IBM PS/2 Model 90 XP 486, no post, no beeps, just blinking cursor.
From Ozzuneoj@21:1/5 to All on Mon Mar 27 09:45:59 2023
I was just given this machine by the original owner who said it worked when last powered on about 16 years ago. As the title says, when powered on it immediately goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor in the corner and never does anything after
several minutes. I am very experienced with PCs but this is my first PS/2, so I have no experience with these and I have no other PS/2 parts to use to diagnose issues.
The system definitely looks like it has received upgrades over the years, but they should all be compatible since they were working years ago.
System specifics:
Front of case marked PS/2 Model 90 XP 486
Front of internal chassis marked 8590-0H9
92F0161 Processor Card with DX2 50Mhz and 41G96361 ROM
20MB (8+4+4+4) RAM on one memory card
SCSI card, SCSI hard drive and SCSI CD-ROM (all disconnected for diagnostics) 2.88MB floppy (also disconnected for diagnostics)
I have tried the following:
New CR2032 battery
removed SCSI card and removed power from drives
reinserted processor card and memory card
tried each memory SIMM one at a time
flashed new ROM image to a PROM and installed that on CPU card
Moved J10 jumper position (was on 2-3, tried on 1-2)
None of the above changed the blinking cursor on the screen, and there are no beeps. The only thing that ever changes anything is if I remove all of the SIMM memory or remove the memory card entirely, it will give a 0211CZ error and a blinking cursor (
still no beep)... which tells me it is at least able to acknowledge that the RAM is there, but I have yet to see a memory test on screen at all.