VOGONS


First post, by DexterHill0

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I recently acquired a Packard Bell Executive Multi-Media (9003D) computer that had been sitting a garage for a couple decades. Aside from some tarnished screws, dead bugs and dust, it looks to be in fairly good condition. No caps are bulged, leaking (although that doesn't rule out them being dry), no obviously tarnished or dirty connectors, etc. I gave it a clean with some IPA anyway before turning it on. It came with two ISA cards, some modem/network card and sound blaster 16, and had all 4 SIMM slots populated, one bank being a mismatched pair of sticks (and the default CD-ROM, HDD and floppy reader).
At the time I didn't have a PS/2 keyboard or mouse to hand but I still wanted to check if would even turn on, which it did, and it booted into windows 95 successfully. As I was moving it around, I pressed what I now know is the Reset button on the front, and that took me back to the POST screen where I noticed a message telling me insert some bootable media. I'll be honest I didn't take much notice of the message at that point because I wasn't sure what the button I pressed did, so I kind of assumed that was normal.

Fast forward to where I have a suitable keyboard (which for context is just a raspberry pi translating USB to PS/2 for now) and I go to try and explore this computer only to encounter the bootable media error which I have since been unable to get past. I was noticing during POST it was listing "Floppy A" as "installed". There is a floppy reader but no floppy inside, so I'm not sure if that message meant it thought there was a ghost floppy in the reader, or just that there was a reader available. Either way, I started by replacing the CMOS battery as that was obviously dead, which meant I could save BIOS settings (and disable the floppy) but that didn't change the symptom described earlier.
While in the BIOS I spotted the real symptom which was that both the primary and secondary IDE positions were listed as not installed, which is not true because the internal HDD is connected to the primary IDE header, and the CD-ROM is connected to the secondary header (I tried swapping them with no change). Both also have their jumpers set to the master position. I reseated everything but still none were registered. Up until this point I considered the possibility the HDD was dead, but even if that was true I would still expect to see the CD-ROM, as they both are in separate slots and do not share a cable.
I tried a few different things, like changing the HDDs jumper position to all available positions, removing the mismatched RAM, expansion cards, and even disconnecting the HDD entirely, but I was having some inconsistent POSTs with inconsistent error beeps. I commonly had one short beep, which I think means DRAM refresh error, but I also had 2 short beeps, 3 short beeps, and even 3 long beeps which I couldn't find docs on. There is a caveat here where I think my monitor was not consistently being woken up if the computer did POST, so I can't be certain all were failures. I also did a check of PSU voltage rails, which all came back clean and consistent, including the Power Good signal which had a clean and fast transition from 0V to 5V.

Since then, I have still been unsuccessful in getting either IDE device to be detected. This is making me think somehow the IDE controller IC (Intel PCIset SB82371FB) has died. I hope this isn't the case, and I'm not sure how a single reset could've killed it, but I'm out of other ideas.

Does anyone else have any ideas of things I could check?

Reply 1 of 6, by akimmet

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Are you setting up the drives in the BIOS? IDE drives will not be detected without setup on a system this old.

Reply 2 of 6, by DexterHill0

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akimmet wrote on Today, 18:32:

Are you setting up the drives in the BIOS? IDE drives will not be detected without setup on a system this old.

I haven't configured anything yet - the BIOS is basically set to system defaults (which I imagine it was even on the only successful boot I had since the CMOS battery has been dead for a long time). Apologies for the phone pictures of a screen, I don't have a way to capture the screen directly. These are the only config options for IDE devices in the BIOS:
bios_ide.jpg?ex=6a67b644&is=6a6664c4&hm=c28ec5d72ca31c3f87cc61db6db2fa1afff9ffcd1c217202aeb8bafe62f8be15&=&format=webp&width=650&height=400
ide_individual.jpg?ex=6a67b644&is=6a6664c4&hm=040d40598f30484b50f7aa17a6b2c221edecbd724a48bb8bc7042cfe1d08101c&=&format=webp&width=650&height=400
In the advanced BIOS section there's only one related IDE setting which is just if it's enabled, and it is.

Reply 3 of 6, by akimmet

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OK, this BIOS dose appear to be capable of auto-detecting drives at boot.
The inconsistent ability to POST makes me suspect other motherboard or RAM problems.
Have you checked under the CPU heatsink? If there is a sil-pad, it would have dried out and failed by now.

Reply 4 of 6, by jakethompson1

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It's normal for IDE CD-ROM to not be autodetected in this BIOS, as such detection wasn't needed until CD-ROM boot (El Torito) needed supported. So focus on just the hard drive. Since it sounds like the BIOS settings were wiped, it's possible for the IDE interface to be disabled entirely, but highly unlikely that it's the default.

Reply 5 of 6, by DexterHill0

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akimmet wrote on Today, 21:35:

OK, this BIOS dose appear to be capable of auto-detecting drives at boot.
The inconsistent ability to POST makes me suspect other motherboard or RAM problems.
Have you checked under the CPU heatsink? If there is a sil-pad, it would have dried out and failed by now.

I'm not certain on the inconsistent POST, I think that may have been partly user error. I was also experimenting with RAM configurations during that point, like single sticks and different banks, which made it not POST a lot of the time.
Under the CPU heatsink there is definitely something, not sure if its a pad or thermal paste, but youre right I should replace that

jakethompson1 wrote on Today, 21:41:

It's normal for IDE CD-ROM to not be autodetected in this BIOS, as such detection wasn't needed until CD-ROM boot (El Torito) needed supported. So focus on just the hard drive. Since it sounds like the BIOS settings were wiped, it's possible for the IDE interface to be disabled entirely, but highly unlikely that it's the default.

Good note on the CD-ROM, I'll ignore that for now then. I've checked and the IDE interface is enabled by default in the advanced options, so that wouldn't be the issue

Reply 6 of 6, by jakethompson1

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Since you were inside the case messing with RAM, you've already checked that the IDE cables aren't connected backward? Depending on the age of the system, there may not be any protection against that, but if they are, just flip them to be the right way (red stripe = pin 1) and it should work again.