Uncreative Labs

Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 5:47 am

Anyone Familiar with an ATEGA-800 286 based MB, i got an at clone that a co-worker wants brought back up to usable specs and i can't enter the bios, i'm afraid i MAY need some kind of disk to achieve that.
The clone was made why QPS INC, can't find anything on the web about it, OR the mb, i have a generic program that might do the trick, and thanks for the above board disks, they did the trick, i fired them up in my 1000 RSX via a 16-bit riser card extended out of the case and they both work nicely Smile

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

there are some 286's that either have difficulties enetering setup
the original and close clones required a disk.

Many clones were so close that other bio's could be substituted without regard for the chipset.
a friend had a AT clone that resembled the IBM-AT
and I gave him a set of chips that had all kinds of features from my VSLI 286-12.
somewhere there are several Award bios 296 chipsets.
I think a bios change will be nessesary to utilize
a ide drive and ide-i/o card ( best way to go)
as many early bios' were stuck on 17 sector drives.
and that was all in the bios table.
Type 47, ( user definable) came by later.

another stupid thing that you can overcome is the" dreaded 528m" limit
it is actually 1024 16 63
and affects drives over 528 megs.
HOWEVER some 420 meg drives has 1800
if such a drive is set at the 1024-16-63
you wind up with 300m?
the numbers can be jiggled to get by this
but need to be written on the drive. with a pen!

if he has a mfm or rll drive, fine let it be.

Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 4:34 am

fascinating, i got it to start up, it gives me NO option to enter setup, it just says to run setup, i got a generic program that is capable of accessing it, but the thing is, it wants to boot from a floppy, BUT i can't tell if it wants a 360kb 720kb 1200kb or a 1440kb drive, as EVERY disk i put in it says Disk Read Failure, and some floppy controllers it plain out rejects completely. It's also got 2 serial and 1 parallel on the mother board itself

More info on the board

ATEGA-800
Computer by QPS INC
The chip itself has a label on it
"Compatibility Software, Phoenix Software 1985 1986/a"
Does it need a specific disk? I have a bios from another 286 board, somewhat newer, that lets you into the bios via the del key, you say this could work? i like this atega-800 and would hate to have to give it up because it's hella picky..

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

the original AT and close clones had no ports on the mb. Sometimes just a floppy port.
strange because most AT stype controllers were set up for a wd 1003 card or a close clone of it.
( mfm ( sometimes rll) and a floppy controller.

with serial and parallel ports on the mb, it indicated there MAY be a setup in the bios itself.
there are several different " keypress schemes" to enter the bios.
Have you tried a 1,2 drive with a cable with the TWIST on it? 1.2 is the default for an AT type pc.
Some, like the original IBM AT were not set up for 720 or almost never 1.44. ( xt's would work with a 720k)

a 360k disk in a 1.2 drive should also work.
however some " non clones of IBM"
did not use the twist in the floppy cable
BE SURE it REALLY IS a floppy cable, not a mfm hd cable. the TWIST is on the opposite side.

I know how frustrating this can be, sometimes I struggle for an hour to get a system to boot

BUT I took a st 225 and controller out of an old XT pc that had stood for 12 years and had gotten cold and wet. Plugged1 it in a PIII-500 with an isa slot DID NOTHING,. no setup. and the next thing I saw was the menu on the mfm drive. worked fine!