First post, by xorlof
Looking at the major chips on a 286 motherboard I have beside me, I haven't found anything that looks like it needs voltages other than 5V. With a careful selection of surrounding components, do you think it possible to boot and use such a system with 5V only? Can anyone think of any way there would be damage to the system if I tried?
Aside from the motherboard itself, I need to power
- the ram and processor, which are 5V
- a vga card--the one I have on hand looks to be 5V only; it doesn't even have isa pins for -5V, -12V, or +12V
- a sound card--ditto, although a handful of cards use -5V at the very least
- the keyboard, which should be fine
- a compactflash drive, which should be ok with 5V
- an isa i/o card to interface with the drive--This is the biggest question mark for me. The multi i/o card I have on hand (typical assortment of serial, parallel, floppy, ide, game) does look like it wants +12V and -12V, but I'm not sure which devices need which voltages. I'm guessing serial serial might not work, but how about the IDE port?
Thoughts? Thanks in advance.