Keatah Posted March 27, 2022 Share Posted March 27, 2022 The protect/enable jumper sounds like it’d be for flashing the BIOS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RetroB1977 Posted March 27, 2022 Author Share Posted March 27, 2022 It is... I didn't notice the writing above it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RetroB1977 Posted March 27, 2022 Author Share Posted March 27, 2022 If it's dead I guess I might build me a 486... ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted March 27, 2022 Share Posted March 27, 2022 (edited) There’s still many unknowns, like trace damage, and voltage levels/quality. And other stuff. Trace damage can really be tiny and underneath other parts. But you have to look for telltales. If you’re going to build one up, just get all industry standard form factors and parts. If you think you’re gonna continue trying with this machine I’ll see about finding gateway manual for it. Edited March 27, 2022 by Keatah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RetroB1977 Posted March 27, 2022 Author Share Posted March 27, 2022 10 minutes ago, Keatah said: There’s still many unknowns, like trace damage, and voltage levels/quality. And other stuff. Trace damage can really be tiny and underneath other parts. But you have to look for telltales. If you’re going to build one up, just get all industry standard form factors and parts. If you think you’re gonna continue trying with this machine I’ll see about finding gateway manual for it. I'm not sure I'll do either. I just wish I had another machine that had ISA... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RetroB1977 Posted March 27, 2022 Author Share Posted March 27, 2022 IT WORKS! IT FREAKING WORKS!!!!!!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RetroB1977 Posted March 27, 2022 Author Share Posted March 27, 2022 (edited) removed Edited March 27, 2022 by RetroB1977 removed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted March 27, 2022 Share Posted March 27, 2022 What do you think fixed it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RetroB1977 Posted March 27, 2022 Author Share Posted March 27, 2022 17 minutes ago, Keatah said: What do you think fixed it? I let it sit there for ten minutes or so and it finally just worked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted March 27, 2022 Share Posted March 27, 2022 Hmm well get the CMOS battery rigged up and we'll just go from there. I guess?? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RetroB1977 Posted March 27, 2022 Author Share Posted March 27, 2022 (edited) 1 minute ago, Keatah said: Hmm well get the CMOS battery rigged up and we'll just go from there. I guess?? Yep! I'll buy one soon. Also gotta get this hard drive setup. Edited March 27, 2022 by RetroB1977 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RetroB1977 Posted March 27, 2022 Author Share Posted March 27, 2022 Well I ran fdisk and format and it thinks my drive is 32MB! This drive had linux on it before, could that be a problem? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wierd_w Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 What disk type is configured? A board this old may suffer from the "No LBA, no ECHS" problem. If so, the BIOS only responds to a fixed list of hard-set hard drive size types. https://vintage-pc.tripod.com/types.html The solution to that, is to set up a DDO, such as DiskManager or E-Z bios. https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ontrack-disk-manager.html https://www.philscomputerlab.com/western-digital.html Those both consume a small chunk of low dos memory to install a software defined INT13 handling routine which is able to do LBA and ECHS translation modes. All they need to be able to function, is for the drive to have an addressable boot sector. As such, the BIOS defined type can be very much "not correct", as long as the drive responds reliably, and starts trying to boot. The DDO takes over, then hides the real boot sector, and chain-loads a second one in the next logical sector down, which it then presents as the first logical one, using its handler routine. Linux does not need a DDO, because its launcher starts from the boot sector, loads a small Initial ramdisk with disk controller drivers, and then immediately goes into 32bit disk driver mode, which does not use INT13 at all. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RetroB1977 Posted March 28, 2022 Author Share Posted March 28, 2022 Anyone know what key you press to get in the BIOS? I forgot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wierd_w Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 1 hour ago, RetroB1977 said: Anyone know what key you press to get in the BIOS? I forgot. The usual suspects are: ESC F2 F10 F12 DEL Phoenix bios is usually F2, F10, or DEL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RetroB1977 Posted March 28, 2022 Author Share Posted March 28, 2022 (edited) I decided to put the original HDD back in the computer as I'm going to put Window 3.1 on it instead. I'm now focused on upgrading the machine with a better cpu and sound card (it currently has an AdLib). Thanks for all your help! Edited March 28, 2022 by RetroB1977 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wierd_w Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 If you should somehow never figure out how to get into the cmos setup, you could also use gsetup, or similar on it. https://archive.org/details/systemutilities It was not altogether uncommon to "not provide an actual ROM setup program", and instead, use a special partition on the disk drive for that. ROM chips were expensive. Since this a a phoenix bios, I would use either the generic phoenix setup program in that package, or use gsetup on it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 From the MS-DOS prompt my Phoenix BIOS is entered by CTRL-ALT-ESC. A minor annoyance that all PCs seem to have a different way.. blech! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonGrafx-16 Posted April 1, 2022 Share Posted April 1, 2022 My DOS PC uses F1 I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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