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Intel Above Board real-time clock support

I aim to create typical getclock/setclock DOS programs for RTC in Intel Above Board/PS card.

Intel Above Board/PS card front Intel Above Board/PS card back Intel Above Board/PS card connectors

Intel Above Board/PS is a very cool multi-function ISA card from 1985 for XT class computers. It has:

  • RTC clock;
  • serial port, DB-9 connector;
  • parallel port, DB-25 connector;
  • up to 1.5MB memory if all memory banks are populated with 41256 DRAM chips;
  • it can backfill the base memory from 256K or 512K to 640K;
  • all memory that wasn't used to backfill base memory can be used as EMS 4.0;
  • works reliably at 8MHz with 150ns DRAM chips.

The only problem I had with it is that all the drivers I could find online didn't include support for RTC. I finally found a driver distribution that did have RTC driver in it. It was in file intel_above_board_v40a.zip available here. I shared the good news with fellow enthusiasts here.

Intel driver works well, but it takes 1280 bytes of base memory, and on XT that is a lot.

I successfully dissassembled Intel driver. See the source here: clock.asm. I use DosBox and Microsoft Macro Assembler 5.1 to build it. Assembled binary matches the original driver exactly. You can use /DTWEAK parameter when compiling clock.asm to reduce size by 30 bytes: from 1280 to 1250.

Note on licensing

clock.sys driver and derivative works clock.asm and abovertc.asm are copyright (c) 1985 Intel Corporation. The rest of the code is my and is GPLv3.

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Intel Above Board real-time clock support

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