ISDNtest.Txt                                    16 May 1995

ISDN*tek
PO Box 3000
San Gregorio CA 94074
Tel: 415-712-3000
Fax: 415-712-3003
e-mail: info@isdntek.com
web page: http://www.isdntek.com


			ISDN TEST software

INTRODUCTION

The ISDNTEST program provides assistance installing your ISDN*tek
CyberSpace Card.

There are many systems that must work together to provide you with 
a seamless interface to the Internet, and the CyberSpace Card sits 
squarely in the middle. For this reason, it is important to check 
each of the interfaces at every step of the installation.

The Test Program will step you through 5 phases:

1. Set the Address and Interrupt switches on the Board.
2. Check your System's Config.SYS and System.INI
3. Install the Card and confirm that the board works in 
	your computer as configured.
4. Enter your Service Profile ID (SPID) provided with your ISDN line 
	and set the call type.
5. Test your connection to the ISDN line by placing a call.

GETTING STARTED

Copy files from the Distribution Diskette and install according to 
your Windows documentation:

		ISDNTEST.EXE    

		VBRUN300.DLL
		ISDNTEK.DLL
		DDEML.DLL

		DIALER.EXE	(if Commuter Card)
		GRID.VBX	(if Commuter Card)

The ISDN Test program will create the following files 
if not already present on your system:

		ISDN.INI
		WINISDN.DLL

All the files may be in your working directory, or you may place 
the DLLs in your Windows Directory. If you already have a WINISDN.DLL 
then remove it and a new one will be installed. Copy the ISDNTEK.DLL 
over your old ISDNTEK.DLL (it is identical to the WINISDN.DLL and is 
the source of it).


1. BOARD SETTINGS - SET SWITCHES ON ISDN CARD

You can run certain sections of the program while you still have 
the card in your hand. The first section of the Setup screen allows 
you to see the values of the switch settings. The default address 
is D000 and the IRQ is factory set to 10. If you are aware of system 
conflicts at this time, then you should physically change the settings 
now. Use the icons on the screen to assist you. You should also review 
the section on system memory conflicts. Pay particular attention to
Shadow Rom if your's is a newer computer.

Starting memory addresses can range from 0000 to FF00, in increments 
of 100, such as D000, D100, D200, D300, etc.  Available interrupts 
usually range among 10,11,12,14,15, or 5. 

The Board Description is an arbitrary name (that can be omitted). 
It will be the source name for saving your diagnostics log to file, 
which you can change at any time.

		  SEARCHING FOR MEMORY CONFLICTS

When you think you have appropriate settings, then click on SET. This 
will save your settings to the ISDN.INI file and will search through 
you CONFIG.SYS and SYSTEM.INI and make recommendations regarding memory 
conflicts. It will not actually change your files, nor will it test for 
conflicting settings. It will, however, print the path and contents of 
these files into the log window.


2. ISDN LINE INFO - ENTER PHONE NUMBERS

Each ISDN line is assigned a Service Profile Indentifier which tells 
the local switch what kind of features are supported by your equipment. 
This SPID generally looks like your phone number (with area code for 
the DMS100 and without area code for the 5ESS), with a few extra 
digits before and after. Depending on your phone company's equipment, you 
may have been assigned either one, two, or no SPIDs, which you should 
enter here. (It should be noted that not all switches require this info 
in a call, so if you do not know your SPID, you just might get away 
without it. However, if a SPID is required and you do not include it, 
it will make a test failure difficult to locate.)

NOTE: Whenever you change your SPID entry, click on SET to save it to
file, and click the RESET icon to register it into the hardware.

The screen also provides an area for entering the number of a nearby 
phone. This number will be called during the test, and if it rings, 
then you will know that you have a good telephone connection. The Option 
buttons are for setting the type of call, either Voice, 56K, or 64K. 
The Voice button is to be used for the Ringing test to the nearby phone. 
When you click the SET button, these settings will be saved to your 
ISDN.INI file.

			SAVE YOUR LOG

Before you turn off your computer, save your diagnostic log to file 
using the Test Log pulldown. You may need to refer to this info later.

You may repeat the first two stages as often as you wish or need, and
save your log as often as you wish. The Save Settings and Get Settings 
option in the pull-down menu allows you to save and retrieve the info 
in your ISDN.INI file at any time.

