I hope it has not a floppy driven BIOS setup like older 286s and oldest 386s.

I will connect a floppy and see if the board tries to read from it

keropi wrote:

Any ideas? 😕

Hi Keropi, there's one thing that comes to mind - try provoking a keyboard error.
On my 286 with a Schneider-BIOS (Phoenix based), pressing ESC during power-on causes a sticky key error.

My Commodore 386SX-16 had a Phoenix BIOS, and you could enter its setup by pressing CTRL-ALT-S, if I recall correctly.
This site lists some other options:
https://www.lifewire.com/bios-setup-utility-a … cturers-2624461

just by connecting a floppy I got this screen, I could now press F1 and the board booted . Ofcourse like you people said I most likely need that setup program - no idea where to get it though.

at least I loaded DOS 😁

Try CTRL+ALT+INSERT
I had to do that with 386SX-16 system with Phoenix BIOS

To enter the CMOS Setup, press CTRL+ALT+INSERT simultaneously. This will display the
system configuration setup menu. Ensure the configuration is as indicated below. Follow
the instructions on the monitor to change any of the entries.

keropi wrote:

Ofcourse like you people said I most likely need that setup program - no idea where to get it though.

You can always use Gsetup for basic functionality (probably enough for this board anyway...)

This is how mine looks:

^ I have tried all combos in the page Scali listed - including CTRL+ALT+INSERT (does not work, prints some messages about keyboard stuck keys and lines and waits for F1)
I will go the gsetup way and check it out, never used it before 😁

Have you tried it a few times, like during or after the mem check? Mine didn't work every single time too :p
Like you need to do it at a specific moment.

Also this:

@Murugan
yes, pressing any key combo on boot produces a kb error

@quicknick
mega-thanks for that! SETUP and ATSETUP worked for me and the board now boots without issues 😀
really slow system though 🤣

Good you got it solved dude 😀
Quite some differences in BIOS types it seems.

yes, I am not surprised this mobo is really old. and slow.

TBH I never really tried both of my (identical) systems.
Or just tried Dune for 5 seconds on 1 of them :p Seemed to go pretty well.

These were used as medical equipment for bloodgas analysers.

I did a quick sysinfo benchmark, the board scored 9.08 while the example 386DX/33 system is at ~37 or something ... needless to say this old board has no cache at all 🤣
also these sipp modules are weird - each is 128kbytes? I did not check specs but if you put in the bios more than 1mb of ram you get errors.

Glad to be of help. That's a low score indeed. Maybe it's working in the non-turbo mode, 8MHz instead of 16? (There are two oscillators near the CPU, 16 and 32MHz).
Also, 128KB for a module is extra-weird, can you find the datasheet of chips on the module and do a quick math on their size? I don't even know if it's possible, but maybe it's accessing the RAM at 16-bits only, thus only seeing half the capacity?

I will look at the ram specs tomorrow since I left the office...
about speed I think that's the 16mhz score, both cachechk and speedsys report a 15.8mhz 386

Yes. I confirm that multiple clicks of CTRL-ALT-S allowed me to enter Commdore BIOS 1.03 on my 386 SX 16 Mhz.

I also did enable the shadow BIOS (both BIOS and Video ROM) and Paint in Win 3.1 is much faster now.