Really Old PC Motherboard Replacement - Win 98

amallon

I have a friend who has a control system for a machine that drills and cuts heavy steel sheets on an ancient industrial PC (Win 98). I'm fairly sure the motherboard has died, I've stripped out everything and tried a new ram ship and different power supply. When I hit the power button I get the power fans in the PSU rotating gently but nothing else happens.

The motherboard is an AOpen AX3L
http://www.motherboards.org/mobot/motherboards_d/AOpen/AX3L/

Is there a compatible board I could use?
Can anyone remember what windows 98 will do when it detects a new board?

I really don't want to get into installing a clean version of Windows because I haven't a clue how to setup the IO for the drilling machine.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

gctest50

Make a clone of the hard disk first in case it all goes wrong after the transplant

If it can boot the new board, it will start looking for drivers for hardware - little grey icons of what a chipset vaguely looks like

I have a couple of historic bits here

- parallel card
- Isa video card
- ??? vga card

no prob send them to you FOC if you're stuck

Torqay

It is fairly easy to "transplant" a Win9x HDD from one computer to another.

It should be much easier to find an old Win9x compatible machine than this particular motherboard (google came up with one being offered in Nova Scotia last month).

In any case, as suggested, ghost the drive first before you start "experimenting".

riclad

IF WIN98, detects motherboard ,diifferent from the old one,
it,ll crash ,or just not load up the desktop,
maybe giving a blue screen ,
error code.
you could switch around , the board ,replace , with an identical motherboard.
take a note of where all the jumper cables ,go.
take photos of where all the cables go exactly,
eg power on,reset, turbo, hdd, hdd led, audio etc as you may have no manual for the motherboard.

AS you,ll need to replace all cables back as they were.

Ellectronic rcycling in finglas specialize in old pcs,

thats where i go for parts to fix old pcs, pentium 4 s etc
http://www.electronic-recycling.ie/

they,,ll sell you an old p4 pc unit,with cpu,psu, motherboard .ram,
40 euro.eg working pc with no drives in it
make sure the motherboard is identical.

You can install win98 on any pentium 4 pc with 500 meg ram in it.

Then you,d have to install the specialist software you use,

no win98 install needed, if you can install an identical motherboard.
if the board is very similar,but not completely identical,
eg model vmx 560a , and board is vmx 560 b,
some devices wont work, eg sound ,ethernet,chip, ,and you can install new drivers from,
device manager.
Have a copy of win98 on cdrom ready ,in case you need a fresh install.
some programs may need win98 se,
special edition ,
Which was the later version of win89.

I got a pc there,
say dell 450,
took, hd from a broken pc,dell 450,
and windows booted up fine,
winxp sp2, no drivers needed .
eg i just swapped in the hardrive ,put it in the pc i got from from electronic recycling.

if you get a pc there ,ASK them to test it first, put in 500meg ram,or 1 gig .
THEY charge maybe 15 euro for 1gig ram .

Torqay

riclad wrote: »

IF WIN98, detects motherboard ,diifferent from the old one,
it,ll crash ,or just not load up the desktop,
maybe giving a blue screen ,
error code.

No, it wont. (unless you plant it in a modern PC with AHCI or other Win9x incompatible components)

You're talking about Windows XP and later here.

wil

Torqay wrote: »

It is fairly easy to "transplant" a Win9x HDD from one computer to another.

It should be much easier to find an old Win9x compatible machine than this particular motherboard (google came up with one being offered in Nova Scotia last month).

In any case, as suggested, ghost the drive first before you start "experimenting".

As said, and something generic with as few add in cards to reduce the looking for W98 drivers problems. Shouldn't need sound card, modem or perhaps even nic, onboard graphics should be fine. If there is a proprietary ISA card well you'll need that slot or maybe the drill uses the local serial port.

Try and get a look at the sw too as you may find text /help files for the control program with I/o setup and if lucky even the install files.

Then for your next project, replace it with a raspberry pi:D

riclad

see here,
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/pentium-ii-motherboard


http://www.ebay.com/itm/AOpen-AX6BC-AGP-ATX-Motherboard-Intel-Pentium-II-400MHz-512MB-RAM-91-87810-451-/170790401751

i dont know if this one above is compatible.

http://halifax.kijiji.ca/c-buy-and-sell-computer-accessories-system-components-AOpen-AX3L-Motherboard-W0QQAdIdZ526893021

one for sale 10 dollars.
looks identical to the one you need.


http://www.google.com/search?gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=aopen+ax3l+mortherboard++for+sale+
would probably cost 50 dollars to ship it to ireland.

you,d be lucky to find an identical motherboard in ireland.

you could look around a place in dublin ,
that sells old pcs,
or recycles them.

THE oldest pc i see people using is pentium 4 s for internet acess.

easy to install win98 on a pentium 4 pc.
the specialist software should run fine on a p4 running win98 ,
or win98se.

amallon

Guys thanks for taking the time to come back to me on this.

Maybe picking up a Windows 98 compatible machine might be the way to go. The drilling system has two serial links on two seperate ISA cards. If I went with a new pc and clean OS, could I drop the program directory from the old machine onto the new machine and run the application? Am I right in thinking that Windows 98 didn't have a registry, therefore all the configuration settings would be stored in .ini files in the program directory?

Torqay

Windows 98 does have a registry.

Just find an old machine with 2 ISA expansion slots, put in the cards and the hard drive. All should be be fine then, you may need a few drivers though (video, audio, etc).

riclad

you could get a p3 or pentium 4 pc from electronic recycling ,
30 euro.
Make sure it has 2 isa slots in it.
OR put an ad on adverts.ie , i,m looking for pc with 2 isa slots,
WIN98 works like windows xp, it has a registry.
OR see adverts.ie ,for sale,computer hardware.

Torqay

riclad wrote: »

you could get a pentium 4 pc from electronic recycling ,
30 euro.
Make sure it has 2 isa slots in it.

Good luck with that now. Such a configuration would be extremely rare, it was only used in industrial motherboards. Even with a Pentium III ISA was considered legacy hardware and they had 1 slot at best.

amallon

I "reached out" to my facebook buddies and managed to get a machine with 3 ISA slots from someones roof space. I need to get my hands on one of the old keyboards, round connector but twice the size of PS2.

I'll let you know how I get on.

riclad

Question: Why is it so hard to find an USB adapter that will make a vintage IBM keyboard interface with a modern Intel motherboard.
Answer: Online reports indicate that vintage IBM ps/2 keyboards pull up to 100x more current compared to modern keyboards (112 mA vs 1.2 mA). see reference: (http://web.archive.org/web/20080228180642/http://www.geocities.com/jszybowski/keyboard/index.htm). One way to resolve this problem to add resistors to change the voltage, or an easier non-destructive fix is to use an active ps/2 to USB plug-in converter with built-in electronics.

get PS2 to usb adaptor ,

FROM what i remember win98 se has usb drivers built in to the os.
eg win98 special edition
i ,m not sure if the original win98 has full usb support in the os.

i have an old motherboard,
I cant remember how many isa slots it has .
its about 10 years old.

wil

amallon wrote: »

I "reached out" to my facebook buddies and managed to get a machine with 3 ISA slots from someones roof space. I need to get my hands on one of the old keyboards, round connector but twice the size of PS2.

I'll let you know how I get on.

All things I've dumped not so long ago, well the garage needed floors.
I could have a kb adapter DIN but have a feeling its buried in the parents garage. If I do find it in the next few days I'll let you know

riclad

I have an old ps2 to at keyboard adaptor,
if you wanna pm me, ill send it it you free in the post.
its 1 inch long.
its not usb,

Allows you to use a small modern pin type AT keyboard in a pc that has a an old ps2 interface.



ITS a ps2 to at adaptor.

like this,
http://www.cablewholesale.com/products/keyboard-mice-cable/ps2-at-adaptors/product-30i5-03200.php

so you,d need an DIN5 at male type keyboard to use it.

amallon

Ok another step forward. I managed to get an old style keyboard. I dropped an image of the drilling machine onto an 80GB ide drive but I can't get the machine to see the drive. I've set the jumpers to master and tried to do an IDE auto detect in the BIOS but it just doesn't see the drive.

