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-
- Enhancing the Osborne Executive Enhanced BIOS Version 1.1
-
- According to OCC, their enhanced Osborne Executive BIOS
- prevents a premature display of BIOS time-out error messages
- while using printers with internal print buffers. This is only
- partially true. The delay value, DELAY0, is reset after every
- timeout to the value you supplied with the new SETUP command, but
- the initial timeout value remains at five seconds. To change the
- initial value, I recommend the following steps, using DU-V86
- which can be found on the -FOG/EX1.006 disk.
-
- Enter DU, logon to a disk containing CPM3.SYS, and get a map
- of the disk by typing M. A typical map line might be:
-
- A0-AF 00 CPM3 .SYS 00 : B0-B1 00 CPM3 .SYS 01
-
- What we really want to know is where on the disk the CPM3.SYS
- file starts. On this disk it starts with Group A0. The sector
- we want to change is 5 groups and 7 sectors or 2FH sectors from
- the start of the CPM3.SYS file, or in this case, it is group
- A5:07. Enter:
-
- GA0;+2F;D
-
- to display the sector of interest. CPM3.SYS will probably start
- at a different location on your disk, substitute the first group
- listed in the map for the A0 in the above command.
-
- The last line of the displayed sector should read:
-
- 70 03CD2EE4 C118DF01 3A06E6B7 2008C5CD *.M.dA._.:.f7 .EM*
-
- If it doesn't, then you don't have the latest enhanced CPM3.SYS
- from OCC or you didn't enter the command correctly. Look at the
- map again and make sure you have found the first entry of
- CPM3.SYS in the map.
-
- If the last line of the displayed sector matches that above
- then you have found the correct sector. The eighth byte, 01
- above, is the byte we want to change. A value of 01 gives a 5
- second timeout, I changed mine to 78H to give a 600 second
- timeout. To do this, enter:
-
- CH77,78;W;X
-
- DU will update your disk and exit. Reboot the system with the
- updated disk and verify that the first BIOS timeout error now
- takes much longer than 5 seconds. If so, you've now fixed the
- timeout bug!
-
- John M. Blalock
- PO Box 39356
- Phoenix, AZ 85069
- (602) 993-4604
-