Brickpad wrote:

My folks have that exact same receiver. Bought it brand new, along with two Bose speakers, and a Sony dual-cassette player, in 1993.

I just hooked the Sony up to my old (but good) Dahlquist speakers and was pleasantly surprised. Audio quality was quite good at reasonable volume levels. It clearly struggled at higher volumes, but hey, it's an early 90s surround receiver driving a relatively inefficient pair of speakers.

stereo integrated amps from around the same time definitely have a cleaner sound and do a far better job of driving low impedance speakers, but for a Dolby "Surround" AVR, the Sony isn't half bad. Especially with all of the cheesy effects disabled. This thing will do great as a retro gaming amp with my 8 ohm Kenwood speakers.

I'm tempted to bring it upstairs and hook it up to five speakers and an LD player, just to experience early 90s home theater at its best. Matrixed surround and all. 🤣

Saved a box of motherboards from destruction. Unfortunately most of them are pretty stripped down & all (but one!) of the CPUs were pulled, probably recycled for gold. Normally I wouldn't really bother but they were 8088 ~ 486 class and as we all know those are getting impossible to find, even just for spare parts.

(Apologies for the horrible camerawork, I got a "new" phone and have been having terrible luck with its camera. I didn't have time to take multiple shots per board in order to ensure one of them might be decent.)

If anyone wants to chime in and help me identify these or point out which ones are "special" in some way I'd love to hear your input.

#1:

#2:

#3:

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

#11

#12

#13

#14

#15

(continued below ... )

#16

#17:

#18:


#19:

And some rodents:

Of course I immediately had to barrel-ectomy some of them. Surprisingly only a few of them had leaked but I pulled them all just to be sure. The PC-Chips 386 seems to have suffered actual damage from the leakage but I cleaned it off as best I could. The complete DX/40 board had some leakage but looks like it fared fine underneath.

^^ ewwwwww...

Honestly, the AMD 386DX/40 setup w/8MB RAM was a good score; I'll probably hang onto that one and maybe a couple of the nicer VLB 486es but the rest need to find other homes fast. Just doing what I can to keep some potentially useful stuff from being sent off for 3rd-world disassembly.

^^ Planning to fill these in with some cache chips from one of the other boards. What exactly do I need to look for? This is on the DX40.

Also, not pictured but grabbed a mighty clean original Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite (the "ergonomic one") which I promptly plugged into my i7 workstation and am now trying out. I've been having some wrist pain so I'm seeing if the change in posture helps. It's got a bit of a learning curve but isn't a bad keyboard at all, the "y" is on the wrong side as it's usually a left-handed letter for me but I'm adjusting (I usually just cross the gap with my left hand which is "wrong" but works fine.)

xjas wrote:

#17:

Whatever you do with the rest, you wouldn't want to throw away a good working socket 7 board with Intel chipset. But you can send me this classic Gigabyte 430FX board if you insist. 😀

#18 and #19 AMD 386DX-40 and the 486 SiS board, also a Gigabyte.

The rest I'll let others chime in. Great find. 😀

archsan wrote:

Whatever you do with the rest, you wouldn't want to throw away a good working socket 7 board with Intel chipset. But you can send me this classic Gigabyte 430FX board if you insist. 😀

That's the idea, unfortunately we seem to be in the middle of a postal strike & I have no idea whether stuff is going through or not. Feel free to PM me though.

xjas wrote:

archsan wrote:

Whatever you do with the rest, you wouldn't want to throw away a good working socket 7 board with Intel chipset. But you can send me this classic Gigabyte 430FX board if you insist. 😀

That's the idea, unfortunately we seem to be in the middle of a postal strike & I have no idea whether stuff is going through or not. Feel free to PM me though.

#2 Appears to have 64bit PCI-X slots. Can't say I've ever come across them in the wild before. Still pretty cool.

Also, I PM'd you regarding #4 / Socket 3 PCI board.

Brickpad wrote:

#2 Appears to have 64bit PCI-X slots. Can't say I've ever come across them in the wild before. Still pretty cool.

I have a PowerMac G5 with PCI-X slots and I tend to run across a lot of server gear so I see them fairly often. I have a stack of about 15 Adaptec 29160 PCI-X SCSI cards too. Unfortunately that board is one of the ones I suspect is dead as the big array of solder pads (WTF is that for anyway?) between the two CPU slots is heavily corroded. It's socket 462 BTW.

xjas wrote:

Brickpad wrote:

#2 Appears to have 64bit PCI-X slots. Can't say I've ever come across them in the wild before. Still pretty cool.

I have a PowerMac G5 with PCI-X slots and I tend to run across a lot of server gear so I see them fairly often. I have a stack of about 15 Adaptec 29160 PCI-X SCSI cards too. Unfortunately that board is one of the ones I suspect is dead as the big array of solder pads (WTF is that for anyway?) between the two CPU slots is heavily corroded. It's socket 462 BTW.

That appears to be a spot for another CPU socket. Judging by the outline and arrangement of the pads, I suspect that would have been socket 754.

