I guess it's time to go dig in the trash for that bad socket, remove one of the pins and see how it actually fits in there... might be as easy sliding it in, but I don't know.
Either way, cool job, though... How could you have missed that one pin ? ! 😀
seems like that was one of those ARGH moments.

PCI slot would have same or similar pins in it, but it really depends on who exactly manufactured the slot. Different makers have different shape pins in them and they may not neatly fit that VLB socket.

Recently I got a board with a VLB slot where one of the contacts was totally mangled. Since I had no spare VLB slots to replace it, I had to take a contact from the modem riser slot of a dead board, which is of the same type as VLB.

However it was very difficult to get the new contact in place, even after desoldering the VLB slot, it took me a long time to fit the new contact from the bottom. I think inserting it from the top would be even harder (or impossible).

Tiido wrote on 2021-04-22, 18:52:

PCI slot would have same or similar pins in it, but it really depends on who exactly manufactured the slot. Different makers have different shape pins in them and they may not neatly fit that VLB socket.

I tried harvesting a contact from a PCI slot first but it didn't match... however there may be PCI slots from different manufacturers that could fit there as you say.

It should be noted that you cannot bypass desoldering entire connector, the pins go in from bottom end and are fixated to the plastic there too. There won't be success trying to get the pin in from top. You can make a PCI slot fit in place of VLB slot if you remove 8x pins and sand one edge down, this is what I ended up doing on one board that had no VLB slots populated.

If you are on a budget, you can always use a PCI slot (and cut the last 4 set of contacts, since it has 8 more pins than the VLB slot, thus longer).
If you are lucky, it will fit without cutting, just make sure to remove the unused pins from the slot.

It won't look original, but it works really well (+ it's easier to insert VLB cards).

Thanks for all the info and suggestions!

Looks like I just earned myself some bonus work. 🙁

I will try to find a PCI socket with the same type of contacts in my stock of riser cards that I use to harvest ISA sockets. After desoldering I will pull one contact and report the details here.

P.S.: The old slot I removed is no option, the garbage collection was this morning.

majestyk wrote on 2021-04-22, 19:24:

P.S.: The old slot I removed is no option, the garbage collection was this morning.

Let that be a lesson to ya. Never ever throw away gold 😁

edit: yes I know it's a very tiny amount.

By the way, only a 2 mm area of the contacts, where they touch the inserted card, are gold plated.
Today I desoldered a PCI socket that happened to have the very same contacts as the VLB slot and removed a few of them. The end at the bottom is indeed thicker.

It´s nearly impossible to insert it from the top as some of you already said. So I had to completely remove the VLB slot - again.
The transplanted contact fitted perfectly and the socket could be soldered on the mainboard again.
The solderings still look acceptable.

Finally the second VLB slot is alive again. (There´s a DX50 on this board, I had to underclock it at 40 MHz or the VLB card wouldn´t work.)

If there´s a lesson to be learned here it´s to very carefully inspect components with many pins b e f o r e fitting them in.

Excellent work I'm glad to see you were able to fix the slot and get it functional again.

So am I!
But it´s an awful lot of soldering work.

Oh yes it is. It's something I wish I was better at. I have very basic soldering skills but something like this is currently outside of my wheelhouse

While at it I used the remaining PCI-socket to replace one of the VLB sockets on the donor riser-card.
And still there are 6 contact left for future cases.

I’m looking for this vlb riser for more than a year. Anyone knows what is it or where to get it, please?

That motherboard is poorly designed to run 50MHz. Too long tracks from CPU socket to VLB slots.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-06-24, 20:07:

That motherboard is poorly designed to run 50MHz. Too long tracks from CPU socket to VLB slots.

Cheers,

That´s more like it: