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From: chris@egghead.East.Sun.COM (Chris Kordish - Norwalk CT SE/SysAdm)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: BIOS / memory question
Message-ID: <4011@eastapps.East.Sun.COM>
Date: 22 Jan 91 19:21:22 GMT
Sender: news@East.Sun.COM
Distribution: usa
Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc, Mt. View, CA, USA
Lines: 25
Originator: chris@egghead

hi there,
	Some time ago, I put an accelerator board in my "vanilla" IBM XT
BIOS sig date is 5/10/86.  The accelerator board the DAC Breakthru 286-12
once installed in my system now causes booting problems.  Upon booting
I see no screen output at all and my system goes "out to lunch" just hanging 
there doing nothing - until I re-cycle power and then it finally comes up.

Will changing the BIOS help - can anyone make any recommendations as to what
kind of BIOS to use - will I be losing any functionality ??

Another couple of questions:
1)  tis true the 8086/8088 can address up to 1Mb of memory
    but can anyone tell me what things that "non-conventional" memory
    is used for ( i.e. the 384Kb that i think holds screen addressing memory
    and some other things....what are these other things - can anyone
provide a list

2)  SLOT 8 on a "vanilla" IBM XT - Can I use any card in this slot ? Or is it
    dedicated for use with maybe an IRMA type of card or some other kind of
    communications/protocol transfer device.  Reason I ask is because
    I would like to place a 720KB floppy controller in this slot and want
    to know if this is OK ( all other slots are filled )modem,CGA,I/O-Clock,
    BREAKTHRU286-12,EMS RAM card,HD drive controller,FD controller,open