First post, by alpm
Hi, I have just acquired this 386 board on ebay (seems to be from TI, but there is also an HT/HD symbol, maybe Headland?). The model seems to be HT BV-0 E105181. On the boot screen it reads in the bottom BT13-1187-011091-KF.
Once turned on, it is intermittently failing with "CMOS inoperational System Halted" or three long beeps. Most of the times the error happens during memory test. When I manage to get into the CMOS setup, the clock/time starts and behaves normally but then, after 10s or so, the seconds part of the time starts to jump erratically (e.g. 0 -> 10 -> 5 -> 32) and then stops. Then, on the next boot, it will either boot and fail during memory test (CMOS inoperational system halted), or not boot and error with 3 long beeps (indicating a memory failure).
If I remove the memories (clean them with a rubber) and place them again, sometimes this will make the machine boot past the memory check, but the CMOS will still show the erratic time behavior (in some occasions it will fail from within CMOS setup). Other memories (80ns) I tested show the same behavior.
Some notes about the motherboard:
- It has two broken tantaluns near the power supply connector
- There is a cracked tantalum near the second memory module
- The trace connecting to the "+" of the battery connector is broken, so I bodged it with a wire
- It seems someone tried to repair the power connector, given the fresh solder points there
Can you folks help? Could this be due to bad tantaluns? Or maybe something in the oscillators?