G+_William Burlingame Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 I recently thought my PC had died. It would hang on the BIOS splash screen. I posted a call for help in one of the forums and got lots of advice. One was that the power supply might be a problem. A power supply tester showed the voltages to be spot on. Another recommendation was to check the memory. I have four memory sticks. I did some removing and swapping around of the memory sticks. It still would hang on the BIOS splash screen. I tried another video card and that didn’t work. I unplugged all the disk, USB devices, etc. and I was about to give up. I started to build a list of components for a new build and was ready to disassemble the system for recycling and spare parts. It bothered me that it wouldn’t even let me get into the BIOS. I finally remembered that the mobo had a pair of clear CMOS pins. I shorted the pins and it went into the BIOS. The BIOS screen even had a list to select how to proceed. One was to use the last known BIOS save. I did have to change the primary boot disk selection, but now all is well. I’ve been doing my own builds since the late 1970s and I’ve never had a need to clear the CMOS. My first build required that I solder all the chips onto the printed circuit boards. The system came as a kit with bags of chips, resistors, caps, etc. and unpopulated PCBs. It had an 8 bit Motorola 6800 processor that ran at 1 MHz with 4K of static RAM. I’m still planning to do a new build after Intel releases the next generation of CPUs. I still have my first system build in the attic collecting dust. Here is a link to some pictures of the system http://bit.ly/1CCdiXo http://bit.ly/1CCdiXo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jay Abbott Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 Wow, that SWTPC 6800 brings back memories. I built mine back in high school (1977). I also built the keyboard and TV display they offered. I built their printer also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Timothy Hamlett Posted January 25, 2015 Share Posted January 25, 2015 You still have it... that's priceless! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_William Burlingame Posted January 25, 2015 Author Share Posted January 25, 2015 Timothy Hamlett, Jay Abbott, thanks for the comments about the SWTPC 6800. I have it, but it would be a problem to fire it up. I'm not sure if I still have the cassettes that were used to store programs and if they are in the box, they've probably degraded and can't be read. I'm not sure if I still have a cassette player. I later added an 8" floppy drive, but I no longer have that. BTW, that drive set me back $1200 in 1970s money. I also later added an ADM-3A terminal (~$1000) and that is also gone. I also upgraded the memory to the max of 32K. I guess I could dig out a PC com port board and use the PC as a terminal. I haven't fired it up since I got one of the original IBM PCs in 1981. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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