No BIOS, no functionality, no nuthin'

[Fred]

Hello,
This is my first post here.
I have owned this d8b for over 10 years. About 5 years ago, it just suddenly stopped working and wouldn't power up properly. The display said "Host did not load ... Error 43..." It had worked fine on the previous session
I hadn't changed any hardware or made any modifications of any kind. I assumed the HD was bad since it had some high pitched sounds coming out of it when I turned the unit on. Since I don't really use the d8b anymore, I just forgot about it until I was cleaning and found another internal d8b drive (which could also be bad or mislabeled). I swapped it in -- no change. I hooked up a monitor and held the delete key when it was powering up. I was unable to get anything to appear on the screen (monitor says "no signal"). In fact the monitor doesn't ever show anything, or even turn on (power button is on, of course), whether I'm trying to enter bios or not.
So I'm guessing something fundamental is wrong here. Bad bios chip or mobo?
I tried re-seating and switching the ram around in every possible configuration of 1 and 2 cards.
I tried replacing the 2032 battery.
I tried starting without the other two expansion cards in there (I think that's what they're called - the two cards besides the graphics card).
I tried a different HD to mobo ribbon cable.
Also, I had assumed that I would be able to get the bios screen with or without a working HD installed, right?
Anyway, nothing has worked and I'm out of ideas.
Thanks,
Fred

[nuss]

if you can get "error 43" to show up again with the other harddrive, hit the F1 key right away and see if it loads

[Fred]

Error 43 shows up with both drives, and with no HD at all. F1 does nothing.
I also noticed that the keyboard lights (num lock, caps, etc) briefly flash when the power is turned on, but then pressing number lock key, or caps, doesn't light the corresponding lights on the keyboard.

[nuss]

have you tested the power supply in the computer?

[arjepsen]

Check whether the cpu fan starts spinning and the HD's start whining when you turn on the power - that would indicate whether the computer psu works or not.

[Y-my-R]

That the Num-Lock key lights up and goes dark again, would suggest to me that the computer at least starts booting up, and gets past the point of recognizing the keyboard. It would stay dark, if it doesn't get that far.

I think what the problem might have been originally, was a dead battery. But now you just seem to have a problem with video output. So, either the monitor, the video cable, or the video card.

I'd have to check the exact sequence of needed keystrokes... but if you wait until the Num-Lock light goes off, then maybe count to 10 or so, then hit F1, wait for a few more seconds, and then hit F10 to save the BIOS settings (that you can't see) and exit, it might boot. But only if the settings that the BIOS reset after losing it's memory (empty battery), are "compatible enough" to boot the unit.

Do you have another video card you can try? To see the BIOS, you can try any PCI video card (or AGP, if your board has that slot). You just won't be able to use that to boot into Mackie OS... but at least you could tweak the BIOS settings, if it's the video card that's the culprit.

Good luck!

[Y-my-R]

oh... and maybe another silly suggestion, since that got me a few times before:

If you have a monitor with more than one input (e.g. a VGA and DVI and HDMI), then maybe you just manually need to select the VGA input to see what's coming out of the d8b. Some monitors don't detect signal on the VGA port automatically, and make it necessary to switch over.

[Fred]

Thanks Y-my-R, nuss, and arjepsen.
I finally got it running. It started up after switching/reseating the RAM about 20 times.
Funny thing is, I said "This is my last try" out loud when I switched it on, so maybe that's what did it.
Anyway, best guess is a ram issue ... perhaps I touched a chip on the ram card in just the right way.
Then I changed the BIOS settings and got a boot fail for several tries until I put a floppy disk into the drive.
I didn't need to install the OS, though. Just the act of threatening to do so by installing the OS disk was enough to get it going.
So now I'm wondering, is a working floppy drive necessary for operation of the unit on a day to day basis? Or did it just give me boot fails because the floppy is first in the boot sequence? OR... is the HD failing and the boot fail/floppy drive connection was coincidental?
Also, I should probably get new ram. What do you guys recommend?
Thanks again,
Fred

[arjepsen]

I'm not entirely certain what was/is wrong.
I've tried similar situations, where I pretty much had to take a pc completely apart, and slowly piece it together again, to make it boot up.
A thought: maybe the bios was somehow corrupted? I remember somebody stating that you pretty much had to take out the battery and leave the clear cmos jumper in overnight, before it really was cleard. I'm not sure I belive that it really takes that long, but taking time to ensure that all capacitors has drained, might have done something.
For floppies: I keep recommending getting a cheap chinese usb stick floppy emulator. I was unable to find a working floppy bisquit in my area, so I ended up getting the emulator, and has been smiling ever since.
Also, I changed the hard drive to a compact flash disc. First of all, it boots faster. Second, it lets me take the card out for backing up / cloning, without having to open up the whole unit. Third: Much less noise!

For the ram: I would wait on that. Personally I would install a sort of rescue linux distribution, and use that to test the system - in your case specifically the ram. The sticks you have might just be fine, and it can be difficult to find new working sticks these days.

[Y-my-R]

Strange indeed. Hard to tell what the problem was. I always spray at least some pressurized air in the slots when reseating stuff like RAM or PCI cards, etc. Sometimes I even SEE the dirt in there.

(Electronic cleaner is even better, but I wouldn't really use that on the mainboard).

Everything arjepsen said makes a lot of sense. As far as memory goes, if it fails again, you can always get some cheap memory sticks like these:

https://tinyurl.com/ycl6jd75

I got two of them in one of my two d8b's (the "old" 166 MHz Pentium board) and it seems to work fine. Not sure if the bus speed is correct (100 MHz sounds a tad too slow), but at the time I bought them, they were under $8 for two sticks, and that's worth the experiment, IMO. It worked out for me! I have to say, though - I ordered them together, and got two slightly different looking memory sticks. This irritated me at first, but they ended up working just fine, so I didn't complain.

As far as replacing outdated technology with newer stuff goes (floppy for emulator, hard-drive for CF card, etc.), I could not agree more. I don't think the boot speed is really different, though. One of my d8b's still has a harddrive (I'll change that soon), the other has a CF card. If I turn them on together, they run through all the same startup-steps at nearly exactly the same speed, and finish booting together (both run the OS 5.1 Hack). Even though one is a 300MHz Celeron, the other a 166 Pentium.

But it's already worth it, just from how much quieter your d8b will get with a CF card for a harddrive. Especially if you run more such "noisy old computers" along with your d8b, like an HDR/MDR or something. They all need CF card upgrades and have their fans replaced for quieter models, IMO. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to deal with the noise.