VOGONS


Help with I/O cards

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First post, by iogamesplayer

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Hey Vogons,

The last two weeks I've been having lots of trouble trying to configure my two I/O cards to work with either one of my old (working) motherboards.

I've tried only enabling the IDE controller, disabling all the rest. My 386 motherboard doesn't have a built-in controller, but my 486 motherboard does, but sadly a pin was broken when I got it, so I disabled the controller. (I think, couldn't find ANY documentation online, it came in a prebuilt computer and is probably an OEM board. I just switched off the 4 jumpers next to the IDE port)

Neither of the cards work with either of the motherboards. When I try my known-good old HDDs, I get a HDD controller failure.
When trying to boot from a MS DOS 6.22 boot diskette that works on my Windows 2000 laptop, I get either a "drive not ready" error, or I'm asked to insert a boot diskette depending on if I have one in the drive. This confirms that the I/O cards aren't dead, and stuff is happening.
Yeah, I got new IDE cables. I have 4 different IDE cables, they all seem to be working fine. Didn't put it in the wrong way either, nor did I flip them around.

No clue what the problem is at this point. I used the HEADS / CYL / SECT configuration in the BIOS present on the HDD, switched it to Master, they all spin up. Added the FD drive to the BIOS config too.

I'm going to test my floppy drives on a modern-ish Fujitsu computer that has an on-board FDD controller on the motherboard for some reason within 1-2 weeks.
So yeah, am I unlucky and are both my cards broken? Am I doing something terribly wrong?

Reply 1 of 3, by dominusprog

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Yes, some 486 boards have a jumper for disabling the onboard IDE/Floppy controller, but it doesn't work in my experience. You'll have better luck repairing the board. For the 386 board, have tried a different configuration? Post a picture of your I/O cards.

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Reply 2 of 3, by Kouwes

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I have a 486 board with exactly the same problems as you describe. Except mine doesn’t have an onboard controller so I’m using an I/O card, but it just refuses to boot from FDD - known good bootable floppy of course.
Now, I just grabbed the BIOS file from retroweb and burned a ‘new’ eeprom. Somehow I got the feeling the bios could be corrupted but I’m going to try it out tomorrow, when I have more time.

Reply 3 of 3, by iogamesplayer

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dominusprog wrote on 2025-10-22, 19:03:

Yes, some 486 boards have a jumper for disabling the onboard IDE/Floppy controller, but it doesn't work in my experience. You'll have better luck repairing the board. For the 386 board, have tried a different configuration? Post a picture of your I/O cards.

Never done a pin repair like that before, I'll see what I can do though. Wish me luck 🤣