286 board post fail \ VOGONS

286 board post fail

Topic actions

First post, by noshutdown

Posted on 2019-04-09, 15:27

noshutdown Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1302
Joined: 2010-07-23, 17:04
Location: China

board is highly similar to this one, except that it has 4 simm slots in the place of the sip slots:
https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/E/E … 6-G2-80286.html

as i power it on, it makes 1 long beep and 8 short beeps, with no display on monitor, and my diag card displays code 30.
i looked it up and found that 1 long and 8 short beeps mean "Non-fatal--Display/retrace test", and code 30 also means "About to Look for the Retrace Checking". but what on earth does this "retrace test" mean?

Reply 1 of 4, by noshutdown

Posted on 2019-04-09, 16:04

noshutdown Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1302
Joined: 2010-07-23, 17:04
Location: China

it's fixed now. its probably just too old to be compatible with my cirrus5434. i swapped in a trident8900d and its working now.
its got an old bios from 1990 which is extremely simple though, there is no hdd auto detect of course, and i didn't write down the parameters.

Reply 2 of 4, by retardware

Posted on 2019-04-09, 16:30

retardware Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1063
Joined: 2019-01-30, 02:00
Location: Cottbus, Germany

Could be due to that particular VGA with CL5434 not having an interrupt line, but your Trident seems to have one.
The myth of the vertical retrace interrupt on EGA/VGA

Reply 3 of 4, by Deunan

Posted on 2019-04-09, 16:31

Deunan Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 2103
Joined: 2018-05-29, 12:32

I have a 386SX mobo (or two) that lacks HDD auto-detection as well - if you don't have another PC with this option then try booting from a floppy with HDD/CF card connected but not set in BIOS, and run NSSI. I think it detected the parameters by probing the IDE ports directly.

Reply 4 of 4, by Jo22

Posted on 2019-04-09, 16:57

Jo22 Offline

Rank l33t++

Rank: l33t++
Posts: 11175
Joined: 2009-12-13, 07:06
Location: Europe

Another possible cause for this issue..
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-isa-osc-mystery/

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to General Old Hardware