Fireing up an old AMD-K6 2

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ted Hermanson
  • Start date Start date
T

Ted Hermanson

Howdy, hope this is the right group to ask this in. You guys seem to
be pretty good at miracles here! :)

Came across an older box the other day, and thought I'd try and fire
it up and see if it was shot or just discarded for more/better
pretties.

As far as I can tell it has a Soyo 5EH5 v1.3 motherboard, AMD-K6 2/400
CPU, two sticks 64MB SIMMs, 8X CD-ROM, and a AT power supply of
unknown origin. I removed the modem and sound cards, left in the video
card and hooked her up. Replace all the ribbon cables, just to be sure
and put in a floppy drive (known to be good). Check out the CD-ROM and
it worked in another computer, same with the hard drive, an IBM 8.4GB
Darkstar. I fdisked and formatted the hard drive on another computer
first to be sure it was good.

I turned the juice on to her and get to the screen that tells you it
has Award 4.51pg plug-n-play BIOS and that it has a AMD-K6 2/400 CPU
and 65536K of RAM. It then detects the hard drive as master and the
CD-ROM both on their own IDE channels and the cursor just stops there.
There is a note at the bottom of the page to enter the BIOS, which I
have and set all the settings to default. I reboot and I get to this
screen again and the cursor just sits there and finally the note at
the bottom about the BIOS disappears and then it just blinks at you.

I have a known good boot disk in the floppy drive, but to be sure I
went to www.bootdisk.com and made another one.

What am I missing, or is this 'puter toast??
 
Ted said:
Howdy, hope this is the right group to ask this in. You guys seem to
be pretty good at miracles here! :)

Came across an older box the other day, and thought I'd try and fire
it up and see if it was shot or just discarded for more/better
pretties.

As far as I can tell it has a Soyo 5EH5 v1.3 motherboard, AMD-K6 2/400
CPU, two sticks 64MB SIMMs, 8X CD-ROM, and a AT power supply of
unknown origin. I removed the modem and sound cards, left in the video
card and hooked her up. Replace all the ribbon cables, just to be sure
and put in a floppy drive (known to be good). Check out the CD-ROM and
it worked in another computer, same with the hard drive, an IBM 8.4GB
Darkstar. I fdisked and formatted the hard drive on another computer
first to be sure it was good.

I turned the juice on to her and get to the screen that tells you it
has Award 4.51pg plug-n-play BIOS and that it has a AMD-K6 2/400 CPU
and 65536K of RAM. It then detects the hard drive as master and the
CD-ROM both on their own IDE channels and the cursor just stops there.
There is a note at the bottom of the page to enter the BIOS, which I
have and set all the settings to default. I reboot and I get to this
screen again and the cursor just sits there and finally the note at
the bottom about the BIOS disappears and then it just blinks at you.

I have a known good boot disk in the floppy drive, but to be sure I
went to www.bootdisk.com and made another one.

What am I missing, or is this 'puter toast??
Click to expand...

I doubt there's anything wrong with the 'computer', per see, but the most
common problems for symptoms like that are the floppy cable plugged in
backwards or hard drive/CD jumpers.

Did you set it in BIOS to boot from the floppy first or the hard drive?

You should double check the memory because "two sticks 64MB SIMMs" should
read 128 Meg, not 64Meg
 
David said:
I doubt there's anything wrong with the 'computer', per see, but the
most common problems for symptoms like that are the floppy cable plugged
in backwards or hard drive/CD jumpers.

Did you set it in BIOS to boot from the floppy first or the hard drive?

You should double check the memory because "two sticks 64MB SIMMs"
should read 128 Meg, not 64Meg
Click to expand...

Did computers of that vintage still use simms? I would think they'd be
dimms.
 
Howdy, hope this is the right group to ask this in. You guys seem to
be pretty good at miracles here! :)

Came across an older box the other day, and thought I'd try and fire
it up and see if it was shot or just discarded for more/better
pretties.

