AST Premium 486/33 Cupid
This was the second PC Compatible that I acquired, after the Tandy 1400FD I purchased and used as my first PC. (Prior to these PC’s my main computer was the N* Advantage running CP/M). This AST was given to me by another member of the MHV Computer Club. She said it did not work. But I took it home and fiddled with it and I got it to work. It remained my main PC for several years and I used DOS most of the time until toward the end of its use when I started experimenting with Windows 3.11.
At some point I moved on to Windows 98, 2000 and XP on other systems and I put this machine in storage. This was before I actively started playing with old computers as a hobby. Some years later I pulled it out of storage to see if I could still use it. I found a mouse nest inside and did a quick cleanout - not a full teardown and thorough cleaning. I attempted to get it to work but was not successful. I don’t remember exactly what I did - only that I could not get a floppy to boot. I don’t remember if I was able to get into the BIOS setup or not. At any rate I got discouraged and set it aside. It’s been sitting on the bottom shelf in my lab ever since. I often looked at it and hoped I could get it working again. Today I am giving it another try.
I have watched a lot of videos recently on old ISA generation computers and I wondered if I could clean up this old AST and get it to POST or get into the BIOS. The only cards in the case are the Cupid Daughter board with the 486DX CPU and a Multi-I/O card that was used for the drives and serial and parallel ports. There was no video card or floppy drive, or hard drive. The CD-ROM drive was in the case but not connected to anything. The mess from the mouses nest was still there.
I began by tearing it completely down into its parts so I could remove the motherboard for cleaning. I removed the interface cards first and then the power supply. Then I removed the motherboard. I opened the power supply and it was very dusty. I took it outside and brushed and blew it off with a vacuum hose.
I then started cleaning the motherboard. I first cleaned it with vinegar and a toothbrush. Then I followed that up with distilled water and finally Isopropyl Alcohol. I let it sit for a while to begin drying and I reassembled the power supply.
I set all the boards up in front of the electric floor heater and used the vacuum blower to remove as much moisture as I could then I let it sit in front of the heater/blower for a few hours. While waiting for the boards to dry I cleaned the case.
After the boards were dry I started to reassemble the computer. I installed the motherboard and then the daughterboard. Then I installed the power supply, leaving it disconnected until I tested it first with my multimeter. I had an old battery pack so I put in new batteries and attached it to the battery header. I attached the front panel wires and the speaker.
Next, I used my multimeter to test the power coming out of the power cables. I tested both the +5v and +12v rails and everything looked good. I attached the power cables from the power supply to the motherboard and started getting ready for a smoke test.
I plugged in a hard drive and floppy drive to use as load. I went ahead and attached them with ribbon cables to the motherboard headers for the floppy and IDE drives, just in case it works. I had to find both a video card and a keyboard before I could give it a test. I found an 8-bit VGA card and put it in the last slot. I have an old IBM AT keyboard and I plugged it into the 5-pin AT keyboard port. I am now ready to give this thing a smoke test.
From some of the videos I learned that the key combo for the BIOS setup is probably Ctrl-Alt-Esc. But it might also be F2 or F1. I am ready to power on and I hope that nothing blows up! Here we go!
VGA-BIOS © 1991 American Megatrends Inc.
Version no. - 1.c, All rights reserved
AST CUPID BIOS Rel. 1.34
Copyright © AST Research, Inc. 1987-91
All rights reserved
[40.06] Testing CMOS Battery …Failed
[40.08] Testing CMOS Checksum …Failed
BASE Memory …640K
Extended Memory …15360K
Testing Memory … 16000K OK
Testing Cache …Enabled
[10.03] Video Configuration Error - Run Setup
To Access Setup Program, Press Ctl-Alt-Esc now.
[40.01] CMOS RAM Error, Check battery/run setup
[20.03 Memory Size error - Run Setup
[40.02] Equipment Configuration Error - Run Setup
Press F1 Key to continu or Ctrl-Alt-Esc for Setup…
I hit Ctrl-Alt-Esc. I did get into the BIOS setup but the keyboard is not working. I tried two other keyboards. The Model M just had a continuous beep. The PC Parter does not beep but it does not seem to be responding. I’ll have to try to reboot with this keyboard attached. Lets’ see what happens. I hit the Reset button on the front panel. That killed the screen but did not reboot. Next, I turned off the power switch and then turned on the power switch.That did it. This keyboard is working.
