Can you enter setup ?

Yes that works, no problems there.
It just won't go any further than counting memory.

It might have a problem detecing hard drive or booting from it (if preconfigured in setup).

I'd make sure to put the most conservative settings (incl. disabling L2 cache). Remove any other cards if installed. Double check disk setting or, even better, remove hard disk configuration altogether and boot from floppy. Then it should go one step further. It might be easier to boot from a floppy drive.

Wrong settings in Bios might be, a battery going weak but still holding time prevented a 486 board from booting at home.
Might be the same here.
My next step would be to use a post card to see what happens after the initial screen.

Will try that things.
Already removed IO card only leaving VGA card but that changed nothing.
Reporting back asap...

Got it working!
I wasn't aware of that the order of ISA cards is relevant.
After loading BIOS defaults it could boot from floppy, however, booting from any configured harddisk did not work.
I then used a PCI graphics card and it did boot from harddisk. Ha!

Switched back to ISA graphics card and tried some other slot configurations and finally found one that worked (may not be the only one).
I never had more then one ISA card in a system - the sound card - so these "effects" were unknown to me.

Now I know that the board is functional which was all I had in mind.
Problem solved.
Thanks to everyone!

is this the board ?
https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/2742

It may be a controller problem, what are you using?

Yes, that is the board.
I'm using this card:
https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-disk-floppy … -LCS-66-47.html
It's based on a Winbond W83757AF.

Order of ISA slots shouldn't matter. If it does, probably one or more slots may have dirty contacts. Just removing and inserting cards may have made the difference, not the order as such.

Order of PCI cards can make a lot of difference. PCI had 4 interrupt lines and allocation of lines to slots, and interrupts to lines, may cause issues. On older boards like this, I'd expect it to be possible to manually allocate IRQ to interrupt, and possibly interrupt to slots. Make sure the PCI stuff doesn't conflict with whatever you've set on the (non-PnP) ISA cards.

dionb wrote on 2021-12-21, 21:01:

Order of ISA slots shouldn't matter.

I'd like to agree but I have another board where the order of ISA cards seems to matter.
It is an 386 board (Unichip 367C) with the same effect. In some combinations the (same) IO card (or at least the IDE port, didn't test them all) has problems while VGA always works fine.
So I don't know what's the real issue. May be it is the IO card itself causing trouble or may be something different like some IRQ settings. Don't know which IRQ ISA graphics cards are using, if any. But maybe that is in conflict with the IRQs used by the IO card. Changing the IRQ used for IDE just made it non-functional at all so I set it back to the original setting.

At the time of testing there where no PCI cards installed, so there shouldn't have been any trouble from this side.
Contacts looked ok, the board itself was in a very clean condition for its age. Just some minor dust. Also, reinserting the cards into the same slots didn't change anything so I think this possibility can be excluded.

ChrisK wrote on 2021-12-21, 19:30:

Yes, that is the board. I'm using this card: https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-disk-floppy … -LCS-66-47.html It's based on a Win […]
Show full quote

Yes, that is the board.
I'm using this card:
https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-disk-floppy … -LCS-66-47.html
It's based on a Winbond W83757AF.

First turn off the cache from the bios.

then try changing the controller jumper

PC / XT JP1 / 6 Pins 1 & 2 closed

PC / AT JP1 / 6 Pins 2 & 3 closed

OK, I can try that. But will have time for this not before after Christmas holidays.
Haven't change this one since I have the card. It is labeled JP7 / 6 and there's a "H" and "L" setting on my card btw.
Current setting is "L". Whether that translates to "1&2" or "2&3" I don't know. Presumably it is "2&3".

Will report back asap.

Could you please take a nice picture of your motherboard ? The picture we have is rather bad. We'll credit you of course 😀

Hi,
sorry for late reply. Didn't have the time for further testing during the holidays and was quite busy with work & family in the last time.

I can take a picture, no problem. How do I proceed with it? Post it here in this thread or better in the other one here?
Re: Ultimate Retro board submissions thread: suggest board edits and/or add new boards here

Regarding the original issue discussed here:
I have done some playing around with my 386 board and bespoken ISA IO- & VGA-cards which showed the same effect of obviously only be working in a specific slot configuration.
To my surprise I could not find any combination not working at all. I tried several (not all, though) and in every combination booting into DOS from CF-card was just a question of some seconds.
So I don't know, maybe it really was just some issue with dirty contacts in the slots or even the jumpers on the IO card.
Will try to repeat that with the socket 4 board.

is it a Intel 430LX, i have seen that some have a finicky IDE controller.