HELP! Noob Building a Parallel Port ROM HackStation . . .

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

. . . as if I didn't already have enough on my plate, now I'm trying hack a PC together for Mac ROM burning playtime! :

So far so good, almost. I had snagged an ATX MoBo on eBay a couple or three years back. I figured the very heatsink would come in handy even if nothing else worked, though it was purported to be good, IIRC. I have to search for the info on it here a/o pull what I've got together all apart and just read the friggin' board if it's not something basic I'm doing wrong.

I installed a new, when I bought it, unused 500W ATX PSU and plugged it in.

I hooked up the secondary exhaust fan in the case.

I located the power switch header by trial and error and powered it up.

No drives of any kind installed, just testing for RAM check, BIOS setup, etc.

Hooked it up to the Mutisync Trinitron, plugged in a wireless USB mouse nubbin and a wired USB KBD.

Hit the switch again . . . nothing but the noise of all the fans running, bopkes on the CRT. :-/

Anyway, it has PCI 1, PCIe X 1 and PCIe X 16 slots as well as a slot for a riser that I don't remember having.

A board with that kind of I/O shouldn't need a Floppy to poll in order to boot should it?

Could the missing riser card be the problem? :?:

I'll be hooking up PS/2 peripherals for a second try while waiting for feedback.

I haven't built a PC from scratch since the 386SX and CorelDraw box were waiting for the release of Windows 3.0.

TIA, gang,

jt

 

[IPalindromeI]

Are you sure you want a build a machine out of possibly non-working parts you're unsure about? Atom motherboards are cheap, CPU-included and often have parallel and serial included.

Older parts are not as builder-friendly. Get some new ones, really!

 

[MacJunky]

I would say it is more that random ebay-pulls are not very builder-friendly, but that is a different argument for a different time.

Did you plug in the 12v 4pin or 8pin power connector generally near the CPU socket?

I might also double check standoff positions on the motherboard tray to make sure there are no extras poking at the board from behind.

And do try to find a manual if the front panel header info is not shown on the PCB.

It is also sometimes helpful to have model numbers of parts you are playing with if you are going to be asking for help.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Yep, part numbers coming up along with a search for the manual. That was to be the next step, but I was out of time.

Had to see the grlf, it can't all be fun and games with the Macs, or frustration with PCs ya know! [] ]'>

There's a ton of crap I can't read printed on the mobo, so it's coming out in a few minutes for a photo-op on the copy stand.

I was hoping it was just going to be something simple, like the empty eight lug power socket near the CPU you just mentioned. I'll assume that's where the two four pin headers on the PSU harness ought to have been inserted.

Like I said: I'manoob! :I

 

[markyb86]

Yep, CPU power is my first guess, and then check if the RAM is seated correctly. Hell, see if the CPU is as well.

 

[CelGen]

Grab one of the Pentium era Toshiba Satellites, slap on Windows 95 and hang your hardware off the parallel or serial port. Same thing I do for my Willem station and you are assured full compatibility and it's small. No need building a whole desktop.

 

[volvo242gt]

Heck, a Dell Inspiron 8500 or early 8600 will do the job. Modern enough that you can hack Win 7 onto it, if you wanted to, but still with a parallel port.

-J

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Boxes of parts and time I've got, money I don't ATM, so I'm assaulting the objective with what I've got . . . on several fronts. [}] ]'>

It needs to be Win98, '95 is too old to run the burner. I've used 98 before, it's as solid a rock as I've used running windows and I've got a license for it.

Piccies are up! [] ]'>





MoBo verbiage:









I'll link to the full size shots after I upload them on iFrog.

Does anyone have a clue as to what this might be? I'm googling for info in the AM. |)

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.

Muahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :lol:

I gave up on the unknown quantity with the cool heatsink and weird slots I've never had cards for and dug through the MoBo Box. I came up with one that needed the spare old style power cord adapter, but it's happy as heck with the four lug CPU power cable. It has one AGP and three PCI slots, USB AND FireWire, IDE AND SATA, so I can't ask for much more out of a spare/castoff MoBo box.

It fires right up, the fans slow down, it thinks for a while and then tosses that lovely greeting across the CRT. Heck, it even powers down when I push the power button again.

Now I can look for that dratted Win95 HDD in the AM. [] ]'>

< decides he might just as well insall a DVD and see what this thing makes of an old ubuntu CD [}] ]'> >

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Well, it's booting to the account login for XP installed on a Presario I gutted. I'm in the process of chopping the poor Presario down as an assorted drive stack/card reader/hub/breakout box for the NetBooks, so it doesn't really need this drive any longer. [}] ]'>

ISTR reading something about removing a password to use a Windows install while leaving the user account data encrypted? There's even mention of password resetting on the MoBo. Any help freeing up XP temporarily would be nice. This is a bit newer MoBo than the Presario's so XP should work out fine. I can just wait until next payday as well, has anyone got an XP retail package they wanna let go for cheap or trade goods?

