NewDeal Technical Support Document 278

• a 286, 386, 486, or Pentium processor
• CGA, EGA, Hercules, or VGA video display
• a hard drive with at least 10 MB free space
• A mouse or other pointing device is recommended, but not required.

This document details some issues that NewDeal's technical support team has encountered with specific brands and models of computers and computer peripherals.

• Desktop Computers
• Notebook or Laptop Computers
• Disks and Drives
• Processors
• BIOS
• Serial Ports
• Keyboards
• Memory
• PCMCIA
• Pointing Devices
• Video
• Miscellaneous

Desktop Computers

Installation Problems on Early Clones

If you have trouble installing NewDeal on an older clone computer, try turning off the computer's turbo mode and letting the machine run at the slower speed while installing. You may then turn turbo back on and NewDeal will run okay.

Packard Bell Computers

Distorted Printouts
Some older Packard Bell computers were reported to have a problem with the printer port which causes it to build up static that interferes with proper printing. The symptom is that every second or third page has white gaps or missing information. Replacing the printer port is one solution.

IBM PS/1

1. boot from the ROM disk (drive D:), which is the default
2. boot from the hard disk (if it's got one)
3. boot from a floppy (by pressing ALT+SysRq)

Mouse Trouble
If you have trouble with the mouse on a PS/1, try moving it from the mouse port to a serial port and try the Logitech Serial driver. If the trouble persists, try the mouse on a different computer or try a different mouse to ensure that the mouse is not physically broken.

If the PS/1 mouse driver beeps unexpectedly, try running NewDeal from the DOS prompt (not from the PS/1 Quadrant).

DTR-1 Dauphin

Toshiba T100X

Toshiba 1000SE or T1200HB

A work around is as follows: before running NewDeal, insert a formatted disk in A: (or B:) and switch to A: (type A: at the DOS prompt). Examine the GEOS.INI file to make sure that the line "waitpost = false" exists in the [system]. Then start NewDeal.

If you want to format a floppy on these machines, you may need to have accessed a floppy in the drive before running NewDeal. Simply doing a DIR A: at the DOS prompt should work for this purpose. If you don't access the drive before running NewDeal, you may be given formatting options as if the disk were a 360K drive, instead of the 720K drive it is.

Toshiba T1600

Toshiba 3200 With Monochrome VGA

AST GRiDpad 1910

1. Use the AT&T6300 driver for video.
2. For the pen you need the PENMOUSE.COM driver for the 1910. You can download it from AST's BBS or from CompuServe or elsewhere on the internet. Load that driver before you load NewDeal. This is essentially a mouse driver for the pen on most Grid systems.
3. You might want to create a batch file like this:

   @echo off
   penmouse
   loader %1 %2 %3 %4
   penmouse /r
   

   That way, the penmouse driver is loaded before you run NewDeal and unloaded when you quit.
4. In NewDeal, choose the "Absolute Generic Digitizer" mouse selection and it will work great. Takes a little practice to do pen taps for button presses but it does work.

Leading Technology 6800SX

Technical explanation:
All PCs have a chip called an interrupt controller (aka 8259, aka PIC), and AT-class machines contain 2 of them, one acts as an arbiter between the various IRQ lines and the single interrupt line the CPU accepts. The 8259 is what gives the various IRQ levels their ranking.

Because the controller is separate from the CPU, it cannot know when the interrupt it signaled to the CPU is done being serviced, unless the CPU tells it so. There are two commands the 8259 accepts to tell it an interrupt is done: the General End of Interrupt (EOI), and the specific EOI. The general EOI tells it the highest-priority interrupt that's in-service is now complete, while the specific EOI reports when specific other interrupt levels are complete.

On the Leading Technology 6800SX, the specific EOI command is non-standard and the machine doesn't understand when NewDeal 1.2 sends the command, so after the first timer interrupt runs, it never lets a new interrupt get to the processor and the computer locks up completely.

Newer versions of NewDeal have not been specifically tested on the Leading Technology 6800SX.

