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From: gcw20877@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (George Wang)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.laptops
Subject: Re: Zenith SupersPort 286 and Expanded Memory
Message-ID: <1990Oct27.081548.16796@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 27 Oct 90 08:15:48 GMT
References: <05PS02gG03t901@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> <34540@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Sender: news@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Lines: 39

First off, Zenith or rather Groupe Bulls tech support is VERY lousy..
It is VERY hard to find anyone who can give an correct answer...

The memory between 640K and 1 meg *CAN* be used reliabily
as LIM 4.0 EXPANDED memory.. How much?? About 224K.. The max
should be 384K expanded meory but some of it is used as
overhead by Zenith's BIOS apparently... I am using the
224K currently as expanded memory using the EMS.SYS driver
that is included with Zenith's MSDOS 3.3+

It seems that the current BIOS revision is Version 3.2A
(Press CTRL-ALT-INS).. I only have 3.1C and THERE IS AN
MASSIVE BUG IN THE 320 X 200 X 256 color mode (also in 3.2)!! By default
EVERYTHING comes up in REVERSE video and there is NO permanent
way of putting it in the correct image... In the 640 X 480
X 16 graphics mode as well as TEXT modes you can use:

machine palette 7

but that only works for NON-256 color VGA mode.. If you try machine
palette 7 on the 256 color VGA mode it goes back to reverse
video.. This renders all 256 color applications almost useless
as everything is backwards... I believe the new 3.2A revision
fixes this problem by allowing a PERMANENT normal video lock
for 256 color mode with machine palette but NO ONE AT GROUPE
BULL has been able to confirm this.. Does anyone have the
latest BIOS level and gotten 256 color images to look right??

Please email.. Thanks
George
PS The folks at Zenith/Groupe Bull at the Chicago area HQ has
acknowledged this "bug" yet they just shrug it off... I hope there's a fix to this...

--
George Wang
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
(217) 332-4019
INTERNET: gcw20877@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
UUCP: gargoyle!igloo!gwang