I will need to get a new battery. I went ahead and set the BIOS settings and saved and rebooted. It did not like the floppy of hard drive settings and did not boot. Try a different floppy. I put in a different floppy, a Mitsumi 1.44. When I started up there were no errors and I went into BIOS Setup. All the settings were where I left them. Battery catching up? I reset the boot mode to Auto and rebooted. The hard drive interface failed but the floppy tried to boot. That’s something. It ended in an error :
RAM Parity Error, Checking for segment address..Offending Segment: 0036.
Now let’s try the Multi-I/O card. I disabled the onboard ports after installing the I/O card and rebooted. The floppy drive light lights up but it does not boot. The hard drive is not recognized.
I can’t remember but this may be where I was last time. Is this a bad I/O card? Let’s try the onboard floppy controller again. I disabled the hard drive and enabled the floppy only.
The floppy tried to boot but failed to find a system disk. Try another disk. Then try other drives.
It booted! I have an A; prompt. There was an error on the disk but it booted. We’re making progress! Try another disk. Try adding the hard drive. I enabled the hard drive and rebooted. Error initializing hard disk controller. Hit F1 but floppy will not boot. Set HD to “None” but left header enabled. Floppy will not boot. Disable HD header. Floppy wont boot.
Disabled onboard ports and installed Multi-I/O card. Double-checked all the pin settings on the card. Same error about initializing hard drive controller. Floppy won’t boot. Try another hard drive.
I’ve tried everything I can think of. Won’t boot from floppy. It did it once only. Not since.
Need to get a new battery and another Multiu-I/O card. That’s it for now.
OK, interesting - I tried setting the floppy to 720K and rebooted to a 720K DOS 3.3 boot disk. It worked! I booted into DOS 3.3. This is on a 1.44 floppy drive. But I know most 1.44 drives can act like 720K drives. Weird. The BIOS does seem to support 1.44. Anyway, lets try staying with 720K for now and see if I can access a hard drive. Nope. Back to where we were before. Will not boot.
So, I’ve got it to boot twice now. Once was on a 1.44 disk of DOS 5. Once was on a 720K disk with DOS 3.3. I each case it was after setting the BIOS - the first was set to 1.44, the second time it was set to 720K. But it doesn’t seem to matter. I tried setting back to 1.44 and put in a 1.44 disk but it did not boot. I also tried resetting to 720K and putting in the 720K disk and it did not boot. Maybe it was after a time being off? and an immediate reboot does not work? Try waiting a while with the computer off.
Could I try partitioning and formatting the hard drive in another computer, install DOS, and then trying to boot from it?
OK, I waited a while and then put in an MS-DOS 5.0 boot/install disk and rebooted. It worked. I also replaced the 8-bit VGA with a 16-bit VGA card. Don’t know if it will make a difference. And can I use this boot to install DOS to the hard drive? Fdisk says No Fixed Disk Present. Will need to go back into BIOS Setup. Then shutdown and wait a while before booting.
The next morning I booted on the 720k MS-DOS 5.0 disk. I reset the BIOS to 1.44 for both A and B then ran MS-DOS setup onto 4 1.44 disks. I then copied all the files to the first 2 disks. Then I reset both floppies to 720k and ran the MS-DOS 5.0 setup again onto 4 720k disks. Then I reset both floppies back to 1.44 and rebooted into the newly created MS-DOS 5.0 1.44M boot disk. It works. I have a dual floppy system in both 1.44M and 720k drives.
Before this I found another Multi-I/O card and I put it in. The floppy drives are working. But I cannot get the hard drive controller to work. I disabled the IDE and booted only from floppy. I did the above MS-DOS 5.0 installs using this card with the HD disabled. I also pulled an older hard drive from my PC Partner 386sx but I could not get it to work any differently than the other hard drive. I left the hard drive unplugged and the M-I/O IDE port disabled and only used the two floppies, as outlined above.
Next, I tried to enable the onboard hard drive header again. I left the M-I/O card’s IDE disabled and hooked up the ribbon cable from the HD to the onboard header again and attached the power cable to the HD. Then I rebooted into the BIOS and reset both floppies to 1.44 and the HD to 99 and enabled the onboard header. (I had previously set up this hard drive’s type as 99) Then I rebooted. I expected an error that the hard drive controller could not be initialized and a boot failure. This has been consistently happening every time previously. Instead, there were no errors and the floppy drive booted into MS-DOS 5.0 from the 1.44M floppy. Hmm. Lets try to FDISK the hard drive and see what happens.
FDISK found the hard drive this time! I’m astonished! Is this because it is an older hard drive and that the built-in IDE header only works with older drives? Or is this because MS-DOS has setup this machine differently? Let’s try putting the other drive back on the ribbon cable and see what happens.
