Com port conflicts

[emporerconcerto]

I have an old P166 running 95. The old mobo died and I replaced it with a Chaintech 5IEM. It booted ok but the mouse wouldn't detect. It used to on the old mobo.

The two com ports on board are ok. Windows detects and installs but then lists conflicts in device man. The ports are using different irq's and addresses yet they are listed as conflicts. I have tried removing them and reinstalling with no change. I think the guy who sold me the board had the same probs. I didn't get to see a mouse working on it. Also, the com ports it came with are brand new.

The IRQ steering isn't going. In Device man. says it cant find the irq table. I tried everything to fix that and nothing worked.

I have tried all configurations in device man and the conflict goes away on the com listing but mouse wont detect. The computer properties shows the two coms as conflicting and the printer port as conflicting. Yet the are all on different irq's.

I have tried a working serial and a ps/2 mouse thru the com. Nothing can get through because of the conflicts.

It is an AT board and doesn't have the ps/2. I have tried every configuration in bios and in device manager.

Nothing is on the second com. I have tried to use the second com plug on the board. No good. Nothing else in the system is using the irq's. I took everything out but the graphics card.

I have everything I know and have 2 options left. Transfer the data I want to floppies and try Regedit to remove old mouses and reinstall. I dont know regedit so I dont know what to do. Or reinstall windows 95. I cant install over the top I have a different 95 cd to the original was 95 plus. I only have 95.

Suggestions?

I can't bleed the cmos to wipe any bad settings because it is some pre cmos battery that is attached to the m/board.

 

[edfair]

Attached batteries had a jumper , usually the 2 middle of 4 pins, so you could disable onboard and add external.
How about disabling the COM2 and see what it does to COM1.
At worst case I suspect you might need to disable all onboard I/O and add an ISA I/O card. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Snickle]

"I can't bleed the cmos to wipe any bad settings because it is some pre cmos battery that is attached to the m/board."

If it is a barrel shaped, usually blue, battery soldered to the board, there is always a jumper somewhere to clear the CMOS and the same pins are probably also used to attach an external battery.

 

[emporerconcerto]

I saw only one jumper wire coming off the board near the battery and that had "reset" written below the wire. There are other pins there but they have things like jp07. I dont have the manual and I cant seem to find it on the net.

Chaintech 5IEM motherboard. Socket 7. Intel chipset (430fx I think). I even know the bios code but I cant find the manual on any of the rare mobo manual sites.

I disabled com 2 in Device man. and removed it from Device man. and then shut down and booted into bios and disabled it in there. But when I rebooted windows still detected it.

Is there a way to stop windows detecting the hardware?

I tried just disabling the com2 in device man. and leaving it in there, but the conflict remained even though it was disabled. Doesn't make sense that it still uses resources when I have disabled it in both device man. and bios.

Thanks for the help and support

 

[emporerconcerto]

I still have the old cmos off the old board. I can try and hook that up. I hope I don't have to solder anything coz i dont have the right solderer for it.

The old cmos was wired to the old board with wires taped (electrical tape) to the battery somehow. I will yank it off the old mobo and see how the wires are attached and try to mimic that on the new mobo.

I will need to put some sort of pin adapter on the other end of the battery to attach it to the new mobo as it was just attached by a bare wire soldered to the old mobo.

Looks like the old mobo is gonna be sacrificed on the altar tonight.

Thanks people, wish me luck and if it works, you will here the shoots of victory.

Emp.

 

[emporerconcerto]

Is it possible that overclocking has overheated part of the chipset and as a result the resources the mouse uses to work are fried. Is this possible? I have reformatted and installed 98se but the same probs have come up again.

I have plugged a ps/2 mouse into the serial port to see if it was my serial mouse but the ps/2 didn't work either. The person I bought the board off has had same probs as he has left a shiny new com port bracket in it when he sold it to me. He obviously thought the ports were the prob.

So after trying all the settings in cmos and device man. to resolve the irq conflicts, I am suspecting that there is something busted in the chipset.

Even after a fresh installation of windows, it still can't detect a mouse. My mobo is fried.

 

[mainegeek]

Did you get a utility cd with your mobo and did you install it? Some have additional drivers required for use with Win95.

 

[emporerconcerto]

The mobo came second hand with no utilities, drivers or any kind of software. Just a lie that everything worked fine.

I have seen windows install simple drivers for mouses during the installation of windows.

I have tried using the mouse under 95 and 98se.

I have tried several drivers.

I have tried two different com port adapters in so many configurations that it would take a page to list with no success. Something on the motherboard is busted. And there is nothing I can do about that but replace it.

I will get another mobo cheap and try putting all the equip on that. I wont be getting it from the same place as the last one though.

 

[Jakman]

I have found there are comp port cables wired diferently, especialy older mobos. Try finding some legacy com port cables.

 

[emporerconcerto]

I have given up on that motherboard and got another one. I managed to get this one put together from scratch and installed 98se on it. (The first computer I have put together from scratch successfully.)

I have trying to get a second hard drive ready for a second pentium 150 system. I am doing it on this pc I just put together. I have formatted the new hdd from windows as fdisk wanted me to enter a label that was made up of weird characters. I got around that by the windows format.

Now however, windows detects the drive and it shows up in windows explorer but when I try to access it, I get a message like, "Unable to read drive specified; a device attached to the system is not working."

It has been formatted with the system files and partitions are defined. Yet I get that message. The settings in bios are correct, the hdd is detected and all. Windows sees it but can't read it. Scan disk shows no errors.

I am thinking of taking the hdd with windows on it out of ide1 and putting the funny hard drive into that ide channel. See if that gets it to read.

What mode should I put the hard drive in in the bios settings. I think it is in chs mode or mode 3 or 4.

Anyway, very happy that I finally succeeded in putting a computer together from scratch and getting it to work. Now for the second one. Then an experiment in networking.

 

[edfair]

Your best bet is auto detect. And there may be a choice in the BIOS to actually run an autodetect section that will give you the options you could use if you wnat to enter chs.
Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[emporerconcerto]

I formatted the hard drive from a windows environment as it had strange characters for a label and I had prob's typing those labels in dos. After this I formatted it and created partitions in dos but I still cant get windows to view the drive.

I still get a message like before (Unable to read drive specified; a device attached to the system is not working.&quot I tried putting the drive in each possible mode in cmos but still have the same problems in dos. When trying to read or format or anything I get: (Invalid media type; abort, retry, fail).

I took the primary hard drive out (with win98se on it) and put the problem drive in thinking the prob was maybe on the second IDE channel. Same result in dos. I formatted the drive first in windows to clear the Hebrew/Greek letters used for the label. Then formatted it in dos and created a primary dos partition on it. Still the same results in both windows and dos.

I have tried changing the jumpers on the drive with no success. I have tried each different mode in cmos, including auto detect. There is nothing wrong with the cables as the same parts work on the other 98se hard drive.

Is it the master boot record (only needed on primary boot disk I believe) or what? Anyone had this problem. The drive is a 1.2 gig seagate hdd.