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Nan-Tan FMA8100 POST error beep

The IBM AT, and early AT clones, have a 'CMOS/RTC' chip on the motherboard - see [here].
Those chips have some RAM in them, and the BIOS stores the CMOS/SETUP configuration information in some of that RAM.
The POST of some BIOS' will do a read/write test of the RAM.

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So, does this mean the BIOS chip is bad?
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The one with the red label looks like the main chip - but what’s the one above that?
 
I saw your message - I was just quick to reply. So that internal RAM is bad?
 
3lectr1c said:
The one with the red label looks like the main chip - but what’s the one above that?
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To answer that particular question (which is unrelated to “CMOS Read/Write test in progress or failure”), your motherboard BIOS consists of two ROM chips, a 'High' one, and a 'Low' one. Just like for the IBM AT - see the diagram at [here].

I can see "LO" on one of the ROM's. There is probably "HI" under the red sticker on the second ROM.
 
There is indeed a second blue sticker under the red one.
So - seeing as it appears to be a standard configuration, is sources new chips a reasonable possibility? I checked eBay real quick but couldn’t find any listings for the 386 BIOS, only the 286 version.
 
3lectr1c said:
There is indeed a second blue sticker under the red one.
So - seeing as it appears to be a standard configuration, is sources new chips a reasonable possibility? I checked eBay real quick but couldn’t find any listings for the 386 BIOS, only the 286 version.
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I am getting the impression that you believe 'CMOS' and 'BIOS' to be the same thing. They are not.

Per my post #2, see if the motherboard has a 24-pin chip like the one I pointed to in post #2. The MC146818 chip is the make-model of chip that I mostly see.
 
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Ahh yes, and it was right next to the CMOS batt which leaked a bit. Who wants to bet if I reseat this and clean the contacts that this thing starts up?
 
It doesn’t want to come out unfortunately and I don’t own a chip puller. May get out some WD40 soon to see if that helps things any.
 
modem7 said:
Per my post #2, see if the motherboard has a 24-pin chip like the one I pointed to in post #2. The MC146818 chip is the make-model of chip that I mostly see.
Click to expand...
3lectr1c said:
Ahh yes, and it was right next to the CMOS batt which leaked a bit.
Click to expand...
The chip in the photo of post #8 is the keyboard controller chip, not the CMOS/RTC chip.

But I now see why you cannot find the CMOS/RTC chip. See the reference to "P82C206" in the diagram below. In the photo that you put into post #3, I see a P82C206 chip. The CMOS/RTC functionality is in that chip (together with a lot of other functionality). Do you have the ability to remove the P82C206 from its socket then refit it (in case of a bad connection between chip and socket) ?


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Well… whatever the chip in post #9 was (labeled Phoenix), spraying with WD40, reseating it fixed the darn thing!
 
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Now I’ve gotta get the drive type set properly and see if this thing boots.
 
New issue: None of the HDD types in the BIOS match the drive it has (Conner CP3044).
Looked it up and correct specs are either 1047/2/40 or 980/5/17.
There are some BIOS options that come EXTREMELY close to 980 (977/5/17 which is Type 17, 989/5/17 which is type 31) but none hit it bang on and there’s no user type. I tried a few and get a disk error. Drive could easily be bad of course, but I want to make sure I’m testing with the right settings.
 
3lectr1c said:
Just a “hard disk failure”
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Unfortunately, that sounds like a generic error message.

A few possibilities:
- Faulty drive.
- 'Bad' power to drive.
- Hard drive related cables need re-seating.
- Wrong drive-type in CMOS SETUP.
- Drive was wiped by the previous owner. <--- Throwing that in, even though I would expect a different error message.

And it might be more than one of the above.

I will write up a suggested test for you.
 
No, only when it's presumably attempting to read. The drive spins just fine, I can hear it running and also tested it for power externally.
I'm honestly just thinking it's bad. These conners aren't very reliable. It's also possible it's just got stuck heads due to a rubber bumper I know some of them have that goes sticky. I'll take it apart and investigate if we rule out the computer as a likely culprit.
 
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