VOGONS


First post, by GeorgeMan

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Hello forum!

I'm going straight to the problem. I have a socket 7 board that refuses to boot from floppy and cd-rom, but HDD boot works as it should!
BIOS recognises the CD-Rom but on the second POST screen it pretends not to exist a CD-Rom in the drive...
If I choose to boot from floppy, the drive makes a very small ''click'' on the 2nd POST screen, where it should be starting to boot from it, but immediately appears the message "DISK BOOT FAILURE blah blah".
When enabling the "boot floppy seek" option in the BIOS, the floppy drive seeks correctly during the 1st POST screen.

I tried with other cables, other media and other drives, but the problem persists.
When booted from HDD, the computer works as intended and the performance is good. Cache is enabled, as COM ports are etc etc. I didn't try installing Windows though, because booting from CD doesn't work!

Any help on this please?
Is there any hidden secret option in this weird AMI BIOS with mouse support that I'm missing? 😢

1. Athlon XP 3200+ | ASUS A7V600 | Radeon 9500 @ Pro | SB Audigy 2 ZS | 80GB IDE, 500GB SSD IDE2Sata, 2x1TB HDDs | Win 98SE, XP, Vista
2. Pentium MMX 266| Qdi Titanium IIIB | Hercules graphics & Amber monitor | 1 + 10GB HDDs | DOS 6.22, Win 3.1, 95C

Reply 1 of 19, by AlphaWing

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Try another floppy drive, and if your using, rounded cables try a flat one, some floppys I've found are picky about the cable.
Make sure its A,C,cdrom in the bios, if it lets you do that.
Some won't let you have the Cdrom with the C drive in that order.

Reply 2 of 19, by GeorgeMan

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Tried with other drive and cable, nothing happened. The same with other CD drive.
There are 3 options in this AMI bios:
C: A: CD-ROM:
A: C: CD-ROM:
CD-ROM: A: C:

Tried all of them, but each one should have worked because there was no more than 1 bootable device connected to the system at any time... 🙁

1. Athlon XP 3200+ | ASUS A7V600 | Radeon 9500 @ Pro | SB Audigy 2 ZS | 80GB IDE, 500GB SSD IDE2Sata, 2x1TB HDDs | Win 98SE, XP, Vista
2. Pentium MMX 266| Qdi Titanium IIIB | Hercules graphics & Amber monitor | 1 + 10GB HDDs | DOS 6.22, Win 3.1, 95C

Reply 3 of 19, by GeorgeMan

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Any ideas guys? 😀

1. Athlon XP 3200+ | ASUS A7V600 | Radeon 9500 @ Pro | SB Audigy 2 ZS | 80GB IDE, 500GB SSD IDE2Sata, 2x1TB HDDs | Win 98SE, XP, Vista
2. Pentium MMX 266| Qdi Titanium IIIB | Hercules graphics & Amber monitor | 1 + 10GB HDDs | DOS 6.22, Win 3.1, 95C

Reply 4 of 19, by Artex

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What are you using for bootable media? Did you find a bootable .IMG for the floppy and .ISO for the CD-ROM image? If you boot to the C: drive normally, are you able to access the physical media in the drives by selecting their drive letters and performing a directory listing after you the boot puts you at the C: drive prompt?

My Retro B:\ytes YouTube Channel & Retro Collection
LihnlZ.jpg

Reply 5 of 19, by GeorgeMan

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The other media are confirmed to be bootable on other systems.
Is it possible that the same ide controller on the mobo to be working good with hdds and not with cdroms?

1. Athlon XP 3200+ | ASUS A7V600 | Radeon 9500 @ Pro | SB Audigy 2 ZS | 80GB IDE, 500GB SSD IDE2Sata, 2x1TB HDDs | Win 98SE, XP, Vista
2. Pentium MMX 266| Qdi Titanium IIIB | Hercules graphics & Amber monitor | 1 + 10GB HDDs | DOS 6.22, Win 3.1, 95C

Reply 7 of 19, by Jorpho

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GeorgeMan wrote:

Is it possible that the same ide controller on the mobo to be working good with hdds and not with cdroms?

If the BIOS is old enough (and if it's the AMI WinBIOS, it might be) then it might feasibly not support all bootable CD-ROMs. Have you tried looking for a BIOS update?

That doesn't explain the floppy problem, of course. Does the floppy drive work after you boot from the HDD?

Reply 8 of 19, by GeorgeMan

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Jorpho wrote:
GeorgeMan wrote:

Is it possible that the same ide controller on the mobo to be working good with hdds and not with cdroms?

If the BIOS is old enough (and if it's the AMI WinBIOS, it might be) then it might feasibly not support all bootable CD-ROMs. Have you tried looking for a BIOS update?

That doesn't explain the floppy problem, of course. Does the floppy drive work after you boot from the HDD?

Yes it is winbios and I pretty much like it! I have not installed a win95 or newer pnp os, so I don't really know. Should I install Windows on another machine and then just transfer the hdd? I think I'm gonna see the infamous BSOD screen this way...

tincup wrote:

Do the floppy and CDR appear correctly in the 'General' section of the BIOS where all the drives are enumerated?

The cdrom is correctly autodetected. I also enabled the floppy and it seeks it at the post screen.