As far as I can tell it has a Soyo 5EH5 v1.3 motherboard, AMD-K6 2/400
CPU, two sticks 64MB SIMMs, 8X CD-ROM, and a AT power supply of
unknown origin. I removed the modem and sound cards, left in the video
card and hooked her up. Replace all the ribbon cables, just to be sure
and put in a floppy drive (known to be good). Check out the CD-ROM and
it worked in another computer, same with the hard drive, an IBM 8.4GB
Darkstar. I fdisked and formatted the hard drive on another computer
first to be sure it was good.

I turned the juice on to her and get to the screen that tells you it
has Award 4.51pg plug-n-play BIOS and that it has a AMD-K6 2/400 CPU
and 65536K of RAM. It then detects the hard drive as master and the
CD-ROM both on their own IDE channels and the cursor just stops there.
There is a note at the bottom of the page to enter the BIOS, which I
have and set all the settings to default. I reboot and I get to this
screen again and the cursor just sits there and finally the note at
the bottom about the BIOS disappears and then it just blinks at you.

I have a known good boot disk in the floppy drive, but to be sure I
went to www.bootdisk.com and made another one.

What am I missing, or is this 'puter toast??
Click to expand...


I agree with the others about the floppy and memory. I'd remove the
faulty memory (swap out 1 stick at time) and set the bios to no FD
iinstalled and see if the pc boots to the hd or cd. You probably won't
need the FD anymore anyway.
 
Ted Hermanson said:
Howdy, hope this is the right group to ask this in. You guys seem to
be pretty good at miracles here! :)

Came across an older box the other day, and thought I'd try and fire
it up and see if it was shot or just discarded for more/better
pretties.

As far as I can tell it has a Soyo 5EH5 v1.3 motherboard, AMD-K6 2/400
CPU, two sticks 64MB SIMMs, 8X CD-ROM, and a AT power supply of
unknown origin. I removed the modem and sound cards, left in the video
card and hooked her up. Replace all the ribbon cables, just to be sure
and put in a floppy drive (known to be good). Check out the CD-ROM and
it worked in another computer, same with the hard drive, an IBM 8.4GB
Darkstar. I fdisked and formatted the hard drive on another computer
first to be sure it was good.

I turned the juice on to her and get to the screen that tells you it
has Award 4.51pg plug-n-play BIOS and that it has a AMD-K6 2/400 CPU
and 65536K of RAM. It then detects the hard drive as master and the
CD-ROM both on their own IDE channels and the cursor just stops there.
There is a note at the bottom of the page to enter the BIOS, which I
have and set all the settings to default. I reboot and I get to this
screen again and the cursor just sits there and finally the note at
the bottom about the BIOS disappears and then it just blinks at you.

I have a known good boot disk in the floppy drive, but to be sure I
went to www.bootdisk.com and made another one.

What am I missing, or is this 'puter toast??
Click to expand...

i'm sure the machine is still good
just set the bios to boot from floppy
or if you are going to install win98...
set the bios to boot from cdrom

i use an AMD-450 as a spare...it works great really
 
Checked and double checked that.
BIOS is set to boot from the floppy and then the C drive

The MB has three banks for RAM. Two banks (4 rows) for DIMMs and one
bank (2 slots) for SIMMs. The manual says that you HAVE to double up
on the SIMMs, can't use just one.
 
Wish I had a spare stick of that type to swap out with. (sigh!) I just
reached into my pocket and pulled out the tail end of my vast fortune,
thirty eight cents! :)
 
I can do that from a Win98FE disck?? I thought I had to boot from a
floppy before you could install the operating system?
 
All I have is the genuine Microsoft Windows 98 CD. Don't suppose I can
boot from that puppy, can I??
 
seabat said:
Checked and double checked that.



BIOS is set to boot from the floppy and then the C drive




The MB has three banks for RAM. Two banks (4 rows) for DIMMs and one
bank (2 slots) for SIMMs. The manual says that you HAVE to double up
on the SIMMs, can't use just one.
Click to expand...

Well, first, I didn't say remove one; I said check them.

