SpidersWeb
Veteran Member
So I got a rusted junk 386SX/16 that wasn't working a month or so ago, and have got it running.
It wouldn't power up because of a shorted cap on a expansion card, which when removed it fired up fine.
Anywho it's current setup is:
- 1Mb RAM on board (384 used as extended)
- Phoenix 80386 PLUS 1.10.20 BIOS,
- Everex EV-135 with 3Mb RAM (configured as extended)
- Goldstar Prime II multi I/O (IDE/FDD/LPT/COM1/COM2)
- Trident 9600 512K VGA (16 bit mode)
- D-Link DE-220 rev D1 with XTIDE Universal BIOS fitted (300H IRQ 3, PnP disabled, half duplex mode, 16K BIOS @ D000)
The onboard CMOS battery is worn, it forgets the RTC settings if left off for too long, but the CMOS seems to keep all it's settings (HDD,FDD,RAM etc) and it only ever complains about the clock.
Now before I fitted the XTIDE BIOS chip last night, I configured the D-Link and enabled the Boot ROM and set it to D000. After doing this, the video card kept going to black and white mode. Occasionally it'd come up in colour but mostly black and white. If you remove the network card, it'll boot up in black and white, then power cycle again and you get colour and it stays in colour mode.
This continued after adding the BIOS chip.
I tried a few things, and disabling the "Extended Features" option of the Phoenix BIOS seemed to improve things, but occasionally I still get black and white.
When the black and white issue happens it will boot of HD fine, but any app that loads from AUTOEXEC or the command line will cause a hardware lock, calculating free space also does this, so does changing the current drive - if I boot from floppy this doesn't happen and I can access the HD no problem. When I do a DIR it lists the drive but when calculating the free space I get about 10 lines of random ASCII characters before it locks.
On a colour boot, if I press CTRL+ALT+DEL there is a strong chance it'll come back up in black n white mode. It can take 1 to 3 power cycles to get it back in colour mode.
If I cycle the power until I get colour on the Trident BIOS startup, the machine works perfectly. I ran MSD and the XTIDE BIOS is definately 16Kb at D000 and there is nothing else even near it. The VGA occupying the usual places.
I have tried:
- changing slots
- changing the BIOS position on the NIC
- video card in other machines (was fine)
- adding wait states, disabling shadow, dropping CPU speed - but disabling Extended Features seems to have helped increase the chances of a colour boot.
- just realised I should run MSD from floppy in the bad mode to see where it's being allocated
- installed CheckIt Pro and did a full suite of tests - no errors at all (when the video card is in working colour mode)
- DE-220 passed its internal diagnostics on the OEM disk
- two known good hard drives (4.3Gb and 20Gb)
Going to try when I get home
- using a 3C509B instead of the DE220
I also have a spare VGA card coming in the mail soon to try (yes I only have one)
Because both the video and IDE play up when it happens, I'm pondering it being a case of the two cards conflicting with ROM addresses but they shouldn't conflict at all in theory. It happens with the BIOS chip removed (as long as the BootROM socket is enabled) too, so it's not an XTIDE software issue.
So I have more things to test, but wanted to get some other opinions, perhaps someone has had this before or can add something I don't know?
It wouldn't power up because of a shorted cap on a expansion card, which when removed it fired up fine.
Anywho it's current setup is:
- 1Mb RAM on board (384 used as extended)
- Phoenix 80386 PLUS 1.10.20 BIOS,
- Everex EV-135 with 3Mb RAM (configured as extended)
- Goldstar Prime II multi I/O (IDE/FDD/LPT/COM1/COM2)
- Trident 9600 512K VGA (16 bit mode)
- D-Link DE-220 rev D1 with XTIDE Universal BIOS fitted (300H IRQ 3, PnP disabled, half duplex mode, 16K BIOS @ D000)
The onboard CMOS battery is worn, it forgets the RTC settings if left off for too long, but the CMOS seems to keep all it's settings (HDD,FDD,RAM etc) and it only ever complains about the clock.
Now before I fitted the XTIDE BIOS chip last night, I configured the D-Link and enabled the Boot ROM and set it to D000. After doing this, the video card kept going to black and white mode. Occasionally it'd come up in colour but mostly black and white. If you remove the network card, it'll boot up in black and white, then power cycle again and you get colour and it stays in colour mode.
This continued after adding the BIOS chip.
I tried a few things, and disabling the "Extended Features" option of the Phoenix BIOS seemed to improve things, but occasionally I still get black and white.
When the black and white issue happens it will boot of HD fine, but any app that loads from AUTOEXEC or the command line will cause a hardware lock, calculating free space also does this, so does changing the current drive - if I boot from floppy this doesn't happen and I can access the HD no problem. When I do a DIR it lists the drive but when calculating the free space I get about 10 lines of random ASCII characters before it locks.
On a colour boot, if I press CTRL+ALT+DEL there is a strong chance it'll come back up in black n white mode. It can take 1 to 3 power cycles to get it back in colour mode.
If I cycle the power until I get colour on the Trident BIOS startup, the machine works perfectly. I ran MSD and the XTIDE BIOS is definately 16Kb at D000 and there is nothing else even near it. The VGA occupying the usual places.
I have tried:
- changing slots
- changing the BIOS position on the NIC
- video card in other machines (was fine)
- adding wait states, disabling shadow, dropping CPU speed - but disabling Extended Features seems to have helped increase the chances of a colour boot.
- just realised I should run MSD from floppy in the bad mode to see where it's being allocated
- installed CheckIt Pro and did a full suite of tests - no errors at all (when the video card is in working colour mode)
- DE-220 passed its internal diagnostics on the OEM disk
- two known good hard drives (4.3Gb and 20Gb)
Going to try when I get home
- using a 3C509B instead of the DE220
I also have a spare VGA card coming in the mail soon to try (yes I only have one)
Because both the video and IDE play up when it happens, I'm pondering it being a case of the two cards conflicting with ROM addresses but they shouldn't conflict at all in theory. It happens with the BIOS chip removed (as long as the BootROM socket is enabled) too, so it's not an XTIDE software issue.
So I have more things to test, but wanted to get some other opinions, perhaps someone has had this before or can add something I don't know?
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