Specialix SI/XIO AT & Adaptec 1510 in VS660 (Intel) with SCO OpenServer 5

It has been found that when installing the above configuration, problems can arise where the Specialix card appears to install correctly, and is recognised on boot, but when attempting to log in, the system appears to ignore input from the any of the terminal ports.

This is due to the configuration of the 'Plug and Play' option within the system BIOS setup. To overcome this, proceed with installation as follows:

VS660 setup

Within the system BIOS setup (F1 at power up), tab right to select Advanced and use arrow keys to go down to Plug and Play Configuration.

Highlight the ISA Shared Memory Base Address and press return.

A popdown menu will appear, with the current selection set to Disabled. Using the arrow keys, go down and highlight 32Kb. Press return, and a new option will appear underneath labelled ISA Shared Memory Base Address. Highlight this, press return and select D8000h from the popdown menu.

Unix Support have tested a configuration with the Specialix using IRQ 15.

If either card is to be set to any of the IRQ levels mentioned on the same screen, (IRQ 5, 9, 10, 11) highlight the selection as before, press return and set it to Used By ISA Card. This is in order to prevent the Plug and Play BIOS from using that interrupt for a PCI card that may be added in the future. If an Adaptec 1510 SCSI card is also fitted to the system, the interrupt that this uses must be set to Used By ISA Card as above. If this is not done, the system will hang in the SCO Software Manager when attempting to install additional software packages such as the Specialix driver.

When complete, use F10 to save and exit.

Ensure the SI/XIO adapter is on the recommended RAM address of D8000. This is set using the switches and jumper on the card itself. To set this address, set SW1 to 0, SW2 to D, and jumper LK1 to 8. The interrupt setting is programmed into the card by the driver at run-time, and configured during the Custom (SCO Software Manager ) installation. This can be set to IRQ 11, 12 or 15. Use IRQ 15 in preference if available. If there is a lack of these interrupts, then polled mode should be selected.

Ensure that the Specialix device driver is installed as follows. If the driver has already been installed on the wrong settings, remove it through SCO Software Manager or Custom

Booting into UNIX, use the Custom or SCO Software Manager utility, to install the Specialix driver. At time of writing, the preferred driver is version 8.00. This can be found on Insight Rel 10, or Insight BBS in Area 39.

During the driver installation, ignore the screen that tells you to set the card for D0000h. Use the AT compatible option from the machine type selection menu.

Once complete, the kernel will re-link, and you should shutdown and reboot the system. As UNIX reloads, the SLXOS in the hardware config screen should report both the card, and the number of serial ports attached. Once in multiuser mode, any enabled Specialix port should now work correctly for login sessions.

See also IPB 3210 for SCO OpenServer 5 / UNIX 3.2v4.2 related issues on the Apricot VS660.

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