VOGONS


First post, by RetroStorm00

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Hey guy I have spent the last 6 to 7 hours trying to figure out what is wrong with my Asus VL/I-486SV2G Rev 1.4. I finished building my 486 tonight and started it up. After going through the memory check i went into the bios, reset everything then set the floppy to boot first, ran IDE HDD autocheck and restarted, after I get to the system config table BAM! It just freezes up and throws a Disk I/O error although I can tell the floppy drive is barely doing anything besides the light coming on. After that everything including the keyboard locks up. Ive tried 4 different floppy drives, both a 120gb hard drive and a 40gb one, 6 different bootdisk floppys, 2 sets of ide cables, a different ide controller and a different CPU....and nothing fixes it 🙁 Does anyone have any ideas?

Last edited by RetroStorm00 on 2016-09-08, 13:18. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 39, by CkRtech

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Have you walked all of the jumper configurations on the motherboard and verified that each one is set to what it should be?
What I/O card(s) are you using, and how do you have them configured? Have you tried booting with only the floppy drive enabled? Floppy drive light isn't on the whole time (red stripe reversed), right?
Are you running a minimum configuration of a video card and an I/O card or attempting to run with additional cards as well?

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Reply 2 of 39, by jesolo

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Does the floppy drive light stay on when you power up?
If so, then your data cable is plugged in the wrong way around.

However, this shouldn't necessarily cause the system to freeze up.
Since you already tried a different IDE controller, then it might be a RAM problem.
Are you using FPM RAM or EDO RAM? The latter is not supported by this motherboard, but also check the speed of your RAM chips (I think 70ns or faster was recommended for this motherboard).

Otherwise, it's possible that your BIOS is faulty - if so, then you need to replace the BIOS chip.
However, to my knowledge, the older revisions still had an EPROM BIOS, meaning that you cannot flash them to a newer revision. You need a replacement EEPROM chip and an EEPROM burner (fortunately, this motherboard's BIOS revisions are readily available).
However, I would consider this a last resort.

Reply 3 of 39, by RetroStorm00

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CKrtech, ya im pretty sure the jumpers are good to go, i had to redo them anyway when i when i went from a p24d to the second chip a tried(standard dx2 chip) This is the ide interface card im using http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-disk-floppy- … AT-interfa.html Besides that I had removed everything else besides the VLB Vision868 graphics card. No, the ide cables arn't reversed Im sure of this. Ive tried both unplugging the harddrive and selecting "None" in the iDE HDD submenu but still freezes.

jesolo:Im using 2 16mb sticks of FPM RAM, no EDO. EDIT: This is the ebay auction for the RAM http://www.ebay.com/itm/302050869680?_trksid= … K%3AMEBIDX%3AIT Note it only says FPM in the description but under mpn its
16MBEDOSIMMSETOF4 so maybe it is EDO? Would it still complete the memory test at the beginning of boot if they were EDO? It goes through the test just fine.

Reply 4 of 39, by CkRtech

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I apologize, RetroStorm00. I literally haven't worked with the RAM in a 486 since 1995. I imagine that will change soon when I restore my old system, but I am seriously dusting the cobwebs out of my brain.

OK. 72 pin RAM. Glad it isn't 60 pin. You could try it with a single 16MB SIMM and see what happens. I can't tell by the photo, but I assume 16 MB is single sided (whereas 32 MB would take two sides of the SIMM) with the chips at 2 MB each. That is what he shipped you, right? Your manual notes that sockets 1 and 3 can only use single-sided whereas 0 and 2 can use single or double-sided. Not sure how far it would really get in POST if you didn't follow their rules.

That said - you could also disable the quick power on self test if it is current enabled just to make sure everything else passes. Do the numbers in the frozen box (including cache) match what you are expecting?

I also recommend adding your board name to the thread title as I know there are guys here that have used that board.

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Reply 5 of 39, by RetroStorm00

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CkRtech: I tried with just one stick of RAM no change. Interestingly the cache i just noticed does not match up in the box it says 1024k however I only actually have have 256k. According to the screen printing on the motherboard the jumpers are set right So I dunno Im all confused now 🤣

Reply 6 of 39, by Brickpad

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RetroStorm00 wrote:

CkRtech: I tried with just one stick of RAM no change. Interestingly the cache i just noticed does not match up in the box it says 1024k however I only actually have have 256k. According to the screen printing on the motherboard the jumpers are set right So I dunno Im all confused now 🤣

If it's anything at all like the Biostar 8433UUD board with EDO RAM installed, you have to enable EDO RAM INSTALLED in the BIOS, else it will lock up at the system config table just as your board does. This is just a wild guess though.

