PlaneShift
Fan Area => The Hydlaa Plaza => Topic started by: Elvicat on September 09, 2007, 11:22:18 pm
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Oki have this really old pc that's a Commodore PC-40, not the II or III as there seems to be thouse to but just this version, right i'm after some info on this pc like manuals motherboard info like dipswitch, jumper things like that, anything that might help, it's running but with the wrong memory config as the bios battery had leaked and i've put in a newer one that seems to work so far but as you can tell the bios info went away.
Oh and how do you tell what type of 5½ floppy drive you have i'm gonna guess it's a 360k it also has a 720k 3.5, yeah i know it's old but so it the computer ;)
any help here would be great
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Just checked the back of that pc, and it said PC 40-01 so i guess it's model I heh
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http://www.computermuseum-muenchen.de/computer/commodore/pc4040.html I can't find 40-01 :/
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i've seen that one a few times and i think the model of this is 1, on the same side is the model 40 III but it's not even close to what mine looks like
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I can't find that model number anywhere not even on enthusiast websites. you dont suppose it was some clone do you?
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no i don't think so, as i've read there are pc-40's around and i've checked the back for more info, found out it's made in germany.
btw i've found some places that actually meantion this model but very litle :(
also i don't find anything eather if i type in 40-01 but... on ocational sites there are pc-40 models
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There were a couple of models that they kept changing the names on. Best thing to do is post some pictures of the unit, and its motherboard if possible. Better even to post them on some old CBM fanboard.
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well here's the pics, first one is abit big but ok detail
inside:
(http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/1337/10092007113pk0.th.jpg) (http://img122.imageshack.us/my.php?image=10092007113pk0.jpg)
and outside
(http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/2932/10092007121lo9.th.jpg) (http://img77.imageshack.us/my.php?image=10092007121lo9.jpg)
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you could always try doing a search on the bios code or anything else it displays on the screen while POSTing
Another possibility is there may be some kind of code on the back. Every electronic device in NA has one, I forget what it is called right now but European equipment might have something similar.
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A possibility (altough unlikely) is you have a prototype model, before the PC40-III came out.
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miadon as i said there are model I,II and III out there, III however seems to be most common...
on another note, i've manage to scavange for some hard drives it might use, if they are working that is... so i'm playing with that at the moment ;D
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you could always try doing a search on the bios code or anything else it displays on the screen while POSTing
Another possibility is there may be some kind of code on the back. Every electronic device in NA has one, I forget what it is called right now but European equipment might have something similar.
I think what you are looking for is the FCC ID, printed on most, but not all electronic equipment, the FCC ID is usually printed on a sticker carrying the FCC logo, and is a two part code, 3 numbers followed by 1 - 14 numbers, XXX-XXXXXXXXXXXXXX. There are FCC search sites for identifying products using the FCC ID number.
The motherboard may also have identification numbers, or codes, but these are usually pretty difficult to find, however i've had some success in the past when looking up older system motherboards using some of the codes i've found.
The BIOS code is another method of finding the motherboard, however depending on the age of the motherboard this may not easy either, since prior to 80386 systems a lot of manufacturers used their own bios IC's, and these were not always recorded.
From the photo it looks like the bios is certainly pre 386, as it's a pair of eeprom devices with hand written labels, probably a 286, so i'd guess at the 5" fdd being 360K and the 3.5" fdd being a 720K single sided, but possibly a 1.44K as those may have been available, orpossibly a replacement if supported by the drive control card.
Looks like fun to play with, but it's not gonna run PS ;D
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yep it's a 10mhz 286 ;)
i'll take a closer look on the back and mobo areas if i see any fcc codes.
and no i't cant hande 1.44mb diskettes but it does use a 1.44 drive atm as the old one had broken down :whistling: but the bios itself can only handle 720kb diskettes
btw anyone have any idea how to identify what how big floppies the 5½ drive can handle without using it?
and from what i saw at post it's a award bios but with commodore edits
news on the hd front, i got 1 of the drives correctly inisiated aka real low level format ;) and got it to the right size, seems to work but for some odd reason when it's starting to boot dos it just stands there... if i boot of a diskette i can see the hd just fine...
the other hd dosn't have the right size but it boots fine ::|
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Hmm would not expect it to boot dos at all. I guess it could if it is a 286. Commodore had its own operating system IIRC might have better luck if you could locate a copy of that. I had a coleco adam which booted from a cassette. I think many of those things used ROM BASIC to run programs although I think the Commodore 40 was second or third generation for that company. Did Commodore turn into Amiga? Probably not I guess.