That spot is where the northbridge would be, had the board not fallen into the hands of a gold scrapper.

^^ Noted. Back to the scrap pile it goes tomorrow then.

xjas wrote:

Honestly, the AMD 386DX/40 setup w/8MB RAM was a good score; I'll probably hang onto that one and maybe a couple of the nicer VLB 486es but the rest need to find other homes fast. Just doing what I can to keep some potentially useful stuff from being sent off for 3rd-world disassembly.

Skimming over the pics I think you've definitely identified the best of the bunch. Shouldn't be too hard to match some of the cache chips from the other boards. Weird they have methodically removed all the ROMs, including the keyboard controller, but left the cache. It would be a pain to source replacements for one of those boards let alone all of them. However, if someone else has a broken version of one off these boards with good chips, they might snog you.

Yeah, I'd probably dump all the ones that're missing ROMs or keyboard controllers, but definitely yank all of the cache and DIP RAM out first. That stuff will only get more scarce. You could try to source keyboard controllers and BIOS chips for the more easily identifiable boards, but it would be quite an undertaking.

#4 is a pretty nice-looking 486 PCI mobo, so definitely save that. #17 also seems to be intact and might be worth keeping around. I you don't feel like messing with #18, at least pull the CPU.

That's a nice pile of boards. Hope you can get some to work, as you said it so perfectly. They are hard to come by these day's.

2. Is a dual socket server motherboard... Some one had removed the BGA chipset chips (North and south bridge) Dual socket 462 or Socket 370 ( its written on the socket it self)
(scrap it)

4. Soyo 4SA2 (socket 3) 486 motherboard with SIS 497 chipset.
(worth keeping)
Manual and bios files: http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=731

5. Generic 286 Suntac motherboard (10 - 12 Mhz range)
(worth keeping, can provide you the bios images) (also needs keyboard controller)

7. Turbo XT clone 8088 motherboard (think is could be DFI, but not sure or
perhaps magitronic) (worth keeping (needs the keyboard controller)

15. Turbo XT clone 8088 (needs bios rom(s) and keyboard controller
(worth keeping)

16. PCCHIPS Motherboard (type unkown) (386 motherboard perhaps early 486 motherboard.)

17. Gigabyte GA-586AT
(bios is there, could start *worth keeping*

BIOS: https://www.wimsbios.com/biosupdates/gigabyte/2A59CG0H

18. CONTAQ 386 DX motherboard (i have the same board here and think the manual also
(can provide you the bios image as well *your board also needs a keyboard controller*
(worth keeping)

19. Gigabyte GA-486VS (your board is missing the rom, but board (is worth keeping)

Here is the manual (just an easy google found)
http://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s … 127178174,d.d24

SqualStrife have the same board, maybe he can help:
Finally, my perfect 486.

If you want to scrap boards i can buy them over from you, those are easy fixes. If you cant fix these then retro-computers itsnt really your thing..

It wont getting easier on finding these motherboards if you cant fix them by your self.. Getting those old board is scars and the chance finding better ones that are complete are overpriced, or still needs TLC.
I know finding keyboard bioses isnt easy, but worth try keep finding them.

#5 has the same layout as the MORSE KP286 12MHz I have here. The 286 is also missing.

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/M/MO … -286-12MHZ.html

Robin4 wrote:

2. Is a dual socket server motherboard... Some one had removed the BGA chipset chips (North and south bridge) Dual socket 462 or Socket 370 ( its written on the socket it self)
(scrap it)

Yeah, it's a Tyan Tiger MP (dual socket 462): http://www.tyan.com/archive/products/html/tigermp.html

Standard Def Steve wrote:

The Presario laptop. Athlon XP-M 2800+, Geforce 420 Go, 512MB of RAM, 60GB hard drive. […]
Show full quote

The Presario laptop. Athlon XP-M 2800+, Geforce 420 Go, 512MB of RAM, 60GB hard drive.

Awww sh*th, these suckers came with a motherboard revision which is affected by the "cracking chipset solder bumps" disease. This model was mainstream here in Mexico, and almost all them are already dead. I hope yours came in a better condition. Also don't forget to service its dissipation system and replace thermal pad components/paste. Them get very hot when working to their capacity.

PD. Nice Sony system you got there 😀.

xjas wrote:

archsan wrote:

Whatever you do with the rest, you wouldn't want to throw away a good working socket 7 board with Intel chipset. But you can send me this classic Gigabyte 430FX board if you insist. 😀

That's the idea, unfortunately we seem to be in the middle of a postal strike & I have no idea whether stuff is going through or not. Feel free to PM me though.

Oh, I was joking actually, but that's very kind of you! 😀

So... Canada? I see... perhaps another fellow Canadian here would adopt the board if you don't intend to keep it yourself.

archsan wrote:

So... Canada? I see... perhaps another fellow Canadian here would adopt the board if you don't intend to keep it yourself.

A bit busy currently drooling over the 286 and 386 boards... but certainly. Better a new home than the trash.