So I was able to find a keyboard to tie me over until the mechanical one shows up. So I was able to finally interact with it. When I tried to boot the first time I got the dreaded “Floppy disk(s) fail (C0)” error. Meaning the floppy controller is crapped it’s bed.
I know I had the IDE to Compact flash plugged in backwards but I don’t think it would of hurt the FDC/UART chip. I contacted the seller of the motherboard and he ensured me it was working when he tested it. I pulled out the sound card, ethernet and swapped video cards and got the same error.
I pulled out the motherboard and did a visual check and also checked the passive parts and everything checks out. So this leads to the Winbond W83787IF FDC/UART chip.
For giggles I tried to find a replacement chip but since the part is like 30 years old all I could find are complete ISA IDE/IO boards with the chip. So I ordered one. I’ll disable all of the built in IO on the motherboard and just use the controller. If that doesn’t work then I’ll extract the chip from the card and replace the chip on the motherboard.
I tried to do away with the floppy by using QEMU on my main PC and create a DOS system, install everything that uses floppies transferred to it and transfer the image to the compact flash card but the motherboard seems to not like the compact flash to IDE. So I need the XTIDE BIOS for that. I already have some prototype ISA boards on the way so I went ahead and ordered a few 74LS688 ICs so I can put together a option ROM board and get XTIDE going so it can see the compact flash.