After POST

[dexterex]

I'm playing with older systems from familly members to learn. I have a Tyan Trinity 400 S1854, 500 PIII, and a 3DFX video card. On start up It recognizes the 3DFX video card, Award Modular Bios, the MOBO, the CPU, all the memory installed, Award PnP Bios and then goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner and stays that way. Initially it would not recognize the primary master so I rest the CMOS then it showed the Primary Master Drive

 

[Yeti]

So it isn't able to boot from anything - CD, HDD?

 

[dexterex]

No not either

 

[Yeti]

And you have them set to boot in BIOS?

 

[dexterex]

Yes, A,C,SCSI, Right?

 

[Yeti]

Have you tried adding the CD drive (D maybe) to the boot list before the hard drive and trying to boot a windows CD?

 

[Blue]

I'd try getting it to boot from cd rom with the windows disk in there and see how far that'll get ya. Perhaps you'll need to reinstal the OS.

 

[dexterex]

Changed boot to include "D". No change
Set up is Mobo.CPU500(100X5), 3Sticks memory(all working),3DFX, 1HDD, 1CD, 1 "A"Drive( None of the Drives Run up)
Is there any kind of Mobo Diagnostics?

 

[Greg J.]

If you can't get the CD drive to boot, the controller(s) on the mobo that controls the drives may not work anymore (too old). Or, the machine may need a new CMOS battery and/or a BIOS update. Hmmm.....corrupt BIOS? Mobo shortage? Yeah, you need to do some diagnostics on the mobo to see if it is all working right. Here's its manual: www.litech.org/services/tech/mobo.pdf Or, go on google and search it and click html version.

 

[dexterex]

Thanks

Thanks I'll try those things, looks like I need to do some more reading
I want to Thank You for your Advice. I am literally in my first weeks of being fed up with local computer techs and wanting to learn as much as I can, so this will become a new hobby. As a novice I was reinstalling XP and I don't know what I did but I ended up with first Two copies of XP and then Three on my hard drive. Not knowing what I did I had a Local tech reinstall XP for me. I gave them a system that worked (even with 3 OPSYS) and two days later charged me $50 and gave me a broken computer. Go Figure! Now My MISSION is to absorb as much knowhow as I can. Again Thanks

 

[Cromewell]

corrupt BIOS?

doubt it, that causes really bad things. have you checked that everything is plugged in properly?

 

[Praetor]

If you can't get the CD drive to boot, the controller(s) on the mobo that controls the drives may not work anymore (too old)

Short of physical damage, ive never ever _ever_ encountered a controller that just "got old"

Mobo shortage?

If that was the case, you'd know it

 

[k7n2]

Have you checked that your master/slave jumpers on the IDE drives are set up correctly?

 

[dexterex]

Cmos Battery

I got a new battery and on restart the DRAM CLK: changed from 66 to 100
and the message I got was "CMOS Checksum error-defaults loaded

 

[Greg J.]

Short of physical damage, ive never ever _ever_ encountered a controller that just "got old"


If that was the case, you'd know it

Upon rebuilding my relative's old system, the CD drive controller for the mobo crapped out. Thus, a computer repair store rearranged how the drives were hooked up to run through a PCI ATA multi card (that I originally bought for the hard drives) to make it work. And yes, I gave them all the needed driver CD's.

NOW, as for the CMOS battery, since you put the new one in, you have reset the BIOS. Look in the BIOS for the boot-up sequence, yes, check out those drives! You will want to have the CD drive as the first in the boot-up sequence. You also may want to check if the CD drive itself is crap (try in a different computer if nothing will work). A new (generic) CD-ROM drive to re-install windows costs about $9 at Circuit City, etc. So, another problem would be that the CD drive right now is broken. Check these things out.