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erm billbous, it's a commodore pc :whistling: not to confuse with the commodore 64-128 range
and i finnaly managed to get the bigger hd to boot old dos 6.22 \\o//
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well I doubt the 5.25" is a 360k if it can handle 720k 3.5". But my guess is that it is a 1.2Mb 5.25" drive.
(from what I have seen on commodore sites and knowledge of floppy disk history)
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Must be a European thing I guess as I never heard of them making dos compatible equipment available in Canada. I suppose I might have missed it though and they did have them available here. I think my Adam had an 8086 [or would that have been an '88?] in it but I could be mistaken.
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urgh next problem is to install the whole dos 6.22 on the hd and that's gonna be a problem when it dosn't boot from 1.44mb disks... any ideas?
on the FCC codes and similair, only things i seem to find on it is S/N (serial) codes and it has no code at post just the bios name and version + the mem counter
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Is it possible for you to temporarily take the hard drive out of the Commodore system and put it into a more modern computer and then install the OS you want using 1.44 MB floppy disks?
if you're able to do that then you might also want to consider configuring the system so that you can transfer files to and from the Commodore to another PC using a null modem cable or a parallel laplink cable. Kermit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_protocol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_protocol) is a program that can perform terminal emulation and transfer files over a serial null modem cable. I use it to allow my 386 laptop running FreeDOS with 1 MB of ram to act as a dumb terminal for one of my FreeBSD PCs. I think it can run on a 286 as well though and it is very portable. I know InterSvr in MSDOS 6.22 can transfer files using a laplink cable but I'm not sure if you'll be able to easily do that between that and a PC running Windows for example.. I know there are third party non Microsoft programs that can be used for transferring files over a laplink cable in MSDOS too though. You might want to research that because you'll get much higher bandwidth out of a parallel laplink cable than a serial null modem cable. I've installed FreeBSD onto a 486 laptop I have using a laplink cable and it wasn't too bad.
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Make a boot floppy of the kind it will accept, fdisk and format the hard drive, copy all the installation files to the hard drive and install from them there. There may be an installation ini file you will need to tweak so that it knows to look on the hard drive. Actually I think that once the system has been created [format /s c: , I think] you can just copy the files from one installation to another so if you have a drive with 6.22 on it just make the boot floppy and then copy the files directly bypassing the installation program completely. In some cases the files may be too large for one floppy so you might have to create a self-extracting archive that spans disks. You do not need to make it self-extracting if you have a pkzip from the proper era.
The boot disk ought to have most of what you need to run dos anyway. If you are really lucky you might be able to run windows 3.1 hehhehe.
If you are unsure about creating an autoexec.bat and a config.sys get a hold of an old manual from a library or something. Last I looked my library still had that obsolete information.
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Ya it'd be easier to simply boot off of a floppy disk it will accept if you can find one. But if not maybe Elvi can try what I proposed..
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i don't think moving the hd is a option as it's not a ide drive but a mfm/rll drive and i have no nullmodem cables at all
i might however try and fix the files from a newly installed dos tho, that could actually work and i've sysed the hd so but it's only the basic boot disk sys so not much to use
and btw the 6.22 install refuses to use the hd even if i've copied over the install files to there, it just says to put in the orginal diskette and reboot and no a dos boot disk is not enough to use a it as the more advanced commands arn't there
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right got dos 6.22 in and it seems to work so far \\o// still i wonder if that comp should only have 640kb ram... i'm suspecting it has 1mb but how to activate it...
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To use the 'extra ram' above the 640Kb Dos limit, either XMS or EMS may be used depending on the machine and the size of RAM installed, you must adjust c:\CONFIG.SYS and add these lines below;
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS (80286 with at least 64KB XMS)
and either
DOS=UMB (8086/8088 or less than 64KB XMS)
or
DOS=HIGH,UMB (80286 with at least 64KB XMS)
for EMS try this in the CONFIG.SYS
DEVICE = C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE = C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM
SHELL = C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM C:\DOS\ /p
Using XMS is pretty certain to work, EMS may or may not, depending on memory and bios, at this age it's uncertain which will work best, so i'd keep a boot disk handy in case of any problems accessing the machine if you try EMS and can't get it to boot.
