VOGONS


My finally working "Project 98" computer !!!

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Reply 20 of 63, by Elia1995

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Unfortunately, that's the only PSU I currently have here that would even fit in the chassis, my main PC uses a 660W (I think) Thermaltake Blue_EVO which is larger than the Project 98's chassis (and I don't want to murder my most powerful machine for an experiment) and even though I think it has more pins than the ATX socket in the Asus A8V-XE... thus I cannot test the mobo with another power supply...

The PSU is fine, the hardrives boot up just fine, I hear them spinning by the way... it says it is 220V on the back and I have no idea what model it is (the label inside is quite off from its age), but enough for a Windows 98/XP vintage retrogaming computer, no ?

I just tried what Chinny said, but apparently it did nothing :\

I'll now post some screenshots of the BIOS

f68a1920c7304d6a84a183a9620e9cc0.png

Primary IDE Master and Slave are both "None", while BOTH should be detecting an hardisk since I have two hardrives in there, no ?

b860082b9d7e4fc289bcdcb0a5d94a65.png

I switched them to "None", rebooted and tried "Auto" again, but nothing happened.

What is the deal with "Manual" ???

I also noticed that today it takes a while to get into the BIOS setup... it gets there instantly when I set those things to "None" and it always got in there instantly every other day, but today it waits at least 2 minutes before going in the BIOS setup... weird and creepy... plus that's my LAST motherboard which can handle Windows 98, so we MUST fix it 😢 😢

Check this out:

c794d8e7de7d4424be18a5dc4bbb81e7.png

Currently assembled vintage computers I own: 11

Most important ones:
A "modded" Olivetti M4 434 S (currently broken).
An Epson El Plus 386DX running MS-DOS 6.22 (currently broken).
Celeron Coppermine 1.10GHz on an M754LMRTP motherboard

Reply 21 of 63, by Tetrium

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Elia1995 wrote:

The PSU is fine, the hardrives boot up just fine, I hear them spinning by the way... it says it is 220V on the back and I have no idea what model it is (the label inside is quite off from its age), but enough for a Windows 98/XP vintage retrogaming computer, no ?

How do you know the PSU is fine if you don't even know the model number?

And the pic you showed, also showed your rig being very dusty. The rear air exhaust thingy is so full of dust, even if you have a fan in there, it will have a hard time cooling your rig and all the hot air will pass through your PSU, which also seems to be dusty.

I don't know if your PSU is your problem right now, but at the very least you have another problem staring at you right there.

Btw, don't open up any computer PSU if you don't know what you're doing (just a disclaimer here 🤣)

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Reply 22 of 63, by Elia1995

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I cleaned up the PSU fan as you suggested, I also tried to disable the SATA controller as I am not using anything SATA in that PC and I tried again to set IDEs to none and back to auto, but still nothing, it hangs up here:

8730d74d77124822bfc64b9ef67d4db5.png

The hard drives both work fine, I tested them in my main PC with an external USB enclosure and they both work...

The IDE cables are all the way in and the slots aren't flimsy at all...
I could try to play around with the jumpers, but I've never understood anything of them...

Currently assembled vintage computers I own: 11

Most important ones:
A "modded" Olivetti M4 434 S (currently broken).
An Epson El Plus 386DX running MS-DOS 6.22 (currently broken).
Celeron Coppermine 1.10GHz on an M754LMRTP motherboard

Reply 23 of 63, by Jorpho

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Elia1995 wrote:

Primary IDE Master and Slave are both "None", while BOTH should be detecting an hardisk since I have two hardrives in there, no ?

"None" means "none" – meaning the BIOS will not even try to detect the drives.

You should always leave those settings on "auto". If they switched to "none" all by themselves, then maybe your CMOS battery is dying. Don't use "manual" – it will just cause different problems.

If the drives were working fine before, don't start messing with the jumpers now.

Reply 24 of 63, by Elia1995

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They are in "auto", but they're still not being detected...

Currently assembled vintage computers I own: 11

Most important ones:
A "modded" Olivetti M4 434 S (currently broken).
An Epson El Plus 386DX running MS-DOS 6.22 (currently broken).
Celeron Coppermine 1.10GHz on an M754LMRTP motherboard

Reply 25 of 63, by Jorpho

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Then your problem lies elsewhere. Maybe changing your CMOS battery will help. (Around here, replacements can be found at the dollar store – maybe not the best replacements, but adequate for testing purposes.)

It is possible to use a separate PSU from another system just to power the drives, but if the drives are spinning then I doubt it is a PSU problem.

Reply 26 of 63, by Elia1995

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Yeah, the drives are spinning just fine, plus I changed the CMOS battery not a lot of days ago.

When I salvaged this motherboard it had a dead battery since I dunno how many years, I had issues with the clock and thus I changed it for that.

After all you can notice that the time and date are correct in the BIOS screenshot, it wouldn't be if it still had the dead CMOS battery.

Currently assembled vintage computers I own: 11

Most important ones:
A "modded" Olivetti M4 434 S (currently broken).
An Epson El Plus 386DX running MS-DOS 6.22 (currently broken).
Celeron Coppermine 1.10GHz on an M754LMRTP motherboard

Reply 27 of 63, by chinny22

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Elia1995 wrote:

What is the deal with "Manual" ???

Lets you set all the settings yourself. I had to do this with my CF card at first.
If you google your hard drive you may find the correct settings. otherwise find something with the same capacity and experiment from there.
This is even trickier though as the computer will blindly accept what you set, so if your wrong it will simply not work but give no errors either. (you wont damage anything though)

Also just to double check at the moment you just have the 1 hard drive on the primary IDE channel and tried both IDE connectors (I've had drives that like being on the 1st connector even though that's meant to be for the slave)

Also tired setting the jumper to Primary or Cable Select (also had drives that prefer one or the other)

Reply 28 of 63, by Elia1995

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Ok, time for some news.

I just unplugged the secondary (Windows XP's + extra storage) hardisk and left the main Windows 98 hardisk in and it detected it.

I didn't change anything else, no jumpers, nothing, I just unplugged the power and the slave BUS from the secondary hardisk.

Now we need to figure out how to get the secondary hardisk work with this one together again like it used to be until all of that suddenly happened...

rQEzzot.png

Currently assembled vintage computers I own: 11

Most important ones:
A "modded" Olivetti M4 434 S (currently broken).
An Epson El Plus 386DX running MS-DOS 6.22 (currently broken).
Celeron Coppermine 1.10GHz on an M754LMRTP motherboard

Reply 29 of 63, by Elia1995

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I tried plugging back in the second hardisk aswell, just like how it was the first time (when everything was working fine), but still nothing... it doesn't detect neither hardisk if I plug both in... any idea how to configure the jumpers at this point ???

Currently assembled vintage computers I own: 11

Most important ones:
A "modded" Olivetti M4 434 S (currently broken).
An Epson El Plus 386DX running MS-DOS 6.22 (currently broken).
Celeron Coppermine 1.10GHz on an M754LMRTP motherboard

Reply 30 of 63, by Jorpho

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Elia1995 wrote:

any idea how to configure the jumpers at this point ???

One drive should be configured as mater (or master with slave present), and the other drive should be configured as slave. What else could you possibly expect? There aren't a lot of options here. It is indeed very strange that it ever worked at all with the jumpers set incorrectly, but neither I nor anyone else here knows exactly what you might or might not have been changing.

Reply 31 of 63, by PcBytes

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Elia1995 wrote:

I tried plugging back in the second hardisk aswell, just like how it was the first time (when everything was working fine), but still nothing... it doesn't detect neither hardisk if I plug both in... any idea how to configure the jumpers at this point ???

Set your 98 drive as master (jumper settings should be printed on the HDD) and the other as slave. And check that they share the IDE channel they're on. Oh,and depending on your jumper settings,you can also try setting the CD/DVD drive as master or slave,or cable-select. I had this happen a few times with S754 motherboards.

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Reply 32 of 63, by Elia1995

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The DVD is in the other blue IDE socket anyway, just the two hardrives share the same socket with an IDE cable with three connectors.

When I boot I get two masters: Primary Master which is the Win98 hardisk and Secondary Master which is the DVD.
I need to get the XP hardisk on Primary Slave at this point if I understood correctly.

Currently assembled vintage computers I own: 11

Most important ones:
A "modded" Olivetti M4 434 S (currently broken).
An Epson El Plus 386DX running MS-DOS 6.22 (currently broken).
Celeron Coppermine 1.10GHz on an M754LMRTP motherboard

Reply 33 of 63, by chinny22

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Yes that is 100% correct.
And should be connected to the cable in this order

Idecable2.jpg

or you can have the DVD as secondary on either IDE "socket" (channel is the correct term)
and have both hard drives set on primary on different cables.

Just always make sure the hard drive you boot off is the Primary master, in this case your Win98 drive

Reply 34 of 63, by Elia1995

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Yeah, the Win98 hardisk has the boot loader with the selection between XP and 98 (I still get the boot loader even with this hardisk only, so it installed correctly).
I'll try to swap the DVD with the slave of the primary IDE cable and connect the XP hardisk where the DVD is currently connected and see if it works like that...

Currently assembled vintage computers I own: 11

Most important ones:
A "modded" Olivetti M4 434 S (currently broken).
An Epson El Plus 386DX running MS-DOS 6.22 (currently broken).
Celeron Coppermine 1.10GHz on an M754LMRTP motherboard

Reply 35 of 63, by Jorpho

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Elia1995 wrote:

I'll try to swap the DVD with the slave of the primary IDE cable and connect the XP hardisk where the DVD is currently connected and see if it works like that...

You'll need to change the jumper on the DVD drive when you do that. (Using the "cable select" option is inadvisable.)

I hope we're talking about the same thing in referring to "jumpers".

Reply 36 of 63, by Elia1995

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Yeah, the pins betweeb the IDE pins and the power supply pins on the hardisk, no ?

Currently assembled vintage computers I own: 11

Most important ones:
A "modded" Olivetti M4 434 S (currently broken).
An Epson El Plus 386DX running MS-DOS 6.22 (currently broken).
Celeron Coppermine 1.10GHz on an M754LMRTP motherboard

Reply 38 of 63, by Elia1995

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A new challenger joined the battle:

535e83ea23e34bb3931a3edab5924ca7.png

WTF is this ?

Currently assembled vintage computers I own: 11

Most important ones:
A "modded" Olivetti M4 434 S (currently broken).
An Epson El Plus 386DX running MS-DOS 6.22 (currently broken).
Celeron Coppermine 1.10GHz on an M754LMRTP motherboard

Reply 39 of 63, by Jorpho

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If things are just randomly failing now for no apparent reason – even when you aren't changing anything – then one or more of your hardware components is bad. There is no way of knowing what might be the problem except for swapping out the components one by one. I had a faulty PSU once that caused numerous mysterious, intermittent failures; I also once had a PCChips motherboard with leaky capacitors that would not behave consistently.