Most Commonly Asked Questions Question: Why is it that Micronics does not support other BIOS such as AMI or Award instead of Phoenix? Response: Micronics, through compatibility testing, has found the Phoenix BIOS to be the most compatible BIOS with its system board products. Licensing of the Phoenix source codes will provide and enhance features, performance, expanded capability, simplicity, and greater ease of use to accommodate future software and hardware products with all Micronics products. Question: Are Micronics system boards compatible with AMI or Award BIOS? Response: Most likely not. All compatible BIOS is customized to accommodate the system architecture. Without BIOS customization the system will encounter limitations. The Phoenix BIOS is customized to accommodate all Micronics system board products to enhance and provide maximum performance. Question: Are Micronics system boards Novell certified? Response: Novell does not certify system board products, rather Novell certifies complete systems which includes hard drives, controllers, video boards, and Lan adapters. Micronics through compatibility testing, will assure that all Micronics system board product are fully compatible with Novell as a server or workstation configuration. To show that Micronics system boards are capable of passing Novell certification, Micronics has submitted and received Novell certification for it's 80486-33MHz EISA ASIC board. Question: Are all Micronics system boards capable of accommodating the DX2 or P23T (overdrive) microprocessors? Response: No, but boards designed and produced by Micronics specifically for these processors will. Compatibility issues may be encountered when using these processors with earlier designed system boards not design for the current and new processor technology and specifications. The boards that will accommodate these processors are the Gemini 486 line of system boards for the DX2 and the Micronics 486SX Upgradable board for the P23T (overdrive) processor. Question: Are 60ns SIMMs required for the Micronics 80486-50MHz ISA and EISA system boards? Response: No, 70ns SIMMs are sufficient. Use memory modules manufactured by Toshiba, Siemens, Mitsubishi or Samsung. Question: Why does the system count only 16 megabytes when more than 16 megabytes of memory are installed (32, 40,.., etc.)? Response: The system only recognizes 16 megabytes because the BIOS relocation is enabled in the CMOS setup utility program. When the BIOS is relocated the area 16MB-384KB is allocated for ROM use. Therefore, the area 16MB-384KB is used and the system will consider this area to be discontiguous and will not recognize memory beyond 16MB-384KB. Disable BIOS relocation to recognize more than 16MB of memory. Question: When will a Local Bus video adapter be available for use with the Micronics EISA Local Bus boards? Response: A board based on a new higher performance video chip will be designed and a board will be available by the end of August 1992. Question: Do Micronics boards use Flash ROM technology? Response: Not at the present time but may in the near future. Question: Why is it that the turbo LED does not turn off nor is there a speed difference when the switch position is pressed or depressed? Response: Turbo LED and speed of the CPU can be changed by first setting the CPU SPEED to SLOW through the BIOS setup and then saved and reboot by pressing the ESC key. Every time after this the turbo switch is activated and the speed and turbo LED will change corresponding to the position of the turbo switch. Question: Is IBM OS/2 2.0 compatible with all Micronics system boards? Response: Yes, IBM OS/2 2.0 has been tested and verified on all Micronics system board products. Question: Is Microsoft Windows 3.1 compatible with Micronics system boards? Response: Yes, Microsoft Windows 3.1 has been tested and verified on all Micronics system board product. Question: What is Local Bus and how does it work. Response: Local Bus architecture offers a data path that is 32 bits wide just as an EISA or Micro Channel bus. Due to the Local Bus' direct access link to the CPU, data is transferred at the CPU clock speed. Question: Is the bus speed selectable to higher than 8MHz. Response: No, because of reliability and compatibility problems that can be encountered with most peripherals. All Micronics system board products follow the ISA standard for the bus speed which is 8MHz. Question: How to run CMOS setup utility on all 386DX and 486DX/DX2 ISA/EISA boards? Response: Use the following ALT+CTRL+ESC key sequence for ISA system boards, and ALT+CTRL+S keys sequence for EISA system boards to run the CMOS setup utility software. Press the "ESC" key to save the configuration or the "F10" key to cancel changes made to the CMOS information. Question: Do Micronics system boards provide Bus Mastering support? Response: Yes, all current Micronics Gemini 386/486 ISA/EISA boards support Bus Mastering. Question: Will any Micronics system board fit in an IBM PC/XT chassis? Response: No. Only chassis that follow the Baby AT measurements are able to accommodate any Micronics system boards. Question: Will the new 1MX4 (3 chip solution) SIMM solution work on Micronics boards? Response: Yes, they are compatible. Contact Technical Support Engineering for a list of compatible SIMM manufacturers. Question: Is it necessary to