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Everex RAM 8000 (EV-178)

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Nov 7, 2012
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Hi there.

I've just recently got hands on an Everex RAM 8000 board (EV-178).

I'm planning to use it in a Commodore PC40 system (AT-Compatible with an Intel 286).

The only document I've found describing the board is located at
www.student.nada.kth.se/~d94-tan/pckort/ever8000.txt

I've managed to get the EMM.SYS driver mentioned in the above document, but it won't find the board and hence refuses to load - and after some inspection using IDA I guess it's the wrong version, as Control-Ports mentioned in the above document don't match the ones probed by the driver.

I could not, however, find the "EV178.EXE" configuration utility; as the board's almost completely configured via an EEPROM and the utility, I cannot even tell whether it's set to EMS or XMS, 8 or 16bit mode etc.

Does someone still have the config-disk and/or manual lying around? I tried to use the card as XMS, which I would prefer - but that also does not work, so I guess it's configured to EMS.

Any help would be great!
 
Hmm, thanks for the hint, but unfortunately it doesn't. The two cards have different port-addresses to talk to, and I could not change them easily (I could try to patch the executable, but I don't think it'll help, as I don't know whether the communication with both cards is compatible). The utility also complains about the amount of RAM being to high if I try to enter 8192KB as max. available memory on the card.

If I try to use the card as XMS, is there anything else to do except entering the amount of memory in the BIOS setup and loading any appropriate driver, as himem.sys? (the question might be silly, I though I know enough about it, but after all I might just simply be using the card the wrong way...)
 
RJBJR said:
Looks like Chuck might have missed your reply. You can get the RAM 10,000 file here
Click to expand...

Yes, I missed it--generally I respond only to those things that show up on the "New Posts" button--and, as I'm sure you're aware, that "feature" is far from perfect. If you really need to whack me upside the head with a 2x4, please send a PM--I do get those.
 
Hi, there.

Finally, I got the card to work. BUT, I still don't have the utility. Fortunately, it was configured to use all available memory on the card as XMS.

The card had been previously configured to have the memory been mapped above the first 4MB, not 1MB. I wrote a small programm utilizing the LOADALL-Instruction of 80286 CPUs to access physical memory above 640 kB and checked the whole 16MB physical adress space of the system for valid pages, and found the card between 4MB and 12MB.

After this I soldered out the EEPROM from the card, and found only 3 Bytes (out of 1024 in total) beeing different from 0, and one of it containing the number 4 in it's upper nibble. This changed to 1 made the card appear from 1MB to 9MB - mission acomplished.

If there's interest in the program / the EEPROM-Image etc. please let me know.

Thanks for all your help on that!
 
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