Tandy 1000 TX and SCSI IDE Smartdrive

Tandy 1000 S1/2

SET COMSPEC=C:\COMMAND.COM

Tandy 4000

Texas Instruments TIPC

Delta Gold and DOS 3.33

Macintosh and SoftPC 3.0

Sharp PC 6220

IBM PC Jr

One user is running NewDeal successfully on a customized PC-Jr using the /s parameter. The PC-Jr ships with only 256K, no hard drive, no expansion slots, and an incompatible keyboard. He has added some kind of expansion board, a SCSI hard disk, and 101-key keyboard all from "PC-Enterprises." He also has a shareware program called JRCONFIG (by Larry Newcomb) that reallocates video RAM outside standard RAM. He has allocated 32K to video RAM. He says IBM makes products equivalent to all of these PC-Enterprises components. However, he seems to be the only person so far who has gotten it to work. He's using DOS 3.3

PC-Enterprises is a company which makes hardware upgrades for the IBM PC-jr. They have a BIOS compatibility cartridge that fixes many of the BIOS problems on the Jr, too.

ZEOS Computers

When you select interrupt level 5 or 7, NewDeal attempts to talk directly to the I/O card for speed but, due to the hardware design, the communication fails. This happens on several brands of computers, not just ZEOS. Windows also requires the use of BIOS or DOS on these computers.

Notebook or Laptop Computers

Leading Edge Laptop Screen Blanker

Leading Edge DLT

GRiD 1810

AST Premium Exec laptop

A customer installed DOS 5 on an AST Premium Exec laptop and had a lot of problems (not just with NewDeal). AST technical support recommends against using MS DOS 5.0 on that system.

POWER.EXE

CompAdd Express 325NXL, Black Edges

The problem seems to be in the computer's video BIOS. You can work around it by running C:\UTIL\SETUP (the computer's SETUP program) and switching the monitor setting from CRT to laptop and back to CRT again.

NEC ProSpeed

mode co80

NEC Multispeed-HD Laptop

Instructions:

Before running NewDeal, disable the NEC pop-up utilities by entering this command at the C: prompt:

KILL64OR

KILLPOP

Then disable the screen blanker by entering the command:

EL ON

Explanation:

The pop-up utilities are built into the Multispeed's hardware and will reload every time the computer starts up, so you must run killpop every time you re-boot the computer. Otherwise, these utilities will completely prevent NewDeal from loading.

The Multispeed has a back lit LCD screen, whose back lighting normally turns off after 1 minute to save power if no key is pressed. Since NewDeal intercepts keystrokes before they reach BIOS (and thus before this screen dimmer detects them), the EL ON command is needed to disable the screen dimmer.

To turn the screen dimmer back on, type the command:

EL x

Now install NewDeal normally. If you have your printer and mouse (and mouse driver) correctly installed on the Multispeed, the installation should go smoothly.

• KILL64OR disables certain Multispeed ROM TSR programs that may interfere with loading NewDeal. (They remain disabled until you enter COLD at a future C: prompt)
• KILLPOP disables the Multispeed's ROM POP application programs, which also may interfere with loading NewDeal.
• EL ON will give you a screen message that the LCD's backlit screen is On and functioning OK.
• EL 10 tells the Multispeed to leave the screen backlit for a full 10 minutes before automatically turning the backlight OFF (that's 10 minutes if there hasn't been a key touched).

Philips Maxnavox Metallis Notebook

\video\eagle fast

Standby Mode
When running NewDeal, the standby mode of the Metallis laptop causes the real-time clock to lose time. This happens in NewDeal but not at the DOS prompt.

BIOS
If you have a Philips Metallis 386 SX machine that appears to turn itself off while running NewDeal and other programs, you may need to upgrade the BIOS.

Gateway 2000 Handbook Sub-Laptop

PCMCIA Drives

However, each make and model of slot uses its own software drivers. While there has been a move toward standardization of drivers in recent years, many slots, especially early slots, use very proprietary drivers. For this reason, NewDeal cannot guarantee compatibility and support for all PCMCIA slots and PCMCIA devices. However, if you can access the device from a DOS prompt, then NewDeal will probably recognize it, too.

If NewDeal does not recognize your PCMCIA card, make sure a card is in the slot when you start NewDeal. With certain slot drivers, NewDeal may not see the slot unless there is a card in it.

If that doesn't work, try to access the card from the DOS prompt or from another DOS-based software. If you use Windows, you might be loading a Windows driver for the slot that does not provide support for DOS applications. If so, you may need to locate and install the DOS drivers for the slot. Check any diskettes that came with the slot or check with the manufacturer of the slot for DOS drivers.

