I've been second guessing myself today, so I fired it up and tried a few different jumper configs again and made sure I was going into BIOS each time to set the drives to the right place, but it makes no difference. I just get the same error (picture). I'll try it in a newer system I have that has …

I have tried both ways. I didn't have the hard drive until about a month ago and in fact I bought it because I wanted to run DOS from the HD because the CF was so unreliable. It doesn't seem to improve its performance when it's on its own. (Also, why does it have the MASTER/SLAVE jumper if it can …

Hi everyone. I've been messing around with my 486 build for a while now and I am having constant problems using a CF to IDE card interface. For starters, I also have an old 250mb hard disk in the build and I wanted this to be the master and the CF card to be the slave. It absolutely refuses to work …

Yup, plugged into my main monitor and it's fine. Thanks for your help, everyone!

Finally! I have it booting MS-DOS from the compact flash! After messing around with various configurations of the I/O card and the compact flash, I decided it wasn't that. Changed the CPU configuration to DX2 - it wouldn't even POST. On a whim, I tried the CPU configuration for P24T that is in the …

Hmmm.... I will try this shortly, but I'm pretty sure it hangs at the same point even without the I/O card installed. I would expect it to say MISSING OPERATING SYSTEM or NO BOOT MEDIA or something to that effect. Unfortunately, I don't have a floppy drive to try it, though I may have an old hard …

I can get into the BIOS. I've tried "standard", "optimal" and "fail-safe" settings, but it doesn't really do anything different. Only thing that changes is on fail-safe it doesn't show the 256k cache line, or the 80mhz CPU Clock. Still says 384k Shadow RAM and hangs at that point. One thing I …

I figured I would buy a parity chip and see if that worked as someone else mentioned parity vs non-parity. Also, as I had no idea which parts work, I wanted to at least get it to POST, which it now has. So I can say that the motherboard, the CPU, the 1x8Mb RAM stick, the graphics card and the I/O …

Ok, so I bought an 8Mb parity stick off eBay and it now turns on! Video BIOS does its thing. System BIOS loads and memory tests OK. It detects the compact flash card I have attached via an adaptor and old VESA I/O card. I get to the post BIOS check screen, the one with the table detailing the …

Hi Horun - The manual I've found online says it supports parity and non-parity. I don't really understand memory configurations too well, and having read through the manual again, I'm not much clearer. It says: "Mix 256K, 1M, and 4M SIMM (8 bit/32 bit) Module DRAM memory" So that would mean my 8mb …

Success! Well... partially. I did the paperclip trick with the white and ground wires on that connector, and the PSU powers up! All the rails on the P8 & P9 look correct on the multimeter. However, nothing beyond that - just a blank screen. CPU started to get warm... so I guess that's good. I'll …

Correct, that's all the cables

Both the red and the white show about 5v on the multimeter. I'm not sure I want to go opening up the PSU just yet and I don't really know what I'm doing in there. So your thinking is that 3 pin connector is for a specific case that would have a standby button and power button, that would switch …

CoffeeOne - Damn... It was very cheap at least! LewisRaz - There is some rust on the 30pin Simm clips, but weirdly not on the 72pin clips. A spot of rust in the KBD controller chip seating, but this isn't being used. I had noticed the bent pin, but I hadn't planned on using this and I think it will …

That's what I was thinking. The PSU does nothing when I plug it in, either hooked up to the motherboard or not. The connector has three wires: Red 5v, Yellow 5v and Black GND. I've read that some PSUs won't power on without sufficient load, so maybe I should hook up a HDD to one of the Molexs?

Hi everyone. I've recently got back interested in vintage computers of my youth and have decided to try to build a working 486. I've purchased a motherboard, CPU (x2), video card, PSU, RAM, keyboard, sound card, and hard disk controller. I've not been able to find a suitable case yet. So, I haven't …