I'll start with the simple question first. The LCD was used to
display system messages via the BIOS. Everex and a couple of other
manufacturers put similar displays on their mid to high end systems.
The original BIOS was written by Phoenix and I suspect Wyse and Everex
modified it to support the display.
The problem is the PC won't boot from the hard drive because the BIOS
interrupts the normal boot process with an configuration error. The PC
doesn't have a keyboard and monitor attached to it. The only way that
I know is from the LCD display. The BIOS for this type of machine then
tries to boot from the A floppy disk expecting to find a 360 Kb floppy
disk to boot from. The setup disk would have an early version of DOS,
maybe DOS 3.3, and just the setup.exe and maybe an AUTOEXEC.bat that
would start the setup.exe for you.
The way the PC is currently configured is it doesn't have a keyboard
or a video card or commonly described as being a headless workstation.
It is the boot processor for a Stellar Graphics GS2500 Graphic
Supercomputer. They made similar Graphic Supercomputers model GS1000
and GS2000 and Departmental Supercomputers DS1000 and DS2000. They Wyse
was used to boot from a hard drive, a proprietary version of UNIX
called Stellix, to load a kernel image into the memory and kickstart
the supercomputer. The Wyse would then become the IO processor for the
low bandwidth devices and I think it kept time for the supercomputer.
The keyboard and mouse for the supercomputer were a serial mouse and
keyboard plugged into an 8 port serial board in the Wyse. The BIOS in
the Wyse BIOS doesn't support these. I think the Wyse also had on its
hard disk utilities for diagnostics for the supercomputer.
I've searched past news group articles for users requesting the same
utility. Some of them got a response to try a utility like 'gsetup'
a general AT setup utility but they reported back that they were
unsuccessful.
I have been able to dig up a Wyse keyboard, it has a molex connector,
same size as a telephone connector that plug into the 386 boards
instead of the normal round DIN connector. I'm going to try adding a
video card and the keyboard and see if I can get beyond the error
message.
I suspect that the other Wyse systems I have aren't in much better
shape because I have dug them up from service shops after they were
parted out. But I'll check before I get involved in playing around
with the main system. I'll also try and find out what the chipset is.
Derek
Franc Zabkar wrote:
Quote:
On 5 Sep 2006 11:32:49 -0700, dereks314@gmail.com put finger to keyboard and composed:
Quote:
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The inevitable has finally happened, the battery in my Wyse 386/16 hasdied and I need the setup and configuration program for configuring theBIOS. The Wyse is actually integrated into another system and is usedonly to boot the other system. I would replace it with something moremodern like a 486 but the other system makes use of the LCD display toboot.I have tried contacting Wyse tech support, while they are more eager tohelp me today than when I ran into similar problems back in 1992, theydon't have a clue about this system anymore.I have tried some of the setup programs that are still available on thenet but they lockup or don't seem to recognize the system correctly.I'm hoping the there is a tech out there still with a box of 5.25floppies of setup programs for proprietary systems. If anybody has thesetup disk or the setup program from the disk I'd really appreciateit if you could get me a copy.The full specs for that system are:Model Number: WY3216-01Part Number: 900291-02Serial Number: 15U29900329Thanks,Derek
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If you have a second system, then you could use a utility like CMOSBAK to save and restore the contents of CMOS RAM from a working machine. Or I can write you a simple QBasic program to do it. Otherwise, can you describe your problem in more detail? Is it that you can boot from a floppy but not from the hard drive? If so, then there should be a way to manually set the drive type using DOS Debug. I've done it before. I've also hacked a 386 BIOS to add support for new drive types. If you can save your CMOS RAM contents to a file (either 64 or 128 bytes), I may be able to analyse it for you. Do you know the chipset type? Is it Chips and Tech? VLSI Tecnology? Which BIOS are you using? Award? AMI? Phoenix? BTW, I once salvaged an old Wyse desktop case. I never did work out what the LCD was for. Can you enlighten me? - Franc Zabkar -- Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
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Setup/Config Utility for Wyse 386/16
Linear Mode
