Any dates on the ATI card? There might have been some remade ones from server graphics chips that don't work on a 5V PCI system. If it's an original one, it should be fine if functional. Quite often with old parts, everything needs the contacts cleaning with alcohol and maybe "exercised" in the slot a few times until it decides to make contact right.

My bet is on the RAM sticks. It's always memory with these 486 mobos...

Thanks for the ideas. I tried pulling the RAM and the board just sounds a long beep continuously. I retried the graphics card again, multiple inserts just in case, still no luck. I have attached photos of the parts to provide more details. I had a couple of other thoughts. Could it be a BIOS issue where the configuration is set up use ISA graphics only? If so I expect the only solution would be to pull the CMOS battery and leave unplugged for 24-hours to check. I could try different RAM but I would need to order some since I do not have any spare 72-pin kicking around.

Have you tried one SIMM at a time, in case one of them is bad? Shouldn't actually need a pair on this board, pentium up does though.

mayera wrote on 2024-02-09, 20:25:

Thanks for the ideas. I tried pulling the RAM and the board just sounds a long beep continuously. I retried the graphics card again, multiple inserts just in case, still no luck. I have attached photos of the parts to provide more details. I had a couple of other thoughts. Could it be a BIOS issue where the configuration is set up use ISA graphics only? If so I expect the only solution would be to pull the CMOS battery and leave unplugged for 24-hours to check. I could try different RAM but I would need to order some since I do not have any spare 72-pin kicking around.

Use FPM RAM instead of EDO. Only B5 chipset revision of SIS496 supports Edo.
Re: Asus PVI-486SP3 // PCB vs. Chipset Revisions

EDIT: And this table is also wrong: B5 starts with P, something with PR
😁

probably wrong ram, but
>board just sounds a long beep continuously
It shouldnt do that 😀 start from the bottom up, remove everything, leave just power and speaker connected to empty motherboard.

"Continuous beep Memory or graphics card not detected"
I stand corrected

One long, two short is Graphics Card Error. Clean the card edge connector and socket, try it again. Continuous beep is memory or graphics card not detected.

You might find these handy:

RetroWeb entry for Zida 4DPS - https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/zida-4dps. The User Guide Rev 3.1 pdf under the Documentation tab even has Tomato on the cover!

Beep Codes - https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/server/kno … ios-beep-codes/ has a number of them for various BIOS.

Good luck!

Monty

Oh I'm just thinking, if you haven't given the CMOS a proper clear, you're probably going to have to do that, this may be pre PnP PCI, which means it needs to assign resources on initial setup, it might have wrong IRQs etc assigned to the slot you have the graphics card in.

Reseat the BIOS chip on the graphics card, and all reseatable chips on the motherboard

Thank you for all of the suggestions. I tried clearing the CMOS today. I also received an ISA VGA card that I had ordered 4 months ago this afternoon and tried with that. Same beep code (long, 2 short) which should be graphics card related, but now I have tried two. I have tried reseating all the chips on the board as well. I have FPM RAM coming in by then end of the month. One difference today was after the 1 long and 2 short beep code I started getting continuous beeping. I have removed both RAM sticks and tried each one individually, but since the chipset likely does not recognize the EDO RAM I did not expect that to change anything. I am still surprised that the beep error code is pointing at the graphics card considering I have now tried two different ones, using different busses, but listed as known good cards.