Cool topic, feipoa. First one is for industrial automation?

That second board is certainly "SMD for you and me" - a far cry from early-mid 90s 486s

I wonder if the "ESA" on the second one refers to an extended ISA bus, or to the European ESA space agency? Either way an intriguing board, with not just an ALi chipet from 2005/6, but also a BIOS datecode from 2000 and a bona fide (and standard) 3-pin CPU fan header, a PC speaker, not to mention the SMD all over the place and of course the IDE flash disk. Very surprising to see a Dallas RTC in the middle of all this modernity 😉

ESA is a brand for industrial motherboards: Electronic Solutions Associates. The point of the thread is to see how late the datecodes went with these 486 chipsets. This information could be of interest when ordering replacement chipsets, that is, you can specify a certain datecode range when ordering.

I have one of those boards with the single PCI slot. VIA with 9848 datecode

What are the model numbers of that VIA chipset?

http://www.dfi-itox.com/pages/support/mbd/486vpc/g486vpc.pdf The manual.

Just noticed this is a different model to the one posted earlier in the thread. Interesting. :p This thing has a problem. Ultima 6 misses notes when an OPL3 is used. My other 486 PCI board has the same issue.

To confirm, you have a VIA VT82C496 and VT82C505 chipset with a datecode of week 48, 1998?

I'm all ears...
486 seems like to be the Jason Voorhees of the computer industry.

feipoa wrote:

To confirm, you have a VIA VT82C496 and VT82C505 chipset with a datecode of week 48, 1998?

The VT82C496G has 9848 and 82C505 has 9705. Sorry this took so long. Got busy this week. Those the industrial 486 MOBOs were made into the early 2000s. Check around on Ebay and looks at the datecodes.

Sorry to revive such an old thread, but I figured I'd contribute this oddity.

Recently, I purchased this American Predator Corporation Predator 747. It has a Chips & Technologies F84041 chipset, and a date code of 9944.

Corvalent, which appears to be American Predatorpost-rebrand, sells this same board here. I have no clue if this listing is current, but seeing as it's meant for industrial applications, it may very well be. I wonder just how late the date codes on the chipsets they're using these days are; I can't imagine that Intel is still producing these under the Chips & Technologies name.

When I have some more time, I want to make a real post about this thing. It's pretty fast and yielded the highest scores I've ever seen on a VLB S3 864 paired with a DX4-100WB.

Wild, design of board looks more like 93 or 94 maybe.

Has now an UR page with bios/manual available:
https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/537

Sorry for resurrecting a dead thread as well, but just got my own Predator 747 and the date codes around the board all point to a 2002 ish time frame, also the PCB is black... kind of a nice little board. Of the three CHIPS branded ICs, they are 0031, 0135 and 0221 and the soldered on ST branded Dallas clock chip had a 2033 date code on it, either this sat around in the warehouse since it was made waiting to be sold and then they slapped on the chip, or it was made with NOS parts in 2020 and sold then. the solder joints looked like all the others on the board so I do not think it was replaced.

I know that Corvalent was making these board up till April or so this year as they had a blog post on their website talking about the end of the production for it due to lack of parts.

The PS/2 header caught my eye. How does this board compare against other socket 3 boards with the SiS 471 chipset?

JuddSandage wrote on 2025-06-19, 01:16:

I know that Corvalent was making these board up till April or so this year as they had a blog post on their website talking about the end of the production for it due to lack of parts.

Based on archive.org, it looks like that post is from 2010 and perhaps the timestamps just got clobbered back in April (which would make sense given the 14 years of history and comparison to the Core 2 Duo): http://web.archive.org/web/20210513144517/htt … l-end-of-an-era

However, looks like there is still a Martin on the leadership team, and maybe he would enjoy hearing about you coming across this board, and possibly shed more light on it?

feipoa wrote on 2025-06-19, 05:17:

The PS/2 header caught my eye. How does this board compare against other socket 3 boards with the SiS 471 chipset?

No idea, as I have not really dealt with 486 motherboards, at least not since high school era, and I was not really that in to the building of them back then (this was the 90s)

jakethompson1 wrote on 2025-06-19, 05:38:

JuddSandage wrote on 2025-06-19, 01:16:

I know that Corvalent was making these board up till April or so this year as they had a blog post on their website talking about the end of the production for it due to lack of parts.

Based on archive.org, it looks like that post is from 2010 and perhaps the timestamps just got clobbered back in April (which would make sense given the 14 years of history and comparison to the Core 2 Duo): http://web.archive.org/web/20210513144517/htt … l-end-of-an-era

However, looks like there is still a Martin on the leadership team, and maybe he would enjoy hearing about you coming across this board, and possibly shed more light on it?

And your right, I did not notice that, still why would the board have a Dallas alternative with a Y2033W date code? and the board looked pristine too, with just a little dust under the fan on the heatsink.

The chip I bought for my 386sx board, a Chips F82C836 B-25, is dated 0413-W ... 2004, 13th week.

386sx's were used in industrial single board PCs and made quite late as well

Wasn't it also the only space certified x86 until 2005 or so?