Title: Intellicon and NT960 Memory and Conflicts
Keywords: Intellicon and NT960 Memory conflicts
Date: January 6, 1997
KDB: KDB-095
Revision: 0.00
Author: KAM
Distribution: External
A common problem when installing Intelligent serial I/O cards are various upper memory conflicts, this is referring to the upper memory between 640k-bytes and 1meg-bytes. The NT960 and Intellicon serial cards have what is called shared memory on board, residing in the formentioned address spaces. Below are some of the major problems that may be encountered:
1. Memory conflicts with the Shadow Ram in your P.C.
2. Memory conflicts with other adapters in the computer.
3. Memory conflicts with system BIOS ROMS.
4. PCI and Plug and Play or resource allocation problems.
5. EISA bus resource allocation problems.
Technical Tips to avoid memory conflicts:
1. Before installing your Intellicon or NT960 serial cards in your PC, go into your computers CMOS or BIOS setup and check for SHADOW RAM settings. Some computers allow the user to customize the shadow ram settings. Observe the memory locations where shadow RAM is an option, they are usually listed with addresses like cc00-cfff and d000-d7ff and so on. Ensure that it is DISABLED at the memory where the Intellicon resides.
The NT960 requires at least an 8k-byte memory area, while the Intellicon requires a full 64k-bytes of upper memory. Failure to disable shadow can result in no or erratic operation of the serial card.
2. Many other ISA/EISA adapters require “shared memory” like the Intellicon or have a ROM on board, either case requires shared memory in the upper address space. Ensure that none of the other adapters in your computer are conflicting with your Connect tech card. Some common conflicting devices are..
- Corman or QNX network cards.
- Adaptec SCSI controller.
- Any other network or SCSI card that has a ROM on board.
3. Conflicts with system BIOS ROMS. Sometimes some computers have additonal BIOS ROMS at upper memory address E000-EFFF as well as at the standard area F000-FFFF. If you suspect that your computer has additional ROMS at address E000-EFFF, then you should relocate your Connect Tech serial adapter’s memory to a different location.
4. PCI and Plug and Play conflicts. The Intellicon is not a plug and play board. The Intellicon requires 64k of shared memory in the region between 640k and 1meg, typically d0000 or e0000 are available in todays systems, Sometimes b0000.
Therefore it is often necessary to go into the CMOS setup (BIOS) and ensure that the resources used by the Intellicon are available to Non-Plug and Play ISA devices. This could be one or all of, the Intellicon interrupt, I/O ports and Shared memory. Look in the CMOS setup for “Plug and Play Setup”, or “ISA setup” options.
5. EISA bus resource allocation problems. If the Intellicon is installed in an EISA bus, the resources will need to be allocated for that board in that EISA slot. For example some EISA machine come with a setup disk which is used to define a “Generic EISA Device”. This allows you to describe to the system the resources required by the Intellicon. The resources include Shared Memory, Interrupt and I/O port.
Tips and Tricks
An Intellicon and NT960 memory test utility is available. The program name is CTIMTEST.EXE ( CTI-Memory-TEST ). This is a DOS program, it can be used to help verify that the Intellicon memory is available for use. Please see the file ctimtest.zip for more info. It is recommended this program be run from a 386 with DOS 5.0 or better, this program will give erroneous results under Windows NT. A WinNT Boot disk might be ok. It is available on most newer shipping disks and the CTI FTP site and CTI BBS.
End of KDB-095