ctl alt del causes hang \ VOGONS

ctl alt del causes hang

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First post, by badmojo

Posted on 2013-08-11, 23:41

badmojo Offline

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I'm putting together a 486 using an Aopen (Acer) brand VLB motherboard:

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/A/AC … ml#.UgggEdIwf3t

It's working OK, but doing a soft restart using ctl alt del causes the system to hang instead of reboot. If for example I'm at the DOS prompt (clean install of DOS 6.22) and I hit ctl alt del it'll just sit there, prompt still visible but no longer accepting input from the keyboard.

Has anyone seen this before? This board has that stupid graphical interface bios so there aren't many options to fiddle with.

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 1 of 6, by Malik

Posted on 2013-08-12, 01:39

Malik Offline

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Ermmm..have you tried waiting for 5 or 10 seconds?

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Reply 2 of 6, by leileilol

Posted on 2013-08-12, 02:26

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Does it on my M919 if I have the memory timings set too tight.

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Reply 3 of 6, by NJRoadfan

Posted on 2013-08-12, 02:36

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Is EMM386 installed? If so, does the machine reboot as it should when in real mode? It can do weird things like that. You can also try EMM386's "alt boot" switch to get around the problem.

[ALTBOOT]
Specifies that EMM386 use an alternate handler to restart your computer
when you press CTRL+ALT+DEL. Use this switch only if your computer stops
responding or exhibits other unusual behavior when EMM386 is loaded and
you press CTRL+ALT+DEL.

Reply 4 of 6, by badmojo

Posted on 2013-08-12, 10:02

badmojo Offline

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Thanks for the suggestions but no, waiting doesn't help and the EMM386 tip was a good one but didn't make a difference either. I've noticed also that memmaker can't reboot the machine, and now that I think about it neither the DOS installer nor the creative software installer rebooted the machine when they should have either. They just sat there.

I'll look at the memory settings in the bios, but currently it's set to auto config that stuff, so the timings shouldn't be too tight.

Very annoying, I'm building this thing to sell and although it seems to work fine, I don't think I can bring myself to sell it to someone if this doesn't work. Bloody quirky 486s.

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 5 of 6, by h-a-l-9000

Posted on 2013-08-12, 10:44

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If the keyboard controller can be replaced it's one option to check out.

1+1=10

Reply 6 of 6, by badmojo

Posted on 2013-08-13, 00:06

badmojo Offline

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h-a-l-9000 wrote:
If the keyboard controller can be replaced it's one option to check out.

It's soldered on! And I noticed that the turbo LED header doesn't work on this board either - the switch does, but the LED is always on.

That's it, I'm going to hand it on my wall of dead hardware.

Thanks for the replies.

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

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