Friends, romans, countrymen,
To all who helped    RE: PC Won't Post, 'twas the battery & MOBO was O.K. Thanks.

I recently acquired the following and would have liked to set it up for a friend in need.
Program:   Unicore Chip Detect v0.72 2000.03.10 found the following to be pertinent to the MOBO in question:

BIOS Type: Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG  BIOS Date: 03/03/97
BIOS ID:   03/03/97-i430VX-02071997C-00
BIOS Eval: Release 03/03/1997S
Chipset:   Intel Triton 430VX rev 2
Superio:   UMC 8663B rev 0 found at port 108h

200 MHz Pentium, 32 Mb RAM, WIN 98, 420 Mb MAXTOR HDD, 24X CD & 3.5 floppy
Trident ISA graphics card.

Research has led me to ID the MOBO as possibly being:
I430VX-02071997C-00: Houston Technologies or PcChips or Mastonic 5500 or Zida (tomato board) 5SVX or MG (Microgram) or Eurone matsonic ms-5010

Further scrutiny has led me to positively ID the board as Houston Tech, but cannot find support in their archives. I've downloaded and read through manuals for HOT 555AEN i430VX & HOT 555EN i430VX MOBOs which except for the number of ISA & PCI slots & BIOS manufacturer are identical to the said HOUSTON TECH MOBO I have. No help there either except for annotations re memory limitations and workarounds which I believe is not the case here.

My problem has me stumped, for every time I install a PCI modem card and or sound card, the box hangs on startup[won't even POST]. Removal of the card will result in proper POST & booting. Have tried using alternate PCI slots with the same "hang" results. Both cards are new, and have tested each in different box and checked O.K. I believe I have properly set options in CMOS, but herein may be my error.

Introduction of various ISA cards on this MOBO are easily recognized by PNP which goes on to successfully update ESCD and offers to load drivers for them. But ALAS!, not so for PCI cards, though it has 3 ISA slots and 4 PCI.

Any suggestions, consolations, ideas, or comments? Perhaps I should resolve to use ISA sound and modem capabilities, but I would like to learn something new every day. TIA.

I should mention that the power supply was not ventilating and may be the reason for this box to have been donated but I have replaced with equal 200 watt unit.

Tomas Santos  [log in to unmask]


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