tabm0de wrote on 2022-01-10, 20:14:

Ohhh im no the only one that bought this board, doh i did give up after few test runs trying to get a DX2ODPR66 overdrive working...

That's the red bodge wire. You can see where it attaches to and from in the "BACK" photo I posted. It connects to the jumper block, so check for proper continuity with a multimeter.

retropc5x86 wrote on 2022-01-11, 15:57:

tabm0de wrote on 2022-01-10, 20:14:

Ohhh im no the only one that bought this board, doh i did give up after few test runs trying to get a DX2ODPR66 overdrive working...

That's the red bodge wire. You can see where it attaches to and from in the "BACK" photo I posted. It connects to the jumper block, so check for proper continuity with a multimeter.

Many thanks! 😀

A viewer just pointed me to this thread to identify a board I did a repair video about.
This is a pretty interesting board for sure.
Has anyone figured out the pinout for the VGA connector?

Maybe this video can be helpful to repair the damaged traces
https://youtu.be/_ODJeOSuFvc

epictronics wrote on 2022-02-13, 00:59:

A viewer just pointed me to this thread to identify a board I did a repair video about. This is a pretty interesting board for s […]
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A viewer just pointed me to this thread to identify a board I did a repair video about.
This is a pretty interesting board for sure.
Has anyone figured out the pinout for the VGA connector?

Maybe this video can be helpful to repair the damaged traces
https://youtu.be/_ODJeOSuFvc

Could have been better 😜

tabm0de wrote on 2022-02-14, 21:06:

Could have been better 😜

Thanks!

Did you figure out what kind of RAM you needed?
I just bought one of these system from ebay and finding there not much info except from what you guys are finding.

ivannudem wrote on 2021-01-30, 23:16:

Hi, i saw a 486 board on ebay which was teared down from a techmedia 486 machine. It got UMC um8498F chipsets on it. I asked the […]
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Hi, i saw a 486 board on ebay which was teared down from a techmedia 486 machine. It got UMC um8498F chipsets on it.
I asked the seller about several questions but he/she didn't have quite good knowledge of it.
I attached several photos of it in attachment
I would like to know:
1. Does it support EDO ram or only FPM ram because I need to buy separately from other seller, I don't want to make mistakes
2. It has jumpers for 3.45V, so I can plug in a Am5x86-133?
3. It has a nasty 3.6V barrel battery, I'd cut it off immediately if I buy it, is there any good replacement? Better yet, does this board offer separate CMOS external battery pins so that I could connect a non-rechargable battery pack? I couldn't see it near the barrel battery area.
4. If someone has the manual of this board or any knowledge of how to configure it, I'd like to know.
Thanks
Iván

footlooseman wrote on 2022-04-16, 00:17:

Did you figure out what kind of RAM you needed?
I just bought one of these system from ebay and finding there not much info except from what you guys are finding.

ivannudem wrote on 2021-01-30, 23:16:

Hi, i saw a 486 board on ebay which was teared down from a techmedia 486 machine. It got UMC um8498F chipsets on it. I asked the […]
Show full quote

Hi, i saw a 486 board on ebay which was teared down from a techmedia 486 machine. It got UMC um8498F chipsets on it.
I asked the seller about several questions but he/she didn't have quite good knowledge of it.
I attached several photos of it in attachment
I would like to know:
1. Does it support EDO ram or only FPM ram because I need to buy separately from other seller, I don't want to make mistakes
2. It has jumpers for 3.45V, so I can plug in a Am5x86-133?
3. It has a nasty 3.6V barrel battery, I'd cut it off immediately if I buy it, is there any good replacement? Better yet, does this board offer separate CMOS external battery pins so that I could connect a non-rechargable battery pack? I couldn't see it near the barrel battery area.
4. If someone has the manual of this board or any knowledge of how to configure it, I'd like to know.
Thanks
Iván

Hey. It does support EDO RAM. I'm currently running my board with 2x16mb of it. Stability might be hit or miss though; I tried a couple of 32mb sticks and they kept failing memory tests, soft reboot no longer worked, etc.

tabmode on this forum kindly donated one of these boards to the channel. Thank you : )
The board I got only had minor cosmetic damage to some traces and all the traces are working.
I managed to get it running with a DX4ODPR thanks to you guys.
Attached are the settings I used. (the board hangs with these settings with the cache chips in place)
I'll do more testing and try to push it to the limits within a few weeks : )

https://youtu.be/7AIkJctDP8w

My apologies to tabmode - the forum won't allow me to PM or even reply to a PM that's directed to me.....

epictronics: The ebay seller these boards came from also had some tower cases that I bought several of. It appeared to me that these boards had been pulled from these cases and a Pentium MMX board installed in their place that doesn't quite fit correctly. I have two of these "barebones" systems with matching keyboard and mouse that I have not opened (I bought 3 of them). I would be happy to send you one for the cost of shipping. I know you stuck your board in a Commodore case, but I'm fairly certain these lived originally in this Techmedia branded tower case. They are actually quite nice - new old stock with power supply, keyboard, and mouse.

They are still listed on ebay actually:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/324957305191

And they have some with the 486 board still installed as well:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325034018130

If someone could kindly unlock my ability to PM that would be awesome. I'm not a troll I promise.