Drive Mounting Screws Too Tight

Parking Your Hard Drive

If you are using an older hard drive, you may want to use a drive parking utility. First a brief note on when and why to park your hard drive. When you turn off your computer, your hard drive is probably still ready for action with the read/write heads just hovering somewhere over the section of the disk that contains data. Most hard drives have the ability to park the heads, moving them to an empty area on your drive and locking them into place. This prevents any possibility that they may bounce around and collide with the disk, cause scratches or other physical damage. You should park your hard drive whenever you transport your computer. There are many utility programs that will do this for you.

Because laptops are moved so much, it's particularly important to park the hard drive.

For an easy exit from a NewDeal product and to park the hard drive heads for safety, try this. Put a parking utility in your world directory. Create a launcher for a better looking icon if you wish.

Double click on your park icon and NewDeal will drop to DOS and park the hard drives. Turn off the computer and away you go. When you turn on the computer and enter the NewDeal software again it will bring everything back just as you had it before. No mess no fuss, everything up and running just how you like it.

JDR Micro Controller

Optical Drives

Floppy Disk Trouble, Bus Mouse, Boot Sector

The error message "no or unformatted disk in drive" usually comes about because there is some non-standard code in the boot sector of the disk.

Concept Technologies Disk Controller

The Concept Technologies disk controller requires this line in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file:

fd/load/small>nul

Bernoulli Boxes

The /w flag can be passed to RCD.SYS (version 7 or earlier) to allow NewDeal version 1.x to write to the boot sector. IOMEGA has a prohibition on writing to the boot sector due to a bug in MS DOS 4.0 where creating a directory right near the end of a 32 MB partition can cause DOS to wrap back around and overwrite the boot sector, which makes the disk non-bootable. Since the bug doesn't exist in DOS versions other than 4.0, users should only need to add this flag for DOS version 4.0. The resulting CONFIG.SYS line would look like this:

device = rcd.sys /w

Sysgen MobileDisk

Plus Passport Removable Hard Drive

In newer versions of NewDeal software, try specifying a hard drive type for the disk drive, by adding a line like this to the [system] section of the GEOS.INI file:

drive d = 65535

Panasonic DOS 3.3021

NEC CD Express

mscdex /d:tslcd /l:d /m:10

Magnavox HeadStart/SX

If you get a "Critical error: general failure" message when formatting reaches 98% (which is when the volume label gets written to the disk), choosing A to abort usually allows the operation to succeed. You can often get around this by putting a formatted disk in the drive and clicking the drive icon before attempting to format another disk of the same size (the drive is a 1.44 MB drive and you need to have looked at a disk in whatever format you would like the new disk to be in that drive before you attempt the format). This problem is fixed in versions of NewDeal newer than 1.2.9.

Technical explanation:

1. The HS/SX hard disk is 40 MB, meaning its device driver has the attribute bit set indicating it accepts 32-bit sectors, rather than the 16-bit sectors used before DOS 4.0. Because of this, NewDeal kernels before 1.2.8 get confused and go through DOS to write the boot sector for the new disk. The DOS device driver decides to go look for a volume label in the uninitialized junk that is the root directory of the new disk (in order to see if you've changed disks on it), finds no volume label at all (the sectors are all F6 bytes) and declares that an invalid disk change has taken place. NewDeal version 1.2.8 properly checks to see if the drive contains removable media and the sector being written must be on the 0th track and then uses BIOS to write the sector, rather than DOS, allowing a proper 0-initialized root directory sector to be written before DOS is actually asked to write a sector for later tracks.
2. When formatting a disk for DOS versions 3.2 or later, NewDeal instructs the DOS device driver about the format of disk it is to create. NewDeal saves the previous format the device driver thought it was accessing, and restores that format when the new disk has been formatted. . . almost. Unfortunately, it restores the format before it writes the new volume label, and a number of device drivers aren't clever enough to recognize this foolishness, so they attempt to write the volume label assuming the disk is the wrong format and fail miserably. Telling the subsequent critical error to abort the operation causes DOS to rebuild its idea of the disk geometry and allows it to properly write the volume name.
3. Starting with version 1.2.9, NewDeal properly writes the volume label before restoring the previous geometry.

