Are you really sure that it has already HDD Auto Detection implemented?
With old BIOSes you have to enter the values yourself as Drive User Type 47. They often get cutted to 1023 Cylinders, so this is nothing to worry about. You should get at least 504 MB.

You have to set the floppy drives type too in BIOS.

Usually press del to enter bios.

If it has a RTC/battery combo chip and it's dead it won't keep any setting, after you leave the bios. Your only chance is to get a functional RTC chip. So if the RTC is dead and by ROM defaults no HDD or drive is set you can not boot.

elianda wrote:

Are you really sure that it has already HDD Auto Detection implemented? With old BIOSes you have to enter the values yourself as […]
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Are you really sure that it has already HDD Auto Detection implemented?
With old BIOSes you have to enter the values yourself as Drive User Type 47. They often get cutted to 1023 Cylinders, so this is nothing to worry about. You should get at least 504 MB.

You have to set the floppy drives type too in BIOS.

Usually press del to enter bios.

If it has a RTC/battery combo chip and it's dead it won't keep any setting, after you leave the bios. Your only chance is to get a functional RTC chip. So if the RTC is dead and by ROM defaults no HDD or drive is set you can not boot.

Why do you assume that I'm a noob that doesn't even know how to enter BIOS?

I know what I'm talking about - bios has an ato-detect option but it doesn't find anything. I tried setting up an old 42MB hard drive by hand but it still didn't work.

As per your last statement, that's simply not true. As long as the motherboard has power, the settings will be saved. This particular motherboard has a socketed ODIN RTC chip that contains a battery which is of course dead. This shouldn't affect the way BIOS works...

Cheers

Half-Saint wrote:

As per your last statement, that's simply not true. As long as the motherboard has power, the settings will be saved.

Nope, you're wrong here. The NVRAM in a real time clock is totally battery dependent. if the battery is dead, you can enter the BIOS and change whatever you want, after the "SAVE TO CMOS" and the warm reboot the saved data goes to the nirvana and the CMOS data reset to default values (read from the ROM table).

But I doubt that the dead real time module has anything to do with the faulty detection progress. I know your board and if the IDE controller is enabled (which is default) the BIOS auto detect routine should be able to detect your media. My two guesses: 1. The in-chip controller is defective. 2. The cable is defective. 3. The BIOS is corrupted.

Regards
Fabian

elianda and FGB are correct in that you need RTC battery juice to save any CMOS settings, even if you don't power down. There is a poor man's solution to this, without needing a new RTC or modding the RTC for a new battery. You can use a BIOS editor to save all your desired default settings into the BIOSes flash ROM. With this method, the only thing you loose out on is the ability to save the date, however any changes you make to the CMOS need to be done with the BIOS editor and flashed to the BIOS each time.

You guys are contradicting my first hand experience with many boards, not just this one. The battery is phisically present but I doubt that there's ANY juice left in there. POST reports CMOS Battery Dead. Now, I can enter HDD settings in BIOS, save & exit, re-enter BIOS and voila! my settings are still there! According to you, this shouldn't be possible. So either I'm living in a parallel dimension or...

FGB wrote:

But I doubt that the dead real time module has anything to do with the faulty detection progress. I know your board and if the IDE controller is enabled (which is default) the BIOS auto detect routine should be able to detect your media. My two guesses: 1. The in-chip controller is defective. 2. The cable is defective. 3. The BIOS is corrupted.

Fabian, I can only disable secodary IDE channel in BIOS. Primary is always active... I tried using an ISA controller but no luck.

How can I check if the BIOS is corrupted without finding a ROM dump and comparing it to mine?

Thanks

Well, everyone has its own experiences and maybe I haven't used enough boards yet to know.

I don't know bro!

Your using the onboard primary and sec IDE ports? Faulty onboard IDE controllers?

Do you have something like a Promise Ultra 100 IDE Controller card or a SCSI controller card you can test?

Half-Saint you need to chill out a bit. People are happy to help there is no need for attitude.

What attitude? I'm just being very serious 😁

rgart wrote:

I don't know bro!

Your using the onboard primary and sec IDE ports? Faulty onboard IDE controllers?

Do you have something like a Promise Ultra 100 IDE Controller card or a SCSI controller card you can test?

I'll try to find one on ebay for the sake of testing this issue since it's really bothering me. Thanks for the suggestion.