It's off to the Trading Post in the AM!

 

[IPalindromeI]

Windows does not take to hardware/computer changes every well - you're lucky it managed to boot.

Anyways, just reinstall Windows - it'll probably be a better idea. Gets rid of cruft and all.

 

[markyb86]

Did you already find this PDF about the motherboard?

http://www.daito-me.com/product/maker/Radisys/Endura%20EM945G.pdf

It's only showing support for XP + later.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Didn't know that about windows, I've never done this kind of thing before, I've only really run 3.0/3.1 and '98. I did use XP for about six weeks on HP_Mini before it did a spectacular crash and burn. After a week long horror story working with HP's offshore tech support trying to get it back upl using the restore CD and elevating the case all the way back to California, it still wouldn't work. I'd been booting it off a full-on ubuntu desktop CD during that week, so I installed the NetBook remix and haven't had a problem with ubuntu for four and a half years running now.

Doing a clean install of '98 or XP is the third thing on my list for this setup. Those two bookend OS support for the ROM burner. This morning I'm reinstalling this MoBo in a more civilized case that even has a front bezel and everything! This is quite likely the case from which I'd removed this MoBo and the MIA Win95 HDD. *****

I'll be setting up one of the removable drive bays to make swapping HDDs a snap in my search for the fabled Win95 drive. This week I'll be installing ubuntu on another drive the carrier instead of messing around with XP password avoidance or Win95 for anything other than diagnostics and possible future gameplay. I don't expect ubuntu to run very quickly, if at all, on this board, but it may give me a chance to play around with the new removable SCSI drive bays. A fast SCSI II controller came with my Nikon CoolScan and one of the collection of little Ultra SCSI server drives and adapters should make that interesting. I've got an AGP VidCard or two and a stack of dual-head PCI VidCards to test as well.

This may becoming a fairly palatable way to introduce a black sheep WinPC ROM hacking station into the still growing Mac fold.

***** I've liberated three extra wide (front panel on the right) cases to match the stack Radius 8100/xxx front bezels I bought from macmetex. This wild one is slated to become a PEx sleeper in 81/110 clothing when and if I get the ROM SIMM a comrade is working on to boot my board. The first case I got is already halfway to becoming a wild, internally illuminated, clear cased Radius 81/110 ubuntu GIMPbox. The generic clone I'll be installing this board in will be the wildest hack of the three if all works out. When finished, these three and the actual 81/110/G3 will be the supports for the first two levels of a future Radius display/workstation . . .

. . . one day, Finagle willing. ;D

 

[markyb86]

Ubuntu should run decently on there, maybe one of the alternate DE versions like Xubuntu or Lubuntu would be better though. It's a Pentium 4, so it should be in the GHz range at least.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Did you already find this PDF about the motherboard?

Nope, VERY interesting, thanks much for searching that out for me! :approve:

I've got thae alternate board up and runningalready, so bringing this crazy looking thing back to life will be another project! Now that I think about it, this crazy board may have to be the one for all the above playtime. I just realized that the alternate might only be up to running Win98 acceptably. It does boot into XP though. I only NEED it to run the ROM burner so dog slow XP may be just fine for that, gotta figure out what the alternate board actually is first of all.

Pics coming up during the case swap, so we'll see!

 

[genie_mac]

Before you install an OS be aware of the limitations of accessing low level hardware directly. From Win2000 on most hardware can't be accessed directly unless you want to write a device driver. So if you want to program the parallel port, use something like Win98 or you will need to get a 3rd party utility to allow access to LPT1 (the parallel port).

For my Win2000 machines I use the trial version of NTPort (http://www.zealsoftstudio.com/ntport/index.html. The only reason why I'm suggesting this is because I have used it and I know it works.

Happy days in Win98/DOS though, real easy to quickly write some I/O stuff in QBasic

Also my favourite resource for interfacing the parallel port is: http://retired.beyondlogic.org/spp/parallel.htm. Retired!

 

[CelGen]

It needs to be Win98, '95 is too old to run the burner.

What awful burner are you using that won't work on 95 but will on 98?

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Dunno, it's something that costs less for someone to buy outright and have sent to me from China rather than mail his real one back and forth, so I'm not lookin' a gift horse in the mouth.

It's cool, I've got one generic WinBox with all the ports and slots I really need up and running with zero funds spent, leads on all the documentation for that crazy eBay MoBo and I finally had a chance to spend some quality time poking around inside the BEAST from Tekelec.

I also learned a bunch of crap I'd missed out on over the years in the process.

In my book that's a great deal all around. :approve:

 

[techknight]

DLPortIO works for windows XP/Vista/7 32-bit.

I have a sivava-willem eeprom burner, and my machine is running Windows 7 X64. Which, nothing that supports a parallel port via a driver will run on any x64 OS.

I did manage to find a driver that works as dlportio/winio.sys for x64, so i got my willem sivava programmer going on win7 x64.