If the CF card was not completely blank, FDISK may not have written a correct MBR to it. Try fdisk /mbr and also sys c: from your boot disk and then reboot, you may then be able to boot from the CF.

I would shut off external (L2) cache in the BIOS until you've resolved all other stability issues.

If you purchased that ISSI 128Kx8 (1024 kilobit) cache from eBay, you need to be beware there are defective chips mixed in; best best is a TL-866 II (or its successor) that will both test those one-at-a-time, and also flash BIOS chips as you'll likely escalate to that before long.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2025-04-20, 02:06:

If the CF card was not completely blank, FDISK may not have written a correct MBR to it. Try fdisk /mbr and also sys c: from your boot disk and then reboot, you may then be able to boot from the CF.

I would shut off external (L2) cache in the BIOS until you've resolved all other stability issues.

If you purchased that ISSI 128Kx8 (1024 kilobit) cache from eBay, you need to be beware there are defective chips mixed in; best best is a TL-866 II (or its successor) that will both test those one-at-a-time, and also flash BIOS chips as you'll likely escalate to that before long.

Yeah, I will see about disabling the cache, I can get in to the BIOS as its checking RAM, but once its done and the green logo fades out, thats when it tends to lock up, or once it goes thru it then locks up as it gets to the point of booting, and I cant seem to get it to boot from the Gotek anymore either. otherwise I would try and mess with the CF card.

And yeah I kinda thought that kit would have bad ram chips or maybe even fake ones in it, I have two other 486 boards with Cache chips on it, as well as what this system came with originally, so I will try them out I think... and I will also get one of those programmers and see what it shows.

Rule #1: always use the original hardware that it was designed for to test old hardware. Use a real 3.5" floppy drive and real mechanical HD before trying a Gotech and Compact flash drive, as you would have done back in your IT days before they existed.
Rule #2: never try to upgrade a system that is not stable under rule #1. Need I say more ?
Sorry but I hate hearing "i used a Gotek or a flash card" when you haven't even got the system stable.....just MHO

Well, to my defense, it was stable enough to run the Gotek and install DOS to the CF card, the BIOS does auto configure and see the CF card as a HDD, it only went sideways after that, the Cache was never seen from the get go, but that can be just bad chips. the system did come with a HDD, I just haven't used it yet, same with a floppy drive, I will need to dredge up my stash of disks though and make a boot disc, which I haven't done since my WinXP days.

Ok, I disabled the external cache, hooked up the IDE HDD it came with and floppy drive, the HDD was seen by the BIOS but could not access the drive, and it took 7 diffrtent disks before I could get one to actually work on my USB floppy drive, used Fdisk on the CF card and fixed the MBR, it boots like it should now. Ran a few of the dos bench stuff from Phil and now I need more RAM and figure out the issue with the cache. My SB16 works great and Doom seems to work fine full screen.

Now I have to figure out BIOS settings and proper autoexec.bat configs including a cdrom driver, I want to play some old school games like Myst, The 7th Guest, Under a Killing Moon and the like, still have all my original cds for those.

Good job ! What model are the cache chips ? You might try just 512k first and see what happens

the ISSI IS61C1024-15N IS61C1024 128K x 8 ebay listing, as I said I do have 3 other 486 boards with cache on them, no idea how much they have though. This board is supposed to support 1mb but one of the chips might be bad, once I get paid I will need to get one of those chip programmers and test each of them out.

JuddSandage wrote on 2025-04-20, 21:49:

Ok, I disabled the external cache, hooked up the IDE HDD it came with and floppy drive, the HDD was seen by the BIOS but could not access the drive, and it took 7 diffrtent disks before I could get one to actually work on my USB floppy drive, used Fdisk on the CF card and fixed the MBR, it boots like it should now. Ran a few of the dos bench stuff from Phil and now I need more RAM and figure out the issue with the cache. My SB16 works great and Doom seems to work fine full screen.

Now I have to figure out BIOS settings and proper autoexec.bat configs including a cdrom driver, I want to play some old school games like Myst, The 7th Guest, Under a Killing Moon and the like, still have all my original cds for those.

That matches my experience in that USB floppy drives go haywire when given anything but a pristine (error-free), preformatted disk. It sounds like you can put the Gotek back in if you'd like.

Oakcdrom.sys ships with the Win98 boot disk image and is universally compatible with ATAPI CD-ROMs, but not very memory efficient. There are several alternatives.

I am thinking about getting 32MB of RAM for this PC, or maybe 64MB, the board can take 128MB but... meh nothing will take advantage of that much RAM that I want to use on this PC, just going to use it as my early to mid 90s gaming rig, gonna build a Pentium 233MMX rig next, then a P!!! rig.

That's how these systems tend to multiply, yes.

The Award memory test can get annoyingly long with huge amounts of memory. Some VLB video cards might want to put their framebuffer at 64MB also.
At least, if you get the 1MB cache, you shouldn't have to worry about cacheable area.
It looks like that board might accommodate a PS/2 mouse or at least reserves space for the components; looked into that?

I have looked at it, and it's got a pinout for ps2, but I would need a proper adapter for it, I used to have one but it's been 30 years now.

Well got an adapter, 5 pin for the 5 pins on the mobo, just need to verify the pinout on the mobo, pin 1 is 5v, which I assume is VCC, pin 2 no voltage and no continuity to ground, NC I suppose, pin 3 is ground, pin 4 gives 5v but also gives random continuity with ground, and 5 just gives 5 volts, I have no scope to check what kind of signal they may be doing.

Also whats a good suggestion for a 2gb CF card? the Transcend I have seems to be corrupting quite a bit, some stuff I install after a few sneakernets to my PC have gotten garbled text in folders or the folders are no longer recognizable as folders, also getting random lockups or reboots on trying to install things now.