You wouldn't happen to have an ISA video card to test with would you?

at least the computer seems to be happy 😊

no, seriously, you have to make some testing with another video card, different ram, processor and such. by trial and error you can isolate the problem and fix it.

I couldn't get EDO RAM to work with a SIS 471 board. Try moving the memory and video card to different slots, but I suspect you'll need different RAM.

I'm suspecting that the problem is the memory modules... so I bought some 30 pin RAM and a POST diagnosis card. It should arrive this week. And let's see what happens now 😎
Previous owner of the mb + proc + video said that everything was working. I bought the EDO RAM from another person.

EDO definitely doesn't work on a SiS471, only FPM does.

The only true happiness comes in death.

oeuvre wrote:

The only true happiness comes in death.

That's very Zen of you 😀

diegotmc wrote:

I'm suspecting that the problem is the memory modules... so I bought some 30 pin RAM and a POST diagnosis card. It should arrive this week. And let's see what happens now 😎
Previous owner of the mb + proc + video said that everything was working. I bought the EDO RAM from another person.

Ok, so the 30 pin RAM finally arrived. 8x 1mb sticks... and none of the 8 sticks are being recognized by the board 😢
MB is giving the long beeps (Award BIOS), and the test card gives the same code as if it wasn't any memory in the board.

Any ideas? Look for some FPM 72 pin RAM?

Your motherboard only supports FPM RAM. Are the 30-pin modules EDO as well?

http://www.elhvb.com/webhq/models/486vlb3/sis471b.htm

debs3759 wrote:

Your motherboard only supports FPM RAM. Are the 30-pin modules EDO as well?

http://www.elhvb.com/webhq/models/486vlb3/sis471b.htm

I thought that all 30 pin sticks are FPM... 😐

I'm not sure. Were they sold as working, or was it pot luck?

what about jumpers? maybe 30pin ram slots need to be enabled

My SIS 471 board has an army of jumpers for setting RAM banks/size and they have to be set right for things to work right.

Could be a non properly inserted video card, push the side farther from the connector first and check pin alignment.

diegotmc wrote:

Ok, so the 30 pin RAM finally arrived. 8x 1mb sticks... and none of the 8 sticks are being recognized by the board 😢
MB is giving the long beeps (Award BIOS), and the test card gives the same code as if it wasn't any memory in the board.

Any ideas? Look for some FPM 72 pin RAM?

To confirm, are you filling all 4 slots with 30-pin RAM?

Tiido wrote:

My SIS 471 board has an army of jumpers for setting RAM banks/size and they have to be set right for things to work right.

Do you know what jumpers is?
I only have the manual from here: http://www.elhvb.com/webhq/models/486vlb3/sis471b.htm

fitzpatr wrote:

To confirm, are you filling all 4 slots with 30-pin RAM?

Yes, all 4 slots.

The info available seems not to tell what half the jumpers are...

Tiido wrote:

The info available seems not to tell what half the jumpers are...

Maybe the info is here: http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/V/VI … BUS-VLT-MB.html

JP36 and JP37.

I'll test it later!

Ok, updates:

These settings that I posted are different from my board. But yesterday I started playing with some jumpers and found that JP41 probably is the one that selects the memory banks in use.
And then the system started to come to life!!
But it was very unstable. Sometimes no image at all, sometimes it showed up the Trident logo, beeps, and stops in a screen only with the cursor blinking, and 2 times it showed the next screen identifying the CPU as a 75mhz with the text grayed, and locks up...

Today the FPM 72pin memory arrived... and now it's working!

But the new problem is: I can't boot from the CF card. The system reboots everytime it tries to boot from the card.

I'm using a 512mb that is already prepared with MS-DOS 6.22 (i've tested it in my old laptop, and it's ok), and a cheap CF to IDE adapter like this one:

It was identified normaly in the IDE HDD auto detection.

Any ideas what's happening?