Can't seem to find the edit button, if such a thing exists so...

Caps are looking good, no obvious signs of bulging and none of them are leaking.

Your first video is set to "Private." I believe the edit function is only allowed after a certain number of posts (not sure how many).

Have you tried a fresh CMOS battery? Some motherboards will not post if the battery's voltage is too low - this would be consistent with it working years ago, then not working now.

Sorry, fixed the first video so it should work now.

Yes, the CMOS battery is new.

I've had things not work in the past due to a faulty IDE cable. Verify the floppy cable works in another PC or try another known working floppy cable. Also try a different floppy drive, and no floppy drive. As it is hanging at initializing the floppy, that would be where I would be focussing on. If none of that works, next thing I would be doing is looking for any jumpers etc on the board related to the floppy and also purchasing a new bios chip

It hangs at initializing the floppy controller, so floppy drive or no floppy drive it's the same.
I tried with working floppy and cable and it's no change from no floppy at all.

Bios chip is good. Last year i tried booting it up again when I went to a guy (with another problem on a different mobo) and he took the chip out and rewrote the latest bios and still the same problem and same error codes.

remove

Ok, I can understand that chipsets can die, given the age and the fact that this mobo wasn't very high quality, but it doesn't make sense to me that the last time it booted was in the first clip that I posted, for exactly the duration of the clip and then directly in a box to storage with no one touching it for like, 6 years.

The case in that clip is from another system with 5x86 and a luckystar, i was just using the case for that specific clip 😀

I could try and find another socket7 board but this one kinda has some sentimental value in it and I would like to try and resurrect it, if I can.

remove

Hi Tzzantaru,

Looking at your second videoclip I see the hang at POST 41, preceded by POST code 0D. On the Award v4.51PG BIOS this strange sequence mains only one thing: a BIOS Checksum Error! 🙁

At this stage, the BIOS Bootblock attempts a recovery by checking for a bootable floppy and that’s when you see the POST code 41. In the videoclip I hear that the POST 41 indication is followed by a High-Low chime, indicating that a bootable floppy is not detected.

As the Bootblock code has only ISA-bus support at this stage, you need an ISA videocard to see what is going on.

This all means that you have a corrupted or incorrect BIOS on this board!!
But the Bootblock seems to be intact so a Bootblock recovery should be possible. You can download the latest Rev:D BIOS for this board from https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/lucky- … ech-p5mvp3#bios

Good luck with the recovery,
Jan

Chkcpu wrote on 2025-01-03, 16:42:

Hi Tzzantaru

Hello

Chkcpu wrote on 2025-01-03, 16:42:

Looking at your second videoclip I see the hang at POST 41, preceded by POST code 0D. On the Award v4.51PG BIOS this strange sequence mains only one thing: a BIOS Checksum Error! 🙁

Well duck me I'm stewpid 😀) I didn't even think of checking the error code before de 41. Thank you for pointing this out.

Chkcpu wrote on 2025-01-03, 16:42:

At this stage, the BIOS Bootblock attempts a recovery by checking for a bootable floppy and that’s when you see the POST code 41. In the videoclip I hear that the POST 41 indication is followed by a High-Low chime, indicating that a bootable floppy is not detected.

Bootable floppy as in a win95/98 bootable floppy or another kind of bootable?

Chkcpu wrote on 2025-01-03, 16:42:

As the Bootblock code has only ISA-bus support at this stage, you need an ISA videocard to see what is going on.

Can you elaborate on this? If I manage to get my hands on a ISA card would I be able to get some video output and then work my way from that?

Chkcpu wrote on 2025-01-03, 16:42:

This all means that you have a corrupted or incorrect BIOS on this board!! But the Bootblock seems to be intact so a Bootblock r […]
Show full quote

This all means that you have a corrupted or incorrect BIOS on this board!!
But the Bootblock seems to be intact so a Bootblock recovery should be possible. You can download the latest Rev:D BIOS for this board from https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/lucky- … ech-p5mvp3#bios

Ok, I'll download the latest BIOS and if I don't have the means to make it work by myself I'll ask the guy that I mentioned a few posts behind to rewrite the BIOS because I don't have a programmer for that.

Chkcpu wrote on 2025-01-03, 16:42:

Good luck with the recovery,
Jan

Thank you Jan, much appreciate it

Here is a very informative video that goes over how to do a boot block recovery flash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45UQ8Y8rl4s

Thank you @Repo Man11 , I just googled boot block recovery and was watching exactly that video 😁

But apparently, the first thing I need to get, is an ISA video card.

Tzzantaru wrote on 2025-01-03, 17:40:

Thank you @Repo Man11 , I just googled boot block recovery and was watching exactly that video 😁

But apparently, the first thing I need to get, is an ISA video card.

If you set up the boot floppy correctly, the process will proceed automatically so a display isn't needed. If it doesn't work (and you've made sure that the autoexec.bat file is correct) having a display won't make any difference.

Ok, so I pulled out my 5x86 system with a working floppy drive, made a bootable disk, copied the bios file, copied the flash utility, made the autoexec.bat just like the clip said and we have an FF code on the diagnostic board, floppy drive is chewing something for like 30 seconds or so buuuuuuut after that, nothing, no reboot, no post.