Another way to get Dos 6.22 to do this automatically is to run MEMMAKER.EXE which should examine the system, and decide on the best memory configuration, then rebuild the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat for you, been a long time since I used DOS, but from memory these are the options i'd look at.
edit*
Just realised, us over 40's have a use after all, we're the only ones apart from die-hard geeks who even remember that Bill Gates said that '640KB should be enough for anyone', and saddled us with a memory limit of 640Kb until we stopped using DOS. :D
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actually the bios is set to 640k but i'm not sure of the total size, there are a few chips stuck to the mobo then others that you can pop up if you wish
so the base mem is there but the over 1mb is 0 not really sure about how to check this stuff
i read somewhere there should be a jumper where you could set the mem to 512 + 512 but uh... hehe you know with nothing to go after it's abit hard
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You could always try the mem command it has several options but should tell you what is installed. The memory chips are very likely soldered to the mb they might have readable values printed on them in which case you may be able to add them up. If the bios lets you set an arbitrary amount it should be safe to try a higher amount. I think the worst that could happen is it will report bad ram and possibly not boot. I might be wrong so take this advice at your own discretion. If it doesn't let you set an amount then it is likely 640 is all there is.
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found some litle info on this pc, it's not much but still
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=905
that's most of the commodore pc's
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It is a good bet that these (http://web.ncf.ca/cr502/ps/chips.png) are your ram and/or video ram chips. Perhaps a search for the text printed on them will tell you more but they might not be available on the open net. An old electronics manual such as you might find in a library might be of use. Alternatively you could post a clearer picture --text clearly visible as much as possible-- and one of us might be able to tell you better. You should be able to just add up the numbers to get the total, which numbers is not always easy to discern.
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well i took a closer look at the chips that i think are the memory.
the solded ones had these numbers on them.
MD81256-12, thats the same on all the solded ones but the second row of text is this
8629 m64 bc
8623 m47 bc
8627 m33 bc
8624 m67 bc
theres one or two of these chips in the "plugged zone" to but most of these have different text
8644, next line same chip
hm50256p-12
another chip
tms4256-12nl
thats as much as i could gather, theres 4 rows with 9 chips in each, counting both solded and inserted making it a total of 36 chips.
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http://www.memoryx.com/ I find these people helpful with RAM questions.
:D
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well i took a closer look at the chips that i think are the memory.
the solded ones had these numbers on them.
MD81256-12, thats the same on all the solded ones but the second row of text is this
thats as much as i could gather, theres 4 rows with 9 chips in each, counting both solded and inserted making it a total of 36 chips.
How many soldered ones are there, they look to be the memory chips I think, the 256 is a good indicator as it is 29, your 640k is 655360 in actuality.
MB81256 is the chips part number which usually contains a clue about the chips capacity. The key digits are 1256 which indicate this chip is 1 bit wide, and has a depth of 256K. The 1 means that to make a full byte with parity you need 9 of these single wide chips.
The -12 is 12 nanoseconds the timing for the chip. So what I think you need to do is add up these chips, divide by nine (early pcs all used error checking) and multiply by 256k and that should tell you the amount in kilobytes of ram you have.
640 is an awkward number for these as it would seem you need 2.5 sets to reach that number. 18 chips would give you 512K. Is there perhaps a set of 9 with 128 markings on them? For example, in an IBM XT 286, which is an At-type 16-bit system, the last 128K of Bytes of memory on the motherboard consist of a bank of only six chips, four are 64K-by-4 bits wide, and two parity chips are 1 bit wide, storing 18 bits.
Sounds about right to me.
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there are 18 soldered and 18 pushed in, 4 rows with 9 chips in each
So what I think you need to do is add up these chips, divide by nine (early pcs all used error checking) and multiply by 256k and that should tell you the amount in kilobytes of ram you have.
and this just confuses me even more as i just go back and forth with the numbers
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Are the 18 pushed in identical, for the most part to the soldered ones? That would indicate to me a megabyte of ram but the video ram has to live somewhere on the motherboard as well. The 18 soldered would be 512KB of ram.
tms4256-12nl would likely be 4bits wide x 256kbits at 12 nano-seconds. You can search for the chip numbers but most of the relevant information seems to be locked away behind paywalls.
