ISA 486NC motherboard PALs missing - owner of the baord / donnor board needed \ VOGONS

ISA 486NC motherboard PALs missing - owner of the baord / donnor board needed

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First post, by H.W.Necromancer

Posted on 2024-08-10, 14:17

H.W.Necromancer Offline

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Hallo guys, I am trying to help one member of our local retro PC community.

Right now, he acquired this very nice early 486 board. But some "scrapp head" managed to remove several of the PAL chips.
We know they are most likely not protected (locked) - he managed to read out the content of the remaining chips.

If any of you own this board I would appreciate very much a copy of the content from the missing chips - see the photos.
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Anyway, any help would be appreciated.

Thank you

Reply 1 of 4, by majestyk

Posted on 2024-08-10, 14:43

majestyk Offline

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I have a 486C, it seems the PALs are the same (most of them). Some of them have a "G" istead of "P" on the sticker and the same (position-) number, but this probably just means GAL and PAL.

My impression is the 486NC is just the 486C without the memory / cache card connectors. "NC" like "no cache" 😉

The attachment ASUS_ISA-486C.png is no longer available

Reply 2 of 4, by H.W.Necromancer

Posted on 2024-08-10, 14:58

H.W.Necromancer Offline

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majestyk wrote on 2024-08-10, 14:43:

I have a 486C, it seems the PALs are the same (most of them). Some of them have a "G" istead of "P" on the sticker and the same (position-) number, but this probably just means GAL and PAL.

My impression is the 486NC is just the 486C without the memory / cache card connectors. "NC" like "no cache" 😉

I think you are right. The TRW database has photos of your version, but not this one. Anyway I think the content of the chip could be the same. If you are able to try copying the equations from the chips I would really appreciate it. The owner of the board is a good guy.

Reply 3 of 4, by majestyk

Posted on 2024-08-10, 15:13

majestyk Offline

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I´m quite confident the PALs/GALs are identical, because the 486C also works without a memory / cache card.

Since these things get boiling hot when working I already thought about backing up all of them - just in case any of them "fade away" in the future.
Currently I´m building the Arduino dumper:
Arduino-based combinatorial PAL dumper

I have 3 ASUS 486-E with missing PALs, so I must pull this off. Give me some time and as soon as the dumper is working I can dump your missing PALs (except when someone does so earlier.)

And I still can´t figure our why everybody is pillaging PALs from mainboards before selling them...

Reply 4 of 4, by H.W.Necromancer

Posted on 2024-08-10, 16:58

H.W.Necromancer Offline

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Thank you very much! We have time. And your project might me useful in the future! You are right, backuping those chips make sence and even saving the dumps in TheRetroWeb, same as the bioses, would be a good idea!
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I think they are pulling out anything. This particular board is a scrapp find. Those dumds are hoarding chips because they find out you can sell even old eproms and IC per weight for "gold". Maybe they get more for the chips and the PCBs separatly? And many people are pulling chips with stickers just for fun. I can ´t even count how many boards with a missing bios I have. I am buying boards and then I am buying ICs to fix it from other blockheads. 😢

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