jh1523
Experienced Member
It's the first time I run into something like this, and I'm a little bit stumped.
I acquired recently a 486 motherboard, here it is on TH99:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/A/ACER-INC-486-VI15G.html#.U4uGHIXeLFk
I am having the following problem with it: I can't make any FDD controllers work with it. I have a sizeable stack of FDD/HDD/multi-io cards, both ISA and VLB. I have tried all of them (more than 15 cards) in this motherboard. I even tried an Adaptec AHA-1542CF. No matter what card I try, I get one of 2 results:
1. error message "FDD controller failure, press F1 to resume" - after F1 is pressed I get the POST summary screen, then it hangs
2. no error message, shows POST summary screen then hangs
This is with a known good 3-1/4 floppy drive with a known good boot disk in it, correctly powered/jumpered/connected through a known good floppy cable etc. All the controller cards have been verified working correctly in another system, the floppy drive and disk similarly verified etc.
The board has an AMI graphical BIOS. At first I thought it may have been a conflict between the adapter card BIOS and shadow RAM. I have since disabled all RAM shadowing I could find in the BIOS, no luck though. Same problem persists. Even the AHA1542CF card gives me the same problem, "FDD controller failure" then hangs. And this card also works correctly in another system.
I even tried the motherboard's built-in "safe CMOS settings" and "failsafe CMOS settings", and none of this helped.
I am out of ideas at this point. The mobo POSTs but can't boot from floppy.
I acquired recently a 486 motherboard, here it is on TH99:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/A/ACER-INC-486-VI15G.html#.U4uGHIXeLFk
I am having the following problem with it: I can't make any FDD controllers work with it. I have a sizeable stack of FDD/HDD/multi-io cards, both ISA and VLB. I have tried all of them (more than 15 cards) in this motherboard. I even tried an Adaptec AHA-1542CF. No matter what card I try, I get one of 2 results:
1. error message "FDD controller failure, press F1 to resume" - after F1 is pressed I get the POST summary screen, then it hangs
2. no error message, shows POST summary screen then hangs
This is with a known good 3-1/4 floppy drive with a known good boot disk in it, correctly powered/jumpered/connected through a known good floppy cable etc. All the controller cards have been verified working correctly in another system, the floppy drive and disk similarly verified etc.
The board has an AMI graphical BIOS. At first I thought it may have been a conflict between the adapter card BIOS and shadow RAM. I have since disabled all RAM shadowing I could find in the BIOS, no luck though. Same problem persists. Even the AHA1542CF card gives me the same problem, "FDD controller failure" then hangs. And this card also works correctly in another system.
I even tried the motherboard's built-in "safe CMOS settings" and "failsafe CMOS settings", and none of this helped.
I am out of ideas at this point. The mobo POSTs but can't boot from floppy.