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PC "waits" for 15 seconds on boot

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First post, by wkjagt

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Just a small annoyance I'd like to get rid off: my PC always "hangs" for about 15 seconds after the PCI device listing, before MS DOS starts. I have no idea what it's doing. It always takes the same amount of time, so it looks like it's waiting for something. Boot order is C,A. Floppy seek on boot is disabled. During this time, there's no disk activity. Disabling the floppy and the D drive in the BIOS also doesn't change anything. After this pause, everything works well. Does anyone know what it could be doing during that time? The motherboard is an Asus P5A-B, with Award BIOS. I am including a screen shot I took while it hangs/pauses/waits, that also provides some additional info on my PC.

217859579-18b6cf8a-323c-4611-9281-b245591122ac.jpg

Stay at home dad playing around with 286-486. Programming C and assembly. Repairing old stuff.

Reply 2 of 24, by BitWrangler

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I used to get a hang like that on a machine I had an ISA DEC network card in and finally realised the boot ROM was enabled and it was trying to get a connection to DEC Serverworx or something.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 3 of 24, by wkjagt

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konc wrote on 2023-02-09, 16:00:

Remove all drive cables from the m/b and the BIOS. Does it go to "invalid boot disk" immediately now?

I just pulled everything out, but the pause remains. I don't have any cards in there, other than the graphics card. I did realize that I could use my POST card to see what it might be doing. During the whole 15 second pause it shows POST code 63, and after the pause, it jumps to FF. 63 for this BIOS seems to do a couple of things:

1.If there is any changes in the hardware configuration, update the ESCD information (PnP BIOS only)
2.Clear memory that have been used
3.Boot system via INT 19h

Since I guess an interrupt doesn't take 15 seconds, it's either updating ESCD, or clear memory. So maybe a memory problem? It does pass the memory test earlier during POST though... I'll try playing around with the memory next I guess?

EDIT: after pulling out one strip of RAM, it showed the successfully updated ESCD message _before_ the 15 second pause, so it's not that step that takes 15 seconds.

Stay at home dad playing around with 286-486. Programming C and assembly. Repairing old stuff.

Reply 4 of 24, by Ozzuneoj

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Have you reset BIOS to defaults?

Also, if you have the option in the Plug and Play section of your BIOS, try enabling Reset Configuration Data (it may be worded slightly differently). This will force the system to reconfigure the ESCD on the next reboot.

After doing those, try disabling absolutely any integrated devices or ports, disabling shadowing, etc.

Haven't experienced this personally, but these would be my next steps.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 5 of 24, by konc

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wkjagt wrote on 2023-02-09, 16:42:
konc wrote on 2023-02-09, 16:00:

Remove all drive cables from the m/b and the BIOS. Does it go to "invalid boot disk" immediately now?

I just pulled everything out, but the pause remains. I don't have any cards in there, other than the graphics card.

Great, so now you know what you don't need to waste time with 😀 The general idea as others already wrote is to strip the pc to the bare minimum and disable everything that can be disabled. I'd try completely different RAM also, just to be sure since there aren't many possibilities left.

Reply 7 of 24, by wkjagt

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Rawit wrote on 2023-02-09, 19:10:

Check your CMOS battery.

I replaced it, but that also didn't change anything. Replacing it did also reset the BIOS to defaults, which also didn't make a difference. So I am going to start disabling as many things as I can.

Stay at home dad playing around with 286-486. Programming C and assembly. Repairing old stuff.

Reply 8 of 24, by Horun

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May sound far-fetched but you are slaving a 500Mb HD to a 10GB HD ? Maybe it is waiting because of some oddity with that config and getting to the boot drive.... Try removing the 500Mb and see what happens.
a way to test a HD oddity: disconnect them and boot from floppy, if boots with no wait time then you know....
Have had odd issues with slaving a cdrom to primary master HD before....Just an odd suggestion but never know...

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 9 of 24, by wkjagt

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Horun wrote on 2023-02-09, 23:58:

May sound far-fetched but you are slaving a 500Mb HD to a 10GB HD ? Maybe it is waiting because of some oddity with that config and getting to the boot drive.... Try removing the 500Mb and see what happens.
a way to test a HD oddity: disconnect them and boot from floppy, if boots with no wait time then you know....
Have had odd issues with slaving a cdrom to primary master HD before....Just an odd suggestion but never know...

I actually disconnected both drives, and the floppy drive, and still got the 15 second pause before it told me there was no bootable disk... 🙁

Oh and to give a bit more info about these drives: the 10GB is an old Maxtor hard drive. The 500MB D: drive is a CF Card in a CF>IDE adapter to be able to copy things over more easily. And the 1.44 drive is a Gotek 😀

I also just tested disabling everything there is to disable in the BIOS and _still_ got that long pause. I guess the next thing to test more in depth is the RAM. I've tried it with one out of two sticks, then swapping for the other stick, but I haven't tried with completely different RAM yet.

