I have a MICS running system 4.0 and the NAM is intermittently failing. Tracked it down to a bad hard drive. I was able to get a disk image of the hard drive(block level) restore it to a new drive and repair a couple of fat16 errors. Once the new drive was installed the NAM gets caught in a loop. Throws codes 4c and 5e along with 2 short beeps and one long two toned beep. I'm guessing it wants something else from me. Is there a way it can tell that there is a new drive installed? I have block imaged a drive from my BCM 400 with no problems, but its linux based and quit different. Any help would be great. Thanks.
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NAM with a failing hard drive
- Thread starter setenvjt
- Start date
If there's a video connector hook up a monitor and watch the boot sequence to see where it's getting stuck. If you made an image of the failing drive I would guess that you copied some bad sectors or a software corruption.
Brian Cox
Oregon Phone
Brian Cox
Oregon Phone
misseditbythatmuch
Technical User
What size drive did you use for the new drive ?
- Thread starter
- #4
The new drive is bigger. 80GB. Not that easy to find parallel drives around anymore. I did a block copy so the new drive looks like a the other with about 76gb of unused space.
The NAM seems to hang at code 4C and then restart. There is not VGA port on the unit. Am I able to establish a serial connection with it instead?
The NAM seems to hang at code 4C and then restart. There is not VGA port on the unit. Am I able to establish a serial connection with it instead?
It could be the NAM doesn't recognize a hard drive that big. It uses the OS/2 Warp operating system. The serial port won't let you watch the boot up. If you can find an old ISA video card just plug it into an empty slot and you can then see what's going on.
Brian Cox
Oregon Phone
Brian Cox
Oregon Phone
About 20GB is the biggest hard drive I've seen in a NAM. I usually use either the same size or slightly larger when I image a hard drive for a NAM. If it's an Applications Module II my experience is that it has to be exactly the same size as the original hard drive.
Brian Cox
Oregon Phone
Brian Cox
Oregon Phone
misseditbythatmuch
Technical User
I have only fought the NAM drive battle once, in an early copper NAM, and I found that I had to find a 540MB HDD to make it work. I tried a larger drive (in that case, a 40GB) and I could never get os/2 to properly see the drive, even when I made a smaller partition on the drive before installing. I ended up having to find a legacy NOS 540MB drive, and then things worked out ok.
I saved this from an old thread, and thus do not take any credit for it but I do not have the header for it so I cannot offer proper attribution for it; however, it may help you decode some of the beep-codes.
NAM CODES
Code Beep Description
19 2-3-2 Screen memory test
1A 2-3-2 Screen retrace test
27 3-2-4 CMOS mem compare
28 3-3-1 Mem size mismatch
7A Bad sector on hard drive
7F Disk in Floppy Drive
82 1-1-3 CMOS write&read-back failure
83 1-1-4 BIOS ROM checksum failure
84 1-2-1 Programmable Interval Timer test failure
85 1-2-2 DMA initialization failure
86 1-2-3 DMA page register write & read-back failure
87 1-2-4 DRAM refresh verification failure
88 1-3-1 First 64K RAM test failure
89 1-3-2 First 64K RAM parity check failure
90 2-1-1 Slave DMA register test failure
91 2-1-2 Slave DMA register test failure
92 2-1-3 Master interrupt mask register test failure
93 2-1-4 Slave interrupt mask register test failure
95 2-2-2 Keyboard controller test failure
9C Trying to boot a NAM that is less than 4.0 on a 4.0 or greater Norstar.
SW8 is OFF but VGA card is removed.
A0 3-1-1 Timer tick interrupt, test failure
A1 3-1-2 Timer Ch.2 test failure
A3 3-1-4 Time of Day clock test failure
Other miscellaneous codes
Code Description
01 Power Management level 1
02 Power Management level 2
03 Power Management level 3
9C Video Error
Another use for the port 80 display will be to blink, out the Setup and POST (Power On Self Test) error codes when a monitor is not connected. These error codes are generated by BIOS and are normally seen on the monitor screen (162 setup error, etc.).
If the system displays Setup and POST errors on the screen, it also begins blinking out the two byte codes to the port 80 display over and over. For example, if there is a 0162 (setup error) and a 0604 (diskette error) would be seen on the port 80 display. Change CPU switch 5 to display codes.
