Rebuilding an old PC: 1 fault, HELP!

Rebuilding an old PC: 1 fault, HELP!

Author
Discussion

DustyC

Original Poster:

12,820 posts

256 months

Thursday 16th October 2003
quotequote all
Im off work sick and to occupy my time I have gathered the 5 spare PCs laying around to build one decent one.

Its all gone together quite while and is working quickly with out faults, well, almost.

There is one small error on boot up which says

"Conflict I/O ports: 2FB"

I have to then "press F1 to continue" but everything else appears to be fine.

Can anyone help me on this one?

Plotloss

67,280 posts

272 months

Thursday 16th October 2003
quotequote all
You have a conflict somewhere in hardware.

Can you get into Windows?

If so it will tell you which devices are conflicting in Device Manager.

Podie

46,632 posts

277 months

Thursday 16th October 2003
quotequote all
How old is it?

Sounds to me like messing with jumper settings... unless the BIOS shows any conflicts..?

DustyC

Original Poster:

12,820 posts

256 months

Thursday 16th October 2003
quotequote all
Been in to device manager and sorted out the only 2 problems.
- removed serial mouse (was on the PC I took the hard drive from)
- floppy drive problems. Found to be a damaged lead.

Everything else I look at appears to be OK and it all runs fine, just this error message at the beginning Want to get it sorted incase it brings future problems.

Im not PC buff but know enough to get by and build my own PCs, up until now!

Plotloss

67,280 posts

272 months

Thursday 16th October 2003
quotequote all
Go into the BIOS and disable the addressing of COM2, set everything back to AUTO.

That should sort it

DustyC

Original Poster:

12,820 posts

256 months

Thursday 16th October 2003
quotequote all
Podie said:
How old is it?

Sounds to me like messing with jumper settings... unless the BIOS shows any conflicts..?


How Old? which bit!
This will give you some clues! CPU = AMD300, running Win98 on a 2MB hardddrive.

Didnt see anything that looked bad in the BIOS, just gonna double check again. (its running in the other room)

DustyC

Original Poster:

12,820 posts

256 months

Thursday 16th October 2003
quotequote all
Plotloss said:
Go into the BIOS and disable the addressing of COM2, set everything back to AUTO.

That should sort it


BINGO!

IRQ3 (COM2) was "secondary", changed to disabled
Onboard serial port2 was "2F8", changed to Auto

fired up ok with these settings, thanks people

Podie

46,632 posts

277 months

Thursday 16th October 2003
quotequote all
DustyC said:

Plotloss said:
Go into the BIOS and disable the addressing of COM2, set everything back to AUTO.

That should sort it



BINGO!

IRQ3 (COM2) was "secondary", changed to disabled
Onboard serial port2 was "2F8", changed to Auto

fired up ok with these settings, thanks people


Plotty stealing my thunder again...

mmertens

397 posts

284 months

Thursday 16th October 2003
quotequote all
DustyC said:

Podie said:
How old is it?

Sounds to me like messing with jumper settings... unless the BIOS shows any conflicts..?



How Old? which bit!
This will give you some clues! CPU = AMD300, running Win98 on a 2MB hardddrive.

Didnt see anything that looked bad in the BIOS, just gonna double check again. (its running in the other room)


A 2MB harddrive!! Now that is old!

meeja

8,290 posts

250 months

Thursday 16th October 2003
quotequote all
mmertens said:


A 2MB harddrive!! Now that is old!


Ha.... this thread has brought back memories of the first PC I bought (rather than built!)....

A "super fast" Pentium 90.... with "loads" of Ram (8mB!) and a "massive" 850mB hard drive....

Those were the days......

Podie

46,632 posts

277 months

Thursday 16th October 2003
quotequote all
I had an 8086 with a 30MB hard drive... and 640K..!

meeja

8,290 posts

250 months

Thursday 16th October 2003
quotequote all
I never had an 8086.... but I did build a 286, then upgraded it to a 386, then to a 486sx, then a 486dx, then eventually bit the bullet an dbought a complete system (the Pentium 90)

Lived on 640k with the 286, 1mB with the 386... then a massive (and expensive at the time!) 4mB with the 486's

They were the good old days.... if you had any conflicts, it wasn't software "sort-outable"... it was off with the cover, and change jumpers left right and centre!

Also remember having different boot disks for different games!

Actually, maybe those days weren't so good after all!

ErnestM

11,621 posts

269 months

Thursday 16th October 2003
quotequote all
[showagemode]

Ahhh, that's all nothing - can anyone else remember actually populating the ram directly onto the motherboard. (and I mean chip by chip, non of those easy SIMM/DIMM thingies)

[/showsagemode]

ErnestM

Mikej

226 posts

286 months

Thursday 16th October 2003
quotequote all
[even_older_mode]
First PC, not even DOS, but CPM - HDD's not yet invented.
Second PC, IBM PC running some bizarre office system - had to share it with 3 others. Email not yet invented.
Third PC, IBM Laptop - no HDD, but twin floppies (ohh err missus), DOS - Windows still not invented.

When I was doing Computer Studies at poly (remember them ?) we had to submit our programmes to "data entry" for the typing pool to enter

[/even_older_mode]

Mike.

meeja

8,290 posts

250 months

Friday 17th October 2003
quotequote all
MikeJ and ErnestM....

meeja

8,290 posts

250 months

Friday 17th October 2003
quotequote all
Actually, talking of windows..... I used to work for the company who invented the mouse and the GUI.... then forgot to patent it! D'OH!!!!

devdog

165 posts

256 months

Friday 17th October 2003
quotequote all
[OldDufferMode]
Now then when I was at poly the terminals didn't even have a screen ... teletypes and paper tape ... those really were the days... oh god what am I saying
[EndOldDufferMode]
my first 8086 PC olivetti circa 1985 had a 10Mb hard disk which was huge ....

alans

3,367 posts

258 months

Friday 17th October 2003
quotequote all
ErnestM said:
[showagemode]

Ahhh, that's all nothing - can anyone else remember actually populating the ram directly onto the motherboard. (and I mean chip by chip, non of those easy SIMM/DIMM thingies)

[/showsagemode]

ErnestM

Yes I can. I was also involved with manufacturing the 1st IBM 1G hard disk ($20K each!)

alans

3,367 posts

258 months

Friday 17th October 2003
quotequote all
meeja said:
Actually, talking of windows..... I used to work for the company who invented the mouse and the GUI.... then forgot to patent it! D'OH!!!!

I used to work for the company that made Microsoft the company it is today!! eleventy seven billion doller mistake there then

DustyC

Original Poster:

12,820 posts

256 months

Friday 17th October 2003
quotequote all
Of the 5 PCs I was stealing bits from, one had a 25MHz Processor and 256MB hardrive.

I have since decided to make this my main PC.