Golden Tee Fore 2005 - Failed to load boot file

[bravesirswagsalot]

Hi everyone, reaching out for some assistance as I'm trying to revive an old Golden Tee Fore 2005 machine.  I'm facing an error on the first screen of boot up and presented with the message "Failed to load boot file, code 3".  Now I've taken some steps to try to correct this, but so far no luck.

I've tried

• Replacing the hard drive and eeprom with the one from ebay.  Plugged the new drive in and replaced the eeprom only to be presented with the same error mentioned above.
• Tried downloading version 5.01.06 chd and 5.00.00 chd files and re-imaging the hard drive myself.  No luck again on either of these CHD's.  I'm using Ubuntu to burn the .img to the hard drive (does this seem ok?)

My specs

• Golden Tee Fore 2005 Red Board
• Eeprom looks to be ok (checksum passed v2.09)
• G45 chip

I'm wondering what else could be wrong? I've not seen any posts specifically addressing the "Failed to load boot file - code 3".  I'm wondering if the way I imaged the hard drive is incorrect?

[bravesirswagsalot]

My CHD files were pulled from a green board hard drive.  Would anyone have a red board CHD for gt 2005 they could share with me?  I'd like to give that a shot, although I'm thinking there isn't any difference.

Thanks

[mclovin]

There is no difference in hard drives green, red or even the 5 or 7 courses, hard drives are all interchangeable. I have a chd file that works but don't have an FTP site or anything to upload to.

[mclovin]

How about disconnecting the hard drive all together and try booting. Do you get the same error or a hard drive error?

[lilshawn]

make sure all the socketed IC's are firmly in place and there are no bent pins.

you can run a powerup test by holding down the start button while you power on the machine.

[bravesirswagsalot]

Mclovin, I tried running the CHD file I have under Mame and it worked flawlessly.  I'm thinking the CHD is good at this point if green and red boards have the same software.  Next I tried disconnecting the drive and the system gives a count down trying to detect the drive.  I read on another board to try a cd-rom drive in the other IDE port, which was detected, but still the same error trying to read data from the hard drive.  I also checked the voltage out of the PSU and it read 5.10v during boot up of the hard drive, in-case I was losing voltage while it spun up.  No luck there either, PSU, hard drive and software are all looking fairly good.

Lilshawn, I'll take the IC's out and clean them up to ensure they're good.  Would either of you know how to test the IC's to see if they're functioning properly?  Holding the start button takes me to the system tests, and everything checks out except the hard drive test from that menu.

[lilshawn]

make absolutely sure if you remove the chips you insert them back EXACTLY the same way the were, reversing a chip in it's socket will kill it.

I just use a screwdriver to pry them up a tiny bit and then push them down again. this is enough to scrape any crud oxidation off the contacts. if something has been spilled, the socket will have to be cleaned up with chemicals or replaced and the chip may be dead.

if you've replaced the harddrive you need to make sure it's configured as a master or of it's older, ideally "single"

older boot roms don't deal well with having a harddrive replaced in them.

the original drives could be configured 3 different ways... as "single" IE there was only a single master drive attached to the cable. these drives could also be configured as "Master with slave present" and "Slave"

newer drives did away with this configuration and simply get configured as master or slave.

the older eagle boot roms wait for the drives to report their status. old drives report "I'm master and i have no other devices" (single) newer drives report "i'm master" but don't report any drives or anything but themselves... therefore it hangs because the boot rom code waits for the other non existant drive to report "i'm slave". the newest eagle boot rom fixes this issue.

i'm not 100% sure as to the reason it works, but as you mentioned, attaching a CD rom fixes this issue because the CD rom drive reports back it's the slave and allows the boot to continue. either that or the boot code goes into checking for an update mode and when it finds no update, automatically boots from the master device regardless. (bypassing the check)

[Loopey1]

I have 2 boards here that had that exact issue. 1 was the buffer chips for the IDE port. But the other I fear is the actual IDE control chip.
So 1 was repaired and the other is a parts board.