VOGONS

Search

Common searches

I need help please: 3 floppy drives, 3 motherboards (386), 3 I/O Cards, no boot

Topic actions

First post, by delorean__

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Hello everyone,

I need some serious help! I started this little project (rebuild childhood 386 PC) a couple of years ago. I purchased a working 386 motherboard off eBay, got everything to work but it lost all data on the hard drive once it was shutdown. I thought that it could be because of the leakage of the onboard battery. (I noticed this later)

I put that motherboard aside and bought another one. Symptoms became even worse: can't boot off the floppy. After trying everything I purchased another I/O card which didn’t change anything, then another floppy. No luck.

Since then:

1 new I/O card

Another 386-baby motherboard

2 other floppy drives

I now have 3 sets of floppy data cables (IDE style). One has the very old 5-inch connector I believe which doesn’t work at all. Why?).

What am I doing wrong? I have changed RAM, reset CMOS, tested the floppy in a working PC before trying to boot on the 386. I tried a different power supply as well.

The weird thing is that it is corrupting every single floppy that I put into it.

When I enable the read only tab on the floppy it still does not boot, but at least it doesn't kill the floppy.

What the heck am I missing or doing wrong?!?!

Here are a few specs:

VESA Super I/O card: GCW757VL-3
AIO - 200G - V3.00 I/O Card
Brand new (still in original box) 3295UMV - A Ver 1 I/O card

Floppy drives:

1997 IBM
2003 Samsung drive
2007 NEC

Motherboards:

Currently in system: AMD386 DXL-33 AMI BIOS - CHIPS Chipset
Other: AM386 SX-25 SIS Chipset (This one leaked)
AMD 386 SX-33 Baby board to test the rest...

Questions:

Are all 3.5 floppy drives the same? Same cables etc.? Can I take a drive from 2003 and install it in a 1992 386?

What the heck am I missing?

The message after POST is always the same (It also does the floppy seek correctly after the RAM count, unless I use the older cables that have the 5-inch connector):

DRIVE NOT READY ERROR

Insert BOOT diskette in A:

Press any key when ready

Remove disks or other media.

Press any key to restart.

(Doesn't restart)

Thank you very much for any help you could provide. So far, I have enough hardware to build 3 computers and it's really depressing that I can't get one to work!

I can provide any info, pictures or videos requested. Thanks again for any help.

Reply 2 of 16, by cyclone3d

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Floppy drives in general are the same as long as they are the same capacity.

Some do have jumpers to configure them to work in specific systems though. That is mainly with 5.25" drives though.

Is the floppy disk you are trying to boot from verified bootable with another system?
How are you making the boot floppy disks?

Are the floppy drives verified working with another system?
What about the cables?

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 3 of 16, by Horun

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

You do not mention the exact models of your 386 motherboards.
For one the GCW757VL-3 is a VLB card and most 386 do not have VLB slots so the IDE portion will not work unless you have a rare 386 with VLB slot..
The Goldstar AIO - 200G is a good card from experience but you have to set jumpers properly. Can you post a picture ?
Older 3.5" floppies have jumpers and may need to be set, newer ones rarely have any jumpers and are to be used on the end of a twisted end floppy cable to be "A" drive in standard PC's.

edit: Oops ! sorry guys was slow to reply :?

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 4 of 16, by delorean__

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
cyclone3d wrote on 2021-12-27, 02:02:
Floppy drives in general are the same as long as they are the same capacity. […]
Show full quote

Floppy drives in general are the same as long as they are the same capacity.

Some do have jumpers to configure them to work in specific systems though. That is mainly with 5.25" drives though.

Is the floppy disk you are trying to boot from verified bootable with another system?
How are you making the boot floppy disks?

Are the floppy drives verified working with another system?
What about the cables?

Hi there,

Thanks for taking a look.
The drives that I have do not have jumpers.
I don't have another system old enough to verify that it boots but I can read the contents of the disk from 2 different PC's. One via a USB floppy drive, the other has an internal floppy drive.
As for how I make them, I format the diskette (long format to make sure) on my Windows 10 PC via the USB floppy drive, then copy the contents of the bootable image through WinImage. I have DOS 6.22 disks from here: REMOVED
I would have done format a: /s but that doesn't exist anymore. I don't think there's some sort of flag to mark the drive bootable?