The drive that was in the machine was an 8GB drive. I'm going to save of an image of this 8GB drive and then drop the image of the drilling system onto this drive in case there is a size limitation in the BIOS of this machine which is preventing it from seeing larger drives.

This could be a long drawn out process.

Torqay

If it is an older machine, the HDD size could be limited to 8.5GB.

riclad

YOU might need to use an old 10 or 20, or 40 gig ide drive ,
then make the primary partition on it 8.gig .
on some old pc bios ,8gig is the limit.
you, have to manually input ,the no of cylinders, etc of the hardrive,
in drive o, first drive ,settings,
if autodetect did not work.
make sure its set to primary partition active.
http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/bioslim.htm

he Int 13h extensions - Breaking the 8 GB barrier

With the rate in which the harddisk technology is progressing, we are now faced with EIDE drives exceeding the 8064 MB limit of the Int 13h interface.
The only way to break this limit is to ditch the CHS system in favor of a direct LBA interface.
try set bios to hd lba mode.


quote;


Have a look in the bios at the drive parameters. The translation setting will currently be set to one of the following : CHS (normal), Large or LBA. See if LBA is offered as an option but DO NOT CHANGE THIS SETTING YET. Doing so will render the drive inaccessible.

The other possibility, is that the bios has a limitation of 8GB as the max capacity it will recognise. If so, you can do one of the following :

1. See if there is a bios update (or rompaq) available from HP/Compaq which will allow the bios to recognise drives larger than 8GB

2. Use overlay software which will allow the full drive capacity to be used (this can be a bit flakey though!).

3. Repartition the drive to 8GB.

All 3 options will require the drive to be wiped & Windows to be reinstalled from scratch so you will need to back up any data you wish to keep first


set bios to hd mode, LBA, SAVE, exit,

see does it work.

How big is the primary partition?

amallon

That 8.5GB limit makes sense. I have the driller image dropped onto the 8GB disk and windows will boot. It's looking drivers for the PCI Bus and Video but thats to be expected.

I was thinking of putting the original image for this machine back on and having a look at device manager and getting the right video and PCI bus drivers and then putting the driller image back on and trying to install these drivers.

amallon

The partition is a massive 4gb so an 8gb disk is loads. Its hard to believe that my phone has more storage than 8gb now.

riclad

THE original win98 image wont work, as the motherboard, chipset ,
will be different,

you can use f8,safe mode, vga mode to load windows,



http://www.navozhdeniye.narod.ru/vbe9x.htm

this is a universal vesa video driver for win98, 98se ,
Works on most video cards.

i remember windows had a vga or svga graphics driver ,
WHICH you could install from device manager,
scroll thru the video driver s on the left drop down menu.
AT least windows xp had it.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/131806

scroll down thru list of video cards till you find the card you have, or you find the svga
driver in the list .

Torqay

riclad wrote: »

THE original win98 image wont work

Of course it will work, this isn't Windows XP.

riclad

most phones are more powerful than A pentium 3 pc now.

amallon

Ok a quick update on this.

I split the 8gb disk into 2 partitions. I dropped the driller image onto the primary partition and dropped the original windows image from this machine onto the secondary partition. I booted from the primary and it came straight up looking for the driver for the PCI bus. I pointed the driver wizard at the Windows\System folder on the secondary partition and it happily installed the driver. Not only that the hardware wizard kept detecting new hardware and automatically installing the drivers from the secondary partition until windows booted and all drivers were correct and present. I couldn't have wished for better.

The machine doesn't have any PS2 or USB ports and I don't have a serial mouse so I'm going to put a Belkin USB PCI card in which luckily has 98 drivers. After that I need to look at the Driller control system, I'd imagine all the addressing for the IO ports is different so I need to get a look at that.

I'll keep you updated, no doubt I'll have more questions before this is done.

riclad

GET one of these,
http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/serial-mouse
serial to ps2 unit,
they should have em them in maplins shop.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/serial-gender-changer-9-pin-to-ps-2-97873

cheaper than buying a card.
Than just use a ps2 mouse.

amallon

The control system worked as well. What I thought would be a nightmare turned out to be fairly straightforward. Cheers for the help guys.