1. Athlon XP 3200+ | ASUS A7V600 | Radeon 9500 @ Pro | SB Audigy 2 ZS | 80GB IDE, 500GB SSD IDE2Sata, 2x1TB HDDs | Win 98SE, XP, Vista
2. Pentium MMX 266| Qdi Titanium IIIB | Hercules graphics & Amber monitor | 1 + 10GB HDDs | DOS 6.22, Win 3.1, 95C

Reply 9 of 19, by Jorpho

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GeorgeMan wrote:

I have not installed a win95 or newer pnp os, so I don't really know.

This has zero relevance to the ability of your BIOS to boot from CD-ROMs.

Can you currently access floppies normally after booting from your hard drive?

Reply 11 of 19, by GeorgeMan

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Jorpho wrote:
GeorgeMan wrote:

I have not installed a win95 or newer pnp os, so I don't really know.

This has zero relevance to the ability of your BIOS to boot from CD-ROMs.

Can you currently access floppies normally after booting from your hard drive?

It has a specific option for the boot order and I've set it to boot from cd first. But still not booting. Tried different drive, media and cable.

About the floppy issue I will try it later, but TBH the cd boot concerns me more.

1. Athlon XP 3200+ | ASUS A7V600 | Radeon 9500 @ Pro | SB Audigy 2 ZS | 80GB IDE, 500GB SSD IDE2Sata, 2x1TB HDDs | Win 98SE, XP, Vista
2. Pentium MMX 266| Qdi Titanium IIIB | Hercules graphics & Amber monitor | 1 + 10GB HDDs | DOS 6.22, Win 3.1, 95C

Reply 12 of 19, by tincup

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Are you using an original installation CD and boot floppy, or images? What OS by the way? Maybe you need to try different images for this particular board to boot properly. You mentioned that your media are confirmed bootable on other systems - are they retro as well?

Easiest is if you can boot to Windows off the hard drive you can make a boot floppy that way, and I think W98se also can make a bootable CD IIRC.

Reply 13 of 19, by Jorpho

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GeorgeMan wrote:

It has a specific option for the boot order and I've set it to boot from cd first. But still not booting. Tried different drive, media and cable.

About the floppy issue I will try it later, but TBH the cd boot concerns me more.

Some BIOSes simply will not boot from CD-ROMs, ever, as the standard for bootable CDs was only invented some time after CD-ROMs came on the market. In such a case the only fix is to get a newer BIOS.

Although the CD drive shows up in the boot order, there are nonetheless different means for making a bootable CD-ROM and the BIOS may not support all of them.

Reply 14 of 19, by chinny22

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Not a fix, but a work around.
As long as you can boot from the hard drive, you can install Windows anyway.
Just copy the Win9x folder from the CD to your hard drive and run setup.exe

Definitely don't install windows on another PC then move the hard drive, windows will be confused by the different motherboard

Reply 15 of 19, by tincup

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chinny22 wrote:

Not a fix, but a work around.
As long as you can boot from the hard drive, you can install Windows anyway.
Just copy the Win9x folder from the CD to your hard drive and run setup.exe

Good advice. Also helpful is to make a D: 'data' partition first, then drop the W9x folder in it and run it from there. How you divide the space between C: and D: is up to you but I make C: as lean as possible - about twice to 3 times as large as the final OS install + whatever non-game programs are to be installed. I install all games and park all data [including Tech stuff like the W9x install folder] in D:.

Reply 16 of 19, by Jorpho

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chinny22 wrote:

Just copy the Win9x folder from the CD to your hard drive and run setup.exe

Well, if you can access the CD-ROM, there's no need to copy the files to the hard drive first.

Reply 17 of 19, by chinny22

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Haha, Jorpho is right, copying the CD to the hard drive is not really necessary. I'm just so used to running up PC's that way its like 2nd nature.
The main thing I was trying to say was if you can get to a command prompt, it doesnt matter what drive you actaully boot from.

Reply 18 of 19, by tincup

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It's second nature to me as well. And once the Win folder is on hard drive [not C:] it installs considerable faster than off CD. Something to consider if your given to regular OS re-installs to keep the system in top nick, or like to test new drivers/software etc. from a fresh install.

Reply 19 of 19, by GeorgeMan

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Bumping this as I have investigated the case and have news:

1) Actually there was a BIOS update that adds CD-ROM boot, but that was not the case for me.
2) 2 pcb lines (wires) going from the floppy to a UMC chip were BURNED and the corresponding chip pads were MELTED, so this was the cause for not being able to boot from it. (How the hell could this have been? I recall connecting the floppy cable the wrong way caused it only not to function...)
3) Now the compicated part: To be able to boot from CD, it had to be the primary master AND to completely disable the damaged floppy controller.

So problem partially solved and the machine is happily and fully stable working now, except the floppy. 😀

1. Athlon XP 3200+ | ASUS A7V600 | Radeon 9500 @ Pro | SB Audigy 2 ZS | 80GB IDE, 500GB SSD IDE2Sata, 2x1TB HDDs | Win 98SE, XP, Vista
2. Pentium MMX 266| Qdi Titanium IIIB | Hercules graphics & Amber monitor | 1 + 10GB HDDs | DOS 6.22, Win 3.1, 95C