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ZEOS 486DX-T50 Boot problems

W

Whoo

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Joined
Dec 26, 2011
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15
About two months ago I picked up an old ZEOS tower from a friend:




The problem is that it is failing to pass the POST. When I turn it on the system emits three beeps: one long and two short. I've been looking everywhere on Google, and I can't seem to find a manual for this specific PC anywhere. I've been able to identify the mobo, but past that I can't find anything else. I've checked and cleaned the RAM's contacts and removed all ISA cards with no success. Here are some more pictures:





Any help would be appreciated.
 
According to your link to Stason the BIOS is an Award BIOS. One long and two short beeps is indicating a failure to initialize the video. Have you tried a different video card?
 
RJBJR said:
According to your link to Stason the BIOS is an Award BIOS. One long and two short beeps is indicating a failure to initialize the video. Have you tried a different video card?
Click to expand...

I found a page about that on Google, but I have also read that Award BIOS chips tended to vary from system to system. The only ISA video card I have is the Diamond SpeedStar24 pictured, and the beep code is still the same when I remove it.
 
A broken video card will give you the same beep codes as no video card.
 
RJBJR said:
A broken video card will give you the same beep codes as no video card.
Click to expand...

Well hell, it looks like the video card wasn't seated correctly before, as DOS lives on!! said. Looks like the CMOS is corrupted, but that's nothing I can't fix. Thanks for the suggestions (makes me wish I found them sooner)! I'll post some specs and more pictures later.
 
Okay, I got it to boot:



The CMOS' battery is totally dead, making any attempts to change settings useless. I went to look at the battery and found this:



This hunk of plastic (which was crudely attached to the case with velcro) is the battery, and I have no idea how to replace it. Any ideas?
 
Pull the internal connector, remember which way it goes, buy one at radio shack and plug it in, they still sell 1:1 replacements on those last I checked. It's the same 4 pin inline-pin connector as a internal speaker, right?

Or improvise, 3xAAA would do the job. Remember, red+, black-

I've come across a good number of AT through 486 class machines where the internal battery died and people just took a speaker, snipped the wire, and soldered together three AAA's, velcro-ing them ot the back of the case wrapped in black electrical tape.
 
Holy moly, I remember that system board, that's what was in my 2nd computer - a Flight 386SX that I pulled the old board out of and put one of these ZEOS boards in it. Supposedly they had 2 daughter-cards for the CPU, one for a 386, and one for a 486. I had the 486. This board was what got me started in vintage computing in the first place, all starting on my 18th birthday in 2001.

The CMOS battery you have is pretty much the run-of-the-mill part for that era. The only problems I've had with them aside from being dead are some that were affixed above the keyboard port - leaking acid, and then eating the data lines for the keyboard jack I've heard of some people using AA batteries wired into the old connector to replace these. Back when I lived in Alabama, I was able to source them from Southern Electronics NOS in Opelika. I don't know if they do mail order but it might be worth a shot.

http://businessfinder.al.com/973964/Southern-Electronics-Opelika-AL

Some other things about that board......It is very picky when it comes to video and RAM. I used to get NMI errors playing Ultima VI using a WD Paradise PVGA1A card, which would usually end up leaving me with a crazy neon colored mess of the VGA pallette when the game was run again. Also, I recall being able to use two joysticks with it, one on the on-board joystick port, the other on my sound card.

It can be upgraded to a 486 DX4-100 if you have a rare 5v version, or a 3.3v version of the chip on a voltage adapter. Also, the large socket next to the CPU is for the TurboCache module, which as I recall is a proprietary L2 Cache module. It adds a little bit of speed but not much. I wish I still had it, at one point, I had ALL 8 expansion slots running devices

1 - Packard Bell FM Radio CArd
2 - Packard Bell TV Capture Card
3 - TSENG 512K SVGA Card
4 - NE2000 Compatible Network Card
5 - 16550AFN UART Serial Card (The ZEOS has 8250A, I needed bi-directional for my 56K Sportster Modem)
6 - Future Domain Dual IDE Card w/BIOS
7 - Reveal Sound Card w/ CD-ROM controller
8 - Parallel Port Card

Anyway, that's enough of my reminising.
 
Whoo said:
Okay, I got it to boot:



The CMOS' battery is totally dead, making any attempts to change settings useless. I went to look at the battery and found this:



This hunk of plastic (which was crudely attached to the case with velcro) is the battery, and I have no idea how to replace it. Any ideas?
Click to expand...
That's a typical after market pack. They where used when the barrel type CMOS batteries went tits up. Some you could open and replace the cells. You can buy enclosures for using AA or AAA batteries or even use a coin battery and holder if you want.
 
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Caluser2000 said:
Some you could open and replace the cells. You can buy enclosures for using AA or AAA batteries or even use a coin battery holder and holder if you want.
Click to expand...

.. and that's the thing, so long as your voltage is within around 5-10% tolerance you're likely fine.
 
Thanks for the help everyone!

I ended up buying a AAA enclosure (since RadioShack is right down the street). I still need to find some electric tape though, which should be somewhere in my house (I think).

EDIT:

It works!

Looks like the hard drive is fried though, or I'm just having trouble setting the disk in the CMOS setup. I have a jumper on the hard drive's master option, so I'm pretty much guessing that it's gone. I'll have to look through some old manuals.
 
Last edited:
DOS lives on!! said:
What's the hard drives problem? Not showing up in DOS, read/write problems, weird noises?
Click to expand...

I haven't even gotten into DOS yet. I can hear the drive start spinning when I turn it on, but after that it makes no noises. I keep getting this error:

Code: 
ERROR INITIALIZING HARD DISK CONTROLLER 0
<PRESS CTRL-ALT-ESC FOR SETUP>

If I press F1 to continue anyway it simply tells me there was a boot failure and asks me to insert the system disk. Here is a picture of the CMOS Setup:

 
Last edited:
The error initializing the hard drive controller could be an invalid CMOS setup, hard drive failure or hard drive controller failure. Make sure the hard disk parameters in CMOS are correct. According to the screen pic you have two hard disks installed, you might want to disconnect the 20MB disk 2 and reset the CMOS to only the 202MB hard disk.
Does this BIOS have auto hard disk detection or do you have to manually choose drive type?
 
DOS lives on!! said:
Try booting from a DOS diskette and tell us if you can access the hard drive, or if it throws up an error.
Click to expand...

Gonna have to give awhile to dig up one of my floppy drives and plug it into my Ubuntu machine then.

RJBJR said:
Does this BIOS have auto hard disk detection or do you have to manually choose drive type?
Click to expand...

Nope, no auto option. There are 49 total, but the last two are blank. I'll have to see if those are supposed to be auto.

The drive is a WD Caviar 2200. It's got 989 cycles, 12 heads, and 35 sectors.
 
The last two are auto or user defined. Remove the second hdd entry then try entering the cyl, heads and sectors in option 48 save and reboot.
 
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