First post, by delorean__
Hello everyone,
I need some serious help! I started this little project (rebuild childhood 386 PC) a couple of years ago. I purchased a working 386 motherboard off eBay, got everything to work but it lost all data on the hard drive once it was shutdown. I thought that it could be because of the leakage of the onboard battery. (I noticed this later)
I put that motherboard aside and bought another one. Symptoms became even worse: can't boot off the floppy. After trying everything I purchased another I/O card which didn’t change anything, then another floppy. No luck.
Since then:
1 new I/O card
Another 386-baby motherboard
2 other floppy drives
I now have 3 sets of floppy data cables (IDE style). One has the very old 5-inch connector I believe which doesn’t work at all. Why?).
What am I doing wrong? I have changed RAM, reset CMOS, tested the floppy in a working PC before trying to boot on the 386. I tried a different power supply as well.
The weird thing is that it is corrupting every single floppy that I put into it.
When I enable the read only tab on the floppy it still does not boot, but at least it doesn't kill the floppy.
What the heck am I missing or doing wrong?!?!
Here are a few specs:
VESA Super I/O card: GCW757VL-3
AIO - 200G - V3.00 I/O Card
Brand new (still in original box) 3295UMV - A Ver 1 I/O card
Floppy drives:
1997 IBM
2003 Samsung drive
2007 NEC
Motherboards:
Currently in system: AMD386 DXL-33 AMI BIOS - CHIPS Chipset
Other: AM386 SX-25 SIS Chipset (This one leaked)
AMD 386 SX-33 Baby board to test the rest...
Questions:
Are all 3.5 floppy drives the same? Same cables etc.? Can I take a drive from 2003 and install it in a 1992 386?
What the heck am I missing?
The message after POST is always the same (It also does the floppy seek correctly after the RAM count, unless I use the older cables that have the 5-inch connector):
DRIVE NOT READY ERROR
Insert BOOT diskette in A:
Press any key when ready
Remove disks or other media.
Press any key to restart.
(Doesn't restart)
Thank you very much for any help you could provide. So far, I have enough hardware to build 3 computers and it's really depressing that I can't get one to work!
I can provide any info, pictures or videos requested. Thanks again for any help.