GD

GeneralDisorder wrote on 2022-05-30, 15:19:

My apologies to tabmode - the forum won't allow me to PM or even reply to a PM that's directed to me..... […]
Show full quote

My apologies to tabmode - the forum won't allow me to PM or even reply to a PM that's directed to me.....

epictronics: The ebay seller these boards came from also had some tower cases that I bought several of. It appeared to me that these boards had been pulled from these cases and a Pentium MMX board installed in their place that doesn't quite fit correctly. I have two of these "barebones" systems with matching keyboard and mouse that I have not opened (I bought 3 of them). I would be happy to send you one for the cost of shipping. I know you stuck your board in a Commodore case, but I'm fairly certain these lived originally in this Techmedia branded tower case. They are actually quite nice - new old stock with power supply, keyboard, and mouse.

They are still listed on ebay actually:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/324957305191

And they have some with the 486 board still installed as well:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325034018130

If someone could kindly unlock my ability to PM that would be awesome. I'm not a troll I promise.

GD

Thank you GD, that is very generous of you : )
I'd love to put the two back together.
Also, the Commodore has what I think might be it's original board on the way from eBay.
Now I can make both machines as original as possible : )

Many thanks 😀

Email sent.

GD

Here's the bodge I had to do on one of these boards:

GD

Its really sad that all these full mounted computer was in a storage so long, but at least all traces had minimal impact i would say of the boards I have seen, could have been worst 😉

I remember when I found the listings is was right after I bought my self a NOS at case ( without board ) from another listing and was so mad that it cost the same including a nice board. Still I’m more in to have digital speed display at the front which it doesn’t have 😉 but it has the new standard side case panel which is a plus 😉

Doh the price has gone way up since first listing they made.

GeneralDisorder wrote on 2022-05-30, 18:02:

Here's the bodge I had to do on one of these boards:

IMG_20220530_082516586.jpg

GD

Looking att this picture and some of the other boards I realize what a lucky board I got in the second video.
Although the board I repaired for a friend in the first video needed many bodge wires.
These VARTA batteries seems to vary quite a lot in how much they leak. I assume all these boards came from the same place and were probably stored under the same conditions.

I would say this is probably best thread to maybe get answer to my strange problem with one of the boards.

So the board have same memory and cpu, I just move them from one to another. But for some reason the display output on wolf3d ( pic3) is some how not the same as the other board ( pic 1 ), everything is fine and the same until I start a new game on one of the board. I added some pictures but i have not tried any other game but I don’t see why isn’t the same. I can’t be doing any thing wrong as all jumpers are also the same.

* UPDATE
I just notice it looks like to be the bar with health and so one that is missing and not overlayed on that picture, also missing in the loading screen in that board.

I also notice that this other board gives other cmos error then the other one.
Both do not have any battery connected and just psu which i only define the floppy drive in bios when i boot.

Normally i get on the other board:
CMOS system options net set
and nothing els.

But on this other one which has the wolf3d problem i get CMOS checksum failure and CMOS display type mismatch some times and then promted with enter password until i reset the bios with the jumper.

I have switched bios chip and still same problem with the wolf3d.

Are you using the onboard graphics?
Have you tried to see if it behaves differently with other graphics cards?

If the problem disappears with other graphics cards, I would swap the onboard VRAM chips next.

epictronics wrote on 2022-06-03, 14:58:

Are you using the onboard graphics?
Have you tried to see if it behaves differently with other graphics cards?

If the problem disappears with other graphics cards, I would swap the onboard VRAM chips next.

So i moved on to test with ide disk today 😉 for some reason its the shareware version that is not working on this board, if i run the fullversion it works without any problems.

I did add another card and wolf3d shareware work as it should on the board.

There is two different Mark on the cirrus logic chip, the one that shareware has problem has stamp "45116-303DL" and "9524 U" and the other that works has "45115-303DL" and "9523 U", I don’t know what that refers to.
9524 and 9523 might be date?

I cant see how the version works on one board but not on the other one, really crazy 😀

Would be nice if some one else that might have cirrus chip with stamp "45116-303DL"could see if they have same issue with wolf3d v1.0 😀

*UPDATE
I can confirm that wolf3d shareware version 1.4 works without the problem, so i would say some kind of bug on this cirrus logic chip, if it could be something to do with the stamps.

I did have to deep-six a GD5429 for being very glitchy earlier. It's possible the chip itself is faulty. 🙁

Oh well, makes a good excuse to swap a '5429 in its place, right? 🤣 All you need is a hot air station and a known good GD5429 chip. (Or SMD removal alloy and a ton of SMD flux and two tons of patience.)

tabm0de wrote on 2022-06-04, 19:57:

So i moved on to test with ide disk today ;) for some reason its the shareware version that is not working on this board, if i r […]
Show full quote

epictronics wrote on 2022-06-03, 14:58:

Are you using the onboard graphics?
Have you tried to see if it behaves differently with other graphics cards?

If the problem disappears with other graphics cards, I would swap the onboard VRAM chips next.

So i moved on to test with ide disk today 😉 for some reason its the shareware version that is not working on this board, if i run the fullversion it works without any problems.

I did add another card and wolf3d shareware work as it should on the board.

There is two different Mark on the cirrus logic chip, the one that shareware has problem has stamp "45116-303DL" and "9524 U" and the other that works has "45115-303DL" and "9523 U", I don’t know what that refers to.
9524 and 9523 might be date?

I cant see how the version works on one board but not on the other one, really crazy 😀

Would be nice if some one else that might have cirrus chip with stamp "45116-303DL"could see if they have same issue with wolf3d v1.0 😀

*UPDATE
I can confirm that wolf3d shareware version 1.4 works without the problem, so i would say some kind of bug on this cirrus logic chip, if it could be something to do with the stamps.

Yes, 9524 and 9523 seems to be the date.
My board is in storage right now because I only have space for one project on my workbench : )
I will try soon when I have finished and removed the project on the bench. probably in two days : )