DosMerge under SV/AT on a Tatung TCS-7000

[karl at ddsw1.UUCP]

In article <1217 at maccs.UUCP> nusip at maccs.UUCP (Mike Borza) writes:
>Apologies for bringing up something which has probably been hashed
>out before, but I couldn't find a specific reference to this in
>our news archives.  Has anyone been able to get DosMerge running
>under Sys V/AT on a Tatung TCS-7000 AT-clone.  The last time I spoke
>to John Sully, he indicated that the Tatung was listed as a
>machine that Merge won't run on.  As I understand it, the problem
>can be either in the implementation of the keyboard driver or
>in the BIOS.  I'm hoping that the problem is in the BIOS, so
>that installing either an Award or Phoenix BIOS should fix the
>problem.  While we're at it, does anyone have (un)favorable
>comments about either of these products?  What about Merge on
>AT's?  I'm interested in using Merge to run:
>	1) a 3Com 3C501 Ethernet card
>	2) a Complete Handscanner
>
>thx,
>--mike borza

Hi there.

Merge will run on a TCS-7000 as long as you replace the BIOS with a Phoenix
bios having a revision of > 3.05.  Anything after that should be ok.  Also
check the memory cards you use VERY carefully, the Tatung is extremely picky
timing-wise and will crash left and right with a cheap board at 10 Mhz
(presuming you are speaking of a 6/10 and not a 6/8 machine).

Oh yeah -- get rid of the Tatung disk controller -- it is NOT a complete 
WD1003-WA2 clone and will trash the entire disk if you ever have a physical 
I/O error (ie: you get one, EVERY disk I/O after that is junk.  Bye-bye 
superblock (and nearly everything else important).

Dos Merge on the '286 has one fatal flaw -- the "standard" serial I/O just 
doesn't work when there's a DOS session running.   UUCP will barf, spit and
die if you attempt to use it without an intelligent I/O board.  If the
additional cost of a good smart board isn't too prohibitive you should be ok
(this is presuming you want to use the communications capabilities of Unix).

The bottom line?   Get a Phoenix BIOS, WD1003-WA2 controller and good memory 
and it will work.  It's not great, but it does work.

Now, on the TCS-7000.  If you haven't bought it yet, I'd stay clear.  We're
a third-party service center, and have had a good number of TCS-7000s in for
main board replacement from one of our largest accounts (!)  Yes, the
big-bucks kind of failures.  All out of warranty too.  At MCS we also had a 
TCS-7000 which failed while in warranty and was replaced with another unit 
-- we immediately sold it and replaced it with a '386 :-)  We've done 4 out
of 20 or so that I know of at one location (and all at different times, same
failure mode.  Yuck.)  Of course, they may have improved since these machines
were manufactured; there is no way to know as the failures show up 6-12
months after purchase if you're lucky, and 13 months after purchase if
you're not :-)

(Ps: We filed a complete beta test report on this exact system (TCS-7000)
     along with the needed changes in the hardware to get it running more
     than a year ago with Microport.  That got us the "real" copy, which is
     what my statements above are based upon.  What happened to that data is
     anyone's guess.)

[Disclaimer: We've no affiliation with Tatung or Microport other than our
	     third-party repair of Tatung systems and of course as a customer]
	     
---
Karl Denninger                 |  Data: +1 312 566-8912
Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. | Voice: +1 312 566-8910
...ihnp4!ddsw1!karl            | "Quality solutions for work or play"