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486 freezes? when booting from disk

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Reply 20 of 28, by MMaximus

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CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-01-30, 19:35:

Yes, you can upload a good picture of your board.

Here's my board. To me the jumpers seem correctly set but who knows, maybe something slipped my attention 😀

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Hard Disk Sounds

Reply 21 of 28, by CoffeeOne

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MMaximus wrote on 2023-01-31, 18:28:
CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-01-30, 19:35:

Yes, you can upload a good picture of your board.

Here's my board. To me the jumpers seem correctly set but who knows, maybe something slipped my attention 😀

VLI486SV2GX4.JPG

Oh.
I am a bit surprised, I thought you have the floppy problem with a CPU that supports L1 write back.
But you have the problem with a 486SX, so different thing.
Jumper setting seems to be good for 486SX.

So what about your floppy controller? Is it a Vesa Local Bus one or an ISA one? Jumper settings correct? 😁
Is the floppy controller known good (working on another board)?

Reply 22 of 28, by MMaximus

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CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-01-31, 19:37:
Oh. I am a bit surprised, I thought you have the floppy problem with a CPU that supports L1 write back. But you have the problem […]
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MMaximus wrote on 2023-01-31, 18:28:
CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-01-30, 19:35:

Yes, you can upload a good picture of your board.

Here's my board. To me the jumpers seem correctly set but who knows, maybe something slipped my attention 😀

VLI486SV2GX4.JPG

Oh.
I am a bit surprised, I thought you have the floppy problem with a CPU that supports L1 write back.
But you have the problem with a 486SX, so different thing.
Jumper setting seems to be good for 486SX.

So what about your floppy controller? Is it a Vesa Local Bus one or an ISA one? Jumper settings correct? 😁
Is the floppy controller known good (working on another board)?

Yes, both the floppy controller and FDD are known good. Run of the mill ISA Goldstar Prime2 card and 1.44 TEAC FDD. I've also tried with different RAM so I'm not sure what the issue could be 🤔

Hard Disk Sounds

Reply 23 of 28, by CoffeeOne

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MMaximus wrote on 2023-01-31, 19:39:
CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-01-31, 19:37:
Oh. I am a bit surprised, I thought you have the floppy problem with a CPU that supports L1 write back. But you have the problem […]
Show full quote
MMaximus wrote on 2023-01-31, 18:28:

Here's my board. To me the jumpers seem correctly set but who knows, maybe something slipped my attention 😀

VLI486SV2GX4.JPG

Oh.
I am a bit surprised, I thought you have the floppy problem with a CPU that supports L1 write back.
But you have the problem with a 486SX, so different thing.
Jumper setting seems to be good for 486SX.

So what about your floppy controller? Is it a Vesa Local Bus one or an ISA one? Jumper settings correct? 😁
Is the floppy controller known good (working on another board)?

Yes, both the floppy controller and FDD are known good. Run of the mill ISA Goldstar Prime2 card and 1.44 TEAC FDD. I've also tried with different RAM so I'm not sure what the issue could be 🤔

Hi, this is hard now.
One maybe silly question:
In BIOS, when you set "Boot Up Floppy seek" to enabled, do you hear some noise from the floppy drive???

Reply 24 of 28, by MMaximus

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Yes, I've tried with "boot up floppy seek" enabled and disabled. The floppy correctly seeks at boot - seek noise and LED lighting up. But when trying to boot from a DOS floppy disk, there's one short access to the floppy and then nothing. The boot disk works correctly as verified on other machines. If I put a non-booting floppy in the drive, I don't even get the usual message "insert system disk and press enter" - nothing happens 🤔

Hard Disk Sounds

Reply 25 of 28, by CoffeeOne

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MMaximus wrote on 2023-02-02, 11:57:

Yes, I've tried with "boot up floppy seek" enabled and disabled. The floppy correctly seeks at boot - seek noise and LED lighting up. But when trying to boot from a DOS floppy disk, there's one short access to the floppy and then nothing. The boot disk works correctly as verified on other machines. If I put a non-booting floppy in the drive, I don't even get the usual message "insert system disk and press enter" - nothing happens 🤔

Hi, and you test only with the ISA Floppy/harddrive/serial controller and the graphics card. Is it correct?
Or are there any other cards inside?

Are you able to boot the system from an IDE drive? (When you have MS DOS 6.2 installed for example)?

Reply 26 of 28, by CoffeeOne

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MMaximus wrote on 2023-01-31, 18:28:
CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-01-30, 19:35:

Yes, you can upload a good picture of your board.

Here's my board. To me the jumpers seem correctly set but who knows, maybe something slipped my attention 😀

VLI486SV2GX4.JPG

Hi again, something indeed slipped my attention 😀
What RAM is inside?
Please try moving the second module to slot 3, so that 1 and 3 is populated (not 1 and 2).

Reply 27 of 28, by MMaximus

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Good observation - thanks! Following your last message I had a look at the mainboard manual and noticed that some slots supposedly don't support double-sided RAM, so I did as per your suggestion but then the system reported only 1Mb RAM as opposed to 4Mb. (I am using a pair of double-sided 4Mb FPM SIMMS, 70ns IBM branded.)

I've then swapped the IBM RAM for one stick of single-sided 4Mb FPM SIMM, Daewoo branded (I have a pair of these but only used one in SIMM slot 0 for testing). I managed to make the floppy drive boot, but then I switched off the system and it wouldn't boot anymore. I haven't been able to boot from a couple of known good <540Mb IDE drives, but IIRC I managed to boot from a 512Mb CF a few weeks ago. I've also tried with a VLB multi-I/O, but no luck. The board seems very temperamental, I've noticed there's one capacitor near the CPU socket and I'm wondering if it could be the problem, even though it looks OK visually...

Hard Disk Sounds

Reply 28 of 28, by CoffeeOne

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MMaximus wrote on 2023-02-04, 19:34:

Good observation - thanks! Following your last message I had a look at the mainboard manual and noticed that some slots supposedly don't support double-sided RAM, so I did as per your suggestion but then the system reported only 1Mb RAM as opposed to 4Mb. (I am using a pair of double-sided 4Mb FPM SIMMS, 70ns IBM branded.)

I've then swapped the IBM RAM for one stick of single-sided 4Mb FPM SIMM, Daewoo branded (I have a pair of these but only used one in SIMM slot 0 for testing). I managed to make the floppy drive boot, but then I switched off the system and it wouldn't boot anymore. I haven't been able to boot from a couple of known good <540Mb IDE drives, but IIRC I managed to boot from a 512Mb CF a few weeks ago. I've also tried with a VLB multi-I/O, but no luck. The board seems very temperamental, I've noticed there's one capacitor near the CPU socket and I'm wondering if it could be the problem, even though it looks OK visually...

Hello,

Yes, so something is clearly wrong with the mainboard (or RAM or both).
Since you have also problems with harddisks, it's not related to floppy disk access only.
I don't have more ideas at this point.
But I am really sure, when you would try to install windows 95 or windows 98 (not sure if you would be able to do it), you would have bluescreens and the installation would fail....