No Keyboard Connected Keyboard Failure

crux77

New Member
I'm working on a vintage computer for a customer, he really does not want to upgrade if he doesn't have too but It's not looking good at this point.

The computer in question is a compudyne 100mhz with windows 2.1. This PC operates industrial equipment so it's not an easy rebuild/replace. The computer requires ISA slots which were discontinued on most motherboards at the turn of the century. You can still find ISA slots on motherboards but they are by no means common. The drivers will need to be recovered from the hardrive the driver discs were floppy and are no longer readable, my guess is floppies do not hold data over 20 years.

The PC boots up fine however the serial port was disabled. So I went out and bought a PS/2 keyboard not easy but once I plugged it in got "No Keyboard Connected Keyboard Failure" tried unplugging everything but keyboard/monitor no luck, tried resetting cmos no luck, disconnected hard drive/floppy/etc... so that only thing connected to the motherboard was keyboard/monitor no luck.

So I pulled the motherboard just to check the solder connections to the motherboard they look good too.

I need to get access to the bios too enable the serial port however this is not going to happen without a keyboard. Anyone have any clue on how I could get this keyboard working?

I have tested with another PS/2 keyboard just to rule out the keyboard being bad, same result chances both keyboards are bad is a long shot.

Any help is appreciated thanks in advance!
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
Sounds like somebody's gonna need to buckle down and buy new industrial software. :p

Yeah you/customer is likely screwed. I had a few old machines come thru the repair shop I used to be at, usually like alignment machines for car shops and the like, and they were always a nightmare and not worth fixing. You can usually get XP era machines to cooperate anymore but hell Windows 2.1? That's the late 80's... Unfortunately computers aren't designed to last 30 years. If I had any relevant advise I'd give it but really it's time for them to move on. 2.1 came out 7 years before I even existed.
 

crux77

New Member
Sounds like somebody's gonna need to buckle down and buy new industrial software. :p

Yeah you/customer is likely screwed. I had a few old machines come thru the repair shop I used to be at, usually like alignment machines for car shops and the like, and they were always a nightmare and not worth fixing. You can usually get XP era machines to cooperate anymore but hell Windows 2.1? That's the late 80's... Unfortunately computers aren't designed to last 30 years. If I had any relevant advise I'd give it but really it's time for them to move on. 2.1 came out 7 years before I even existed.

The crazy part is the price due to the ISA ports. I never would have thought you could get $400-500 for an old PC like this simply because it has ISA slots. Some newer builds with ISA are 2000.00 to 4,000.00 and the customers will pay this since an upgrade of the equipment would cost upwards of $20,000.00 So if you have an old Windows 2.1 or even Windows 95/98 machine with ISA slots lying around you can sell it on ebay for good money just mark it as industrial with ISA.
 
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