Diskette boot vanished, hard disk boot remaining OK

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

Hi!

On my mobo investigations a new strange problem did pop-up, namely,
the diskette boot did vanish, but the hard disk boot remained OK. What
has actually been happening and vanishing from this Kaimei/Jamicon
KM-T5-V rev. 3.1 socket 7 mobo?

The mobo boots and works fully OK, except you cannot boot from diskette
anymore ... I have been making tens of trials with different booting
diskettes, different diskette units, different diskette cables, all these
different components do work fully OK on other mobos', so, the problem
can't be on these diskette components. So, what's the next "component"
to check? Maybe something on the mobo itself?

During the POST the diskette drive is recognized and checked fully OK.
On the next phase the boot sector reading from diskette begins and
seems to be performed fully OK as usual. But then, when the booting
is expected already to be complete, the error message "disk boot failure"
pops-up. So, the boot sector was probably found, but did not reach or
come to the right "place", or was not "translated" correctly by some
control program somewhere after the read.

Any hints to clear this problem will be appreciated.

I'll come back soon also to my other topic "Three dead mobos' to
reincarnate ...".

Best regards,

Pete V.

Do the normal read/write operations (after boot-up) work? Didn't find any information concerning that in your long post

Hello Pete,

Have you check the bios configuration! For that mobo !

Here a repair bios


http://www.biosrepair.com/bioslogo/right13.htm

and here the jumpers setting!

http://members.tripod.com/~ASTROCOM/kmt5v3.pdf

and here the bios settings
http://members.tripod.com/~ASTROCOM/km-t5-t3.pdf

I hope it's help you a lot

Hi!

On my message I forgot to mention, that the diskette drive is recognized
somehow only on the BIOS level, after that it will not be "visible" anymore.

So, if the hard disk is connected, the boot will be done straightaway
from there, as the diskette is not present anymore at that point of time,
and after that it will be seen neither in DOS nor in Windows.

Could this have something to do with the MultiIO chip?

Thanks for the replies so far, I hope to get still some more ...

For lucske74, how to get something out downloaded from the
biosrepair.com link, the BIOS links there do not begin to load and
I can't read or understand "chinese" ...?

Best regards,

Pete V.

Hello Pete ,
You are right , the biosrepaire URL is Chinese , Damned !! it's seems to be a good site for a lot of problems , but the language !!!!
If you intrestet in the manual of the KM5 -3t I have it here on my harddisk.

Hi!

Thanks for the comment.

OK, I already downloaded all the things I needed from the links you
gave, incl. the manual, which didn't seem to contain too many pages,
some basical info only ...

The biosrepair BIOS pages weren't found properly, I got the 404 error
on them with the chinese text on it, they probably did not contain
too much more what I got from Tripod/Astron pages.

Regards,

Pete V.

Two things that I think are worth checking:

1) I sometimes find that if HDD boot information is corrupt, the floppy will fail to boot. Consider disconnecting the HDDs from the mainboard and removing the HDDs from the BIOS temorarily to see what happens.

2) Check in the BIOS if a Floppy Mode 3 is enabled. This is some kind of support for Japanese drives and/or disks and I have had problems with this enabled.


From what you are describing it sounds like you have pin 1 on the cable connected properly at both ends, but it is probably worth checking this also, and that you do not have any pins misaligned. For example, when you tried several different drives, if you never dettached the ribbon cable from the mainboard, it is possible you overlooked pins that may not be connected because the cable is sitting on one row of pins and not the other, or the end ones might be bent around the sides of the connector and not connecting, or possibly just round the wrong way. If the floppy light stays on all the time, even if very dim, this usually means the drive cable is connected the wrong ways. Also make sure your power cable is connecting to all pins, and that the power cable and power source is OK. But as I said, you may likely find no problem in this area, because I would not expect to get the messages you are getting if the cables are connected incorrectly.

Hi!

Thank you Ritchie for your hints, I'll still next week be checking all your
points.

Anyway, in the meantime, I'm still thinking about some other maybe
more complicated problem cause, as a quick look on the diskette cable
jack on the mobo didn't give any reason to suspect a problem there.
And further, the diskette drive seems to be recognized properly during
the POST and still during the first boot seek, and even the re-seek trials
after that. But still all the time the "diskette boot failure", even 100%
sure the boot sector is OK on all the several tried diskettes.

My eyes are now somehow on the MultiIO chip, ALi5113, or something
else on that surrounding. Next I'll be checking also the function of the
COM and LPT ports, as they are under the same MultiIO chip control
with the diskette.

Regards,

Pete V.

[edwin]

For lucske74, how to get something out downloaded from the
biosrepair.com link, the BIOS links there do not begin to load and
I can't read or understand "chinese" ...?

right-click, save as, it will prompt you to save it as a .bin bios file.

Hi!

Thanks for edwin for the hint.

But sorry, now the page couldn't be downloaded/saved. I hope the page
is unavailable just temporarily ...

Regards,

Pete V.

Hi!

Here you have some interim (maybe even final) report on this topic.

After some more tests on this Kaimei/Jamicon KM-T5-V v3.1 AT/S7/PI mobo there is no sign of other behaviour than, that the diskette drive "hard" processing seems to work well, but the "soft" processing of it doesn't, i.e. the diskette drive is recognized/working OK on the boot-up until the final boot block recognizing/handling when the "disk boot failure "error message is got, and it will neither anymore become recognized/readable on MS-DOS/Windows at all.

Regarding this problem I have my eyes still on the ALi M5113 MultiIO chip or something else on that surrounding, because the COM1/2-ports are neither working, the working of the LPT-port I do not actually know as not been testing it. If I can recall right, I may have had a slight shortcut with some tool on some pin close to the BIOS chip area some minutes before notising the vanishing of the diskette boot, but anyway, otherwise the mobo is working very well.

If someone will find/have some solution/hints for this I would very much appreciate it.

Thanks for your replies so far, and in advance for some future replies, too.

Best regards,

Pete V.

Just taken another look at the original post.

Looks like your boot order is set OK in BIOS. Make sure drive A is set to 3.5" 1.44MB and not 1.25" 1.2MB. Also check the cable, in correctly and not misaligned on pins, particularly at mainboard end. Also consider disconnecting the HDD temporarily and removing it's setting from the BIOS - I find that sometimes corrupt boot info on HDDs can cause floppy boot problems.

Hope this helps.

Hi!

Thanks for Ritchie for the new hints, but sorry, nothing seems to work to this problem.

I have now been doing tens of trials with different diskette units, cables, bootable diskettes, BIOS settings, FDD/HDD both in both out, all connectors cross-checked etc. etc., but nothing seems to solve this problem, the diskette works OK as "hard", but not "soft", i.e. the diskette boot final remains unrecognized, and the diskette drive remains unseen on the OS'es.

So, once again, what could be the role of the ALi M5113 MultiIO chip or some other relative thing in all this?

Regards,

Pete V.

Only one other setting I can think of right now.

Check if there is a "Floppy Mode 3" (or similar) option in your BIOS. If there is, and it is enabled, disable it. Apparently this represents some kind of Japanese format and I have occassioanally had difficulty operating floppy disks with this enabled.

As to regards of the role of your MultiIO chip, I dunno, so hopefully others are equiped with better knowledge to answer that question.

Ooops: Already suggested "Floppy Mode 3". Sorry.