Reply 7 of 39, by CkRtech

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RetroStorm00 wrote:

CkRtech: I tried with just one stick of RAM no change. Interestingly the cache i just noticed does not match up in the box it says 1024k however I only actually have have 256k. According to the screen printing on the motherboard the jumpers are set right So I dunno Im all confused now 🤣

Whoa. 1024k cache! That's awesome! ...oh wait. 🤣

Are you running eight x 32k or four x 64k to get 256k? What do you have JP13, JP14, and JP27 set to?

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Reply 9 of 39, by CkRtech

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I don't really know that pulling all cache and jumpers is an option. Try 128k: 4x 32k in Bank 0 only and set your jumpers: JP13: Open, JP14: 2 & 3, and JP27: 1&2

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Reply 10 of 39, by RetroStorm00

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ok im guessing i have to add a tag chip also for the 128? according to the user manua it should be 1x8kb chip im not sure if i have an 8kb chip only 32kb ones...

edit: ok just tried with 4 32k chips and no tag chip and it now shows 128k on the screen still froze though. Also I brought down a 386 board installed the ide interface harddrive and floppy and got it to boot...so its deff somthing with this board...

Reply 11 of 39, by CkRtech

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Ahh. So you basically have 9 x 32kb chips and that is it? Well, you could go back to all banks filled with JP13: Open, JP14: 1&2, JP27: 1&2. Load BIOS defaults (for troubleshooting), save and exit.

Even just reseating your cache chips might fix the problem.

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Reply 12 of 39, by RetroStorm00

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correct! I did and now it displays the correct 256k of cache. So thanks for that help! Plus now the HDD at least says no "OS loaded". Floppy drive though....I burnt out my TEAC today from trouble shooting and I have been trying 3 oth 3.5 floppy drives trying to get a win98 bootdisk to work". I got it to work on the 386 mobo no problem but for some reason the board is not liking my floppy drives...gives disk i/o error. Im using a HDE USB floppy on my win 7 laptop to run back and forth trying different disks...i cant be sure of it but im beginning to think the different floppy drives I connect to the asus mobo are destroying the data when the 486 freezes up because I have rewritten the same couple of disks multiple times and everytime I pop the disk into the laptop to check, it needs to be reformatted as the contents became unreadable....

Reply 13 of 39, by CkRtech

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RetroStorm00 wrote:

correct! I did and now it displays the correct 256k of cache. So thanks for that help!

Awesome. Sorry you had to deal with all of that frustration.

Based on your I/O card's details, it looks like pin 1 for the floppy connector is on the side closer to the back of the card/front of the computer, correct? Red stripe from the far end of the floppy cable (for primary drive A) attached to the FDD pin 1? JP6 jumper G set to pins 2&3? Not a whole lot of variables for this one.

Not even my computer and I need a drink.

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Reply 14 of 39, by RetroStorm00

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Yea cable wise it should be good. I didnt remove any of the IDE cables when i transfered the card to the 386 motherboard and it worked perfectly...it must be something else...🙁

Reply 15 of 39, by CkRtech

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You said you tried a different I/O card at one point prior to fixing your cache issue, right? Is that one still available?

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Reply 17 of 39, by CkRtech

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Going back to the beginning of the thread and jesolo's post, can you post a photo of the actual RAM you received - like one where we can easily read the chips? I don't know how your board would behave if you stuck EDO RAM in it - if it just would halt/error/beep codes OR basically do what it is doing right now. I have never stuck EDO in a 486 before, but it seems like you might have the right level of weirdness involved for something like that.

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Reply 18 of 39, by RetroStorm00

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Here you go hopefully this is ok, this is the only stick im currently using (16mb)
0908161954-2.jpg

yes the external cache being disabled fixed all the lockups, very strange

Reply 19 of 39, by CkRtech

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HY5117400B looks like fast page mode based on datasheet.

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