Port 80 Meaning
EE Error header
01
62 162 error
setup error
FE Error header
06
04 604 error
diskette error
Repeat list of codes
EE Error header
17
80 1780 error
hard drive error
I saved this from an old thread, and thus do not take any credit for it but I do not have the header for it so I cannot offer proper attribution for it; however, it may help you decode some of the beep-codes.
NAM CODES
Code Beep Description
19 2-3-2 Screen memory test
1A 2-3-2 Screen retrace test
27 3-2-4 CMOS mem compare
28 3-3-1 Mem size mismatch
7A Bad sector on hard drive
7F Disk in Floppy Drive
82 1-1-3 CMOS write&read-back failure
83 1-1-4 BIOS ROM checksum failure
84 1-2-1 Programmable Interval Timer test failure
85 1-2-2 DMA initialization failure
86 1-2-3 DMA page register write & read-back failure
87 1-2-4 DRAM refresh verification failure
88 1-3-1 First 64K RAM test failure
89 1-3-2 First 64K RAM parity check failure
90 2-1-1 Slave DMA register test failure
91 2-1-2 Slave DMA register test failure
92 2-1-3 Master interrupt mask register test failure
93 2-1-4 Slave interrupt mask register test failure
95 2-2-2 Keyboard controller test failure
9C Trying to boot a NAM that is less than 4.0 on a 4.0 or greater Norstar.
SW8 is OFF but VGA card is removed.
A0 3-1-1 Timer tick interrupt, test failure
A1 3-1-2 Timer Ch.2 test failure
A3 3-1-4 Time of Day clock test failure
Other miscellaneous codes
Code Description
01 Power Management level 1
02 Power Management level 2
03 Power Management level 3
9C Video Error
Another use for the port 80 display will be to blink, out the Setup and POST (Power On Self Test) error codes when a monitor is not connected. These error codes are generated by BIOS and are normally seen on the monitor screen (162 setup error, etc.).
If the system displays Setup and POST errors on the screen, it also begins blinking out the two byte codes to the port 80 display over and over. For example, if there is a 0162 (setup error) and a 0604 (diskette error) would be seen on the port 80 display. Change CPU switch 5 to display codes.
Port 80 Meaning
EE Error header
01
62 162 error
setup error
FE Error header
06
04 604 error
diskette error
Repeat list of codes
EE Error header
17
80 1780 error
hard drive error
I believe that OS/2 Warp (version 3) has a maximum disk or partition size (can't remember) it can recognize of something around 2/3/4 GB, I once tried installing the OS on a 6GB drive with a small (500MB) partition and either it wouldn't install fully or it wouldn't boot.
It could also very likely be the BIOS which just won't properly recognize such a large drive due to its age and detect (i.e. number of cylinders) the correct parameters for the drive. Most BIOSes from that time period were severely limited in the maximum size of the drives they could detect.
I'd try a smaller hard drive close to the size of the original, but I'd definitely do as the other posters suggested and try plugging a monitor into it to see what the BIOS and OS says about it.
Another suggestion - I don't know if the drives used in the NAM are SCSI or IDE but if they're IDE you could try using a CF-IDE adapter with a small (512MB) card in there.
Good luck!
It could also very likely be the BIOS which just won't properly recognize such a large drive due to its age and detect (i.e. number of cylinders) the correct parameters for the drive. Most BIOSes from that time period were severely limited in the maximum size of the drives they could detect.
I'd try a smaller hard drive close to the size of the original, but I'd definitely do as the other posters suggested and try plugging a monitor into it to see what the BIOS and OS says about it.
Another suggestion - I don't know if the drives used in the NAM are SCSI or IDE but if they're IDE you could try using a CF-IDE adapter with a small (512MB) card in there.
Good luck!
joelunchpail
Technical User
Probably time to bight the bullet and upgrade
but i do have a nam that was removed from a R1T1 Mics a few years ago , when they went to a PRI, that my customer would probably like to get rid of.
but i do have a nam that was removed from a R1T1 Mics a few years ago , when they went to a PRI, that my customer would probably like to get rid of.
- Thread starter
- #10
Thanks for the info. Looks like the NAM does need a hard drive with the same size. This one being 4,223MB although the partition was only half that. I was able to repair it and get it going again. Looks like an upgrade is in the future. Not many 4gb PATA drives around anymore to choose from.
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