VOGONS


First post, by andrewreader

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I've got this motherboard. It has a Winchip 180 CPU and 8 MB RAM.

It's all working, BIOS is fine etc. It can boot from floppy disk and recongnise but not boot from a CF Drive.

I have the following questions:-

  • What make and model is it?
  • Is there a manual for it anywhere?
  • Does the itegrated IDE controller support CD ROM Drives?
  • With the CF Drive, it doesn't boot, but after POST, it puts an ASCII smiley face on the screen. Pressing any key duplicates this face. What's all
    that about?

Many thanks in advance.

motherboard.png

Reply 4 of 6, by ODwilly

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Use Fat 32 to format the HDD instead of NTFS beforehand if you are installing a 9x OS. It makes a massive difference. It is late enough it should recognize and support cd drives off the onboard ide, but in any case it might be easiest to prepare a MS.DOS boot floppy on another pc to start the install process.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 5 of 6, by andrewreader

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So having quickly read the manual:-

The turbo connector on the motherboard is for an LED. The turbo button on the case won't work and the turbo mode is accessed by a keyboard <CTRL><ALT><+> or <CTRL><ALT><->. This is a shame, as the turbo on this case shows both a hi and lo speed on the LCD display.

There is reference to CDROM in the manual:

..as well as ATAPI (e.g.; CD-ROM) devices on both
interfaces. Detection of the device transfer rate and translation mode capability is automatically determined.

so it may mean the CD ROM drive I installed is not compatible or not working.

The CF card was from Amazon, so I can try it on another CF IDE Reader.

There is a Wavetable header on the motherboard, but a lot smaller than a regular connector.

Reply 6 of 6, by andrewreader

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And

Why doesn't my IDE CD-ROM work? You can do the following to troubleshoot your CD-ROM issue: Verify that the CD-ROM is configured […]
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Why doesn't my IDE CD-ROM work?
You can do the following to troubleshoot your CD-ROM issue:
Verify that the CD-ROM is configured as a slave device if connected to a master IDE device
Verify that the CD-ROM is configured as a single device if the CD-ROM is the only device on the IDE interface. Refer to your CD-ROM's documentation for configuration information.
Verify that you are using the proper drivers for your CD-ROM.
Upgrade to the latest BIOS version for your motherboard.
The retail version of Microsoft Windows* 95 may not recognize the Intel 82371SB PIIX3 IDE controller used on some Intel motherboards, causing the BIOS to disable the secondary IDE channel. This can result in IDE devices (such as CD-ROM drives) not being detected or disappearing after the system is rebooted. A utility is available to update the MSHDC.INF file and resolve the issue.