VOGONS


First post, by winuser_pl

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Hi, I'm owning the mentioned motherboard. It's MSI 5124 model.
There are several problems.
It doesn't detects any of my CD-ROMs. I tried many of them (around 10 pcs). Some of them are dated 1997, while the others are more modern (2011).
None of them are detected. Does this motherboard support CDROM? It should, I think. It is socket 7, not 486 motherboard...

The second thing is, it doesn't detect any HDDs larger than 1280 MB. Thats strange.

I can set an option in BIOS to:
* several disk types numbered from 1 to 40 or 50, size never exceedes 1 GB as I remember,
* USER (i must enter C/H/S values and size in MB),
* ESDI
* SCSI

None of them worked for CDROM. Maybe this mobo does just showing HDDs on the list during POST and CDROMs are ommited (but detected). Strange. 😒

Thanks.

PC1: Highscreen => FIC PA-2005, 64 MB EDO RAM, Pentium MMX 200, S3 Virge + Voodoo 2 8 MB
PC2: AOpen => GA-586SG, 512 MB SDRAM, AMD K6-2 400 MHz, Geforce 2 MX 400

Reply 1 of 18, by Deksor

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You can't directly setup CD-ROM drives in the BIOS.

By the way, who made your bios ? AMI ? AWARD ? Phoenix ?
A socket 7 should have an automatic HDD setup functionality, just use it and you should be fine. (What's your HDD by the way ?)

Then for the CD-Rom I guess you're trying to boot from it. Somewhere in the BIOS you should be able to select the BOOT order. Those old bioses often don't let you select precisely what the order is but instead have several presets. Some should have CD-ROM booting in it

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 2 of 18, by winuser_pl

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This is "the fancy", colorfull AMIBIOS with mouse support.
I can choose boot order, but there are only two options "C, A" and "A, C".
Then it seems there is no option to boot from CDROM directly.
I need boot floppy disk from Windows 98 and then choose "boot from CD"? And it doesn't matter whether the CDROM is found during POST or not, am I right?

PC1: Highscreen => FIC PA-2005, 64 MB EDO RAM, Pentium MMX 200, S3 Virge + Voodoo 2 8 MB
PC2: AOpen => GA-586SG, 512 MB SDRAM, AMD K6-2 400 MHz, Geforce 2 MX 400

Reply 3 of 18, by bjwil1991

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Sounds like that BIOS doesn't support the booting off of a CD-ROM drive. My Abit AB-TX5 motherboard supports booting off of a CD-ROM.

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Reply 4 of 18, by winuser_pl

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Yeah, I had the same situation years ago with my Compaq Presario CDS, but the CDROM was detected if I'am correct.

EDIT: Maybe I should buy some sound card and then attach the CDROM to it?

PC1: Highscreen => FIC PA-2005, 64 MB EDO RAM, Pentium MMX 200, S3 Virge + Voodoo 2 8 MB
PC2: AOpen => GA-586SG, 512 MB SDRAM, AMD K6-2 400 MHz, Geforce 2 MX 400

Reply 5 of 18, by bjwil1991

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Some sound cards used the proprietary CDROM drives (Sound Blaster used Panasonic/Creative Labs, Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro used Mitsumi/Panasonic and/or Sony), or ATAPI (ESS AudioDrive ES1688F). However, the only way to boot or run a CD that has an OS would be to use a boot diskette that contains the appropriate drivers (change /D from BANANA to CDROM in both config.sys and autoexec.bat, and remove /L in the autoexec.bat file) for that CDROM (sound card proprietary CDROM driver is a must).

Discord: https://discord.gg/U5dJw7x
Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
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Reply 6 of 18, by winuser_pl

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I will give a try with MS-DOS 6.22 + MSCDEX. Then will install Windows 95.
EDIT: I did it! It was the way to go! I had to install MS-DOS 6.22, then MSCDEX. Now I'm installing Windows 95 from an original CD.

PC1: Highscreen => FIC PA-2005, 64 MB EDO RAM, Pentium MMX 200, S3 Virge + Voodoo 2 8 MB
PC2: AOpen => GA-586SG, 512 MB SDRAM, AMD K6-2 400 MHz, Geforce 2 MX 400

Reply 7 of 18, by Deksor

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Your mobo seems to be an early socket 7, perhaps a BIOS update would fix your issues ?
And yes as you saw you don't need to boot from a cd to install windows 9x ^^

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 8 of 18, by winuser_pl

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It is really hard to find any information regarding this motherboard. Not to mention about BIOS updates 🙁
Now I've got another problem. Got S3 Virge with 4 MB graphics card, but no chance to run at 1600x900 resolution (which is native to my display). It should work, because 1600 x 900 x 2 (16 bit color) = 2880000 bytes.