		*-*-*  INSTALL CARD NOW   *-*-*

Now you can install your ISDN*tek CyberSpace card in your computer.


3. TEST BOARD - TEST CONFIGURATION ISSUES

This is the first actual test. Clicking the TEST button will tell 
the program to read three information fields from the board. If the 
fields can not be read, then there is a problem in the hardware 
settings on the board, or in the configuration files, or with 
conflicting hardware. This should be resolved before proceeding. 
If you get a partial reading of the board information, then you may 
need to reset the hardware, using the RESET button at the top of the 
screen or in the TEST pull-down, and try again.

4. TEST ISDN LINE

This final test is the first attempt at touching the telecom side of 
the system. It should not be attempted until you have seen a successful 
Board Test and have resolved any hardware conflicts.

Plug the telephone cable into your Network Termination (NT1) on your 
wall and into the CyberSpace Card in your computer.

The test is automatic and begins with "Open ISDN Board", "Start 
Diagnostics", and "Dialing" your phone number. Then the "Connect to 
ISDN" request is transmitted. At this point, if you have a good line
connection, you will receive several switch responses such as, "Setup",
"Information", "Call Proceeding", etc. (if you answer the phone then 
you will see a "Connect" response on the screen), otherwise you will
experience a 30 second timeout without the appropriate messages. 

Timeout failures may occur for various reasons, including forgetting 
to plug in the phone cable, or failing to enter a proper SPID. Other 
reasons may be incompatibility with the local switch (not upgraded to 
the current NI-1 standard) or an improperly configured line. Click on 
the RESET button on the screen and try Test 3 and Test 4 again. 
You should save your diagnostics log to file for troubleshooting.

If your nearby phone rang successfully, you are ready to try a call 
into your Internet Provider's ISDN access point. Replace your local 
test phone number with the access phone number for the Internet and 
select the 56K option. (Although the 64K option is presented, there 
are very few out-of-office 64K lines, so you should confirm the 56K 
connection before attempting a 64K connection). This call should be 
even more successful than your call to the analog phone. As the 
messages flow down the screen, you should see a Connect message from 
the switch, indicating that you have reached your service provider's 
router.

Congratulations! Now you can use your TCP/IP software to access the 
Internet.



			TECHNICAL SECTION
		POTENTIAL SYSTEM MEMORY CONFLICTS


Any card you install in your computer may potentially conflict with
other hardware unless you set each card with a unique address and
interrupt. This section could help you resolve conflicts with any
hardware you may have installed, including your ISDN*tek board. These
conflicts generally fall into three different classes, Shadow Rom,
conflicts with other hardware, and memory managers.

Memory conflicts  may be suspected if you try to run the ISDN*tek
software, but get errors during hardware resets of the boards, cannot
get a proper serial number display, or if some part of the system
fails to boot after installing the hardware.


		The First Memory Conflict
		Shadow Memory

Many machines, in an effort to improve "benchmark" speed tests, use
Shadow Memory functions, in which regions of hardware memory, such
as ROM BIOS, adaptor ROM, and adaptor RAM are copied and remapped
into faster system memory.  More recent machines are also shadowing
the entire upper memory region between A000h and FFFFh.

This upper Shadow Memory can cause problems for hardware, since all
memory access is now remapped into system RAM instead of the real
hardware of an adaptor board, such as the CyberSpace Card. The remapping
prevents access to the real hardware, and thus keeps the CyberSpace
Card from working.

The symptoms of Shadow Memory problems, as seen by the CyberSpace
Card, include "System Memory Access" errors when trying to use the
Card, or the Memory Footprint of the CyberSpace Card not showing up
on the  MSD Memory Map (see MSD later).

Fortunately, these systems allow you to disable the shadowing function
for a specified address region, allowing access to the real hardware
again. This is normally controlled in the system setup program, accessed
at bootup by various key combinations, such as F1, Ctrl-S, Ctl-Alt-Enter,
or Esc, etc. Refer to your system documentation or the message on
the screen during bootup.

The control of shadowing is located in various places within the setup
program. Sometimes it is located in Advanced CMOS settings, with options
such as a display of Shadow RAM for various segments. Be sure that
Shadow RAM is "Disabled" for the segment containing the CyberSpace
Card.

