board in question is an octek jaguar-5 386 board with macronix chipset and mr bios.
when i power it on, it makes 1 low pitch beep, then 1 high pitch beep, and then 4 low pitch beeps.
as you know mr bios is not that common, so i need info on what's wrong with it and give it a try.
My retro collection: too much...
Bad RAM chip in bank 0, try reseating the chips. If that doesn't work, try swapping out the simms with known good ones.
"And remember, this fix is only temporary, unless it works." -Red Green
so its the ram... the simms are definitely good as they worked on several other boards, but one of the simm slots on the board is slightly corroded. this is kinda weird because there is no sign of leakage or corrosion around the battery...
wrote:...one of the simm slots on the board is slightly corroded. this is kinda weird because there is no sign of leakage or corrosion around the battery...
A few years ago I threw away a big box of quality boards and cards that are very rare by now.
I thought they are not worthy to be put onto the bay, as I stored them in a somewhat damp basement room for years, and there were slight corroded spots, mainly on the brackets and connectors.
As in January I started with my retro mania hobby, I learnt what gets sold on ebay nowadays.
Now I feel that I was too conservative in my judgement, as I got much rusted, corroded and otherwise degraded hardware when buying what I chose for my retro systems.
So I had to learn that more than 50% of all cards and board I got needed some substantial restoration effort to fix the small details that could not be seen in the seller photos.
These 30-pin SIMM sockets, the first widely-used, had some big inherent problems:
- its easy to bend the connector pins
- the tiny contact points can corrode/oxidize easily or even be "isolated" by small specks of dirt
- the (often tinned) memory module contacts oxidize and catch dirt very easily
... all resulting into marginal contact
So I guess you will have to do some substantial board restoration session, removing rust, cleaning and maybe bending the one or another pin a slight bit to increase contact pressure. When you do this, you possibly will find some additional spots that need to be taken care of, too.
