[arachne] Re: Getting Arachne to run on a 286 - Continued!

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

Yes Sam, you are quite correct.
v1.95 has not been tested on a 286 .... let-alone a 286 with CGA video

Ian,

How much free memory do you have before attempting to start Arachne ?

Arachne requires at-least 525kb to start.

Also.... which type of mem are you choosing during setup for
swapping ? (XMS, EMS, or disk swapping)

I must assume that you are in-fact choosing CGA before going to the
setup screens themselves. And that you _do_ change the defaultly
checked VGA to CGA on the video setup screen.
(that-is _if_ you ever get that far)

Perhaps try again from the DOS command prompt in the Aracne_main dir....

setup.bat -inst<enter>

The '-inst' option will start the whole setup all over from the start.

___________________________________________________________________________

On Fri, 3 Jul 2009 12:11:28 -0400 (EDT), Sam Ewalt wrote:

> It's possible that nobody has actually run Arachne 1.95, GPL286, on
> a 286, due to the scarcity of such old hardware. Even ten years ago
> very few people ran the then current Arachne versions on 286's. As
> far as I know *nobody* on the development team even had a 286, so
> I'm fairly sure 1.95 has not been tested extensively, if at all,
> on 286's.

> This is the first time I can recall such a discussion in years.

> Sam Ewalt



> On Fri, July 3, 2009 11:16 am, Samuel W. Heywood wrote:
>> Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

>> On Fri, 2009-07-03 at 05:58 -0700, Mr Ian Primus wrote:
>>> Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

>>> Just an update on this - I still have not been able to get Arachne to
>>> work on my 286. I have downloaded the latest 8086 build, and thanks to
>>> Glenn for making it fit on a floppy, I got it into the 286 with no
>>> problems, extracted it, installed it, and.... hang. Just as it did
>>> before. It hangs wether I run setup or just try to run arachne.

>>> I get "Arachne V1.95;GPL286- is taking off...", and the computer just
>>> hangs. Ctrl-Alt-Delete will reboot it though.

>>> Is there anything else I can do? This is frustrating :)

>>> Some information on the system I'm trying to use:

>>> Compaq Portable 286
>>> 80287 math coprocessor installed
>>> 640k base memory, 8mb extended memory provided by Intel Above Board/ISA
>>> Compaq VDU video display card, CGA/MDA compatible
>>> 3COM EtherLink III network card, with packet driver loaded.
>>> 44mb MFM hard drive on WD disk controller, 1.2M and 360k floppies.

>>> The only things I have loaded at boot are HIMEM and the packet driver
>>> for the ethernet card. I'm running MS-DOS 6.22

>>> I've even tried going into the Compaq setup and disabling the BIOS
>>> support for the Compaq VDU, so it runs in straight CGA mode - same
>>> thing. I have also tried booting from a DOS 6.22 disk with only
>>> command.com (no Himem, no packet driver), and running setup - still
>>> hangs.

>>> -Ian

>> A very long time ago I used to run Arachne on a 286 having about the
>> same specs as your computer.  No problems.  I used dialup, no network
>> card.  I used MS-DOS 5.00 and old versions of Arachne such as 1.20 and
>> 1.4x.

>> Sam Heywood

-- 
 http://www.glennmcc.org/
                  Arachne at FreeLists                  
-- Arachne, The Premier GPL Web Browser/Suite for DOS --

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