JIM HOLSONBACK wrote in a message to ROY J. TELLASON:

 JH> Hello, Roy.
 JH> Can't tell from your post if you're still doing email, but I sent
 JH> you an email this afternoon about that boxful o' stuff I'm going to
 JH> send you.

I ended up swapping MBs,  and then CPUs in that box,  after which it passed
the memory test,  but just now I tried to boot it,  and ran into problems. 
It booted the floppy,  started the memory test,  so I pulled the floppy out
and hit reset,  after which I got as far as selecting the video mode and
then it crashed on me.  Looks like I don't have a working system there yet
(and therefore no email at this point in time).

-=> ROY J. TELLASON wrote to ALL <=-

 JH> 
 RJT> Checked the battery,  it's a common coin cell,  CR2032,  and measures
 RJT> 0.5v! Never saw one get that low...  Pulled one off another board that
 RJT> was laying around here that I can't use for other reasons (keyboard
 RJT> connector's in a strange place),  and checked that -- 2.8v -- but it
 RJT> gives me the same result.

 JH> Hmm. I know a fellow who once solved just such a problem by using a
 JH> rat-tail file :-).  I'm assuming yours is an AT type mainboard,

Yes.

 JH> but with side by side PS/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse in 
 JH> place of the larger (5/8" or so diameter) older type keyboard 
 JH> connector.

Nope.  It has the older style keyboard connector and a pin header for the
mouse,  I had to use a plug-in header for the mouse.  Got a pin header for
USB,  the keyboard connector,  mouse header,  and com port headers along
the back of the board,  between the two mounting screw points.

I can't see a number that indicates what board this is.  It appears to be
VIA chipset,  switching rather than linear regulators near the CPU (no
heatsinks, a coil next to one of the regulators),  four SIMM and two DIMM
sockets,  nice shrouded connectors as opposed to the open ones for floppy
and IDE anyway (parallel and usb, comm, etc. are still open ones).  Bigger
chips are VT82C586A and VT82C586VB plus a couple of VT82C587VP chips in the
cache area, apparently (jumpered for) 512K of cache.  Nice board,  when it
worked.

 JH> BIR at least some of those I've seen have the ps/2 keyboard 
 JH> connector accessible, but the ps/2 mouse port is the one you can't
 JH> get to. That reminds me of a question I've been meaning to ask here
 JH> - - where can I buy a sheetmetal "nibbler" for a reasonable price?

Radio shack.  That's where I got mine.  They said in the catalog that it'd
handle 16 ga. steel,  and a box I also got from them claimed that it was 16
ga. steel,  broke two or three of the damn things before I got one that
worked...   All I had to do was show them where it said what and they were
happy to exchange it.

 RJT> Re-seated the ram,  and next time I power up it sees only 32M of 64.

 JH> Dang! You were really on a roll!

And coming down with the bug while I was at it...

I'm working on my first cup of coffee since Friday,  here.

 RJT> Tried again,  got past that,  and it hangs right after selecting video
 RJT> mode at the boot prompt,  with a couple of funny characters top left
 RJT> corner of the screen.

 RJT> Tried changing the video card out,  and now I'm at that "System
 RJT> Configurations" box that the BIOS puts up there,  and it's hung again.
 RJT> Tried setup again, saving it again,  and it goes,  gets partway into
 RJT> the boot process,  and hangs again,  right after "Freeing unused kernel
 RJT> memory: 112k freed".

 JH> I know you think that Linux is your friend, but maybe at this point
 JH> it is your enemy? Sounds to me like your HDD is now farkeled, and
 JH> you might be better off going back to FDD boots and diagnostics.

I am seriously hoping that this is not the case,  though it's possible
since the system tried to "fix" things on the HDs at one point.

 JH> You got those utilities on FDD for use with Linux?

Either got,  or can do,  if I can bring up *something* running linux that I
can use to write to floppy.  Should be do-able even on a 486 or whatever I
have laying around here.

 RJT> Yep,  Looks like I'm gonna be shopping for some hardware again today.
 RJT> :-(

 JH> My recommendation: look for something well less than 5 years old,
 JH> for once.  [:-D.

The problem is that in order for me to find something I can use I need an
AT style board,  which kinda limits my options there.  Once I accumulate
some other cases w/ working power supplies that'll be a bit different,  but
I'm not there yet.

 RJT> Or maybe not,  I feel lousy,  probaby have that bug that's been going
 RJT> around, and won't be going anywhere today...  :-(

 JH> Looks from here like you posted the above noonish on Friday.  I
 JH> hope you're feeling better now.

Noonish?  No,  that was more like 1 AM.  Or at least that was around the
time I gave up on things and went to bed.  Dang,  my clock must've been
screwed up again.  :-(

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