In some systems the entry reads "Disable Shadow ROM:" which must be
"Enabled" to turn off the shadow function (watch carefully for the
double negative wording)!

In other systems, the word "shadowing" is not used. For example, some
systems have a "Plug and Play" page within setup, and in this page
have an entry called "ISA Shared Memory Size". When this is "disabled",
shadowing is used for the entire upper memory region (more double
negative wording). You must select a memory size of no less than 4K
bytes (up to 16K bytes) to match the amount of memory space required
by the CyberSpace Card.

Once the size option is specified, another option is enabled, requesting
the memory "Base Address". Here, you should select the base address 
set for the board, such as D000, D400, etc.  When both the Shared 
Memory Size and Base Address have been set, the system will no longer 
use shadowing for the specified memory window, and the CyberSpace 
boards will work well in the system.


		The Second Memory Conflict
		Hardware

The  second potential conflict is with other system adaptors and memory.
You must find an area of real mode (under 1 MByte) memory that is 
not used in your system. For example, most systems do not have any 
memory in the 64 KByte region D000:0000 to D000:FFFF.

Some utilities may help you identify available regions of address 
space in your system, but they will be system specific. In general, 
you must find out where any hardware adaptors are located, and how 
much ROM BIOS area is used in your system.

	MSD System Diagnostics 

Window includes a DOS program called MSD which is fairly helpful in 
identifying which sections of memory are allocated. However, it cannot 
always detect all memory uses.

MSD should be started from DOS, not from Windows. After starting MSD 
(C:>>MSD), select the Memory button in the first screen to display 
a memory map of your computer. You will generally be looking for a 
section of memory that is mapped as solid black, "available", when 
the CyberSpace Card is not plugged into the system. With the card 
pluggen in, some of the selected memory space for the card will display 
as RAM. You DO NOT want any other pattern in the memory space of the 
card, such as page frames, UMBs, etc. Each horizontal line of the 
display represents a 400h block (16K bytes) of memory. You will need 
4K bytes (1/4 line) of available memory for the CyberSpace Card.

If no satisfactory region displays as available, you may be able to 
use a section of memory that is allocated to Expanded Memory (EMS) 
functions, or to Upper Memory Blocks (UMBs), by placing EXCLUDE statements 
in your configuration files, as described in the next section.

		The Third Memory Conflict
		Memory Managers

The third potential memory conflict is more subtle, and is usually 
associated with the use of advanced memory managers, such as EMM386.EXE, 
or protected mode systems environments, such as Windows 3.x.

In these cases, the memory management program might choose to map 
some of the real mode memory areas into protected mode memory, to 
implement Expanded Memory (EMS) functions, or to provide Upper Memory 
Blocks (UMBs) for device drivers and TSR programs. These actions may 
conflict with the access to the real hardware on ISDN*tek boards if 
the mapping is performed in address regions used by the boards.

Fortunately, these memory managers usually have options that allow 
you to specify regions of memory to exclude from the mapping functions. 
Two specific examples are given for the DOS/Windows environment. If 
you use a different memory manager, check the documentation for it, 
to determine an equivalent function.

If your CONFIG.SYS file contains a "device=emm386.exe" statement, 
you may need to add an option to exclude the memory region used by 
ISDN*tek boards. The installation software will help you locate this 
line in your configuration file. If you select the 64 KByte region 
D000:0000 to D000:FFFF, as mentioned above, an example command might 
be:

	DEVICE=C:\DOS\emm386.exe 2048 RAM X=D000-DFFF

where the "X=D000-DFFF" specifies the region of memory to exclude, 
in real mode paragraph notation. Note that if you are using fewer 
than 4 ISDN*tek boards, you may exclude as little as 16Kbytes per 
board(4K bytes for newer versions). For example, one board located 
at D000:0000 would only need to exclude "X=D000-D3FF".

Under Windows 3.x, you might also need to modify the SYSTEM.INI file, 
to contain an EMMExclude command, which performs a similar function 
to the example shown above. The installation software will assist 
you in locating this file. The proper command would be:

      EMMExclude=D000-DFFF

to again specify a full 64 KByte region. A smaller region can be used 
for fewer boards, for example "D000-D7FF" for two boards, at D000:0000 
and D400:0000.

The EMMExclude command must be added to the SYSTEM.INI file under 
the "[386Enh]" section. The file may be modified by a standard word 
processor program. 