PC1: Highscreen => FIC PA-2005, 64 MB EDO RAM, Pentium MMX 200, S3 Virge + Voodoo 2 8 MB
PC2: AOpen => GA-586SG, 512 MB SDRAM, AMD K6-2 400 MHz, Geforce 2 MX 400

Reply 9 of 18, by dionb

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winuser_pl wrote:

It is really hard to find any information regarding this motherboard. Not to mention about BIOS updates 🙁
Now I've got another problem. Got S3 Virge with 4 MB graphics card, but no chance to run at 1600x900 resolution (which is native to my display). It should work, because 1600 x 900 x 2 (16 bit color) = 2880000 bytes.

Hang on... which OS are we talking about? Windows 95 doesn't support widescreen resolutions by default - that's no fault of the card.

To do widescreen modes you need to hack the registry and add them manually. Here's an example of someone doing it for 1440x900:
http://toastytech.com/guis/miscb.html

You'd need to find all the relevant parameters for your 1600x900 screen. Ages ago I figured them out for the SGI 1600SW, which also has 1600x900@60Hz. You could try those (ignore the Linux terminology, it's the numbers that matter and are the same regardless of the OS):
http://dionb.eu/1600sw.html

Reply 10 of 18, by Deksor

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This page seems to have what you need http://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/Microst … x/5124/5124.htm (or at least the names of the files you should be looking for)

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 11 of 18, by winuser_pl

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Yeah, you guys are right, I forgot that because I was using Windows 95 ages ago.
This is my first such old build. Previously I was using Windows 98 with AMD K6.
Will try it today.

I think i will give a try with PowerStrip.

EDIT: By the way, can I ask the administrator to change this thread topic to "building SOCKET 7 machine with MSI 5124" ? This is going to be more generic thread for this motherboard. I think it will be nicer instead of creating separate thread for each issue. Thanks.

PC1: Highscreen => FIC PA-2005, 64 MB EDO RAM, Pentium MMX 200, S3 Virge + Voodoo 2 8 MB
PC2: AOpen => GA-586SG, 512 MB SDRAM, AMD K6-2 400 MHz, Geforce 2 MX 400

Reply 12 of 18, by Stiletto

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winuser_pl wrote:

EDIT: By the way, can I ask the administrator to change this thread topic to "building SOCKET 7 machine with MSI 5124" ? This is going to be more generic thread for this motherboard. I think it will be nicer instead of creating separate thread for each issue. Thanks.

I'm not an administrator, I'm a moderator, but: Done. 😀

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 13 of 18, by bogdang

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Hey, I have just bricked my bios 🙁 I have the same motherboard MSI ms-5124 with the "fancy" amibios, do you think you could help me with a bios dump of yours ? the machine enters recovery mode, so I can load the file and restore it ...

Reply 14 of 18, by bjwil1991

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https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-ms … 4-si7#downloads

or

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-ms … 4-si3#downloads

Discord: https://discord.gg/U5dJw7x
Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/retropcuser

Reply 16 of 18, by bogdang

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evasive wrote on 2022-11-25, 06:52:

Can you please check if you have the SI3 or SI7 marking somewhere? In theory both should work with the same bios, but I want to make sure.

Thanks, I have already tried those roms, the system reads the floppy, but then it stops. Black screen, beeper sounds 7 short times ... nothing more after restart.
This happens with both AG77 and AG79 rom files ...

Reply 17 of 18, by bogdang

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bogdang wrote on 2022-11-25, 07:03:
evasive wrote on 2022-11-25, 06:52:

Can you please check if you have the SI3 or SI7 marking somewhere? In theory both should work with the same bios, but I want to make sure.

Thanks, I have already tried those roms, the system reads the floppy, but then it stops. Black screen, beeper sounds 7 short times ... nothing more after restart.
This happens with both AG77 and AG79 rom files ...

Sorry, wrong reply, it was for the answer above, with the links to retroweb .
As for the markings , all I have found is MS V1 ....

Reply 18 of 18, by bogdang

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The bios would display AG76 (see attached pic) but I have only found AG77 and AG79 rom images. None of those seem to work when recovering from floppy ...

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