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erm that computer has a seperate vidoe card, orginaly it proberly had a hercules or something but now it has something beter in it so i think all thouse chips are ram and no the rows dont match except for 1 and 2, the other 2 are different
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The tms4256-12nl is a 262144-bit Dynamic Random-access Memory - 120ns,
the bank of 18 soldered IC's is probably 16xRAM, plus 2 parity IC's, 262144 bits x 16 = 512K RAM.
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heres a picture of the bios screen but as you can see it dosnt hold much but line 8 and 9 is for memory configs and you set thouse manualy no auto config.
(http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/2373/21092007172fv5.th.jpg) (http://img137.imageshack.us/my.php?image=21092007172fv5.jpg)
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Another thing that can be helpful is the markings on the substrate itself, it often indicates what is intended to be put in the sockets. It is often cryptic to though.
Does it do a power on memory test?
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yeah it does a memory test at boot but only up to 640k same as it set to in the bios, if it actually has 1Mb it needs to be set with line 9... havn't figured out how yet tho, and if it's true that there is a jumper that lets you select 512 +512 i wouldnt have any idea what jumper
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Well if it has 1 meg I would think it is line 8 you need to change to 1024.
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actually line 8 maxes out at 640 and you cant type in your own numbers, theres only a few lines to select from and 640 is the last, maybe theres a switch on the mobo somewhere that makes you use 512 +512 as that page said and i have tried setting both line 8 and 9 to 512 but it didnt like it
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There were add-on cards that you could get to plug into an ISA slot that would test the hardware but it is doubtful you could scare one up now. They came with their own BIOS which took over before the one on the motherboard and boot into the test mode. You should try to identify that drive controller and the other two cards while you are at it. The middle one looks to be isa and could as easily be seated in the bottom slot. Is the top one ISA as well, the placement of the expansion slots seems odd, the middle card is an ISA slot, then a bunch of EISA and a final ISA.
Anyway That drive controller might be able to support an old CD drive on a cable with the hard drive. Then you could possibly use a floppy to boot from a CD. I don't know how that would help though, with your current problem. It might if you found an old test program that wouldn't fit on a floppy.
Sometimes you have to strip down to the motherboard to see what is really going on. There could be significant markings under the power supply or hard drive if haven't looked. Something printed on an empty space, a legend, timings or whatnot. It looks like the motherboard is fairly well annotated.
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I usualy just call these isa slots 8 and 16bit, the longer is just that anyway 16bit heh, so the long card is 16bit and a westerndigital hdd/fdd controller BUT it won't hande a cd-rom as it's not ide it's eather MFM or RLL type or both, the second small 8bit is a commodore made I/O card with 1 or 2 serial ports, the last card is 16bit and is the graphics card, some paradise i don't really have much clue on this card except it ain't mono like i think the orginal card was, i have a friend that has ahd one of these computers before but it died but i do remember that he said it had a hercules mono card.
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Ok It was kind of hard to see just looking at the picture. Just to be sure when I said "strip down to the motherboard" I meant remove it from the box and take the expansion cards off, not remove any plugged in chips. If you can get your hands on a 16-bit IDE controller it should work just so long as you have drivers for it. Pretty much any card that matches the bus.
My firewall has a vga herc mono card in it, It works fine and if I could figure how to unpack the X mono driver I could have an actual desktop. It is an 8-bit card.
got to go.
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i'd rather not touch the mobo as i don't have any replacement parts, i have a tendancy to scr.. up when it comes to stuff thats picky :-\ but i'll see if i find anything around that could be of use
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Getting the system to boot all the required drivers and still have room to do anything can be a real pain. I am not quite sure what you intend to do with that machine if you do get it running. Those QUE books "Upgrading and Repairing PC's" are pretty detailed and if you could get a hold of an early version -- I quoted an 8th edition, from when pentiums started to come out -- you might find it useful.