But it sounds like you have your DIMM and SIMM bank description backwards
as the typical configuration, for those motherboards providing both types,
is two 'banks', total, with 4 SIMM slots (the smaller ones) and 2 DIMM
slots (the 'big' ones) for populating the two 'banks'. Two SIMMs make up
one 'bank' with the corresponding DIMM being the same 'bank' (only one or
the other can be used in that 'bank'). I.E. 2 'banks' total. The reason
being that, as the manual said, it takes 2 SIMMs for a bank. And the reason
for that is because the bus is 64 bit wide but the SIMMs are 32 bit wide,
so it takes two to be a 'bank', whereas the DIMMs are 64 bit wide, and so
need only one per 'bank'. I.E. Bank 0 populated by either SIMMs A and B
together, or DIMM0, and bank 1 populated by either SIMMS C and D together,
or DIMM1.

However, bytes are bytes and if you have two 64 Meg sticks, of whatever,
then the result is 128 meg. Which causes me to suspect that you have two 32
meg sticks, which would be consistent with the 64 meg BIOS result and more
common for that era machine as the motherboard L2 cache usually cached only
64 meg (and people used to argue incessantly about whether having 128 meg
would actually SLOW the machine down because of that).

If your two sticks are in the 'biggie' slots then you can run just one. If
they are in the smaller slots then you need them paired to make the 64 bit bus.
 
spodosaurus said:
Did computers of that vintage still use simms? I would think they'd be
dimms.
Click to expand...

It was common for socket 7 motherboards to support both, on the same board.
There were also motherboards with either one type, or the other, and both
types were common.

For example, I've got an Intel LX P-II 300 motherboard that is SIMMs only,
a Compaq Deskpro P166MMX (acquired, complete and operational, from a
dumpster) that is DIMMs only, and a Biostar socket 7 mobo, that I'm running
a K6-II 400 in, that has both.

Things went 'only' SDRAM with the 100MHz, and up, FSBs.
 
seabat said:
All I have is the genuine Microsoft Windows 98 CD. Don't suppose I can
boot from that puppy, can I??
Click to expand...

Some do and some don't. For example, my windows98 upgrade CD doesn't boot
but my windows98 OEM CD does.
 
Me bad! I gave some bogus info there. The RAM is DIMM not SIMM, sorry!
They are 64MB sticks and I swapped them around and only one is any
good, so I put it in the #1 slot and it still boots as far as it did
before and no farther. On the stick it says, '64MB SDR DIMM PC100'

I took the floppy out and tried it in my other 'puter and it and the
ribbon cable worked just fine. I put it back in the other one and it
lights up and I get a message at the boot window that 'Floppy detected
and Failed (40).

I'm going to try and make the thing boot from the CD-ROM when I get
back into the BIOS. It doesn't have a monitor, so I have been
switching mine back and forth. PITB!!
 
David said:
Things went 'only' SDRAM with the 100MHz, and up, FSBs.
Click to expand...

After P200mmx I saw very few that had support for both simm and dimm.
Most of the slot1 motherboards were dimm only. Even socket 370, IIRC,
had celerons at 66 not 100, right?
 
Wish I had a spare stick of that type to swap out with. (sigh!) I just
reached into my pocket and pulled out the tail end of my vast fortune,
thirty eight cents! :)
Click to expand...

I'm not good with words. I meant take out one stick see if the other
boots, etc. You've done that. Can you burn a bootable CD on your other
pc? You could burn a CD with Memtest86 on it which would also check your
good memory stick. When you said you formated the HD on the other
machine I assumed you put Windows or Linux on it. Symantec A-V CDs were
bootable in case of emergencies. An XP CD should be bootable. Power
supply good?

Thinking only about the FD. My machine drove me crazy for months because
an otherwise working FD wouldn't work in the rebuilt machine. Then one day
I realized the FD couldn't rotate or spin when it was flush in the case.
It works perfectly set back inside the case a just little.
 
seabat said:
All I have is the genuine Microsoft Windows 98 CD. Don't suppose I can
boot from that puppy, can I??
Click to expand...


Good question !

There are so many "variations" of the 98 (ver 1998)/ 98SE (ver 2222)
install CDs out there . Some will boot; some won't.

