OT: Why does my system crash when booted from floppy?

I'm running a xmas light show controlling 81 lights from the parallel and s erial ports, using a DOS window in win98. Works fine when run from win98 in side a DOS window, but seems to hang up after a couple hours when run from a floppy that just boots to a command prompt and runs the program from the autoexec file. I wanted to run the program automatically, so I didn't need a keyboard or screen or mouse. Works fine for a couple hours and then hangs up, but not always in the same place.

Maybe there is an easier way of starting window98 and automatically running a DOS program? But that would require a screen and mouse to turn off the m achine. I'm trying to make it automatic so I can just switch it on and off.

-Bill

Reply to
Bill Bowden
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Can't you put some diagnostic printouts inside your DOS program? Memory leak? Win98 probably has access to way more memory than you can access from DOS directly. Stack overflow? As I recall, DOS was fairly loose about how you exit subroutines. Might be leaving stuff behind.

Probably have some delays so the lights stay on long enough to be visible. Rip out some of the delays and see if it crashes sooner.

What version of DOS? Try a non-MS alternative dos?

Have your windows program periodically check to see if a disk is inserted and shutdown in an orderly manner if it's not. Pop the disk to shut down. Could do the same thing with a switch on one of the ports.

Reply to
mike

I was involved about10 years ago setting up a Win 98 machine to control a 1925 Wurlitzer Organ in a concert hall. The PC was locked in a cabinet, came on with the Organ main power, started, started the program and ran by itself. First crash was when daylight saving change wanted a response as Win 98 did and they had to open the cabinet. Someone had built a multiplexed interface that did all the organ stuff that was done by great big box of pneumatics in 1925.

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John G
Reply to
John G

That feels like a race condition, eg:due to reading the dos timer counter without disabling interrupts, if you have source and the build tools you can probably debug it

else: Build a watchdog timer: if lights freeze blip the reset pin.

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Reply to
Jasen Betts

On a sunny day (Fri, 13 Dec 2013 16:30:32 -0800 (PST)) it happened Bill Bowden wrote in :

Drive some sort of watchdog that power cycles the PC from a relay powered by the lights?

I would use a Raspberry Pi....

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

On Fri, 13 Dec 2013 16:30:32 -0800 (PST), Bill Bowden Gave us:

snipped stupid Usenet client retarded long lines.

You should learn Usenet posting conventions. And then follow them.

Did you set the files and buffers statements in your floppy's autoexec,bat and config.sys files? You can also set it up such that you maximize the available base level memory.

I would run it from a DOS or windows emulation within Linux.

But then you are back to KVM access.

You could also install DOS on a hard drive and place the software there and run it right out of autoexec.bat. That would be the way to go for touchless operation.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

On Sat, 14 Dec 2013 18:50:15 +0200, Tauno Voipio Gave us:

DOS apps are single threaded. There is one allocation made. work within that. They don't even get the fancy extra memory management of the old days. And is he booting that old DOS on a newer machine? More likely to have an interrupt latch up.

Maybe try QEMM. He wants it to boot and run. Think inside the box.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

I'd run MEMTEST on the system. You might have questionable ram in the lower 1M.

Cheers

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Reply to
Martin Riddle

You have over simplified it to the point where it is completely untrue.

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Reply to
Jasen Betts

d serial ports, using a DOS window in win98. Works fine when run from win98 inside a DOS window, but seems to hang up after a couple hours when run fr om a floppy that just boots to a command prompt and runs the program from t he autoexec file. I wanted to run the program automatically, so I didn't ne ed a keyboard or screen or mouse. Works fine for a couple hours and then ha ngs up, but not always in the same place.

ing a DOS program? But that would require a screen and mouse to turn off th e machine. I'm trying to make it automatic so I can just switch it on and o ff.

Yes, that sounds like a plan. I have another machine I can try which I shou ld have done. It does seem like a hardware problem.

-Bill

Reply to
Bill Bowden

in the same place.

While in true DOS, you're at the mercy of the BIOS functions being used extensively.

The bios for the most part these days are only expected to boot your PC into some protected mode of CPU operation. So be it that your CPU has a design flaw and over heats or the bios roms just can't take it!

In many mother boards back in the day, you could force the transfer of the ROM into ram or keep it in rom.. You should investigate your options there. Also, have you properly insured that you are not getting recursive entry's on the handling of IRQS ? Are you doing this in ASM code and do you have one of those CPU's that had buss lock problems ? Many of the early intels and windows has/had code to handle those problems by monitoring this. Which also slowed things down..

Jamie

Reply to
Maynard A. Philbrook Jr.

On 15 Dec 2013 01:59:17 GMT, Jasen Betts Gave us:

Why then was it that the term "memory leak" was not even in use until it was a problem with errors in the basic design of Windows' kernel and HAL? It was a Windows fail mode description term.

What you want to call it now, I do not see you stating.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

It was in use even before Windows, but it seems that you have not heard of it earlier.

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-T.
Reply to
Tauno Voipio

On Sun, 15 Dec 2013 16:04:21 +0200, Tauno Voipio Gave us:

But NOBODY was writing DOS apps that "slowly chewed up the RAM" ie "memory leak crash".

That is nobody who wanted to sell their app to anyone.

So, the dork used the wrong term for the wrong reason.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

There is a significant difference between DOS and Windows programs: The DOS code was usually started from the command line and run once until next start. The operating system cleaned up after a stopped run. Windows (and other GUI) programs run much longer, and the commands are given to the running program, so the opportunity to crash the system due to a leaking program is greater.

Anyway, there were leaking programs already in CP/M and its predecessors in the minicomputers (and bigger, also).

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-T.
Reply to
Tauno Voipio

got sourcecode?

Reply to
Johann Klammer

On Mon, 16 Dec 2013 06:24:51 +0100, Johann Klammer Gave us:

I thought XP was tolerant of power outage type shutdowns.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

On Sun, 15 Dec 2013 22:08:55 -0800, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno Gave us:

Of course, I was being facetious.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

On Sun, 15 Dec 2013 22:08:55 -0800, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno Gave us:

I would use Linux on little 5 watt cuboxes with wifi.

Windows no longer supported at those version levels.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

DOS actually made provision for multitasking but you had to get hold of the DOS critical flag since the OS itself was not reentrant. Provided that you only ever task switched in your own code then it was possible to run multithreaded and multiprocess time sliced code on DOS.

How do you think the old DOS device drivers worked?

Yes. They were, but back in those days it took a fair while to chew through (upto) 640k. Ram was used a lot more carefully when it was expensive and precious stuff. But programmers still did malloc without tidying up properly ever since C was invented (and corresponding badly behaved constructs in other computer languages before that).

Of the early computer languages only LISP had dynamic garbage collection of programmer abandoned unused objects.

Memory leaks and file handle leaks have occurred since the beginning of the computer age. But when memory was tight they got noticed pretty quickly. I recall a serious VAX crash where the error handler tried to open a new file handle to report "system has run out of file handles".

The same could also happen on PDP11s or 8s.

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Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

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