VOGONS


First post, by DankEngihn

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Just a bit of background;

There is a local computer store that is a 5 minute walk from my house where I know the person who runs it pretty well. I've gotten a lot of cool things from there for either free or very cheap 😀 I first started with AT computers was in early 2017 when I was allowed to keep an HP Pavilion 7130p. It was a Pentium 1, and was beat-up, and absolutely DISGUSTING. It was the second worst computer I have EVER seen. The only other computer that was worse was a friend's Pentium 4 desktop that had like 2 inches of mold growing on pretty much every interior surface. The HP had 21 years worth of dust, hair, and cigarette tar. I kept the RAM (16 MB of 72 Pin), CPU & Heatsink (Socket 5 Pentium 1) the HDD (1.5 GB WD Caviar 31600) the Optical Drive (8x CD-ROM) a photo scanner, and the power supply. The Case and motherboard went straight in the trash. Since then I've had an AT power supply laying around, and needed to do something with it.

Later on, towards the end of June, I found a Diamond Stealth 64 VLB, a VLB WindBond IDE controller, and a Sound Blaster 16 in a cardboard box sitting in the back of the store. He said I could take the entire box if I wanted, but these three cards were the only ones of interest to me. I didn't have any board to use them with, but I figured I might someday, and kept them.

A month or so later, a box of 7 or so AT motherboards showed up, and he said I could test them if I wanted. Obviously I did, as I had a power supply for them. He said any that don't work, bring them back. I couldn't get any to work properly. Two of them were ISA only (no VLB), and had the CPU socket where you have to slam the thing into place, and had (guaranteed dead) RTC modules. Meh, not for me. The other 4 were Shuttle HOT boards with VLB and Opti Chipsets. the only difference between the four boards were that two used an AWARD bios, the other two were AMI. Time for testing!

One of the AWARD boards made a loud pop, blue spark, then nothing. Thankfully didn't harm any other components.

The other AWARD board just didn't do anything. No beeps, no display, nothing.

One of the AMI boards had a cracked chipset. I don't even know how you do that. Not even going to try testing that one.

The other AMI board kind of worked. I just got a post beep, and the display got a signal (light turned from amber to green) but the screen was blank.

I held onto the last board, and as I was putting the other boards back in the box, I noticed another motherboard in the box. This one was much newer (had PCI, two SDRAM slots, onboard IDE) but something was missing. The CPU socket. I found the CPU still stuck to the heatsink, and half of the socket on it's pins (a K6-2), and the other half of the plastic socket was flying around at the bottom of the box. That board just went straight in the garbage. I kept the CPU though.

At this point, I had given up. I only kept the semi-functional AMI board, and returned the rest. When I got back from returning the boards, I took one more stab at trying to get it to work right. After an hour or so of not making any progress, I put it into storage, and promptly forgot about it. Until yesterday, that is.

I had forgotten about the AT board, until I was sorting my stuff, and found it. I tried to get it to post, and had no luck. I then, as a last resort, I figured I would wash the board, as I had nothing to lose. So, I unplugged everything, and picked it up to clean it, and felt something click into place. It was the BIOS chip. I thought, that it would work now, and the reason it didn't work before was the bios chip wasn't in right. So I reconnected everything, hit the power, and...

BEEP!

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It posted. Finally, but I wasn't out of the woods yet.
It gave me a HDD controller error, and it had a BIOS password that I don't know. The password was easy, I used a jumper setting to clear the CMOS settings, but I was at a dead end with the HDD controller error, because I didn't know the jumper settings for the IDE controller.

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Does anyone know what this card is, and what the jumpers are supposed to be set at?
Also, where can I get an AT computer case? Because, I don't want to pay an insane amount of money for a case on ebay.

Reply 1 of 3, by dkarguth

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We're going to have to get a closer picture of that label and maybe a photo of the back of the card before we can really identify it. To me, though, it just looks like a generic IDE/floppy controller that would have been in a cheap pre-built pc of the era. It looks like somebody has fooled around with the jumpers, because they normally won't all be in the top positions. If you are unable to find the jumper settings for it, those adapters are relatively inexpensive on ebay. The one that you have appears to be a combination IDE/floppy/serial/parallel/gameport card, so not all those jumpers control the ide settings. Some of them will be to set the com port numbers, and to set the io addresses for the IO card, among other things.
As far as AT cases go, your best bet is to browse around at local computer repair shops to see if they have any old PCs laying around. normally they will sell them to you for very cheap if they have them. People sell NOS AT cases on ebay, but they are way overpriced and the shipping only adds more ridiculousness onto the prices. It is possible to mount an AT motherboard in an ATX case, by the way. you just need to have an adapter for the power supply.

"And remember, this fix is only temporary, unless it works." -Red Green

Reply 3 of 3, by DankEngihn

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dkarguth wrote:

We're going to have to get a closer picture of that label and maybe a photo of the back of the card before we can really identify it. To me, though, it just looks like a generic IDE/floppy controller that would have been in a cheap pre-built pc of the era. It looks like somebody has fooled around with the jumpers, because they normally won't all be in the top positions. If you are unable to find the jumper settings for it, those adapters are relatively inexpensive on ebay. The one that you have appears to be a combination IDE/floppy/serial/parallel/gameport card, so not all those jumpers control the ide settings. Some of them will be to set the com port numbers, and to set the io addresses for the IO card, among other things.
As far as AT cases go, your best bet is to browse around at local computer repair shops to see if they have any old PCs laying around. normally they will sell them to you for very cheap if they have them. People sell NOS AT cases on ebay, but they are way overpriced and the shipping only adds more ridiculousness onto the prices. It is possible to mount an AT motherboard in an ATX case, by the way. you just need to have an adapter for the power supply.

The label on the IDE controller is just a warranty sticker dated 1991. When I got the card, it didn't have any jumpers on it at all, so I did that.