Hi,

I am relatively new to the retro scene. Last year I built a P4 system, but afterwards I felt like I want something a bit older. Eventually, I settled on a 386 system and bought a board off ebay from a seller with very good reviews. The board was lying well protected in my working room for about a year until now, when I actually wanted to boot it.

I got a FIC 386-SC-HG in what I would describe as very good condition. The seller removed the battery in time and replaced it with a coin cell battery. I cannot see any broken or corroded traces. It came with 8 MB of RAM and a AM386 DXL-40, 32KB of cache and an 80 MHz OSC. The board is equipped with an AMI BIOS chip. In order to build a small system, I bought a used and verified ATX PSU from a good brand as well as an ATX to P8/P9 adapter. The PSU does not provide -5V. Furthermore, I acquired a VGA as well as a IO Controller card, but for the test I just wanted to get into the BIOS. So no HDD or CF card is attached. I hooked up a PS/2 keyboard with a DIN adapter and a VGA to HDMI adapter and powered the system on, but the screen would stay black. I am pretty sure the system was shown to be working in the ebay listing. However, I cannot access the pictures anymore because the listing has expired.

In order to troubleshoot the problem I bought a cheap ISA POST card with an integrated PC Speaker. When I turn the system on, it only displays the code FF and LEDs which indicate memory activity flicker a bit. I can hear the memory test noises and then after a second two short loud beeps. Searching this forum as well as googling seem to indicate that it is a Parity Check Error. I took out the RAM, cleaned it a bit (without alcohol) and put it back in, but it didn't help. I ordered another set of RAM sticks -> 4x 256KB 9-bit 70ns, but they yield the same result. As a sanity check I got rid of the VGA card, which resulted in long missing video beeps. When I boot without RAM or an incompatible configuration I get RAM Error beeps. With the turbo switch shorted, the whole process is just slower. If I press ctrl+alt+del, the beeps repeat. I thus concluded that the BIOS and the system in general seem to work.

I am running out of ideas what to check or what the problem may be. I was born a decade too late for the 386, so for me it is a completely foreign system. Does somebody have a hint? Should I clean the SIMM slots with alcohol? Could it be the cache? But I think I cannot boot the system without the cache chips installed.

Any help is appreciated!