The only way to find out is "try it" . The worst result is that it
won't boot.
 
Bought an old board on ebay for next to nothing that had a "bad floppy
controller". They said it won't detect the floppy drive. Got the same error
as you. (40?) After a bit of investigation I discovered thebios was set on
the first page to "floppy 51/2"". Changed to to 31/4" & stuffed M/board is
now a good one. Check this & tell us?
BruceM
 
seabat said:
Me bad! I gave some bogus info there. The RAM is DIMM not SIMM, sorry!
They are 64MB sticks and I swapped them around and only one is any
good, so I put it in the #1 slot and it still boots as far as it did
before and no farther. On the stick it says, '64MB SDR DIMM PC100'
Click to expand...

Ah, good news (the RAM I mean).

You sure there aren't some jumpers on the mobo? A few did have some
(although, if it has the 3.3V jumper you'd have blown the second DIMM by now)
I took the floppy out and tried it in my other 'puter and it and the
ribbon cable worked just fine. I put it back in the other one and it
lights up and I get a message at the boot window that 'Floppy detected
and Failed (40).
Click to expand...

Did you check BOTH ends of the cable? I've seen people plug it into the
motherboard backwards and then check and check and check the floppy end
where it will 'look right'.

Floppy light on CONSTANT and then a failed 40 is the classic cable in
backwards indicator.


Since you have a working machine, just format the hard drive in it, write
the system files (dos) to it (format /s), and then copy the win98 directory
off the CD to a win98 directory on the hard drive. Then move it to the
other machine, boot it, and run setup. Make sure you made the partition
active in fdisk and if it don't boot use fdisk /mbr to rewrite the boot block.

I'm going to try and make the thing boot from the CD-ROM when I get
back into the BIOS. It doesn't have a monitor, so I have been
switching mine back and forth. PITB!!
Click to expand...

Hey, I switch monitor cables all the time so no sympathy here ;)
 
spodosaurus said:
After P200mmx I saw very few that had support for both simm and dimm.
Click to expand...

You weren't looking in the AMD world then. Super 7, of course, was 100MHz
FSB and SDRAM.
Most of the slot1 motherboards were dimm only.
Click to expand...

Not prior to the BX. Like the SIMMS only P-II 300 (obviously slot-1) I told
you I had.
Even socket 370, IIRC,
had celerons at 66 not 100, right?
Click to expand...


The first socket 370 boards were the Intel 810 and that ran the RAM at
100MHz (won't run lower).
 
Howdy, hope this is the right group to ask this in. You guys seem to
be pretty good at miracles here! :)

Came across an older box the other day, and thought I'd try and fire
it up and see if it was shot or just discarded for more/better
pretties.

As far as I can tell it has a Soyo 5EH5 v1.3 motherboard, AMD-K6 2/400
CPU, two sticks 64MB SIMMs, 8X CD-ROM, and a AT power supply of
unknown origin. I removed the modem and sound cards, left in the video
card and hooked her up. Replace all the ribbon cables, just to be sure
and put in a floppy drive (known to be good). Check out the CD-ROM and
it worked in another computer, same with the hard drive, an IBM 8.4GB
Darkstar. I fdisked and formatted the hard drive on another computer
first to be sure it was good.

I turned the juice on to her and get to the screen that tells you it
has Award 4.51pg plug-n-play BIOS and that it has a AMD-K6 2/400 CPU
and 65536K of RAM. It then detects the hard drive as master and the
CD-ROM both on their own IDE channels and the cursor just stops there.
There is a note at the bottom of the page to enter the BIOS, which I
have and set all the settings to default. I reboot and I get to this
screen again and the cursor just sits there and finally the note at
the bottom about the BIOS disappears and then it just blinks at you.

I have a known good boot disk in the floppy drive, but to be sure I
went to www.bootdisk.com and made another one.

What am I missing, or is this 'puter toast??
Click to expand...

The bootup screen should also indicate that it found a floppy drive. I
would check the cable and the connector since the drive is good.
Since the cdrom is recognized do you have a bootable cdrom to try?
Good luck.
 
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