Silent Loon wrote:

I just bought an old Soyo SY-4SA2 with a 486dx2-66. Nice board as it has ISA, one VLB and PCI slots. Nevertheless it stops booti […]
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I just bought an old Soyo SY-4SA2 with a 486dx2-66. Nice board as it has ISA, one VLB and PCI slots. Nevertheless it stops booting while attempting to acess the hd ("harddisk(s) fail 80). Also it doesn't recognize the floppy disk at all (no characteristic noise when you turn on, no error message). I can access the bios, and enter the parameters needed, but that doesn't help. I also tried to boot with an isa ide controller, same results.
I know that most likely the board is defective, but perhaps I've overseen something. The battery was low and at the end of its life, so I builed in a new one, hoping that the error will disappear - without effort.
My last idea was that because of the rotten battery the bios itself could be somehow corrupted - is this possible or just wishful thinking?
Also on the soyo site it is said that this board (or at least the 4sa?) came with an eeprom bios and that I should use an eeprom writer (which I don't have). But jumpers on the board let you choose between eeprom/flash and flash only bios. It has an Award Modular Bios (4.50G).
Any suggestions?

Tried a small HD? let's say some hundred meg's?
I've had problems with big hdd's on these old boards and got a similar error message.
The opti chipset mobo's are famous for being "friendly" 😉

You sure the floppy drive and cable are fit for fight?

Yes, I think I've tried all that. I changed the floppy cable to various positions, and I used 853mb wd harddrive, and after that a very old 256mb conner. I don't know if the conner is still ok, but the wd should.
Before I changed the battery the bios was not able to store the settings, now it is. Nevertheless auto detecting the hd took a lot of time. Also it identifies the hd with CHS, but I should be LBA - or not? I also tried different jumper positions on the hds. Also if you have misconnected the floppy drive there should be an error message (floppy drive fail 40). But there wasn't.

Silent Loon wrote:

Yes, I think I've tried all that. I changed the floppy cable to various positions, and I used 853mb wd harddrive, and after that a very old 256mb conner. I don't know if the conner is still ok, but the wd should.
Before I changed the battery the bios was not able to store the settings, now it is. Nevertheless auto detecting the hd took a lot of time. Also it identifies the hd with CHS, but I should be LBA - or not? I also tried different jumper positions on the hds. Also if you have misconnected the floppy drive there should be an error message (floppy drive fail 40). But there wasn't.

Yes, LBA hdd's bigger than ~512mb

hmm...sounds like a BIOS related issue after all 😜

You mean that the hardware is still okay? Oh, my hope is rising, but -If it is a bios issue - could I solve the problem by recovering the bios?
How?
As the soyo site says, it should have been delivered with an eeprom bios, but I can not verify that. Does an eeprom bios look any different? The bios chip one the board looks like all the others I have seen, also on later socket 7 boards. Could it be that this version was allready delivered with a flash bios? Where is the difference?
Apart from that, I can not flash the bios anyway, as it is not possible to access the floppy disk. So I have the following idea:
I have some socket 7 boards that I have no use for, and that I want to throw away or sell as recycling material. Could I flash one of their bios with the "wrong" soyo bios and than pull it out and insert it into the bios socket of the 486 board?

Silent Loon wrote:

You mean that the hardware is still okay? Oh, my hope is rising, but -If it is a bios issue - could I solve the problem by recov […]
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You mean that the hardware is still okay? Oh, my hope is rising, but -If it is a bios issue - could I solve the problem by recovering the bios?
How?
As the soyo site says, it should have been delivered with an eeprom bios, but I can not verify that. Does an eeprom bios look any different? The bios chip one the board looks like all the others I have seen, also on later socket 7 boards. Could it be that this version was allready delivered with a flash bios? Where is the difference?
Apart from that, I can not flash the bios anyway, as it is not possible to access the floppy disk. So I have the following idea:
I have some socket 7 boards that I have no use for, and that I want to throw away or sell as recycling material. Could I flash one of their bios with the "wrong" soyo bios and than pull it out and insert it into the bios socket of the 486 board?

Maybe the I/O controller is faulty?

You can always hire this guy for the flash job www.biosflash.de

Mhm. If the I/O controller is faulty, shouldn't it work with the ISA ide/floppy controller?
Thanks for the link anyway. They don't have the exact chip but something similar. They list it as flash-bios. I've also to correct myself, as the soyo site says that the board came with an eprom bios (not eeprom). But the chip I have is 32-pin dip and has the following number SST PH29EE010 150-3CF 952919-E. Seems as if it is a flash-eeprom bios?
What about my idea on flashing it on a different board or use its bios chip?

Also I found two bios versions: 4SA0730 (by Soyo, for the 4sa - 4sa2 is not listed). And 4sa2iob1 (found it somewhere) and that's the one that is displayed when the board starts.

Did you disable the built in floppy/IDE controller when you tried the ISA one?

Usually the BIOS does a checksum check on itself so it should be allright if you get more than just beeps. The chip is a EEPROM. If the other boards have flash and not eeproms on them I think it's rather unlikely it will work. Might be possible to reflash their chip and put it in the 486 though (compare pinout in the datasheets).

I'm having a similar problem, only its a Pentium board, and PCI card...

Re: need new PCI IDE controller card for DOS

Not sure if the IC is replaceable though.

I think I have the exact Soto board you have which has serious battery damage but the BIOS chip might be useful to you? 😀

Thanks Amigaz, I appreciate your offer very much. Yet I will first try to turn off every onboard controller and see what happens, as what h-a-l- 9000 says about the checksum sounds logical somehow.
Anyway if it doesn't work it would be great if you could sent me the chip - at least if you live in germany or in europe. I would contact you using private message? Would you need something in return? I have a bunch of hardware here... no Creative Gameblaster, unfortunately.
Furthermore - if your board is not damaged by battery accid it is quite easy to replace the battery - even I could do it...

Silent Loon wrote:

Thanks Amigaz, I appreciate your offer very much. Yet I will first try to turn off every onboard controller and see what happens, as what h-a-l- 9000 says about the checksum sounds logical somehow.
Anyway if it doesn't work it would be great if you could sent me the chip - at least if you live in germany or in europe. I would contact you using private message? Would you need something in return? I have a bunch of hardware here... no Creative Gameblaster, unfortunately.
Furthermore - if your board is not damaged by battery accid it is quite easy to replace the battery - even I could do it...

I'm located in Sweden so we're almost neighbours.... 😉
Let me know if you need the chip...we can work out some deal..

The battery acid seem to have damaged some circuits nearby the battery...I don't plan to use this board, it was used in an old full AT tower I use another motherboard in now

Sorry to ressurect an old thread. Had 2 of those motherboards. One died in action many years ago (probably due to a friend trying to insert a long VLB card), the other one is in my spare box; last one seemed to had a "stroke", since it only recognises SIMM's in one slot, and no more than 4 Mb.
First one was a decent 486 VIP board, used it with various VLB/PCI video cards, Adaptec ISA 1542CF SCSI controller, several 1-2 Gb SCSI hard disks and my favourite combo of soundcards, a Yamaha SW20-PC and GUS ACE. Had upto 32 Mb RAM on it, even 2.4.x Linuxes were running at decent speed.