VOGONS


First post, by NC Mountain Man

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I am just about finished building a 486DX4 100 MHz computer using an AOpen VI15G motherboard. The only thing I can not get to work is the Turbo Button. The LED for the turbo light stays on all of the time despite the system being at full speed, and the switch does not change the system speed. I am confirming the system speed with the "maxspeed" utility. The motherboard manuals I have found shows that the turbo LED should be plugged into pins 12 & 13 and the turbo switch should be plugged into pins 15 & 16. This matches the markings on the motherboard, expect it shows the turbo switch as being pins 15,16, & 17. I have tried plugging the switch into pins 15 & 16, 16 & 17, and 15 & 17 with no effect. I have tried two different switches.

Does anyone have any suggestions of what may be keeping my turbo button from working?

Reply 1 of 2, by Whiskey

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Hi NCMN, it could be that the motherboard requires a header connector with three pin spaces, the middle pin will either be un-populated or ground (black), like this example.

Screen Shot 2019-04-01 at 13.44.04.png
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Three pin Turbo Switch Connector
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You might be able to remove the header on the switch lead and attach two individual header connectors (Dupont Single Pin Connectors).

single_pin__42145.1384827624.451.416.jpeg
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single_pin__42145.1384827624.451.416.jpeg
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Dupont Single Pin Connector
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Fair use/fair dealing exception

I've done this in the past with fan headers and case headers which were not compatible with the motherboard I/O pins.

In my experience as well when the turbo light is on it means the higher MHz setting is engaged eg. Turbo on 66mhz / Turbo off 33mhz, also changing the turbo setting using the switch just signals the board to change the CPU clock on a full reboot cycle, it's not realtime.

Hope this helps, W.

I stream retro games every wednesday here & I dump the recordings here

Reply 2 of 2, by NC Mountain Man

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Thanks for the reply Whiskey! I went home last night and tried working on this some more. I made a three pin jumper to connect pins 15 and 17 to simulate a three pin switch, but nothing changed. I also retried jumpering pins 15 & 16 and pins 16 & 17 and restarting the computer with each jumper changes, but still didn't have any luck. I may just give up on it. I previously went to the effort to add a switch to the front of my case to act as a turbo button, so I would have liked for this to work, but in reality it would rarely, if ever, be used.