1st ever PC case found - Pentium 166 MMX win98 build/rebuild - Ram issues

Vestas said:
This is probably the board you've got -


Noticed this about memory : "Provides 2 x 168 Pin DIMM to support SDRAM/EDO DRAM/Page Mode DRAM-supports "Table Free" configuration so that DIMM and SIMM can be installed in any combination up to 384Mb, except that SIMM 1, 2 and DIMM 2 can not be installed at the same time"
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That looks a similar board but this is the one i have. Soyo SY-5VD
 
CaptainRAVE said:
I think it’s the nostalgia, but that’s sexy as hell. Wish I had pictures of my first PCs.
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I got lucky spotting it i think. The chances of randomly coming across the same case as my first pc must be pretty small.

Ive quite a collection of old computers at this point

Acorn BBC Micro 32k - two of these with MMC.
Acorn A3000 Archimedes with 4mb ram, DOM with usb port.
Amiga 500 with 500k expansion board and a gotek.
Atari ST
ZX Spectrum
A Panasonic toughbook running windows XP
An old Dell latitude laptop running XP
A really old fujitsu laptop - not tried this in years.
Sure ive got a laptop running windows 7 also.

I think thats about it for the computers.
 
Beankp60 said:
I got lucky spotting it i think. The chances of randomly coming across the same case as my first pc must be pretty small.

Ive quite a collection of old computers at this point

Acorn BBC Micro 32k - two of these with MMC.
Acorn A3000 Archimedes with 4mb ram, DOM with usb port.
Amiga 500 with 500k expansion board and a gotek.
Atari ST
ZX Spectrum
A Panasonic toughbook running windows XP
An old Dell latitude laptop running XP
A really old fujitsu laptop - not tried this in years.
Sure ive got a laptop running windows 7 also.

I think thats about it for the computers.
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Sounds great, wish I still had all mine.
 
I just found this

Patched bios for large HDD's!

It has one for my SY-5vd board.


Ive updated bios on newer boards like AM3 and simialr ones but i canbt remember flashing and bios on any board as old as this. I need to have a look into it. Im sure i remember it was done with the bios file on a floppy using dos??
I also have a chip programmer so maybe thats an option??
 
There's some FAQs in Wimsbios (there's a blast from the past!) and flash utilities. Basically pick the one for the maker of the BIOS - Award, AMI, Phoenix etc.
 
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Used to be from DOS booted off a floppy. Depends if you have a working floppy and drive to do that. You might be able to do it with a memory stick but depends if it'll boot off that.
 
If you're going for actual floppies (and can find blanks in working condition!), WinImage is quite useful. I seem to still have a variety of floppy images like 95, 98, 98SE startup disks. Also some bios disks which might (I forget to be honest) be just a dos boot disk with a bios image that inappropriate for your use but that you could just replace.
 
Bit of an update guys.

Last night i dug my chip burner out, messed about with the drivers for a bit and got it working on my main pc.
First i read the exisiting bios file from it and verified it against a copy of the same version online to make sure it was working correctly.
Then i bravely erased the chip and wrote the new modified B6 bios onto it.

20251103_220723 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

It worked great and my SSD is detected.

20251103_222202 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

Now im trying to to install win98 SE from CD. It came up with some errors about the LBA blocking on the drive so i went back into the bios and the IDE HDD auto detection screen showed these options.

20251103_225845 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

I selected the one which uses the LBA mode at the end.
When im trying to install windows it comes up saying the last cluster cant be read

20251103_224416 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

If i select continue it starts running the surface scan which takes ages! It got so far then came up with an error, i selected to continue but it will not continue with drive errors. Maybe i should have delected to move that cluster i think the option said. Then it ended the installation.

Do i need to be formatting this drive again in another pc and putting the win98 folder on the drive? or do i need to mess with the drive settings in the bios for the sectors, cylinders ect??
Any ideas?
 
I'd have gone with LBA too...and it is the default.
Had a look for CHS parameters for SSDs and found this
Google said:
This is typically a virtual geometry, commonly set to 1024 cylinders, 255 heads, and 63 sectors per track
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So I think you're probably on the right settings. It may be worth confirming that the SSD is fully working on a system that understands it natively.
Fixing it is unlikely to be a good thing. It assumes a bad sector and tries to mark it bad and recover the data to another sector. On an HDD this usually means the disk surface is damaged and will continue to self-destruct but it may let you back up important data first. An SSD doesn't really expose the same layout, it spreads data about in order to do wear levelling - otherwise one part would be worn out rapidly. It also often has over-provisioning - extra space that is used to replace parts that have worn out.
I'd definitely test the disk in a newer machine to rule out it genuinely not working properly. Other than that, do you have any options to change the parameters so you can make it a bit smaller? Might be you're trying to use the over-provisioned space (bios not understanding the concept) and the drive refusing to play.
 
Thanks for the help!

I currently have the SSD in my main PC and i have re formated it to FAT32 32k cluster size and i am running the surface scan - using Mini tool partition wizard, it shows no errors.
 
My first PC case looked exactly like this. . . at least I think it did from memory. A Pentium 133Mhz. I spent many of hour playing Duke Nukem 3D and Doom and that back in the day :D
 
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