First post, by nilsnegativ
Hello and greetings from Germany!
I present you a very interesting 286-12 mainboard that is probably broken. And of course, I would like to revive it. But I need help!
I received this board as gift from my father sometime in the 90s and it was on the wall of my teenage room as decoration for quite a while. Recently I re-discovered it in my parents' house and took it home.
What can I tell you about this thing?
- I don't see any obvious signs of damage.
- The connector for an ISA riser is really weird since it has more pins (4 if I counted correctly). So far I found only one offer for a fitting ISA riser on eBay and it is on the expensive side. I would like the board to be working first before I spend (more) money.
- The keyboard connector is that 5 pin header and I do not have the matching breakout. I would need to cobble something together.
- The CPU was inserted the wrong way, I corrected that. In the photos it is shown in the wrong orientation.
Now the good things:
Epictronics did a video about a Canon A200-E(x), that is where I could gleam a lot of information. He also kindly provided some photos of the DIP switch settings ins this thread:
286 Acer 915P (N) showing and few questions
The bad things:
I build a GBS Control and Necroware's MCE adapter. But when I turn on the board I get no beep from the onboard speaker and GBS Control says no signal. The chips and CPU do get hot though. The CPU more so than I expected but I do not own another 286 for comparison.
So.. I am pretty much stuck.
I don't know wether the MCE adapter works and I cannot use another graphics card due to missing ISA riser. I cannot use a diagnostic card due to missing riser.
Any tips for trouble shooting?!
Could the CPU be fried from being inserted (and turned on) in the wrong orientation? I did not, but maybe someone before me.
I started working out the pinout of the ISA riser socket which is a bit weird, but I think I will manage. Then I could cobble together something from one 16Bit ISA slot and pin headers. Then I would be able to use a diagnostic card.
Any help is more than welcome since I would love to get this weird thing working!
Thank,
Nils
PS I managed to read out the BIOS. Am I allowed to upload the files here?!