If I pull out the disk and turn the mobo on I'm stuck again in the same loop with error 41 and the high-low chime so I guess there's something wrong with the autoexec. Or maybe I need to try a different utility or different parameters for the blind autoflash.

Good thing is I got an FF with the disk in.

I'll try again tomorrow with a different autoexec and utility and hope for the best.

Is there any case in which the bios chip is somehow damaged or if the bootblock is operational i should assume that the hardware is intact?

Tzzantaru wrote on 2025-01-03, 22:25:

Ok, so I pulled out my 5x86 system with a working floppy drive, made a bootable disk, copied the bios file, copied the flash uti […]
Show full quote

Ok, so I pulled out my 5x86 system with a working floppy drive, made a bootable disk, copied the bios file, copied the flash utility, made the autoexec.bat just like the clip said and we have an FF code on the diagnostic board, floppy drive is chewing something for like 30 seconds or so buuuuuuut after that, nothing, no reboot, no post.

If I pull out the disk and turn the mobo on I'm stuck again in the same loop with error 41 and the high-low chime so I guess there's something wrong with the autoexec. Or maybe I need to try a different utility or different parameters for the blind autoflash.

Good thing is I got an FF with the disk in.

I'll try again tomorrow with a different autoexec and utility and hope for the best.

Is there any case in which the bios chip is somehow damaged or if the bootblock is operational i should assume that the hardware is intact?

BIOS EEPROMs aren't immune to failure. Boot block flashes can work, but they have only worked rarely for me; it could be that the boot block is also corrupted. If you had a chip programmer, the easy way to find out would be to pull the EEPROM and reflash it - it it can't be written too then replace it. You could also do a hot swap flash to see if that restores functionality.

Tzzantaru wrote on 2025-01-03, 22:25:

Ok, so I pulled out my 5x86 system with a working floppy drive, made a bootable disk, copied the bios file, copied the flash uti […]
Show full quote

Ok, so I pulled out my 5x86 system with a working floppy drive, made a bootable disk, copied the bios file, copied the flash utility, made the autoexec.bat just like the clip said and we have an FF code on the diagnostic board, floppy drive is chewing something for like 30 seconds or so buuuuuuut after that, nothing, no reboot, no post.

If I pull out the disk and turn the mobo on I'm stuck again in the same loop with error 41 and the high-low chime so I guess there's something wrong with the autoexec. Or maybe I need to try a different utility or different parameters for the blind autoflash.

Good thing is I got an FF with the disk in.

I'll try again tomorrow with a different autoexec and utility and hope for the best.

Is there any case in which the bios chip is somehow damaged or if the bootblock is operational i should assume that the hardware is intact?

I agree with Repo Man11 about the possibility of EEPROM failure and that a chip programmer would be an ideal tool in this case.
But don’t give up on a BIOS Bootblock recovery yet. 😉

Getting the POST FF code is promising. This means the Bootblock detected the floppy and transferred control to the code in the floppy’s bootsector successfully.
The following 30 seconds of activity on the floppy drive look like its booting the floppy and executing AWDFLASH.EXE. If it stops there, Awdflash probably waits for some input commands, but without an ISA videocard you can’t see what you need to type .

As Repo Man11 also indicated, a Bootblock recovery can be done blind without an ISA videocard if the commands in AUTOEXEC.BAT are correct.
What is in your AUTOEXEC.BAT now?
It should be something like:

AWDFLASH MVP3-D.BIN /Py /Sn /Cp /Cd /Cc

This command will execute the flash without any user interaction.
The three /C switches clear the PnP, DMI, and CMOS data which often helps with a successful boot after a BIOS flash.
When floppy activity stops and the drive light goes out, remove the floppy and reboot.

Using the correct Awdflash.exe for your board is essential as well.

This is Awdflash v7.95 I use for socket 7 boards. Works here on any socket 7 board with an Award BIOS, except Asus. (For Asus socket 7 boards with AWD BIOS I use Aflash v2.02).

Hopefully this gets you further,
Jan

Still no joy, and I think I need to get myself an ISA card to see what happens on screen because I don't really like going in blind like this.

This is the most success I had so far, it goes through codes until it stops at 16 and hangs there with the floppy light still on, but not reading anything from it anymore. The clip is cut short but I've left it like this for about 10 minutes with nothing happening. After that I powered it off and then on again and still no post. Good thing is that it goes back to boot block so it didn't duck up anything.
In the clip I used the autoexec you gave me, the only difference is that I changed the .BIN name to match the actual .BIN file.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu0xrGz3Uc

I don't know, maybe I need to try with another version of AWD, although I tried 3 so far but I would feel a lot more comfortable if I would be able to actually see what the board is trying to tell me.

I really need that edit button 😀)

I know the code is

(16)Test 8259-2 mask bits; Verify 8259 channel 2 masked interrupt by alternate
turning off and on the interrupt line. Setup Interrupt vectors

But i have no idea what exactly that is or what I'm supposed to do with it.

Advice is free and worth twice the price - if an ISA video card costs anywhere close to a TL866 or equivalent, that programmer would be the better investment.