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well it's up and booting just fine atm, with some small quirks but thats expected, the main part is that it's actually working and can be used if you wish as from what i gather this comp and to usual ;) that's why i've spent so much time on it heh
the only thing that boughles me still is that ram prolly will figure it out sometime just dont have a clue what to look at atm but maybe ill notice something, i can't even fasten the harddrive to the case eather atm as i'm missing some parts
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You could stick a network card in it and use it as a network client. I suppose if you had a lot of software for it you could do stuff, as people did stuff with it when it was new. Was there anything special about the commodore PC? You are using dos so I cannot think what it might be.
As for the ram there might be a dip switch on the motherboard underneath the power supply unless you looked.
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no dip switch under the power as theres no mobo there ;) but there is a dip switch kinda near the rams... but i have a feeling i shouldn't poke around with it without knowing what it does, it can also be seen on picture, it's on the right side towards the edge of the mobo.
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What is under the drive bay at the top left of the picture? Is the Mobo really irregularly shaped as it appears? What are the red things underneath the drive controller at the top of the board? I can't say I am being too helpful anymore but thank you for your replies.
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under the drive bay is the mobo and you can see the power unit down on the left side and you should be able to see that the mobo goes beside it, and yeah the mobo isn't squarish like todays mobos, red thing!? can't say i see any red thing there, maybe your seeing the mobo, even if it looks odd the mobo is 1 whole thing but just under the controller it's shape changes abit
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This thing, (http://web.ncf.ca/cr502/ps/redthing.png) between the drive bay and the top of the drive controller. Probably just a capacitor or something.
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i don't know what thouse are called but they are apart of the mobo and they arn't switches, from what i've seen these can be found on many older hd's to, they look like this, long and small with multiple legs
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well i've finnaly put it back together and the info i gathered from it i've placed in a list of computers of all sorts (still to be finnished)
havn't gotten the 1mb memory activated yet if it's even possible but i've had some 286 with more than 640k ram and that's no extra memory card, maybe i'll figure it out sometime or someone get's an idea and posts it here ;)
anyway thanks for all the help guys it was usefull over time hehe now to find some soft to put on it hm... some old game proberly ;D
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kingdom of kroz.
i miss my tandy btw.
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okay... i've started up on this oldie once more and now i'm trying to figure out it's age but not really found anything usefull as the 84 number on it's back seems to be something else.
however i found these numbers on the mobo itself
PC/900-2 PB85065-(1)-2Fi
S/N:A0407956-E
003584
if anyone got an idea please post, i know from past experiance that this one is hard to get any info from :-\
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You might try checking the bios version, the copyright notice will give you an idea. It should be one of the first things that gets displayed on the screen if anything is. You could maybe search that in a repair manual...
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it's a old award bios but editoed by commodore something like version 3.0 but thats about it, there's almost no info at all there and very litle edit options, i've prolly said something like this earlier in this thread
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No I meant the on screen info that shows before the post completes not what you get when you enter the bios. If you hit the pause button when there is just a little text on the screen you should be able to take down the exact text. Maybe not though. other than that I can't offer much help.
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well here's the pics, first one is abit big but ok detail
inside:
(http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/1337/10092007113pk0.th.jpg) (http://img122.imageshack.us/my.php?image=10092007113pk0.jpg)
and outside
(http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/2932/10092007121lo9.th.jpg) (http://img77.imageshack.us/my.php?image=10092007121lo9.jpg)
She's beautiful!. :love:
Kinda reminds me of my first love... I mean computer. A Commodore Plus/4. *Sighs*
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No I meant the on screen info that shows before the post completes not what you get when you enter the bios. If you hit the pause button when there is just a little text on the screen you should be able to take down the exact text. Maybe not though. other than that I can't offer much help.
theres no post screen on this comp just a litle info when it comes to life and thats the bios version and copyright stuff of award and commodore
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That is what I am talking about, perhaps it is more minimal than I expect but if there is some kind of code with the copyright it could be significant. Basically anything like an alphanumeric. They were used to give information about the hardware the bios was designed for back in the days when none of that was printed on the mb. Still it may be a blind alley even if it is as I suggested..
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no there isn't anything else when it boots no extra numbers just the bios version number and copyright, the only nunmbers i found where on the mobo itself but no date atleast not yet