Pls Guide: [00] POST CODE - Pentium 60 MHz + Batman's Revenge Motherboard

[ayandon]

Friends,

I am trying to revive my childhood Pentium 60 MHz + Batman's Revenge Motherboard + EDO RAMs.

Issue: [00] POST CODE in both PCI and ISA Debug Cards.

Steps already done:

• There was two tiny scratches on the back PCB. There was continuity BUT still jumper wire added for support (by Laptop repair engineer)
• Bought 2x Dallas Clock ICs. (Socket installed by Laptop repair engineer)
• 2 different EDO RAMs sets used to test. YELLOW and GREEN set in the pics (both are mine, belongs to this system)
• Jumper are all correct and never changed. Re-checked.
• Processor Socket voltage correct.

Pls suggest future steps....

 

[GiGaBiTe]

00 means that the board isn't doing anything, it's not even trying to read from the BIOS ROM.

That SB82378ZB chip to the right of the PCI slots doesn't look right. Someone has definitely run a soldering iron over all four sides of that chip, and some of the legs look bent. I would inspect that chip very closely and see if any of the legs are shorted together. Also check if the chip is getting hot, if it is then it ls probably destroyed.

Besides that, check if the CPU is even trying to do anything with an oscilloscope or logic analyzer. Check the clock pins and the address/data bus.

 

[ayandon]

00 means that the board isn't doing anything, it's not even trying to read from the BIOS ROM.

That SB82378ZB chip to the right of the PCI slots doesn't look right. Someone has definitely run a soldering iron over all four sides of that chip, and some of the legs look bent. I would inspect that chip very closely and see if any of the legs are shorted together. Also check if the chip is getting hot, if it is then it ls probably destroyed.

Besides that, check if the CPU is even trying to do anything with an oscilloscope or logic analyzer. Check the clock pins and the address/data bus.

Thank you for your suggestions.

Yes, you are right about SB82378ZB.
My laptop repair engg friend did it just to remove the rust/oxidation on the pins.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

There is still a ton of junk on the pins of that IC, and the soldering is very poor. It doesn't look like much, if any flux was used, and far too much heat with what look to be lifted/damaged traces nearby.

That chip needs to be resoldered properly with flux, and all of the pins need to be checked for shorts to adjacent pins, and connection to the PCB. There are also some questionable traces on the top left of the chip that look to be corroded under the solder mask or broken.

The IC legs should have been cleaned first with vinegar to eat away at the corrosion before more solder was used on it.

 

[ayandon]

A HELP ON BIOS

Hello friends,

I bought some BIOS ICs as backup to replace the original one if corrupted (pins are connected but rusted).
But the BIOS dump from theretroweb.com is a .EXE file!

Pls guide me how to burn the BIOS into the chip using my external programmer?


P.S. I also bought the S82378ZB IC that has too much rust on its pins.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Open the executable file with 7-zip, and open the bios.exe file within it with 7-zip again. You'll find a bunch of files, but the ones you'll need are:

1013AF2_Bl1
1013AF2_Bl0

I don't know why there are two BIOS images. The most likely reason is that the full image is split between the two files in some fashion. It could be that one file contains the lower half of the ROM and the other is the upper half, or it could be interleaved low and high bytes.

I'd recommend trying to dump the existing ROM after cleaning the pins and doing a compare between it and the same version of the ROM on TRR. The ROM images from TRR have the version string in them, the ones inside the motherboard flash chip should also have a version string in them somewhere.

 

[ayandon]

Open the executable file with 7-zip, and open the bios.exe file within it with 7-zip again. You'll find a bunch of files, but the ones you'll need are:

1013AF2_Bl1
1013AF2_Bl0

I don't know why there are two BIOS images. The most likely reason is that the full image is split between the two files in some fashion. It could be that one file contains the lower half of the ROM and the other is the upper half, or it could be interleaved low and high bytes.

I'd recommend trying to dump the existing ROM after cleaning the pins and doing a compare between it and the same version of the ROM on TRR. The ROM images from TRR have the version string in them, the ones inside the motherboard flash chip should also have a version string in them somewhere.

Thanks for the detailed suggestion.

 

[ayandon]

SOME PROGRESS

I have managed to source a replacement S82378ZB IC.
My friend helped me to replace the IC.

(In Hindi, regional language aimed for his students)

Next problem is detected that the Intel N28F001 BIOS IC is totally blank! as mentioned here as 'Data Fade: Flash Data Retention Error'
We could not progress as his Universal Programmer doesn't support N28F001.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

You'll need to find a programmer that supports the F001 chip. The other alternative is if you have access to a second board, you can try hot flashing the chip, but that'd require a PLCC socket.