbo mode (it boots to 4.77 MHz, you manually need to switch it to 8 MHz). It's convenient for including in autoexec.bat.
I believe there is also a key-combination to switch the speed, but I don't know it offhand. I have the original manual though, so I can look it up tonight.

Interesting. Mine also has the original Philips 720k floppy drive, it also had an 5.25 floppy with an philips logo label on it but i broke it when trying to take it appart (a piece of plastic broke from the handle bar).
I would like that DOS image, becase everything i tried so far gives me an BOOT ERROR.

As for the graphics card, i bought it on the flea market a few days ago, thought its a better choice than ATi VGA Wonder 16 because its 8bit.

Also, do you have DIP Switch information? And a manual maybe?

jwt27 wrote:

I'd try FreeDOS first, there's a 8086 version of the kernel without FAT32 support. Although some ancient version of MS-DOS is probably better suited for memory-limited machines.
Here's an inexpensive solution to add RAM on 5150/XT class machines: http://www.lo-tech.co.uk/wiki/1MB-RAM-Board

That looks pretty interesting.

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Reply 11 of 22, by Scali

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Also, do you have DIP Switch information? And a manual maybe?

I do, but it's in Dutch (the MS-DOS is also a Dutch version, now that I think about it).
There's only a few DIP switches on the motherboard though, so I can just translate for you, I suppose.

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 12 of 22, by Stojke

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I found multiple versions of DOS 3.21 (for different systems).
I would still like the image, maybe one of those is the one you have.

Also i found info on dip switches (the link) but i would like more info on the computer as well.

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Reply 13 of 22, by Scali

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Stojke wrote:

I found multiple versions of DOS 3.21 (for different systems).
I would still like the image, maybe one of those is the one you have.

Here are the two Philips floppies that came with my machine: http://bohemiq.scali.eu.org/PhilipsP3105
They also include things for the ATi Small Wonder video card.
There is an XT-IDE controller on board. There's a WDHDINIT program included to initialize a HDD. I have not used it yet, but I want to try it with a CF-IDE interface later.

Stojke wrote:

Also i found info on dip switches (the link) but i would like more info on the computer as well.

What kind of info are you looking for?
There are 8 DIP-switches, which are as follows:

SW1-1: On: 8087 FPU not installed
Off: 8087 FPU installed
SW1-2: On: One floppy drive installed
Off: Two floppy drives installed
SW1-5: On: Parallel port disabled
Off: Parallel port as LPT1
SW1-7: On: Serial port disabled
Off: Serial port as COM1
SW1-8: On: HDD controller disabled
Off: HDD controller enabled at 320h-323h

Then these two are for memory configuration:
SW1-4 SW1-3
On On No memory
On Off 256K memory
Off On 512K memory
Off Off 640K memory

SW1-6 is reserved.

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 14 of 22, by Stojke

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I have an XT-IDE controller in mine as well, but i think the HDD is dead.
Can you take a look at this thread please : Click

Thanks for the disk images, i will definitely try them. And the indepth dip switch configuration (Memory).

I would like to know the usual interesting info about the computer it self, nothing special/technical.

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Reply 15 of 22, by Scali

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Scali wrote:

I believe there is also a key-combination to switch the speed, but I don't know it offhand. I have the original manual though, so I can look it up tonight.

The key combination is alt+left shift+right shift, by the way.

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 16 of 22, by Robin4

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Stojke wrote:

I found multiple versions of DOS 3.21 (for different systems).
I would still like the image, maybe one of those is the one you have.

Also i found info on dip switches (the link) but i would like more info on the computer as well.

You also can consider Compaq Dos 3.31. Works great on other clones too.
Then you have the benefit of 1.44 MB floppy disk capacity, and bigger 32MB> harddisk volumes.

~ At least it can do black and white~

Reply 17 of 22, by Stojke

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Still getting BOOT ERROR message.

The floppy is heard when its being tested and than nothing.

---

Edit

Seems that the floppy drive is dead, or maybe dirty.

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Reply 18 of 22, by Robin4

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Ill recommending to clean every floppy drive you are using again.. Also when the drive reads slow, clean it.. After cleaned its more faster..

~ At least it can do black and white~