Ampro Corporation P5X manual Bios Recovery, Interrupt and DMA Channel Usage

ROM substantially enhances system performance, especially when an application or operating system repeatedly accesses the BIOS. Shadowing for both the ROM BIOS and the video BIOS is built into the Ampro Extended BIOS. There is no user setting.

BIOS Recovery

If the BIOS Flash device somehow becomes corrupted, the Little Board/P5x may not boot. In this case, the BIOS will have to be reprogrammed. A disk with an image of the current BIOS along with the Utility PGM5X.COM may be used to restore the BIOS image. Before this can be done, the Little Board/P5x needs to be Booted and running DOS.

Ampro provides a BIOS Extension Board that can be used to temporarily supply a working BIOS. Contact Ampro for information on the BIOS Extention Board (ACC-EBB-Q-72).

The BIOS Extension Board is a MiniModule that has an on-board BIOS that can replace the one in the on-board BIOS Flash device. This BIOS is contained in a socketed DIP memory device. Once the BIOS Extension Board is installed, the Little Board/P5x can be booted using this replacement BIOS. Then, by using the PGM5X.COM utility, the Flash device can be repaired, and working firmware programmed into it once again.

To recover a BIOS using the BIOS Extension Board:

!Install a Jumper on W11 if there is not one already there.

!Remove the shunt on W10.

•Plug the BIOS Extension Board into the PC/104 connectors on the CPU.

•Plug the two-wire cable into J1 on the BIOS Extension Board and plug the other end into W10 of the CPU.

•Power the system up. The CPU should boot. If it does not, the Little Board/P5x should be returned to Ampro for servicing.

•Once the system has booted, remove the cable from W10 on the CPU.

•Replace the shunt on W10 of the CPU.

•Use PGM5X.COM to write a new copy of the BIOS or firmware to the Flash device.

•Remove W11 if it is desired to write protect the BIOS.

The Little Board/P5x should function normally after this procedure.

Interrupt and DMA Channel Usage

The PC architecture provides several interrupt and DMA control signals. When you expand the system through the ISA portion of the PC/104-Plusbus with MiniModule products or plug-in cards that require either interrupt or DMA support, you must select which interrupt or DMA channel to use. Typically this involves switches or jumpers on the expansion module. In most cases, these are not shared resources. It is important that you configure the new module to use an interrupt or DMA channel not already in use. For your convenience, Table 2– 8 and Table 2– 9 provide a summary of the normal interrupt and DMA channel assignments on the Little Board/P5x.

The PCI bus uses four interrupts (INTA*, INTB*, INTC*, and INTD*). These interrupts are mapped to any of the available ISA interrupts by the BIOS. If an expansion card has multiple functions, then more interrupts may be required. You can set the priority in which interrupts are assigned on Setup 6 — PCI Configuration Setup.

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