If you happen to have a post code card that might be helpful in seeing where the post process is failing

Hopefully it wasn't a victim of the CIH virus.
If that's the case you'll probably have to do more than just a BIOS recovery, you'll need a new chip programmed (as CIH would have wiped out the recovery boot block).

But let's see where it's tripping up at. No sense in getting all strung out.
Have you tried disconnecting the IDE cables and testing it with no hard drives attached?

NickCBM87 wrote on 2020-11-15, 15:51:

Hi, […]
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Hi,

First let me introduce myself, my name is Nick i'm from the Netherlands and a collector of older hardware and games since 1999.
I work as an embedded automation engineer for over 15 years now.

Recently I was able to retrieve my dad's old Gateway 2000 (Pentium Overdrive 180MHz) that he sold off in the late 90's.
The guy he sold it to used it for a short time and then left it in his storage box and recently contacted me about it.

After not being used for almost 20 years I cleaned it up, hooked it up to a known good AT psu with only 16MB ram on the board and a PCI videocard (both known good, tested).

No video, replaced the CMOS battery after forcing the board to reset the CMOS via the dipswitches and tested again. Nothing on the screen, numlock flashes shortly.
I removed the ram and pci videocard, powered it up and the systems gives me a beep code: Memory Error (duh, i took out the RAM).
After trying all PCI and ISA slots with various videocards there still was no video. Swapped the ram, still nothing.

The last thing I'd like to try is to force a BIOS recovery (jumper is there) since the board has a Intel Chipset.
Which get's me to my last problem, where do I get the Gateway BIOS for this board?
There are two stickers on the board with part numbers saying:

PBA 636408-606
and
AA 639018-606
and
MBD-SAC012AAWW

The sticker on the flash-ROM says: 633357-001
The PCI chipset consists of: INTEL SB82437FX-66 and INTEL SB82371FB

There is no visible damage or corrosion on the board, all voltages are there, pressing reset doesn't seem to do anything but flashing the numlock led for a brief moment.

Is there anyone who can help me with this or has the BIOS file for this board?

With kind regards,

Nick

MBDSAC012AAWW looks like the Gateway OEM Intel Zappa board

https://contents.driverguide.com/content.php? … path=README.TXT

and 1.00.11.BS0T is the latest BIOS

Ok so I finally got the diagnostics card. I already had one but that was based on a 3,3V pci controller and didn't work with this board.
I now have an ISA version that works fine.

With only the mainboard and cpu installed I get 3 error beeps due to a memory error and an error code E1E0.
With ram installed there are no beeps but I do get an error code: EAE9 or E9F4 (depends every time you reset the board)

To be clear: It is only the mainboard and PSU that i have connected. No cards, drives, keyboard etc.
I also tried to swap the RAM with some other known good strips but it made no difference to the error code.

New CMOS battery has been installed and I forced the board to reset the CMOS with the dip switch, this also made no difference.

Necroposting for sure, but according to this doc: https://www.acelab.ru/dep.pc/products/doc-postcode-ami.pdf it means you are in the BIOS recovery mode that is enabled by BIOS recovery dip switch. And you don't have AMIBIOS.ROM file on your floppy that is required to flash your bios. Also, you need to connect the floppy for sure 😀

Good to me, I know now this memory should post even in that mode even without memory.

Eep386 wrote on 2020-11-16, 17:58:

Hopefully it wasn't a victim of the CIH virus.
If that's the case you'll probably have to do more than just a BIOS recovery, you'll need a new chip programmed (as CIH would have wiped out the recovery boot block).

The 8K on flash is supposed to be protected and contain the boot block just for the bios restoration. Is it possible CIH wipes it as also?

I personally wouldn't put too much stock into the protection features actually saving a BIOS from CIH. If anything all those do is make reprogramming the BIOS harder unless you have software that knows how to operate said protections correctly. (Thankfully the TL866-II and later have zero trouble with that kind of thing.)

Eep386 wrote on 2023-07-27, 21:03:

I personally wouldn't put too much stock into the protection features actually saving a BIOS from CIH. If anything all those do is make reprogramming the BIOS harder unless you have software that knows how to operate said protections correctly. (Thankfully the TL866-II and later have zero trouble with that kind of thing.)

These intel motherboards have BIOS chip soldered to the board. And as I understand due to that feature the BIOS image for update contains only 32KB part while the chip is 64KB with some reserved area, OEM logo and that protected area (don't know if it software or hardware). That's why I'm still thinking if I have enough courage to desolder it, solder the socket and check if that's the reason of non-working mobo.