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AMI 286 BIOS dead?

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First post, by Chupperson

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I just rebuilt my old 286 which had been in pieces for several years. It needed a new video card and I now had one so I reassembled it and it booted fine.

I got an error message about C: having an error, so I assumed I didn't have it set up correctly in BIOS. After a few tries, I got what I assume was the right hard drive configuration, it went to the second boot screen (with all the system information in a table) and after that it went immediately to the ROM Diagnostics screen and it froze there. I couldn't get it to do anything so I turned the system off.

I turned it off, waited a bit, and turned it on, and now nothing happens at all. No RAM test clicks, no beep, no text. The screen flashes like it's getting a signal, my LEDs turn on, and my hard drive spins up.

Is it possible I somehow corrupted the BIOS ROM? I have a ROM burner so I could theoretically burn a new one if necessary. Anything else should I try?

Reply 1 of 5, by Jo22

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Maybe the BIOS is okay, but the CMOS configuration is messed up ?
If it is, maybe your BIOS is just confused and don't know what to do.

In that's the case, remove the battery for a few minutes.
Don't know if it helps, but it shouldn't hurt to try. 😀

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 3 of 5, by Robin4

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Maybe the harddisk is bad.. harddisk does also use firmware.. That could be gone (or going corrupted) over 25+ year.. It just a mechanical problem / PCB problem..
If you remove the harddisk en then the system running fine.. Then the cause could be the disk..

If you want to have a save running system its always better to backup the roms en replace the eproms with new ones.

~ At least it can do black and white~

Reply 4 of 5, by Chupperson

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I took the hard drive out and it still didn't POST. I then decided to try to back up the HD to my CF card I have in my 486. After a long string of playing with hard drive settings, it corrupted the HD in my 486 and now that drive reports the wrong size in DOS and I can't seem to format it back to its original 162MB. What a day.

Reply 5 of 5, by torindkflt

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Other thoughts that come to mind could be faulty or poorly-seated RAM (Try removing and then re-inserting it) or a bad power supply. Leaning more towards bad power supply, because even with faulty RAM you should theoretically still be receiving a POST beep error code. If the power supply is bad, then the motherboard wouldn't be receiving the proper voltages to initialize itself, and that could cause no activity at power-on.

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