Have you checked, that you did not plug in the data cable in reverse by accident?
Or you could try using a different data cable.

Tried Multiple cables...

The cables are plugged in correct, I triple checked it....I dont think they would even pass the floppy seek on post if they werent connected properly.

Smack2k wrote:

Tried Multiple cables...

The cables are plugged in correct, I triple checked it....I dont think they would even pass the floppy seek on post if they werent connected properly.

You are right about that. If the cable was plugged in reverse, your floppy drive indicator lamp will light on as soon as your machine is powered up and stay that way.

Sometimes, not able to detect the HDDs properly (BIOS limits, wrongly inputted "user type" parameters, etc.) can cause very silly errors in machines from that era. Maybe you already did that but, could you please also try booting from the floppy while nothing is connected to the IDE channels of your controller and BIOS setup as "no HDD". I believe there is a big chance that you have some incompatibility issues between your machine and your CF card.

the common parts are for now 2 as i see it: psu and controller chip; also: how did you mount these mobos while testing?

Smack2k wrote:

Also, from Phil's video on building a 386 using CF / SD Storage,

Wait, are you using flash cards in the system ? I recall there was some issue with certain floppy controllers.
And do you use a FDC/IDE combo card or separate floppy and IDE controllers ?
The combined ones are less to suffer from that issue, I recall.

Got back to testing this on my Forex 386 Cache Board

With a regular IDE HDD attached and a floppy attached, and trying to boot from floppy, the system sees the floppy drive on POST (initial seek) as it runs for a second. After finishing post, it then attempts to boot from the floppy drive. The floppy drive comes on as you can hear it running and the light is on, but it doesnt read the disk (good floppy disk or any boot disk used in the Go-Tek Emulator) and then stops with the DISKETTE ERROR, insert a system disk and press any key. Pressing a key will cause the same process to happen over and over.

I know the controller is good as I can hook it up to a different 386-SX board and it goes through the same process but reads the disk and boots from it.

The floppy cables are definately not backward or connected wrong as I move the controller card from one board to the other without changing any of the cables / connections. Have also tried a couple other controller cards with same results

The same power supply is used for the tests on both boards as well.

Is there anything I can test on the board or look for that could cause this issue? I havent touched the cache chips, but I dont think they would matter in this process.

I am stumped big time here as I know this can work as its getting this far....

I have not had much luck to get CF card readers working with 386's, all of them that i've tried originate from China/HK. I ussually get the reading from HDD error and mainly used 256Mb upto 1Gb... using various "user 47" settings in the bios for HD setup.

I'm curious about your bios setup... are you setting up the hard drive correctly?

Startup stalling at "starting MS-DOS" could suggest floppy config error, worthwhile checking this in the bios.

There's not much in the BIOS for floppy config unless I am missing something....all I see is enable or disable floppy seek and choose the floppy type...both of which I have set properly..

It doesnt matter if its a real floppy drive or the emulator, everytime when set to boot from floppy the drive will activate for a second or so, then kick the error, with the drive not actually reading the disk (you dont hear it reading the disk with a real floppy drive and with the GO-Tek you see the USB stick blinking activity for a second and then the error comes up)

For the HDD errors, I definately put the proper HDD settings into the BIOS as they are straight from the drive....

Very very frustrating....