VOGONS


First post, by douglar

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This was the first motherboard that I started working with when I dug my box of 1990 computer stuff out of storage. Had good CPU coverage, WB support, ps/2 mouse, 3.3v power for the ISA slots through the supplemental power plug. I was lucky enough to have a power supply with the right connector on it. Great board other than it has the phoenix bios bug that causes the firmware to crash if you configure a drive over 2 GB.

Anyway, one day last fall it stopped booting. Power runs but there are no beeps. Diagnostic card just shows "-- --" when in ISA or PCI

I tried resetting the bios, 3.3v or 5.0v CPUs, memory or no memory, cards or no cards.

Should I start replacing the surface mount capacitors as the next step?

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/anigma-bat4ip3e

Reply 1 of 3, by Horun

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Possible cap issue. Does the cpu get warm ? Is the Diags Reset LED stuck on ? Maybe bad BIOS or bad Dallas battery.....

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 2 of 3, by douglar

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Horun wrote on 2023-03-12, 23:03:

Possible cap issue. Does the cpu get warm ? Is the Diags Reset LED stuck on ? Maybe bad BIOS or bad Dallas battery.....

Discovery to date:

  • The battery is good and I know that this board will still boot with a bad battery, because I replaced it 2 years ago.
  • The CPU gets warm , but not unusually warm
  • No burning smells, no unexpected shorts in the AT power connector, power supply functions normally
  • Diagnostic card lights for -12v, +12v, +5v,+3.3v, clk & frame come on when in ISA
  • Diagnostic card lights for -12v, +12v, +5v, & clk come on when in PCI
  • 7 segment digit display on the diagnostic card lights up, but just displays "--/--", no numbers
  • Reset switch doesn't do anything
  • Tried with ram, without ram, with VGA, without VGA, with L2 cache, without
  • Double checked the jumpers to make sure they were in the right spots and made connections
  • Tried 3.3v and 5.0v CPUs, tried 25Mhz/33Mhz speeds
  • No beeps from PC speaker, no keyboard lights, no VGA signal
Last edited by douglar on 2023-03-19, 21:21. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3 of 3, by Horun

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To bad the BIOS is soldered, it could be a bad bios chip. With no readout at all the bios is not even starting to decompress/load into ram.
There are other similar boards with stuck reset line but sounds like maybe yours is not....

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