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From: brianr@tekig4.TEK.COM (Brian Rhodefer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Transformer
Message-ID: <1644@tekig4.TEK.COM>
Date: Tue, 7-Jul-87 20:08:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekig4.1644
Posted: Tue Jul  7 20:08:56 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Jul-87 00:52:23 EDT
Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or.
Lines: 39

A week or so ago, I bought an external 5.25" drive for
my Amiga 1000, chiefly so that I could use the Transformer
software which comes with the drive to run some IBM-ish
programs that I use occasionally.  I know they'll run
very slowly under Transformer, but they're not worth
paying more for a Sidecar than the price of a clone.

Though I am using disks patched for Workbench 1.2 by the
people in the computer store, and even though these disks
work fine in the store's A1000 and A500, when I try to use
the Transformer in my machine, it doesn't work.

At the point where Transformer prints up the current IBM
system configuration and options settings, just prior to
plunging into 8086-land,  the ammount of memory listed as
being available for DOS is 9K.  On the store's machines,
there is upwards of 300K available.

My configuration is the Amiga 1000, with CMA's Kickstart
Eliminator kit, and the Insider 1Meg memory expansion.
It occurred to me that the IBM emulator might be fastening upon
the 256K WCS ram bank freed by the Kickstart Eliminator,
(which is not contiguous with the rest of my machine's memory)
for use as the "IBM"s main memory.  If that was so, there might
well be only 9K left over.

To test this, I lifted the pin of the PAL which supplies
the WR* strobe to the WCS ram bank, and strapped the WCS'
WR* line HIGH.  By using a debugger, I verified that my
tampering had indeed "denatured" the WCS ram, but the
Transformer program still wouldn't run, and it STILL
claimed that it only had 9K of memory to work with.

Has anyone else had a similar experience, or, better still,
a helpful suggestion?

Thanks in advance,

Brian Rhodefer   ...tektronix!tekig4!brianr