that's a really familiar model. I think I have one. I have no trouble with mine using an IDE > Sata adapter and a cheap 320gb drive.

I'd actually replace the cable completely, and make sure the jumpers are set to master, and NOT cable select.

luckybob wrote on 2021-11-15, 06:50:

that's a really familiar model. I think I have one. I have no trouble with mine using an IDE > Sata adapter and a cheap 320gb drive.

I'd actually replace the cable completely, and make sure the jumpers are set to master, and NOT cable select.

Thanks for responding!

Well the cf drive is attached to the ide header directly. In fact I've just tried both, with one or both headers enabled. No difference.

I'm beginning to think there's something wrong with the memory or bios memory management. Especially because freedos works but not windows, regardless of floppy, cd, etc.

I'm leaning more towards the latter because I know older systems have lower tolerance for bad ram, so if I'm correct, the bios simply wouldn't have booted at all. I've played with a bunch of memory settings to no avail.

I'm now going to unplug s3 virge gx and see what happens. Next the ess audio drive and so on

(Update) no dice. I tried playing with different ram configs too. An interesting thing is it refuses to post with any less than 2 sticks of ram on the bottom dimms.

If you truly had bad ram, freedos would have issues too.

That said, make a memtest floppy and give it overnight.

Yeah that's true.

I should probably mention that when I tries to boot something it can't, I never actually clarified what refusing means.

Basically it's just a blinking cursor. It stays that way for up to 10 minutes or more before I shut it off. I know for a fact that it's an attempt to boot, because that's what shows up as a floppy it CAN load is loading.

For all I know, those floppies, CDs, and hard drives could actually be loading but incredibly slow.

Do you have a pci ide or sata card to test with?

No I don't. However, remember that the exact same issue occurs with floppies. It has something to do with the windows kernel or dos boot process in general not being able to load. That's the the only conclusion I can come to with freedos so easily able to work.

If its not the ram, I'm getting the feeling of bad cache.

Huh. Looking it up, cache seems to be mostly cpu based (and "l3 cache" occasinally onboard to supplement cpus that didn't have L2).

I have an 233 mmx coming to upgrade from the 200, since I have to wait for other things to ship in roughly the same timeframe anyway and it was cheap. Do you think this would somehow impact this?

might try to disable L2 cache in the bios. it will be SLOW, but if things start to work that had previous did NOT....

I had a 486 board with a partially bad cache chip, it had similar issues that you have. (the chip was okay in the end, it was a bad socket, but still)

Welp, my mmx 233 arrived today aaaand... nothing. I'm at a complete loss. How would someone fix the onboard cache of a propreitary pentium mmx-era board (1997)? Better yet, would it be possible to replace the board with a similar model?

On ebay I'm seeing affordable boards for the Ready 9522 and ready 9732. I'd assume as long as the riser board is the same or the same placement it would be ok.

If all else fails I might go to the computer museum near me (kennet classic) and ask them for help, as they have literal repair workshops for people to help eachother work on whatever.

Welp, the issue is fixed!

I went to Kennett classic, and the owner helped me with CMOS and floppy config issues, which definitely helped things. However, boots still refused to happen once the CF was fdisked or super fdisked.

Turns out, while the bios can detect 8GB, it has no idea what to do with it boot wise. I googled windows 95 rtm hard drive limit, and sure enough it was 4.2GB. I bought a 4GB CF and tada, 98 is installing. I guess it's safe to say this is true for all systems (really bioses) that predate win98.