Hello...and why I'm here

x86 / x64 programming
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shawnerz
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Aug 29, 2021 3:57 am

Hello...and why I'm here

Post by shawnerz » Sat Sep 18, 2021 10:17 pm

Hello, my name is Shawn.
I got interested in ASM programming because of some specialized rugged '286 laptops. They were made by a company called Grid. They made several models based around the 8086 (GridLite series), '286 (the 1520), '386SX (the 1550), and full '386 (the 1535). Then Tandy bought them...but that's a different story.
We started out as a group on Yahoogroups. When Yahoo ended Yahoogroups, we migrated to Vintage Computer Forums (https://vcfed.org).
In the Grid 1500 series BIOS code, they limited the hard drives that could be used to only 5 or 6 specific Connor Peripherals models. Hard drives fail and we wanted to move to Compact Flash (CF) since CF has an IDE interface.
As a group, more than 15 years ago, we discovered where in the BIOS code the model numbers and even where the CHS (number of Cylinders, number of Heads, and number of Sectors) values were located. But changing those list values still didn't allow the computers to be used with other hard drives.
Last year, another user that goes by 'Klyball', was able understand Assembly language and found where the routine was located in the code. He then found how to jump around it. Now, several users have their Grid booting and running from CF.
I brought the Learn Multiplatform Assembly Programming book and watched the 8086 videos on YouTube. It has been helpful. But, my level of understanding is still very basic.
'Klyball' posted his edited code with annotations. I'll make a couple of other forum posts. I hope to get some feed back that will help me understand what is going on.
Thank you very much,
-Shawn

puppydrum64
Posts: 34
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 9:30 pm

Re: Hello...and why I'm here

Post by puppydrum64 » Sun Oct 03, 2021 12:07 am

Hello! Nice to see someone else interested in 8086.

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