www.theoldcomputer.com

I remember I had a 286 when I was small. It was a 12MHz machine.
The thing is that the bios looked a bit different from ordinary ones.
I'd like to ask are some of these chip images proprietary that they are very hard to get?
I recall that there is an extended memory available message etc at post
I lived in Australia at that time....
Thanks
Jack

Hiya Jack

Yes, normally, But the answer can be no too.

The No answer
The Bioses for most machines was made by AMIBios (American Megatrends), Award and later Phoenix when they bought Amibios. But each bios was adapted to fit a certain Motherboard, and is timestamped.

One can work out from the post serial what Manufacturer, Date of Bios and Motherboard the Bios comes from. Mostly used in the Generic type PC's and those from Thailand/Taiwan/China (yes, I've seen a brand new 286, with a manufactured date of 2011 here)

The Yes Answer
Certain Manufacturers created their own bioses for their machines, or had the Bios people create one for them. People like Compaq, HP, even some IBM's had custom Bioses

Thank you for your answer.
I wonder are there any bios image file tester (as an emulator etc) available on the net?
I want to see its post screen etc both vga and main bios would be nice
Thanks
Jack

luckiejacky wrote:Thank you for your answer.
I wonder are there any bios image file tester (as an emulator etc) available on the net?
I want to see its post screen etc both vga and main bios would be nice
Thanks
Jack

I know that mess includes emulation of the 286 with a bunch of 286 bioses. The driver is mystically called atvga, it works for some games as emulation is still very early, things like Duke Nukem, Duke Nukem 2, Test Drive 2 & Grand Prix Circuit works since the stuff they need to run is emulated. But your mileage will vary.

If ya need the Bios I could upload it somewhere

Does that mean I can plug any 286 bios image file into the mess emulator? it will work?
What about modern bioses, I have dumped an intel d865perl bios out onto disk, and the machine has been disposed of. See if anything can bring back some memories for me.
I also heard of boch, you can sub in a bios image lieu to its default one, and it works somehow
Really thanks
Jack

luckiejacky wrote:Does that mean I can plug any 286 bios image file into the mess emulator? it will work?
What about modern bioses, I have dumped an intel d865perl bios out onto disk, and the machine has been disposed of. See if anything can bring back some memories for me.
I also heard of boch, you can sub in a bios image lieu to its default one, and it works somehow
Really thanks
Jack

Jack.

We've added, methinks, all the 286 bioses that we found on the net to the driver, (even if some don't post).

Modern bioses will work with bocsh I think, never tried it, since bocsh also uses bioses.

Can I try out what you mention? the entire collection of 286 bioses on the net
Could you please post them too?
many Thanks
Jack

Norton Anti-virus just rejected mess as a backdoor.
Oops

luckiejacky wrote:Norton Anti-virus just rejected mess as a backdoor.
Oops

must be a false positive.

Thanks a lot have a nice day