My initial thoughts were "maybe we could see if 86Box emulates this and
poke around the BIOS" but after seeing the pictures and the hard drive
size... yeah, it's probably out of scope unless the BIOS somehow boots
OK on a Pentium 2.
Probably worth setting up a boot floppy and tracing the INT 16h handler
and/or the IRQ1 handler and seeing what touches that byte. If it's
something that can be autodetected, then willingness-permitting it
probably should be - it's going to affect more than exactly one laptop,
or even exactly one laptop model.
In the meantime... what are the specs of that machine? A model number
might reveal the existence of a BIOS update somewhere which could be dug
through, and there's a nonzero chance the bug *isn't* fixed on the update.
- Ben R
On 17/04/2025 00:15, Bernd Böckmann via Freedos-devel wrote:
Am 14.04.2025 um 23:10 schrieb Bernd Böckmann <bernd-free...@boeckmann.io>:
I will prepare such a kernel and make it available to Willi, but start with
displaying 40:96 right before and after the menu selection, before and after
the INT 16 calls are being made...
I sent Willi an updated kernel which displays the 40:96 byte at various stages
of kernel initialization. Willi uploaded screenshots:
https://nextcloud.iww.rwth-aachen.de/index.php/s/z9bqWBdom8A8nZz
40:96 is zero at early kernel stages, and is eventually changed to 10h when
navigating the FreeDOS boot menu or some specific keys are pressed when the
BIOS POSTs. The exact logic what causes 40:96 to be changed is unclear to me.
Maybe some INT16 call triggers a BIOS internal detection logic.
Not sure how to proceed. Maybe categorizing this as BIOS flaw and using mkeyb
/E is the best option. An even better option would be letting the user verify
the keyboard type upon FreeDOS installation, and adapting fdauto.bat
accordingly.
Bernd
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