Before I did that I took a look at the C: and D: drives from this hard drive. I think it might boot into a working system. Let’s try that first. Yes, it did boot to MS-DOS 5.0 from Drive C: Windows is on this disk but it is not automatically launched from autoexec.bat. Let’s launch it and see what happens. I typed “Win” followed by “Enter” and that started up WfW3.11. There was an error about the sound card missing and there is no mouse. But I remember using this system on the PC Partner. Cool. OK, I seem to have a working hard drive controller now. Let’s try the other hard drive.
I removed the older drive and attached the other IDE drive I had been using before. It is an 800MB drive and I had previously set it in the BIOS as a type 98. I booted into the BIOS and set the hard drive to type 98 and then rebooted. I am back to the same errors as before. No hard drive unable to boot to floppy (oops, forgot to load the floppy - it does boot. But still no hard drive). This would seem to confirm that this BIOS does not like this “newer” hard drive and only works with “older” IDE hard drives. Let’s put it back to the older hard drive and see what happens.
Yes, the “older” IDE hard drive does work. So, all of the trouble appears to be caused by an incompatible hard drive. Maybe I can use an Ontrack overlay? I’ll try that. If all else fails I can go ahead and use this old drive from the PC Partner since that machine is not working. OK, off to try an overlay program.
I tried using a drive utility but it won’t work with this BIOS. Too much trouble to try and load another BIOS to support a newer IDE hard drive with overlay. I’ll settle for the older drives. I found the old IDE drive from the Packard Bell 486 that I put FreeDOS on. It works. I don’t need it for anything else anymore so, we’ll go ahead and install MS-DOS 5.0 on it and Windows 3.11. I’ll also go ahead and add the serial ports from the M-I/O card for use with a mouse and Laplink. Not sure yet about a sound card. We’ll add in the CD-ROM to the same ribbon cable as the HD to see it that will work. If not, maybe I can get the IDE interface on the M-I/O card to run the CD-ROM.
I attached the CD-ROM to the ribbon cable as a Slave drive. I was able to get the FreeDOS CD driver to see it. But it would not read a directory of a CD. Not sure if it’s the CD-ROM drive or something else. Let’s go ahead and install DOS 5.0 and then try MSCDX.
Before I start formatting drives I decided to try the M-I/O cards again for the Hard Drive. The original M-I/O would not even boot. I reinstalled the second M-I/O card, enabling the IDE port. It did allow booting and the floppy worked to boot into DOS. However, there was no hard drive available. I went back to the motherboard header and the hard drive works. I will use the hard drive header on the motherboard for the hard drive and the M-I/O card for the floppies and Serial/Parallel ports.
So, apparently the problem is in the BIOS and it does not support the IDE port on the M-I/O cards, or any “newer” style IDE hard drives after about 1990/91. But what does work is the floppy and I/O on the M-I/O card and the hard drive header on the motherboard. I disabled the floppy and serial and parallel on the motherboard.
Now, back to setting up DOS. Should I stay with the Windows 95 on the hard drive? Is DOS 5.0 already on there? Can I get Win 3.11 on there if I leave it formatted the way it is? Tried booting from Hard Drive - it didn’t work. I’ll assume it is broken and start over.
I used FDISK to remove the former partition and created a new primary partition using the entire 500MB drive. Then I rebooted and used “Format C: /s” to format the C: drive using DOS 5.0. Now I will use the MS-DOS 5.0 install disks to install DOS 5.0 to the hard drive. Then I’ll use my Windows 3.1 diskettes to install Win 3.1 (not WfW 3.11).
I successfully installed Win 3.1 after a small glitch with a few files not being copied from the diskettes. I used another set of disks and re-installed and it finished with no errors. I started up Windows and there was no mouse. I tried installing a mouse from the command line but it wouldn’t work. I installed CuteMouse and scanned the ports for a mouse. No mouse loaded. I have a serial port problem.
I tried enabling the motherboard serial ports. They would not work. I enabled the M-I/O card’s serial and parallel and game ports. But I could not get any mouse to activate on the ports. Checkit saw the ports and so did CuteMouse but the mouse would not show up on anything. I found an 8-bit ISA Serial/Parallel port card and I disabled the ports again on the M-I/O card. Checkit said there was a COM2 and LPT1 and LPT2 (I thought I had disabled the parallel port on the M-I/O but it turns out I still had it active). I put the mouse on the newly installed Serial/Parallel card and ran CuteMouse. It worked! But CuteMouse said it was on COM1. Weird, but the address worked and the mouse worked in Windows. I shutdown and enabled one of the COM ports and the game port on the M-I/O card. After a reboot and a BIOS setup I could no longer use the mouse. Checkit showed the serial port but the mouse would not connect. I disabled the COM ports on the M-I/O again and now the mouse worked again.
