VOGONS


First post, by Carstenl

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Hi,

I have got this motherboard from an old machine, but i can´t find anything about it.
On the board it says 486DXA REV 1.0
Perhaps somebody have seen it before ?.

I have tried to power it up, but I don´t get any picture on the screen and i get Continuous Beeps.

When the board powers up, there is no ligt in the keyboard, and the debug cards stops at code "0d0c",
after about 30 seconds, the debug card returns this code "000d"

I have tried with other working memory modules and graphicscard...and 2 different cpu´s ( 50 and 40 Mhz )

Any ideas ?

Regards
Carsten

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Reply 1 of 17, by mR_Slug

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Could be one of these (178 matches):
https://www.ultimateretro.net/motherboards/?s … 5D%5Bcount%5D=8

Last edited by mR_Slug on 2021-10-29, 01:10. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 2 of 17, by Horun

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For one you cannot boot a 486 with one 30pin SIMM, it needs four matched SIMMS preferably 9 chip 1MB each but 3 chip 1MB should work. In SIMM1 thru 4.
66Mhz crystal usually means a 33Mhz or DX2-66 486.
The ALI m1419 chipset can help narrow it down but need a ROM dump to see the AMI bios string.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 3 of 17, by Deksor

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Here's a smaller list where your motherboard might be : https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards … 5D%5Bcount%5D=7

It's the same as mr_slug's except only boards without any vlb slot are listed.

As said previously, it can't post with just one 30pin simm, you need 4 of them at least. Once you get it running, please dump the bios (if you need help for that, tell us) so we can perhaps identify it better.

Last edited by Deksor on 2021-11-14, 00:25. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 4 of 17, by Carstenl

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HI,
Thanks for your help 😀

I have allready tried with 4 sticks of ram 😀, I just took the picture before i had put all the ram sticks in - my fault, sorry.
I will try with some other ram sticks. I have got some 3 Chip 1MB that i know is working in another machine.
If it does not work, I will borrow some 9 Chip ram sticks from a friend.

Best Regards
Carsten

Reply 5 of 17, by Deksor

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I'm not sure if the post codes you're getting mean much, but here's a list of possible meaning of the post codes : http://www.bioscentral.com/postcodes/amibios.htm

Maybe it's "0D" of AMI color ? That means "8042 keyboard controller tested, CMOS".

Then code "00" means "Control to Int 19 boor loader" meaning that the computer is actually trying to boot 😮

You could connect a floppy drive to your computer to see if it seeks. Some bios default with a floppy drive so if it's one of those, it will try to seek the disk.

Is your video card known to work ?

You could also try another ISA slot for the video card.

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Reply 6 of 17, by Carstenl

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Hi Deksor,

Thanks for the help, It is alive 😀 😀

I got a bit confused over the post codes, because it looks like the board was working !!.

I changed the ram sticks to 1MB 3 chip, I had to try some different ones, before i could get it to work...the board is pretty senitive about the ram
I still use the Amd 40 mhz cpu, it just running @ 33 Mhz, also used another ISA slot for the video card.
Installed a controller card and CF-adaptor, and the machine boots on the CF card 😀, It got the hdd specs for the CF card from the Sandisk manual

I have used HWinfo, but I get no information about the board, it says "unknown model"

I need some help for the ROM dump, i have not tried it before...

Best Regards
Carsten

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Reply 8 of 17, by evasive

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Just 47 boards with 7 ISA 16bit slots for 486 and nothing else:

http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboards/?showI … 5D%5Bcount%5D=7

Not that it matters much, there is still no match for your board. I'll see what I can dig up, if anything.

Reply 9 of 17, by Deksor

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To dump the bios, use this link : http://cd.textfiles.com/microhaus/mhblackbox3 … MORY/GETROM.ZIP

Run ATROM.exe and send the file it will generate in a zip here. Be aware that it can only dump bioses that are 64KB or less (which is fine for this kind of board).

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Reply 11 of 17, by Carstenl

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yes 7 16bit ISA slots 😀

I have unpacked the zipfile to a floppy, but the ATROM.EXE is not there, so I used the ROMSAVAT.exe instead -
It has generated a file called ATROM, I have uploaded it as a zipfile - hope it can help you 😀

Thanks for the help.

Regards
Carsten

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Reply 12 of 17, by Deksor

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Yes my mistake (I rarely use it because I have an EPROM reader), thank you very much !

We can now try to document your board as best as we can on uh19

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