Award boot block bios beep code: video error?

jiteo · Sat Feb 28, 2004 7:29 am

Hey forum!

I am back! Some might remember my post "Uniflash: 2 chipsets, 2 chips" in the BIOS Utilities and Flash Programs section. Well I did the hot-flashing, flashed the upper half of the chip, and booted with the newly flashed chip.

Long beep, two short beeps, pause, beep, beep, beep, endlessly. From what the Internet tells me, long beep, two short beeps means video error. The beep, beep, beep, endlessly there seems to be less of a consensus on. Now since I flashed only the boot block correctly, I want to know whether that's a common issue, since the boot block BIOS only supports ISA video cards. I do have and ISA video card in there, but there are some other pins on the card that go into some other slot, so it might not be "pure" ISA. Any ideas?

enjoy!
Artom

Sat Feb 28, 2004 2:20 pm

Your video card is most probably VESA Local-bus card (VLB) - it will not work in ISA slot:

jiteo · Sat Feb 28, 2004 3:50 pm

Hey that's it! That's like my card. Thanks! So now I need a "pure" ISA video card...

jiteo · Sat Feb 28, 2004 8:50 pm

I tried putting in a PCI video card, and now the long beep, two short beeps has gone away, but the endless and fast beep beep beep is still there. Award says that the only "official" beep code is long beep, two short beeps, and that anything else is most likely a RAM probelm. I have a stick of 128MB in there, and I tried switching it from slot to slot, to no avail. Any ideas?

jiteo · Sun Feb 29, 2004 12:26 am

New update. An older PCI video card got me an image on the screen, and it was telling me that there was a Drive A media error, which is why it was doing those endless beeps. The floppy light never came on. I tried 2 drives, both of which work, each with either the "cross-over" ribbon or the straight through ribbon, and stilll nothing. Any ideas?

Thanks!

enjoy!
Artom

Sun Feb 29, 2004 2:31 am

Try an ISA diskette controller or Multi-I/O ?

jiteo · Sun Feb 29, 2004 3:59 am

Thanks for the idea! Thing is, I don't know where I'd get one of those. And since a PCI video card works, wouldn't a floppy controller on the PCI bus work also?

enjoy!
Artom

Sun Feb 29, 2004 12:55 pm

There are no PCI floppy controllers. ISA multi-IO cards are present in many older 486 computers and also in most 386s and 286s (except for the "big brands" - they have often everything integrated on the motherboard).

jiteo · Sun Feb 29, 2004 4:17 pm

Okay... I'll have to ask my computer science friends.

About the floppy controller, I just meant that the Windows device manager shows the floppy controller on this computer to be on the PCI bus. But then I checked with Linux's lspci command on my Pentium 166 router and on this computer, and in neither case was there a floppy controller listed. So much for trusting Windows!

Thanks again for this forum's help. The old computer I'm trying to fix will be a web server, so be sure that wimsbios.com will be mentionned there.

enjoy!
Artom

jiteo · Thu Mar 11, 2004 1:29 am

Since I was browsing through this forum, I though I'd make sure that pure ISA floppy controllers should work where multi I/O controllers work right?

jiteo · Thu Mar 11, 2004 1:31 am

Note to self: never get into techy stuff when tired. It'll lead to more embarrassment then you can handle.

Thu Mar 11, 2004 7:52 am

when using a multi I/O controller for this purpose you have to disable anything but the floppy to make it work properly anyway, so: yes.

jiteo · Sat Mar 20, 2004 12:51 am

New Update. Yey!

Got myself an ISA floppy controller, and found the IRQ/DMA/IO combination that works with the jumpers (thank you plug and play, thank you!). However any boot disk that I stick in there gives me the same error: insert system disk and press enter. I've tried the DrDOS disk from bootdisk.com and Windows XP's boot disk. I've also tried every IO/DMA/IRQ combination up to DMA 2, since I figured what doesn't work with DMA 2 is not likely to work with DMA 3. What I have is IRQ 6, DMA 2 and IO 3F0.

Any ideas? I'm so close!
And thank you all again.

enjoy!
Artom

jiteo · Sat Mar 20, 2004 1:04 am

I should have read a bit before posting. What does not work with DMA2 might work with DMA3, but I don't see why that would have a bearing on the floppy not being booted from.

jiteo · Sat Mar 20, 2004 3:14 am

I've tried DOS boot disks of various versions from various places, and a GRUB boot sector too. Nothing.