turbolink boot cd revisited

[jon_we4]

I have my laptop booting into DOS....i try to run turbolnk.exe and it gives a fatal error saying no parallel port found. the booting cd was made from an image of a win98 boot disc

 

[kenmosher]

Does it do it on multiple computers? The parallel port detection is from when it reads the parallel port address from the BIOS. I can't right off hand think why booting from a CD would make a difference?

 

[jon_we4]

well i tried my boot cd - TL cd on my desktop and it worked peachy ------ so it must be something with the laptop/BIOS and DOS. It's an IBM 600E P2 366 any ideas?

-Jon

 

[kenmosher]

Sounds like the parallel port is turned off in the BIOS. Might want to run their "EZ Setup" deal and see if you can get it to recognize the port.

 

[jon_we4]

i'll look into that, i just didnt think of that because when I ran the program inside winXP it did not give me that error ..... maybe because the OS blocked the direct access to it.

however it is pretty close to "late may" so by the time i figure it out i might be running 3.0

 

[jon_we4]

ok WTF .... i even made a huge floppy image of TL AND a DOS disk that boots and then wrote it to a disc, thinking that TL couldnt go back to the booted DOS version....and it STILL cant see the LPT port!!!!!

I EVEN PLAYED AROUND WITH THE IRQ's TO MAKE 7 AVAILABLE!!!!

AGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

 

[jon_we4]

i tried LPT3/IRQ5 = no go....

lpt1test.exe runs and reconginizes ports while winXP is loaded....

 

[kenmosher]

XP will not allow TurboLink to see the parallel port. You have to run it from DOS (real DOS) or Win95/98/ME.

 

[jon_we4]

well this is the last thing I'm going to try....

I'm going to find a NTFS DOS boot disk and rig it up to work

 

[jon_we4]

AGGGHHH!!!!! it took me over an hour but I rigged up a cd that boots DOS, the runs NTFSDOS pro and mounts the c drive....

and it STILL DOESNT SEE A PARALLEL PORT!!!!!!!!!!

stupid IBM 600E

 

[jon_we4]

UPDATE:

I reset the BIOS and it seemed to have taken it....

turbolink started up without error in DOS

then i booted XP, restarted and then tried it agian and it didnt work!!!!!

and it wont let me re-initialize the BIOS.

_____________________-

apparantly i have to shut it completley off before i can re-initialize it....

so everytime i want to run turbolink i have to initilize the laptop, boot to DOS, mount the NTFS partition, then run turbolink!

 

[kenmosher]

That makes no sense at all ... is there something in XP doing that? That's not normal with any other laptop OR OS.... or is that something with that particular laptop?

 

[jon_we4]

well first off this IBM "bios" sucks...its not a full featured bios, there is a "initilize" option

and i agree it makes no sense at all. however this has caused me to go crazy and since i can get into TL in DOS without error i don't care. it'll be even better if i can connect to the ECM!

we'll see in 2 hours

-Jon

 

[jon_we4]

i get a link.... but it dies after a seond or two...

i have to restart just to get it to link again

 

[kenmosher]

Don't know what to say ... almost sounds like something is stealing the parallel port?

You might want to try the battery pack, just to be sure you have solid power. When you get the link, do you get reasonable looking data? Or are all the data values maxed out? If they are maxed out, switch the jumper in the cable...

Other than that, I'm pretty much perplexed...that's definitely an oddball deal.

 

[jon_we4]

the data looks good...

TPS normal was 0.42 and at WOT was 4.02 (two seperate links because it only captures one frame)

I'll try the battery pack

EDIT: i did try the jumper -- was unsueccessfull

i noticed the dvdrom (which DOS runs off of) spins down right before the link is lost.

-Jon

 

[jon_we4]

found this on the IBM site...

makes some sense to whats going on

V. Simple Boot Flag function
This function automatically optimizes the behavior and boot performance of the BIOS and operating system, based on the installed operating system and previous boot.

If this function is Enabled and once a Plug and Play-capable operating system, such as Microsoft Windows 98, is installed, the system BIOS does not configure such hardware resources as system interrupts, memory ranges, and I/O port ranges for all the devices in the system.

If you are going to use a non-Plug and Play-capable operating system, disable this function so that the BIOS will configure hardware resources.