Old Thrashbarg wrote:

That card you linked is not even an IDE controller, it's MFM. Those things were obsolete several years before 486s even hit the market. Putting aside the considerable difficulty of finding a working MFM drive, "dramatic" wouldn't even begin to describe the performance hit... that thing would make the machine unusably slow.

You've no idea how glad I am you guys are around 😊

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

How much troubleshooting have you done with your existing controller, though? There's any number of things that could cause it not to work, which may or may not be any fault of the card itself.

Well.. the fact that the machine boots and posts just fine with everything but the controller card would suggest that it's that specific bit of hardware that's to blame. I've tried switching to a different VLB slot, taking out everything else except the essentials, disabling every interface on the card by way of the jumper switches, and it still wont work.

With the card inserted the fans will spin and the machine does.. something machine-noise-like, but there's no onscreen action whatsoever.

Hmm... OK, PAT48AG... is that the right one?

Documentation is a little sparse, but I see a few points of interest in the jumper settings on your motherboard that might be worth experimenting with, to try getting that IDE card working:

The first is JP18... try that one in both positions, see if it makes any difference.
Next, it looks like JP4 and/or JP5 (and maybe, but less likely, JP3) are responsible for the VLB wait states... play around with those in different configurations, see if you can make any headway. Perhaps related, JP23 and 24 are good candidates for controlling ISA speed.

Reason I suggest those things is that it could be a matter of the card being picky about VLB settings, especially since you're running it alongside another VLB card.

Of course, don't get your hopes up, it's not entirely unlikely that the damn card's just dead... VLB cards weren't known for their hardiness anyhow. It's worth a try, though, if you have some time to spare.

If all else fails, maybe consider going SCSI. I'm assuming you're in the UK from your previous eBay link, and I ran across this thing. Of course you'd need a different CDRom and HD, but you could potentially get better performance, and IMO, SCSI is a lot nicer to deal with than the old-type EIDE.

Mine is the PAT48AG, however the jumper names don't add up with the ones on the board. My board doesn't have the B printed after the model revision, but I'm not sure if that's relevant. The ones you linked to do add up with the ones in my manual hower and the locations seemed consistent with the actual board layout so I went ahead and tried switching the jumper positions each one in turn and booting after every switch. No luck 🙁 Granted I didn't try every single combination but we should have seen some change if it was going to work with any of them.

Good ideas though 😀 I appreciate it.

I'm not from the UK but the swedish variant of ebay is pretty piss-poor so I generally shop for parts from our island friends.

I wouldn't mind trying SCSI but aren't the drives themselves kinda tricky to come across and/or pricey, especially the CD-rom? Kinda hesitant to get a second VLB card again as well in case there is a conflict with using more than one at a time.

How about this one?

It doesn't specify cd-rom compability but given that the card seems to be from 97/98 I'd be amazed if it didn't have it.

How about this one?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … em=350321960348

The seller ships to Europe, accepts paypal, and it's quite cheap.

I wouldn't mind trying SCSI but aren't the drives themselves kinda tricky to come across and/or pricey, especially the CD-rom?

Not really, as long as you don't try to limit yourself to "period correct" equipment. For example here is a decent 40X CDROM drive, if you don't mind the black faceplate. Hard drives aren't that hard to come by, either, especially if you look at newer drives. The easiest option there would be to get an adapter and whatever random <8GB server-pulled drive you happen to come across.

Have you tried cleaning the contacts on the controller board? I used switch cleaner on my lifeless SCSI VLB card today and now it seems to be working.

Does your controller card have vga on it, in which case could it be conflicting with your graphics card?

Thanks for the tips guys 😀

I picked this http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … em=350321960348 up the other day but if it turns out to be a VLB conflict I'll go looking for an ISA one.

I cleaned the contacts with some rubbing alcohol but no luck there. Suspecting the card is plain dead.

Thirst wrote:

I would love any suggestions on what to improve. […]
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I would love any suggestions on what to improve.

Glide Windows 98 machine - 1998

AMD K6-2 @ 550 Mhz
V72MA Motherboard
NCP 265MB PC-100
2 x Mismatched Voodoo2 12MB running in SLI
Soundblaster Live!
IBM Aptiva case 70W PSU

Spare parts

AMD K6-2 @ 400Mhz
Creative Geforce2 GTS 32MB

Changes

By far the weakest unit. Only 3 PCI slots. Only supports up to 256MB of RAM. Wont run Outcast very well at max settings. Look into replacement.

For a 1998 SLI machine, that is a relatively slow unit. The 550 MHz have a fair chance to not even trigger the TP speed bug, something any old P2 266 will usually accomplish. If you want a glide machine, you should think P2 or P3 as CPU.