upgrade the system BIOS to be compatible with Microsoft Windows 3.1? Response: No, upgrade is not necessary for any of the current Micronics system boards. Contact Technical Support for the correct BIOS version to run Windows 3.1. Question: How to correct the situation when getting the error message "Invalid EISA Configuration Storage" during boot on an EISA system board? Response: Run the EISA configuration utility. Configure all EISA peripherals including the system board then save the information and reboot the system. See configuration manual for detail instructions. Question: Are other Local Bus boards compatible with the current Micronics EISA-2 Local Bus boards? Response: No, other Local Bus boards are proprietary just as with the present Micronics Local Bus system boards. When the VESA standard is accepted and released, then peripherals and system boards that follow this standard will be compatible. Question: I am having problems running Windows 3.1 or OS/2 2.0. Microsoft and IBM technical support has suggested that the BIOS date of 1988 is too old so the BIOS should be updated with a later date than 1988. Is this true, if so what can be done to resolve this? Response: Microsoft Windows 3.1 and IBM OS/2 2.0 have been tested and is fully compatible with all Micronics system boards. The BIOS date is the copy right date and not the date that the BIOS was written. Check system configuration or contact Micronics Technical Support Engineering for assistance. Question: Are the present Micronics system boards able to support the INTEL 586 processor when it is released? Response: No! The 586 processor will be larger in size and has more pin connections then allowed by the current 486 sockets. Question: Why doesn't the EISA-2 33/50MHz boards have an option to change and select IRQ assignments other than IRQ7? Response: Micronics follows the accepted industry standard for IRQ assignments for the first parallel port (LPT1). The accepted IRQ assignment for LPT1 is IRQ7. Any additional parallel ports will have to be set to IRQ5. Question: Why was the 16450 UART implemented instead of the 16550? Response: The 16450 is the accepted standard and is still the IBM AT standard whereas the 16550 is not. 16550 UART may encounter compatibility issues. Most or all communication software is evaluated with the 16450 UART. Question: Why is it not necessary to use a heat sink on the DX2 processor when it is dissipating a lot of heat? Response: All components including the CPU has been thoroughly tested and is within the operating temperature range specified by INTEL. Therefore, a heat sink is not necessary. Question: What is the problem when the CMOS information is invalid after installation of IBM OS/2 1.3. Response: This is caused by OS/2 1.3 software corrupting the CMOS data during installation. To correct this and other non-documented OS/2 1.3 problem, obtain from your IBM dealer the corrective services patch or by down loading the file OS2LDRCS.EXE from the Micronics bulletin board at (510) 651-6837. To correct just the CMOS data error, reconfigure the CMOS information after installation of OS/2 1.3 then save the information and reboot the system. Question: Having problem booting from a large capacity hard drive or data is corrupted when writing to hard disk. Response: It is very possible that the power supply is not adequate to support the system configuration that includes a large capacity hard drive. If the system is fully populated with memory and all the I/O slots filled with peripheral boards, a power supply of 300 watts or larger is necessary. Power inadequacy will cause incorrect rotation of the hard drive and the system will have a problem booting or information written to the hard drive will be corrupted. Question: 80486 system boards have a problem recognizing some Maxtor and Conner SCSI and IDE drives. Response: These drives may encounter a booting problem or the system will not recognize the hard drive when the BIOS relocation feature is enabled. This is because the BIOS calls to the hard drive is too fast when the BIOS instructions are relocated to fast RAM. To resolve this limitation, disable BIOS relocation in the CMOS setup. Question: Having intermittent problem with installing or using IBM OS/2 2.0. During installation the screen is blank and the floppy drive light stays on and the system appears to be frozen. Also, the screen blanks out (black out) when accessing a graphics page or when using full DOS window but the drive is active when a DOS command is issued. Response: The problem may lie in the video adapter being used. IBM supports the 8514/a video standard so installing OS/2 2.0 on systems that conforms to VGA or SVGA standards may encounter limitations. The video problem is more evident when using certain VGA chip sets such as with the Tseng Lab 4000 chip set. This chip set is using a hidden and undocumented bit in the video data area that IBM is not aware of, according to IBM OS/2 2.0 support. Situations such as this can be resolved by one of the following: Use an 8514/a register compatible video adapter. Contact IBM OS/2 2.0 support to obtain the corrective services patch diskettes. Dial up to Micronics BBS and download the VSVGA.ZIP patch created by IBM. Micronics Computers Inc. 232 E. Warren Ave. Fremont, CA. 94539 Most Commonly Asked Questions August 21, 1992 Revision 1.01