4 Oct
2005
4 Oct
'05
5 p.m.
On Tue, 4 Oct 2005 21:14:57 +0100 (BST)
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:
There is a utility called 'hackrom' that I used to use to modify the
hard disk paramater tables on machines of that vintage. The software
pulls a binary image of the BIOS out into a file, let you edit the
table, and split to odd/even, and burn back to ROMs to replace the
original. You only had to open the case once to pull the stock ROMs and
plug in the new ones. I used it one time to shoehorn in a 15 meg hard
drive on a '286 system. You could basically 'replace' the parameters on
any table entry with your chosen new numbers.
Why did you need to add/overlay the BIOS to modify the parameter table?
Tony Duell wrote:
I am sure I described it a couple of weeks ago here, and I've not
downgraded [1] since then
[1] That is, to sowmthing without schematics.
OK, here you are again :
A much-hacked IBM PC/AT (8MHz system board). The mainboard has a 486
kludgeboard in the 80286 socket. I've added a couple of EPROMs and a
bit of logic to overlay the last 8K of the bios, so I could modify the
hard disk parameter table.
Actually it doesn't. I am looking at a
monochrome green screen at
the moment. OK, I do have colour monitors around here....
I know I've asked this before but I don't recall the answer. What
exactly *do* you use to connect to the Internet? There's an original IBM MDA board linked to a 5151
greenscreen
monitor. And a Colorgraph+ (Enhanced CGA card, with enough RAM for
640*200 in 8 colours, pity nothing supports it). That's linked to an
NEC monitor that was used with an Apple ][, which I modifed to add the
intensity line.
Good choice in the MDA card. Damned crisp characters and a rock steady
card. I went for years with nothing more. You don't have an IBM EGA
card for the color??