Socket3 wrote on 2023-01-07, 15:34:My XT is a Hyundai Super-16 running an 8MHz Siemens 8088 CPU.
I have a V20 and some oddball 10MHz siemens (SAB8088-1-P) but when […]
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My XT is a Hyundai Super-16 running an 8MHz Siemens 8088 CPU.
I have a V20 and some oddball 10MHz siemens (SAB8088-1-P) but when I installed them in my hyundai they both ran at 4.77/8MHz.
I figured I'd need to replace a crystal oscillator on the motherboard to get them to run at 10Mhz,
but I know very little about the super-16, and it might not like 10MHz so decided to leave it as it is.
The PC also has 640k of ram, and I'm not sure that's enough for GeOS, so I guess the XT is out.
Hi there! Your XT is fine, I think. And I think it will handle GEOS, too.
GEOS merely uses 8086 Real-Mode instructions, if I understand correctly. The 2 MHz difference doesn't matter much.
If you install a NEC chip, then you can run almost all programs that use 80186/80286 instructions (except Protected Mode).
That means that GEOS will still run, even if the bar for the minimum requirements was raised a bit in later versions.
Anyway, if you really want to use GEOS for something meaningful - for browsing the web, writing stories with the word processor, drawing etc.
Then it's highly recomment to get a little EMS card. There's the Lo-Tech card with 2 MB, for example, for less than 100 USD.
With a bit of extra RAM to work with, GEOS will run fine on your XT. You could even run it in Super VGA on the XT.
Normally, the VESA VBE 1.x drivers for ISA VGA cards are all 16-Bit Real-Mode (they work on my 286, VBE 1.x provides a Real-Mode BIOS interface).
So even if the built-in GEOS drivers for Super VGA cards fail, the VBE options in the "device manager" could still work.
All you need is a VBE BIOS. It can be installed from DOS in the form of a TSR:
Re: OAK OTI-037c - 800x600 mode ?
Of course, Hercules and CGA, work as well. Use what you like. ^^
That being said, I'm just a beginner when it comes to GEOS.
User MarkP knows much more about it, I think. I didn't knew about these GEOS links before, for example.
PS: You can use SmartDrive (/X parameter; read-cache only) or DoubleSpace/DriveSpace just fine on an XT.
I did try this myself with an XT+MFM HDD. The CPU overhead is there, but less bad than the usual performance impact by the slow HDD.
In fact, the compression/decompression causes less i/o transfers to the HDD, because data is more compact.
The data is also stored in a little but more intelligent way, I think. The actuactor movement might be decreased that way.
Here's a video for comparison. There are no noticable wait times if you launch a program or read a file.
It works the same as if no compression was used. MS-DOS 6.2x is really neat here.
Just needs special defragmention sometimes (dblspace /defragment or something).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XxOtHodSBU
Speaking of.. GEOS can officially work with MS-DOS 6. There's a patch file installed by the setup program.
It should work the same with MS-DOS 6.2x, thus. DOS 6.2x merely had an updated set of utilities and drivers.
The kernals of MS-DOS 6.0 and 6.2x are identical, as far as I know. Even DOS 5 is very very similar to them.
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