Last edited by DosFreak on 2023-12-07, 02:20. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 5 of 16, by debs3759

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Reading the directory listing doesn't guarantee that the files can be read. Only way to verify that would be scandisk or copying the files. Should be OK though if you created the disk, unless the boot image was faulty.

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 6 of 16, by cyclone3d

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
debs3759 wrote on 2021-12-27, 22:11:

Reading the directory listing doesn't guarantee that the files can be read. Only way to verify that would be scandisk or copying the files. Should be OK though if you created the disk, unless the boot image was faulty.

Or if the USB floppy has misaligned heads and can only work with disks created by it.

That would explain why none of the regular floppy drives would work with the disks made with the USB floppy.

I would try getting one of those USB to floppy adapters to test the other floppy drives.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 7 of 16, by delorean__

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
cyclone3d wrote on 2021-12-28, 05:12:
Or if the USB floppy has misaligned heads and can only work with disks created by it. […]
Show full quote
debs3759 wrote on 2021-12-27, 22:11:

Reading the directory listing doesn't guarantee that the files can be read. Only way to verify that would be scandisk or copying the files. Should be OK though if you created the disk, unless the boot image was faulty.

Or if the USB floppy has misaligned heads and can only work with disks created by it.

That would explain why none of the regular floppy drives would work with the disks made with the USB floppy.

I would try getting one of those USB to floppy adapters to test the other floppy drives.

I can make the bootable floppy on a 2003 Compaq Presario with it's original drive to see.

Reply 8 of 16, by delorean__

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
Horun wrote on 2021-12-27, 02:10:
You do not mention the exact models of your 386 motherboards. For one the GCW757VL-3 is a VLB card and most 386 do not have VL […]
Show full quote

You do not mention the exact models of your 386 motherboards.
For one the GCW757VL-3 is a VLB card and most 386 do not have VLB slots so the IDE portion will not work unless you have a rare 386 with VLB slot..
The Goldstar AIO - 200G is a good card from experience but you have to set jumpers properly. Can you post a picture ?
Older 3.5" floppies have jumpers and may need to be set, newer ones rarely have any jumpers and are to be used on the end of a twisted end floppy cable to be "A" drive in standard PC's.

edit: Oops ! sorry guys was slow to reply :?

Sorry for the delay, I had the pictures ready but my account got permanently banned because of an email issue with Vogons and Hotmail!! Thanks to the admin for fixing that.
Please find attached the pictures of the IO cards, then another post with the motherboards, let me know if you would like better resolution.
The board I wanted to use in the build was the Morse. I think it's the same as my old one.

Attachments

Reply 9 of 16, by delorean__

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Motherboard pictures

Attachments

Reply 10 of 16, by weedeewee

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

a goldstar prime 2 multi IO card without jumpers ? mmh interesting.
the vesa super I/O ... unclear how the jumpers need to be set, switch everything from 2-3 to 1-2, but it's a VLB card so... no idea if that will partially work in just an ISA slot.
same remark for the 3295UMV, and those jumpers seem to be set ok...

Right to repair is fundamental. You own it, you're allowed to fix it.
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Do not ask Why !
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Serial_port

Reply 11 of 16, by delorean__

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Happy New Year everyone! Thank you for your help!

I have the system running with the Morse motherboard, Goldstar Prime 2 and the original floppy drive.
There have been a mix of problems but one in particular seems to have been the way I was making the floppies.
I am now using RawWrite for Windows from chrysocome.net and it works.
Before I would format a floppy on a working system then copy over the files. Why does this not boot?

Reply 12 of 16, by weedeewee

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
delorean__ wrote on 2022-01-01, 16:15:

Happy New Year everyone! Thank you for your help!
...
Before I would format a floppy on a working system then copy over the files. Why does this not boot?

Copying over just the files does not modify the bootsector in any way, which is often needed to make it an actual bootable floppy.

Happy New Year !

Right to repair is fundamental. You own it, you're allowed to fix it.
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Do not ask Why !
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Serial_port

Reply 14 of 16, by weedeewee

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Just the bootsector ? In dos ? None directly by default, unless you consider fiddling around in debug a default way.

Right to repair is fundamental. You own it, you're allowed to fix it.
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Do not ask Why !
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Serial_port

Go to top of page Go to top of page
Back to General Old Hardware
Close window
Close window