VOGONS


Shuttle Hot 433 won't POST

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First post, by Gary.H

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Hi,

Had an account here years ago but lost it and its password when my email provider shutdown.

So, back again.

Circa 2013 I bought a Shuttle Hot 433 motherboard, AMD 5x86 -133 and Tseng Labs ET4000 PCI graphics card.

At the same time our daughter was born. Motherboard parcel arrived and remained unopened.

Fast forward almost nine years and I rediscover the 486 kit and resolve to finally build it up !

Current state of play:

With ET4000 graphics card in: No POST beeps. No display.

With no graphics card: 8 POST beeps (meaning graphics card missing ?) - rapid ticking sound of the RAM being counted/checked and then 2 POST beeps (RAM error ?)

Have a PCI Voodoo 2 PCI graphics card which gives the same (no POST beeps) result as having no graphics card installed.

Both graphics cards are unproven.

Suggestions as to whether my POST beep diagnosis is correct and how to proceed are welcome.

Reply 2 of 84, by Cuttoon

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first step:
https://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm#ami
So far, your estimates about the beeps seem correct.
Is it the right type of RAM?

Manuals etc. here:
https://www.ultimateretro.net/it/motherboards/4442#downloads

I like jumpers.

Reply 3 of 84, by Deksor

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A voodoo 2 can't be used as a standard VGA card. It doesn't have a VGA bios and doesn't have any VGA standard implemented to it. That's why there's a passthrough cable. It's for you to feed the signal from a standard VGA card to the voodoo 2 which will switch the signal depending on if it's used or not.

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 4 of 84, by Gary.H

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Disruptor wrote on 2022-04-02, 18:57:

Do you have a Port 80 diagnostics card?
Which board revision do you have?
Can you post a picture of your board please?

No Port 80 card.

It's Rev 4 of the board (supports EDO according to the manual I found online)

Reply 5 of 84, by Gary.H

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Deksor wrote on 2022-04-02, 19:17:

A voodoo 2 can't be used as a standard VGA card. It doesn't have a VGA bios and doesn't have any VGA standard implemented to it. That's why there's a passthrough cable. It's for you to feed the signal from a standard VGA card to the voodoo 2 which will switch the signal depending on if it's used or not.

Been a looooong time since I was playing with 486-period hardware so a lot of my knowledge has been lost in the intervening years .

Ah - that's actually good news as it's suggesting that the ET4000 could be DOA ?

Reply 6 of 84, by Gary.H

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Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-02, 19:13:

So far, your estimates about the beeps seem correct.
Is it the right type of RAM?

Don't know the type of RAM (receipt lost) but Ver 4 of the 433 supports EDO so I shouldn't have an issue with unsupported RAM ?

Reply 9 of 84, by Gary.H

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Looking to pick up a cheap PCI graphics card to test the theory that the ET4000 is dead 🙁

Would a S3 Trio64 86C764X PCI 1MB be suitable ?

It only has one VGA output (no pass-though connector) so assume it will function as a base VGA card ?

Reply 10 of 84, by Cuttoon

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Gary.H wrote on 2022-04-02, 19:54:

Looking to pick up a cheap PCI graphics card to test the theory that the ET4000 is dead 🙁

Would a S3 Trio64 86C764X PCI 1MB be suitable ?

It only has one VGA output (no pass-though connector) so assume it will function as a base VGA card ?

Pretty much any PCI or ISA card will suffice to boot and play most DOS games.
So merely for testing, get whatever is available cheap and quickly.
If the original ET4000 really is dead, maybe consider a fancier card with 2 or 4 MB memory - that would afford you higher resolutions in Windows 9x.

The voodoo as an addon card is pretty exotic, for a PCI card with a VGA connector.
Not sure if it would boot, but could be that even a lone Voodoo would do something on its own if you could set up the autoexec.bat file to start quake or tomb raider automatically 😉

But, post pictures first and check for the RAM details. Just click "attachments", upload the photo and select "public domain" as a license.

The site I linked to has the full PDF manual, that Stason stuff will work, but is more of a last resort. Popular mainstream board from 1995 or later like this, you'll always find a PDF.

I like jumpers.

Reply 11 of 84, by Gary.H

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The ET4000 I have is 2Mb (£8 back in 2013)

This 486 build will be a dedicated DOOM machine to recreate my first experience with the game back in '94 😁

The Voodoo 2 was bought with a dedicated (Pentium) Quake machine in mind. Hardware collection for that machine didn't progress past the graphics card.

The manual link seemed to only go up to Ver 3 of the 433 ? (Mine's a Ver 4)

Reply 12 of 84, by Cuttoon

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relax, the manual version does not correspond with the board revision.

Also, the PCI 486 aren't nearly as bad a case of cave-dwelling IT archeology as earlier stuff since they were used well into the internet age.
Hence the "clean" original PDF manuals as opposed to some amateur's scan.
So, with a board like that, you can be pretty certain that what's available is the latest PDF in existence.

For 1995, you'll even find contemporary VGA cards with 4 MB for a few bucks. The original Matrox Millennium was from 1995.
Later early 3D cards all usually started at 4 MB and are also abundant. Like ATI rage, s3 Virge, the Matrox Mystique.
But for DOOM alone, any quicker card with 256 kB or more will do. (though all quicker cards will have 1 MB or more)

I like jumpers.

Reply 17 of 84, by Deksor

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Wow it sure looks like it.

Though thankfully it looks like there's no trace going to that spot (at least from this side).
To compare, here are pictures from ultimateretro https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/4441

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 18 of 84, by Cuttoon

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Deksor wrote on 2022-04-02, 20:57:

Wow it sure looks like it.

Though thankfully it looks like there's no trace going to that spot (at least from this side).
To compare, here are pictures from ultimateretro https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/4441

OK, there actually is another entry for the Rev. 4 board and with more recent manual, my bad.

But, anyway, as a general rule, edges of PCB boards are not supposed to go AWOL.

I like jumpers.