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Quadram Quadboard problems on my 5150

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generic486

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2012
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290
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Australia
So the 5150 arrived yesterday and it all works fine except for the Quadram Quadboard. More on that later. Anyway, i thought that the half height drive installed was a Ye,Data; it is not, it is a Alps drive that looks like a YeData and uses the same solenoid as the Yedata and also has the clunk noise. Anyway, when I got it, the floppy drives were horribly setup. Firstly the Alps drive was in the first bay and the Full height Tandon was in the second bay. This was an issue because the floppy cable was designed for use with two Tandon drives (same with the power cable) However, the floppy cable would not reach the other drive. I swapped the drives and now it is perfect. However, as mentioned above, the Quadram Quadboard is an issue. Firstly, I got the board with the original battery still intact. It had started leaking and had complete destroyed the coating on one of the surrounding ceramic capacitors. Nothing else seems to be damaged. So I remeoved the battery and reseated the RAM but still it gives me 4055 201 error. I set the DIP switches to 512K as there is 256K on the mainboard and 256K installed on the Quadboard. Still not working. I am wondering, what the issue could be.

Also the HH floppy drive looks to be IBM replacement as the power cables seem to be bent in a way that there was Tandon drives in there originally. The date on IBM 5150 itself is NOV 85 but the date on the HH floppy drive is the 14th week of 1986. So, the floppy drive must of failed pretty quickly after purchase.
 
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generic486 said:
So I remeoved the battery and reseated the RAM but still it gives me 4055 201 error. I set the DIP switches to 512K as there is 256K on the mainboard and 256K installed on the Quadboard. Still not working. I am wondering, what the issue could be.
Click to expand...

1. RAM switches on Quadboard not set correctly (e.g. not set for a start address of 256K). Two versions of Quadboard: 256K and 384K. Settings for 256K version found [here]. 384K settings found [here]. When checking/setting switches, be sure not to confuse ON with OFF.

2. Not all Quadboard RAM banks populated, and user has the RAM chips in the wrong sockets (e.g. bank 0 is empty).

2. Faulty Quadboard.
 
My Quadboard is the 256K one. Firstly, I have set the starting address to 256 as per the manual. I checked which was on and which was off. All the RAM banks are populated. I did however get it the error code to change. I had the starting adress set at 512K and instead of 4055 it said 5055. I don't know if that is any advancement or not but it not be easy tracking down another Quadboard or equivalent.
 
Confirm that switches are set per:

5150 motherboard SW1: switches 3 and both off (all 4 banks enabled)
5150 motherboard SW2: 1=on, 2=off, 3=off, 4=off, 5=on (512 KB total RAM)
Quadboard switch 1 (switch bank 1): 1=up, 2=down, 3=up, 4=up, 5=up, 6=up, 7=up, 8=up
 
All correct. However now the machine refuse to display anything with the card installed. The fan will spin up but no display. However removing the Quadram card fixes the issue and the machine will display again.
 
generic486 said:
All correct. However now the machine refuse to display anything with the card installed. The fan will spin up but no display. However removing the Quadram card fixes the issue and the machine will display again.
Click to expand...
I think most readers will be saying to themselves, "That sounds like a capacitor on the Quadboard has just now gone short circuit."
Do you have a multimeter?
 
A little further examination shows that when the DIP 2 of switch 1 is down, the system will not display anything but when it is back up, the machine will boot again. Is the card conficting with the system?
 
Ah ha. The system booted with correct DIP settings (DIP 2 of SW1 was down) The system is taking a long time. The cursor is flashing a lot longer than before. It has been flashing for about 2 minutes now. Also I have a multimeter.
 
generic486 said:
Ah ha. The system booted with correct DIP settings (DIP 2 of SW1 was down) The system is taking a long time. The cursor is flashing a lot longer than before. It has been flashing for about 2 minutes now.
Click to expand...
Sounds like you are not used to a 5150. The boot sequence is something like:

1. Power on
2. Power on + about 10 seconds: Cursor appears on monitor (unlike the later 5160, no RAM count-up is shown)
3. Power on + about 50 seconds: Floppy drive LED turns on (POST checking drive)
4. Power on + about 51 seconds: Single beep from speaker (indicating POST complete)
5. Power on + about 52 seconds: Attempts boot from floppy drive (start of boot sequence)
6. Power on + about 60 seconds: Jumps to resident BASIC (no boot floppy present)

generic486 said:
Also I have a multimeter.
Click to expand...
No need now.
 
I know that there was no RAM count and that it was supposed to take that long. However the card has gone back to it's old ways again. 4055 error again. However, I enabled parity and now I am able to boot from a floppy whilst the computer has this memory error.
 
Yes it is.
Wow, I just got a shock. Literally. I was turning of the computer and my elbow must of touched the case.
 
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I don't know. It's too warm this time of the year. I had the same problem with the 5170. Oh well.
Well, I don't believe it. It is posting with no errors. Looks as if the switches had to be moved a few times. Thanks modem 7.
I'll just take some time to see if the problem really is fixed.
 
Knew it was too good to be true. The system was accentially configured as 256K instead of 512K. Still errors. And it seems that the floppy drive will no longer work. I have cleaned the heads but still no go. Maybe I need another disk.
EDIT: Disk is fine. The floppy drive is not trying to boot from the floppy. It is just going into basic.
 
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switch 1 was in the off position. The floppy drive lights up and the motor spins but the heads do not move.
 
During the 'diskette drive test' part of the 5150 POST, the POST moves the heads of A: out to cylinder 34. That happens irrespective of whether or not a floppy disk is present. Later on is a boot attempt made as part of 'bootstrap'.

So when you write, "but the heads do not move", is that for both the POST and the boot attempt, or just the boot attempt?

If the latter, then dirty heads (very dirty heads) is still a possibility. If the bootstrap code in the BIOS can't read the boot sector (on cylinder 0) on the floppy disk, it's simply going to abort - no move off cylinder 0 will occur.
 
I mean the heads do move when they seek but they do not make an attempt to read the disk. The heads do not re read the disk e.g. move the heads back and forth several times. I've cleaned it like 4 times and it was working before. The boot disk I have used has never causes any of my drives to be needing to be cleaned.
 
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