Enhancing the Osborne Executive Enhanced BIOS Version 1.1
According to OCC, their enhanced Osborne Executive BIOS
prevents a premature display of BIOS time-out error messages
while using printers with internal print buffers. This is only
partially true. The delay value, DELAY0, is reset after every
timeout to the value you supplied with the new SETUP command, but
the initial timeout value remains at five seconds. To change the
initial value, I recommend the following steps, using DU-V86
which can be found on the -FOG/EX1.006 disk.
Enter DU, logon to a disk containing CPM3.SYS, and get a map
of the disk by typing M. A typical map line might be:
A0-AF 00 CPM3 .SYS 00 : B0-B1 00 CPM3 .SYS 01
What we really want to know is where on the disk the CPM3.SYS
file starts. On this disk it starts with Group A0. The sector
we want to change is 5 groups and 7 sectors or 2FH sectors from
the start of the CPM3.SYS file, or in this case, it is group
A5:07. Enter:
GA0;+2F;D
to display the sector of interest. CPM3.SYS will probably start
at a different location on your disk, substitute the first group
listed in the map for the A0 in the above command.
The last line of the displayed sector should read:
If it doesn't, then you don't have the latest enhanced CPM3.SYS
from OCC or you didn't enter the command correctly. Look at the
map again and make sure you have found the first entry of
CPM3.SYS in the map.
If the last line of the displayed sector matches that above
then you have found the correct sector. The eighth byte, 01
above, is the byte we want to change. A value of 01 gives a 5
second timeout, I changed mine to 78H to give a 600 second
timeout. To do this, enter:
CH77,78;W;X
DU will update your disk and exit. Reboot the system with the
updated disk and verify that the first BIOS timeout error now
takes much longer than 5 seconds. If so, you've now fixed the
timeout bug!
John M. Blalock
PO Box 39356
Phoenix, AZ 85069
(602) 993-4604
