Windows 3.x and Hardcard Drivers

• Microsoft Windows operating system versions 3.0, 3.0a, 3.1, 3.11

SUMMARY

The following topics are covered in this article:

• Windows 3.1 and Hardcard Plus 80 II
• Windows 3.0 and Hardcard 40/80 II
• General information about Hardcard Plus

MORE INFORMATION

Windows 3.1 and Hardcard Plus 80 II

When you run Windows 3.1 on a computer with a Hardcard Plus 80 II, you must have version 1.4 or later of the Hardcard driver to run MS-DOS-based applications in 386 enhanced mode. Earlier driver versions cause the following error message:

   Serious Disk Error:

   A serious disk error has occurred while writing to drive C
   Continue will retry to the operation.

   Press any key to continue

Windows 3.0 and Hardcard 40/80 II

ATDOSHC2.SYS version 1.3 has been known to cause erratic disk reads under Windows 3.0. According to Plus Development, this problem has been corrected in version 1.31 for the Hardcard II 40 and 80 cards.

The new driver has the following file date and size:

   ATDOSHC2.SYS     22310 05-17-90

There are currently no Windows 3.0 drivers available for the Hardcard 20 or 40.

General Information on Hardcard Plus

There are three separate types of Hardcard Plus cards and they fall into the following categories.

Card & Size     Model       Driver          Version      VIRTUALHDIRQ=

20 MB           8-bit       ATDOSHC2.SYS    1.31         yes
40 MB           8-bit       ATDOSHC2.SYS    1.31         yes
40 MB           Standard    ATDOSHC2.SYS    1.4          yes
80 MB           Standard    ATDOSHC2.SYS    1.4          yes
50 MB           XL          ATDOSXL.SYS     1.5 or 1.7   no
105 MB          XL          ATDOSXL.SYS     1.5 or 1.7   no

The following table lists the address ranges that the specific Hardcard Plus cards may use in the upper memory area (UMA). If there is a memory conflict, try using an exclude statement on the EMM386.EXE line in CONFIG.SYS (X=A000-EFFF). If the exclude solves the problem, you can use this table to further narrow down the exclude range.

UMA USED       20       40      40II    80II    XL50     XL105

C800-C9FF       X        X       X       X       X        X

CA00-CBFF       X        X       X       X       X        X

CC00-CDFF                        X       X       X        X

CE00-CFFF                        X       X       X        X

D000-D1FF                        X       X       X        X

D200-D3FF                        X       X       X        X

D400-D5FF                        X       X       X        X

The Plus Development products included here are manufactured by a vendor independent of Microsoft; we make no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding these products' performance or reliability.