Infochip EXPANZ Disk Expander Card

Tandy's MLPART.SYS drive partition

Third Floppy Drive and Stacker

1. The AUTOEXEC.BAT file created by Stacker had to be changed to a single line file that launched the AUTOEXEC.BAT on drive E:

   E:AUTOEXEC

2. The swap statement in the CONFIG.SYS file had to be changed to C: E:
3. It was necessary to have the device driver for the third floppy drive in the root directory of both drives C: and E:.
4. Also, it was necessary that the device driver statement for the third floppy drive be listed before the two Stacker device statements.

Write Protected Disk

In order to see if the disk is write-protected, NewDeal looks at the disk handle for the drive with the top-level directory on it and sees if the disk is marked as writable in that disk handle. If it's not, an error is generated. What's a disk handle? Glad you asked.

In order to deal with floppy disks and the possibility that a user could have two applications running each with a file open to a different floppy disk in the same drive, NewDeal keeps track of individual disks (including hard disks) by means of a disk handle. This disk handle contains several pieces of information, including the name of the disk, the type of disk, in what drive it was encountered, a unique 32-bit ID number (that it gets from the boot sector), and a flag telling if the disk is writable. A disk handle is created when the software tries to access a disk for any reason. Applications do this when the user saves a file on a floppy disk, and the system software does this for all fixed disks at startup.

There are four things that can cause NewDeal to claim a disk is write-protected when it isn't:

1. NewDeal may just not see the drive. this is true with some networks because they work by intercepting all calls to DOS by applications (such as us) and seeing if they pertain to it (if the call doesn't deal with one of the network drives, the network driver just passes the call on to DOS to let it handle it). If NewDeal doesn't see the drive, when the kernel goes to register the drive on which it found its top-level directory, the registration produces a disk handle of 0, meaning it couldn't be registered. This value is important. Hang on.
2. NewDeal may see the drive, but when the registrar reads in the boot sector (which normally contains a description of the disk geometry--the number of sectors in a track, the number of tracks, etc.), the sector doesn't look like it contains valid information, or at least it's not in a format the kernel understands. Again the registrar returns a disk handle of 0, as the volume isn't compatible with NewDeal's disk tracking system.
3. The NewDeal kernel may see the drive, but finds it's actually an alias for another physical drive and decides to ignore it. Some partitioning software may arrange to have this indication returned for all partitions of a disk other than the first one. Again the registrar returns a 0 disk handle since it doesn't think the drive exists.
4. The disk driver may let NewDeal read the boot sector and it's in a valid format, but it won't let NewDeal write to the boot sector. NewDeal doesn't actually write to the boot sector of a disk, but it checks to see if it can. There may be a virus-scanner that's forbidding access to the boot sector or a disk compression software like Stacker may have found errors on the disk and write protected it to prevent any further corruption. The simplest explanation for a floppy disk is that the write protect tab has been enabled.

RLL

Processor Identification

Each new member of the 8088 processor family has defined additional bits in this register. For example, the 8088 uses only 12 of the 16 bits in the register, with the high four bits always being read as 1, while the 80286 defines three of those bits, but they're always 0 when operating in real mode, so if the high four bits are 1, you know the processor is an 8088.

The determination of whether the machine is an XT or AT or PS/2 is based on a set of bytes located at the very end of memory in ROM. These are ostensibly standardized, but in this industry, anything is possible.

AMD chips, slow printing

Crashes On Early 486 Computers

If you are familiar with the internal components of a computer, take off the computer cover and look. If the 486 processor chip has no heat sink or fan, consider installing one. If you are unfamiliar, have the computer checked by an experienced friend or by a computer repair shop.

NEC V20

AboveDisk by Above Software

DTK 286 BIOS

AT&T 6300, AT&T BIOS

CHIPS-SCAT BIOS

MR BIOS

MR BIOS is manufactured by SmartMicro Technologies Inc, 143 Triunfo Canyon Road, Suite 103, Westlake Village, CA 91361, phone (800) 266-1576, fax (805) 371-0012. Price is approximately $60 to $90.

