Re: Re Keystrokes: Possible BIOS compatibility

["Patricia M. Godfrey" PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx]

Robert Holmgren wrote:
** Reply to message from "Patricia M. Godfrey"  on Sat, 23
Jul 2005 12:38:14 -0400


Send me the keyboard file from one of the misbehaving machines... Do you update your BIOSes
regularly? Go to manufacturer's website and get the latest.
I can and will do that (should I ZIP it or XPLencode it, or both?), but
perhaps some additional information might be helpful (and thank you for
bothering; I said I didn't expect it but I am curious). It ALWAYS
crashes/locks up at the same point: when it gets to NI: 5 on number pad.
And the reason I doubt that updating the BIOS would help is that the one
it runs on has the oldest BIOS, an AMI of 7/15/95. (Generally, I update
on the premise, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Without broadband,
downloads take forever.) And the machines involved are a pretty fair
mix: 2 Compaqs, an IBM Tpad (ancient) as well as three white-box boxes
(Mobos by AOPEN, where it works, PCChips, and ASRock, which I think is
ASUS's bargain basement division).
I compared pif properties, MEM reports (with Xy loaded; i.e., DOS/NV,
and from a plain DOS prompt) and the UMB allocations from Control Panel
on the machine where it works ("Nancy") and this one, since they're both
AMD CPUs, though of widely differing vintages. Would any of that be
useful? The address of the alleged "ïnvalid instruction" seems to vary,
not merely from machine to machine, but from session to session. Last
time, it was at 000047F6, which, according to Control Panel, is within
the address of System Board extensions for ACPI BIOS.
If it's just a matter of OOM, perhaps it would be possible to test for
that by breaking the routine into chunks, clearing memory between them?
Or is there any way to take out that NI: 5 to see if that's the monkey
wrench in the works?
Thanks again, and don't waste too much time on this. As I said, it's
more curiosity over the mysterious workings of Redmond Rubbish (if
indeed BBBG is to blame this time).

Patricia M. Godfrey