Or maybe update the BIOS?

Stay at home dad playing around with 286-486. Programming C and assembly. Repairing old stuff.

Reply 10 of 24, by Horun

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I cannot think of anything that would cause it that you have not already investigated unless there is an issue writing to cmos/eeprom the ESCD info.
Maybe a BIOS update would help, according to November 2001 this is the update history: http://web.archive.org/web/20011101175945/htt … os_socket7.html

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 12 of 24, by Ozzuneoj

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wkjagt wrote on 2023-02-10, 00:24:
I actually disconnected both drives, and the floppy drive, and still got the 15 second pause before it told me there was no boot […]
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Horun wrote on 2023-02-09, 23:58:

May sound far-fetched but you are slaving a 500Mb HD to a 10GB HD ? Maybe it is waiting because of some oddity with that config and getting to the boot drive.... Try removing the 500Mb and see what happens.
a way to test a HD oddity: disconnect them and boot from floppy, if boots with no wait time then you know....
Have had odd issues with slaving a cdrom to primary master HD before....Just an odd suggestion but never know...

I actually disconnected both drives, and the floppy drive, and still got the 15 second pause before it told me there was no bootable disk... 🙁

Oh and to give a bit more info about these drives: the 10GB is an old Maxtor hard drive. The 500MB D: drive is a CF Card in a CF>IDE adapter to be able to copy things over more easily. And the 1.44 drive is a Gotek 😀

I also just tested disabling everything there is to disable in the BIOS and _still_ got that long pause. I guess the next thing to test more in depth is the RAM. I've tried it with one out of two sticks, then swapping for the other stick, but I haven't tried with completely different RAM yet.

Or maybe update the BIOS?

Seems like you've been very thorough. I would lean toward a BIOS update as well.

Though RAM is definitely worth checking out too. This is a pretty early SDRAM board, so there's always a possibility of RAM compatibility quirks.

Once it boots, have you run memtest? Just in case there's something strange going on with the SPD of the RAM and whatever settings the motherboard is happiest with.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 15 of 24, by wkjagt

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Babasha wrote on 2023-02-10, 12:02:

512MB RAM))) Did you try to lower ir to 32/64/128MB?

Could it also be the type of RAM maybe? I have two 256MB sticks in there, but I'm not sure of the type. It passes the test during POST though. But I'll do some more investigations.

Weird thing just now: I was rebooting the system a couple of times just now, to see if the timing was consistent, and it is, except for once, when _there was no pause at all_. I don't think I did anything different.

A couple of other observations, in DosBench:
- I can't run System Information 8.0. It just hangs
- Speedsys hangs during the Year2000 test. After rebooting, the system date / time is at 31 Dec 1999 23:59:59. So it actually does seem to hang during that test. I didn't think this board would have that bug, but it might be a hint towards the problem. I guess it's looking more and more like I am going to update the BIOS.

Stay at home dad playing around with 286-486. Programming C and assembly. Repairing old stuff.

Reply 16 of 24, by Babasha

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wkjagt wrote on 2023-02-10, 13:55:
Could it also be the type of RAM maybe? I have two 256MB sticks in there, but I'm not sure of the type. It passes the test durin […]
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Babasha wrote on 2023-02-10, 12:02:

512MB RAM))) Did you try to lower ir to 32/64/128MB?

Could it also be the type of RAM maybe? I have two 256MB sticks in there, but I'm not sure of the type. It passes the test during POST though. But I'll do some more investigations.

Weird thing just now: I was rebooting the system a couple of times just now, to see if the timing was consistent, and it is, except for once, when _there was no pause at all_. I don't think I did anything different.

A couple of other observations, in DosBench:
- I can't run System Information 8.0. It just hangs
- Speedsys hangs during the Year2000 test. After rebooting, the system date / time is at 31 Dec 1999 23:59:59. So it actually does seem to hang during that test. I didn't think this board would have that bug, but it might be a hint towards the problem. I guess it's looking more and more like I am going to update the BIOS.

Just set pre2000 date in your BIOS - 01-01-1999 is OK
Minimize RAM to "standard" capacity for 1998/99 systems like 64-128Mb

Need help? Begin with photo and model of your hardware 😉

Reply 17 of 24, by wkjagt

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Ok now I am really confused: I changed the system date to 01-01-1999 to see if I could now run speedsys, and after I did that, THE PAUSE WENT AWAY. I rebooted a couple of times to be sure, and yep, pause gone. But now the confusing part: I changed the date back to 2023, and the pause did not return! So while I am happy that it seems to be ok now, I have no idea what fixed it, so I guess it could come back too? I'll keep an eye on it.

I am able to run speedsys now too _with the date set to 2023_. It mentions a failure though, but I'm not sure what failed. See the extended memory test in the screen shot below:

218114591-7509832a-d0fd-46e6-898c-cfe400024802.jpg

Stay at home dad playing around with 286-486. Programming C and assembly. Repairing old stuff.