Serial Ports

COM Port Disappears

ANSWER: When NewDeal loads its serial-port device driver, the driver runs through the ports found by BIOS and attempts to provoke each one to interrupt the CPU so it can determine at what interrupt level the port is operating (IRQ 4 is typical for COM1 and COM3, while INT 3 is usual for COM2 and COM4). There's a gate between the 8250 and the I/O bus that must be opened to allow the interrupt request from the 8250 to make it to the CPU. On some systems, there's something screwy in the system such that unless the gate is opened before NewDeal starts, the initial interrupt never makes it to the CPU, so the serial driver thinks it can't deal with the port.

IBM VGA and 8514

Tandy 3000 HD and Serial Ports

Apparently, the serial port was non-standard and NewDeal was causing the Phoenix BIOS on the machine to generate this error message:

Unexpected hardware interrupt 0D at XXXX:XXXX
Type (R) to reboot

We were able to work around the problem by zeroing out the serial port addresses, preventing NewDeal from trying to check the ports. First we created a text file named PORTFIX.DAT, containing these two commands for debug:

e40:0 0 0
q

c:\dos\debug < c:\portfix.dat

Keyboard Drivers

• Bilingual Canadian Keyboard
• Belgian Extended Keyboard
• CAN/CSA-Z243.200-91 Keyboard
• Danish Keyboard
• Danish Extended Keyboard
• Dvorak Keyboard
• French Keyboard
• French Canadian Keyboard
• French Extended Keyboard
• French PS/1 Keyboard
• German Keyboard
• German Extended Keyboard
• Italian Keyboard
• Italian Extended Keyboard
• Norwegian Keyboard
• Norwegian Extended Keyboard
• Portuguese Extended Keyboard
• Swiss-French Extended Keyboard
• Swiss-German Keyboard
• Swiss-German Extended Keyboard
• Spanish Keyboard
• Spanish Extended Keyboard
• Swedish Keyboard
• Swedish Extended Keyboard
• Tandy 1000 Keyboard
• UK Keyboard
• UK Extended Keyboard
• U.S. Keyboard

Acer 900PC286 Keyboard 101A

Focus Electronic or 8001 Keyboard

device=scanman\hhscan.sys /a=288 /i=11 /d=1

The Focus Electronic keyboard has function keys both on the left and on top and diagonal arrow keys as well as the standard up and down and left and right, and it has a built-in calculator complete with LED readout.

There have been unconfirmed reports of incompatibility between NewDeal and the Focus electronic keyboard model 8001. The reported symptom is that the keyboard simply stops functioning in the first screens of NewDeal's setup program.

Num Lock Key

This problem has been corrected in version 2.01 and newer.

Wyse Keyboard

XT and AT Keyboards

The XT/AT switch found on the bottom of many keyboards is used to tell the keyboard whether it should talk to the controller XT-style or AT-style. ATs will usually work with either, although NewDeal expects them to be in AT position; true XTs require the switch to be in XT position.

NewDeal talks to the keyboard using XT-style commands, since that is common across PCs. XT-style controllers naturally talk this way; ATs are put into XT-style emulation by a special software command.

BIOS's use whatever is appropriate for that machine (since it defines what the machine is, it knows these things), DOS uses that, and DOS applications frequently use a higher-level function that isolates them even from BIOS. If a computer looks like an AT to NewDeal but has an XT-style controller, then the controller may get confused when NewDeal tells it to emulate an XT-style controller.

Another related topic is an infrequently used GEOS.INI key: keyboardDoesLEDs = true. Normally, XT-style keyboards cannot update the Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, and Num Lock LEDs. However, some XT-style machines such as the Club brand Turbo-XTs have partially AT-style keyboards. Setting the keyboardDoesLEDs key to true tells NewDeal that it is OK to update the LEDs even though the machine is an XT. This affects only the LEDs, it does not change the actual driver being used. However, if the user has this set inappropriately, it could conceivably cause problems.

Memory

Tecmar 640+ Expanded Memory Board

Thesys Expanded Memory Board

Zenith Z-MEG150

DEVICE=Z-MEG150.DVD C

In General

IBM's PC-DOS 7 and newer includes generic PCMCIA support for most common slots, but may not work with older, proprietary PCMCIA devices.

