From: Nial Stewart (nials_at_sqf.hp.com)
Date: Wed Jul 25 2001 - 06:15:15 EDT
I'm an Electronic Engineer and have been developing
an embedded with a friend over the last year or two.
This project's nearing completion so I bought a
second hand 600E to use to download and analyse
data.
_Background to my problem_:
The software I've written is in TurboC and uses DOS
based interrupt handlers to drive the serial comms.
I'd like to keep this DOS based so people could use the
cheapest laptops for this and get reasonable performance.
When I first tried communicating with my project nothing
happened. As the Tpd's second hand I was worried that the
serial port wasn't working so openen a DOS based terminal
program and by sending the right characters to the device
I was able to get it to communicate with me. The physical
port must be working OK.
On comp.arch.embedded someone posted a URL to a routine
which checks through all the com ports in a system and
reports any problems. I tried this and got reports that
there were IRQ conflicts and that COM1 was using IRQ9
(it's normally 4).
Everything is set up properly for COM1 in Win98, it's
at the right address and is using IRQ4 (according to
98).
_QUESTION 1_: Are there known problems with using DOS based
software that directly drives the serial ports and uses
serial port interrupts? If so is there a 'standard' fix?
I remembered reading on the IBM support site that
there was an option in the BIOS for a fast boot where
the BIOS wouldn't assign interrupts if it detects a
plug and play operating system. I entered the BIOS
(F1 on startup) and couldn't see this option anywhere
so checked it's version number.
The BIOS installed is IBET22WW which from the driver
matrix for my machine looks like a _very_ early 600 BIOS,
not 600E. My machine type is a 2645-8A0 which according
to the support page is a pentiumII 366, but the BIOS
only reports a 266. It does however report the correct
machine type and serial number.
I downloaded the latest 600E BIOS and created the disk for
my machine. When I booted with it in A I got through
to the splash screen correctly, but then got a box saying
that the upgrade wouldn't work on my system, it was
locked and to press ctrl-alt-del to continue.
_QUESTIONS 2_:
Can a thinkpad 600E be loaded with a 600 BIOS?
If so how do I upgrade to the 600E BIOS?
Thanks for any help/pointers.
Nial Stewart.
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