So, the BIOS does not set up the M-I/O card serial ports correctly but the serial port on the separate Ser/Par card works. Now I have one Serial port and two Parallel ports. I don’t know if the game port will work. I should be able to use the parallel port from the Ser/Par card for Laplink or a PPP packet driver emulator. I did not attempt to install a sound card yet. The only ISA sound card I have left is an IBM Wave card. Maybe I’ll play with that later. For now I reassembled the CD-ROM, Hard Drive and a single Floppy Drive and am ready to finish setting up the software. I don’t have any front panels for the Hard Drive and Floppy Drive, so they remain open above the CD-ROM.
Here’s what I have setup so far:
The BIOS is set with a single 1.44M floppy drive and a single hard drive as type 98. This is a Connor Model CFS540A with 540MB on 1050 Cyl, 16 Hds, 63 Sec. The CD-ROM is attached to the same ribbon cable as the hard drive and set as “Slave”. The hard drive is set as “Master”.
The Floppy interface on the motherboard is disabled. The Hard Disk interface on the motherboard is enabled. The serial and parallel ports on the motherboard are disabled. The only motherboard header being used is for the hard drive/CD-ROM.
We have a Multi-I/O card installed in the 16-bit slot closest to the drives. The IDE/Hard Drive is disabled. The floppy controller is on automatically. The parallel and game ports are enabled. Com1/3 is disabled. Com2/4 is also disabled. This M-I/O controls the floppies, game port and one parallel port.
We have another Serial/Parallel card in the 8-bit slot. This card controls one serial port (COM1) and one Parallel port (LPT1).
Review:
One 1.44 Floppy Drive (on the Multi-I/O card)
One 504Mb IDE Hard Drive (on the motherboard IDE header)
One CD-ROM (on the motherboard IDE header)
One Serial Port on COM1 (on 8-bit card) with Serial Mouse
One Parallel Port on LPT1 (on 8-bit card)
One Parallel Port on LPT2 (on Multi-I/O card)
One Game Port (on Multi-I/O card)
MS-DOS 5.0 on hard drive with Windows 3.1 added.
CuteMouse loads serial mouse in Autoexec.bat.
—--
OK, I installed the MWave ISA card and it works. It includes a modem and fax but I think I am having some conflicts with the serial port. I’ll have to troubleshoot later. The sound works.
I also do not have a working CD-ROM. I think I need to install the CD-ROM drivers in Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files. I need to look up how to do that. I have a Windows 95 boot disk that usually works for this. I can copy over the drivers and batch files and give it a try.
I got a little bit of result by using the Win95 setup as a guide. The MSCDEX.EXE program loads the CD-ROM and I got one DIR readout in DOS. But in Windows it just crashes. I probably need an actual driver for the CD-ROM. I’ll have to track down some drivers for Win 3.1 for some of the models I have in my stash. Welcome back to the joys of drivers in DOS/WIN31.
The OAKCDROM.SYS does work in DOS and I was able to get a directory listing without crashing in Windows. But still no Audio CD in the Ace software. I’m thinking it may be expecting the CD-ROM to be connected to the card. There is an IDE port. I need to try that. I don’t know how to set it up. Will it just be recognized? Or do I need a special port number, etc?
I sorted it out. The CD-ROM does not need to be connected to the ACE5000 card. It works fine being connected the way it is (on same ribbon cable as hard drive). The problem was that Windows 3.1 did not have the CD-AUDIO driver installed. There is a file named MCICDA.DR_ on the installation floppies and that is the compressed CD-Audio driver. It was not installed when I originally installed Windows because I did not have a CD-ROM loaded in DOS at the time I was installing. I ran the driver installer in the Windows Control Panel and added the CD-Audio driver and rebooted. It worked! The CD-ROM now plays Audio CD’s.
The ACE5000 Mwave board is supposed to emulate Ad-lib and Soundblaster. I will test some games next. But I do now have standard Windows sounds and CD-Audio. I don’t think I will test the Modem/Fax stuff since I don’t need that stuff for this computer to communicate. I can use Laplink on the Parallel port. But I am curious if I need a soundblaster card to enjoy games on this machine. It was a business machine and meant for an office environment. I will test it with some office software and a printer. I will also test a DOS CD-Player. Maybe I can set up a DOS only office environment. (Not sure if DOS will support listening to a CD at the same time as running Quatro Pro. Is there a CD TSR?)
No comments:
Post a Comment