Toshiba PCMCIA Drivers

• http://www.toshiba.com/tais/csd/support/files/allfiles.htm
• http://www.toshiba-tro.de/login?mode=http

Mouse Buttons

Dexxa Mouse

Logitech PS/2 Mouse

Philips Magnavox Laptop Pen Mouse

Light Pens, Digitizers, and Graphics Tablets

• Generic Light Pen
• Generic Touch Screen
• Generic Tablet
• Generic Digitizer
• UnMouse Touch Tablet
• Elographics Touch Screen
• SummaGraphics SummaSketch
• Wacom ArtPad

Commodore PC Mouse

Joysticks

Crash On Exit or No Mouse In Other Programs

Packard Bell PackMate X16 PS/2-Type Mouse

The report sounded suspiciously like a hardware problem, but replacing the mouse didn't help nor did changing mouse drivers. It still could be a bad port or hardware problem having to do with IRQs on the computer.

Another customer with this mouse reported that after a few minutes of correct operation, the mouse pointer scoots off the edge of the screen and disappears.

So far, the only fix has been to replace the mouse with a serial or bus mouse, instead of using the PS/2-style mouse that comes with the computer.

ProHance ProMouse

This driver for this mouse hides its serial port by zeroing out the BIOS address. If the mouse does not appear to work with NewDeal, you can work around the problem by using debug and some fancy batch files to poke the port address back into the BIOS address. See technical support document 262 (Forcing NewDeal to See COM or LPT Ports).

NewDeal will not use the extra mouse functions, because the NewDeal keyboard driver ignores them, but the regular mouse features will function normally.

Alps Glidepoint Touchpad

If the mouse sensitivity is too high, you may have to adjust it using one of the touchpad utilities, if available. If your touchpad utility accepts command line options, try:

C:\GPOINT\GPOINT /S31 /P1

Printing Causes Serial Mouse to Freeze

Solution: It's possible that there's a weak circuit in the serial port. When the extra current load for printing is placed on the parallel port, it may draw power from the serial port and kill the mouse. In this case, the only fix may be to replace the serial port. If the port is built into the motherboard, you'll have to disable the built in serial port and replace it with a serial board.

Video

Ahead Wizard SVGA

ATI Wonder or Super

Track down the VGA utilities disk that came with the board, and run the VGA setup utility (ours was called VSETUP). Set the monitor type appropriately and exit. Reboot your system, then run the VGA test program on the utilities disk (VGATEST, in our case) to make sure that all modes are running correctly. Reconfigure NewDeal to use the ATI Super VGA 800x600 driver in Preferences, Video and that should do it.

Some ATI Super VGA video boards come configured for the worst-case-monitor mode which doesn't even attempt to display resolutions higher than 640x480. The solution is to find the utilities disk that comes with the board and run the VGA setup program. This program asks what kind of monitor is hooked up to the board and will allow 800x600 mode if the monitor can handle it.

If your ATI Wonder XL does not work with the ATI Wonder driver, use the VESA SVGA driver.

Bus Mouse Port Conflict
The ATI VGA Wonder video board has a built-in port for a bus mouse. This mouse circuitry can sometimes conflict with other interrupt settings. Try the Logitech Bus Mouse driver.

Backgrounds Blank On Monochrome Monitor

IBM PS/2 Model 30

Two Monitors

1. First run NewDeal and select the driver for Monitor A.
2. Exit NewDeal and in the directory where NewDeal is installed, copy GEOS.INI to GEOS.AAA.
3. Repeat the steps above for Monitor B, naming the copy of the GEOS.INI file GEOS.BBB.
4. Edit or create batch files to launch NewDeal. In the batch files, first copy the appropriate GEOS.XXX file to GEOS.INI before you launch NewDeal.

VideoBlaster

Video and Sound Board Interference

Brother Ensemble Dedicated Word Processor

Can a file created with NewDeal be transferred to the Brother Ensemble device?

Yes. NewWrite, NewDraw, NewCalc, and Scrapbook files can be used on the Brother Ensemble.

Can I add NewDeal fonts to the Brother Ensemble device?

We would not recommend trying to use add-on fonts on the Brother Ensemble. Storage on the device is limited to what you can fit on a floppy disk, so if add-on fonts work (and we're not sure they do), they'd need to be in the correct directory structure on the floppy and accessing them would be extremely slow.

Emmerson Accusaver UPS

The solution:
This can be caused by the Emerson Accucard inboard UPS (uninterruptable power supply), equipped with the Accusaver auto-backup software. Look for a driver in CONFIG.SYS that installs this program and remove it.