VOGONS


First post, by that1crzywhtguy

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Hello all, thanks in advance for any assitance.

I have a nice little P100 build that I've been using for a few years to play DOS games and some early windows games. Recently, my OS stopped functioning, so I attempted to reinstall. The install repetedly failed with errors pointing to bad ram. Eventually, the pc wouldn't even boot from cd or floppy. So I ordered some new simms. With those installed, no changes in behavior. Original simms restored, still no change. The computer posts fine, and I can go all through the bios settings assuring everything is configured correctly, but beyond that it sticks. After the post, I see the detected hard drives, floppies, and optical, but then the cursor just blinks until oblivion. I've tried multiple disks, multiple floppy drives, and even booting from optical. All just sticks on that blinking cursor. Because I was stuck, I decided to tear down the computer to bare bones. Currently, my P5HX-B motherboard has the p100 cpu, my s3 graphics, the ram, and one floppy connected. Still the same symptoms. Blink...Blink...Blink...

Is this motherboard toast, or am I maybe missing something small? Very frustrating situation over here... I just wanted to play some Quake II. 🙁

Last edited by that1crzywhtguy on 2018-09-21, 09:51. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 2 of 7, by gladders

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I recently went through something similar (although it was manifesting as hard drive errors), and figured out my PSU was dying.

Sadly i fear you may face a long road of eliminating tons of possible causes before getting to the bottom of it, which was my experience.

Reply 4 of 7, by that1crzywhtguy

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keropi wrote:

Could it be a dead CMOS battery? Have you tried replacing it?

Mine has one of those annoying Dallas RTC modules... But yes I checked it, and it's not dead.

gladders wrote:

I recently went through something similar (although it was manifesting as hard drive errors), and figured out my PSU was dying.

Sadly i fear you may face a long road of eliminating tons of possible causes before getting to the bottom of it, which was my experience.

I would not have thought to check a psu 🤣. Looks like I'm in for it.

collector wrote:

Ask old hardware and driver/configuration questions in Marvin. This forum is for DOS games on modern systems. Marvin, the Paranoid Android

Sorry! Don't know how I missed that. I read through the categories but it was very late and I was very tired. Can this be moved there somehow?

Thanks again.

Reply 5 of 7, by Stiletto

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Moved to Marvin -> General Old Hardware.

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 6 of 7, by derSammler

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Try with L2 cache disabled.

Reply 7 of 7, by that1crzywhtguy

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Btw, just to stick a fork in this one. Other problems started cropping up, and then I got this awful beep that wouldn't go away and nothing worked.

Dead mobo, swapped it out and I'm back in good shape.

😀