I have an old 486 system here with a NewTech/ SMT486 Terminator mainboard. The onboard parallel/serial ports do not work, don’t know why. Therefore I bought an used ISA card. But I can’t identify it. Could you take a look at these pictures? I suppose that I have to configure it somehow, probably by using jumpers.
I’d like to use win3.11, but without a mouse it’s not possible.
from fcc id: Expert Electronic Company Ltd - IQ6 (Taiwan) Serial/Parallel I/O Card
from TH99 or TRW it is the "UNIDENTIFIED AT BUS I/O CARD 0001 " https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/unkn … s-i-o-card-0001
added: currently jumpered as HD on irq14, floppy enabled. Com 1 (J3) irq 4 port 3f8, Com2 (j2) irq3 port 2f8. LPT irq7 port 3f8.
Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun
I have an old 486 system here with a NewTech/ SMT486 Terminator mainboard. The onboard parallel/serial ports do not work, don’t know why.
Are you aware that there are two common pinouts for the pin headers of parallel and serial ports? One looks like this
16 7 8 9 . 21 2 3 4 5
for a 9-pin serial port, while the other one looks like
12 4 6 8 . 21 3 5 7 9
On-board ports most commonly use the first pinout, while dedicated I/O cards most commonly use the second pinout. The first one has the pin order on the header quite close to the mechanical positions on the actual port, allowing cheaply produced cables, whereas the second one follows the de-facto standard for numbering pin headers. If on-board ports don't work, it is likely you connected the wrong type of break-out cable to them.
Therefore I bought an used ISA card. But I can’t identify it. Could you take a look at these pictures? I suppose that I have to configure it somehow, probably by using jumpers.
It is quite likely that the card is already set up in "default configuration". Disable the on-board ports to get rid of potential conflicts. The jumpers most likely work like this: JP2 sets the IRQs. The IRQ of one serial port is set by jumpering one combination of 1-16, 2-15 or 3-14 (with 1-15 already set), the other serial port is set by jumpering one combination of 4-13, 5-12 or 6-11 (4-13 already set). The last two positions select IRQ5 or IRQ7 for the parallel port (7-10 or 8-9, with 8-9 already set). You can find out more by looking at the traces from the jumper pins to the ISA IRQ connections.
JP3 possibly enables/disables the floppy controller, which is the chip below the "QC passed" label. JP6 most likely configures the base addresses for the two serial ports and the parallel port, with two jumpers per port. Looking at an I/O card with the same chip according the The Retro Web (https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/form … -o-pm-540g#docs), both jumpers open for a port means "port disabled", and the other combinations choose from three possible base addresses. If you plug this card into a working 486-class (or Pentium-class) computer, the BIOS will likely output a "system configuration" box with all the detected port base addresses, making it easy to find the meaning of the jumpers by experimentation.
I have no idea what J9 might be for, though.
Addendum: Horun beat me to it. Horun has the link to the correct card on The Retro Web, which I didn't find since I included the I/O controller chip type in my search.
It is worth checking the pinout of the connectors on the motherboard against the serial port cable as suggested in the above post. I have had ports not work for this reason
Installing the card, you would also need to set the card a bit more... J9 to 2-3 (hopefully it turns the HD side off completely, and not JUST the interrupt!) and JP3 to open
Hello, it took some time but I did install the ISA card and checked the serial pin layout of the mainboard. Everything looked fine but it didn’t work. The culprit was a serial->ps2 adapter, see attached image!!!! I purchased an old serial mouse from eBay and it did function instantly (mainboard serial port 1, driver from phil).
Was the adapter specifcially paired with the PS/2 mouse you were using?
These things aren't generic - there's no standard for them, so pinouts can vary, but more importantly, the controller chip in the mouse needs to support the serial protocol. Most don't. So you need a specific PS/2 mouse that supports serial for this to work, and the adapter needs to have the correct pinout for that specific device.
Same applies for passive USB-PS/2 adapters: the USB mouse or keyboard needs to additionally support PS/2 protocol as well as the pinout of the adapter needs to match what the specific mouse is expecting.
The only way to attach random PS/2 mice to serial is using an active converter (such as Serda's PS2TOSERIAL), same goes for USB - only active converters will 'just work' with andy device.
