Old Ali chipset help

[ctk1981]

I just visited an older mans house to take a look at his computer that they recieved from there daughter (hand me down deal). Anyways, its an Acer computer that was manufacturered in 98, came with windows 95 and has two usb ports (AMD 233mhz Ali chipset of some sort)....which are apparently disabled in the bios. They arent listed as being installed in the device manager in windows 95 or 98 (someone had upgraded it to 98 when I first got there). Anyways, Im trying to figure out what keystrokes I need to use to get into the bios...good Ole Delete doesnt work, F8-10 dont help any...tried the very old compaq alt-s method...no going on all of this. Ive emailed the company and hoping to recieve an answer but thought Id try here too. BTW, no manuals or documentation...just a restore cd that didnt do us any good.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: its CTRL-ALT-ESC. Now my new problem, after upgrading to windows 98....the Ali to USB host drivers are invalid....are there an updated set I can download, something similiar to Via's? Thanks in advance.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

F1 maybe that worked on a PackardBell FX boarded comp.

 

[ctk1981]

Tried F1 once also, and the escape key. Im thinking its some weirded combo-button deal you have to do. Oh well, if nothing else this outta be a good thread for different ways of getting into the bios!

 

[ctk1981]

Bump for my new edit and new found problem:


working windows 98 drivers for the Ali USB controller

 

[AA0]

USB controller on that chipset sucks anyways, it is not reliable. And it will interfer with other devices on your comp, did for mine. I couldn't even get a usb mouse working.
Plus it has SBLive! issue, if that is in the comp, which I doubt.

Check ALi's site for the drivers, or you can look up the drivers from a board manufacturers site like asus. P5A should have the same chipset.

 

[ctk1981]

Okay thanks. I just wanted to get his USB working, his daughter gave him a new USB printer...and she kept the old parallel port one which didnt make sense. Anyways, this computer is very basic and plain, all the really use it for is card games and sometimes email. Hopefully this updated driver set will help out, if nothing else he can trade the usb one for the parallel port printer.

 

[AndyHui]

This seems to be the ALi Aladdin 5 chipset.

ALi only requires drivers for the AGP available here;

and the IDE driver, available here.

ALi recommends using the native USB driver provided with Windows.

 

[KGB1]

Is it with the M1541 Northbridge with PC100 RAM support and the M1543c or M1533 southbridge? I happen to have the M1543c southbridge on the Gigabyte GA-5AX and Windows 98 recognizes and has default drivers. If you have the other southbridge there could be a certain issue since that is for AT power supplies. Also the USB can have a ENABLING option in the CMOS. I have also had issues with power needs, the motherboard will function, but if your power supply is not strong enough certain aspects (AGP, USB) will not function properly.

 

[Peter]

The USB in ALi south bridge 1533 and 1543 is perfectly OK too, and these are their earliest ones. They're standard OpenHCI controllers, Windows standard drivers work fine. You need to enable the USB in BIOS, no other tricks ... normally. At least the A-Trend board I currently type this on needed me to disable "Delayed Transactions", else it would hang after a few USB mouse movements. The PC-Chips M560 I had before that (same chipset, 1531 and 1543 aka Aladdin IV+ aka TXpro) didn't need this.

Figuring out what the USB header pinout is on those old BAT mainboards is the hardest part ... if that isn't in the manual.

regards, Peter

 

[MrBumpy]

If you are having any USB incompatabilities with the ALi Aladdin V chipset, there is a patch released by Microsoft that is supposed to help that. There is a link to it in the USB tech support section of the ALi homepage (http://www.ali.com.tw)