Hi all,
 
We just got our BioRad MRC600 about three weeks ago, and I have tried to
install Windows 3.1, but I have been unsuccessful.  Windows will run for a
little while, but invariably barfs with a message along the lines of
"Program XXXX caused a general protection fault in module YYYY", with module
YYYY usually being either progman.exe or user.exe.  I don't even have to be
doing anything fancy -- just using File Manager or even the Character Map can
cause this problem.  I haven't even dared to try to use COMOS from Windows,
yet.
 
Has anyone out there experienced the same thing? Any technophiles have any
suggestions?  Our computer is an Amsdell 486-dx2/66 with 8 Mb RAM, a Vision
VL Bus hooked up to a Western Digital Caviar 2250 HD, and a Cirrus VL-bus VGA
card with 1 Mb video RAM.  The motherboard is an ExpertBoard 4049 ALI-1429G
with 128k cache.  Does anyone know if perhaps all the BioRad hardware accesses
unusual IRQ's, or somehow messes up calls to SmartDrive? (We are using the
MS-DOS 6.21's SmartDrive with the /X option (write-behind caching disabled)).
COMOS on its own works fine -- it's just Windows that screws up.
As an aside, we have also installed an Adaptec 1540 SCSI card in the computer
so that we can run a magneto-optical drive off it, but Windows will kick out
regardless of whether the card is installed or not, so we have eliminated this
possibility.
 
BioRad had a few suggestions, but none of them worked out.
 
Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
 
 
Mike Czubryt                                         [log in to unmask]
Division of Cardiovascular Sciences
St. Boniface General Hospital Research Centre           Phone:  (204) 235-3855
351 Tache Ave., Winnipeg, MB, Canada, R2H 2A6             Fax:  (204) 233-6723
"A drink a day may lower the risk of atherosclerosis ... isn't science great?"