ISO: Software Diagnostics for (8-Bit) IBM Clones

[jjandersoj]

Hi Guys,

I've been poking around looking for a general purpose diagnostic for IBM PC Clones.

I have used the (True) IBM PC Diagnostics 1.0... it's a bit too specific to the IBM PC 51XX.

I specifically need to exercise my dram chips.

I have a Diagnostic Rom (Supersoft), but it errors out if you don't have 640K, I have 512K.

Was just wondering if anyone had any leads?

John-A

 

[chris_nh]

http://minuszerodegrees.net/software/software.htm

A lot of folks use Checkit. There are some good tools available at the page above

 

[Stone]

CheckIt will do what you want but you must have more than 256k.

Since you have 512k you should be OK with it.

 

[Ruud]

Just an idea: create a bootable floppy that just does one thing, load your test program and run it. It should be doable. In times I cannot access my hardware, I am working on software projects. One of them is CBM-DOS. It is a fun project and completely written from scratch. So the base for this idea is there.

My question: what should such a program be capable of? Testing the memory is obvious. Other ideas: read/write testing of FDDs and HDDS.

Please shoot

 

[chris_nh]

I saw somewhere the other day, a piece of easy BASIC code for doing a memory test. I can't seem to find it now, but basically it was just a for-next loop which iterated over memory addresses using peeks and pokes. This would be possible even for a 64k 5150 machine. If I ever find that piece of code again I'll post it... maybe someone else knows about it too an could share.

 

[jjandersoj]

Thanks again guys on the Checkit recommendation. I was able to weed out my my dead Mostek 4164-150's.