So, this week I've been working on my dual PPro system (from liqmat's giveaway thread) FINALLY! Had to take an angle grinder and Dremel to a small ATX case that works out much better than a couple of very large "gaming" cases that held some fairly snazzy computers for their time (picked up at Habitat ReStore for a song). Hit another snag-- need to make sure I find a power supply that has the standard ATX 20-pin connector and a 6-pin connector. This predates PCI-e by a looooong while; so I'm not about to try a modern PS on it.

Pics up soon, I hope. Took lots of pics, it's just a chore uploading them to my site. (Poor executive function)

Just a reminder... like Luckybob mentioned, you probably wont ever need the 6-pin aux power for normal operation. I ran that board off the 20-pin just fine. Glad you're finding time for the build. Such a nice mobo.

liqmat wrote on 2020-05-30, 03:33:

Just a reminder... like Luckybob mentioned, you probably wont ever need the 6-pin aux power for normal operation. I ran that board off the 20-pin just fine. Glad you're finding time for the build. Such a nice mobo.

It dawned on me a few moments ago that right there on the first page of the thread he says what PS he's using. D'oh!

I'm using a 400W one with 38A on the +5v rail-- should probably be good.

Still also trying to find the pinout for the power switch (found the reset). Sadly, I'm not finding anything on Stason.org 🙁 There are four pins labeled "front panel". Nice.

Just noticed the unpopulated area on the board marked "Universal Serial Bus" (yes, spelled out, which is great because had it just said USB I might have thought "Naaaaawww, they can't mean *USB* USB, can they?").

Electrohacker wrote on 2019-05-18, 01:39:

current build progress. I was live streaming it and forgot to setup my gopro...

https://www.facebook.com/electrohacker/videos … 01123447164737/

What motherboard and case is that ?

AlaricD wrote on 2020-05-30, 04:43:

Still also trying to find the pinout for the power switch (found the reset). Sadly, I'm not finding anything on Stason.org 🙁 There are four pins labeled "front panel". Nice.

As I stated on the first page of the thread it should be JP31 for power. I still have a stack of these new old stock monsters and its little brother, but no documentation so I had to use one for trial and error to figure out some of the pin outs. As you probably have gathered these are uncommon boards so very little info on them. Gateway bought ALR in the late 90s so I think there was some loss of info online. Doesn't help they were probably part of a larger, expensive preconfigured system so finding docs on just the motherboard may prove difficult. Guessing these were designed around a specific case which might explain the ambiguous front panel connector. I did send a couple of these boards over to a guy in Poland where he did some testing and confirmed he could not get Pentium II Overdrive CPUs working on that board. So the dual PPro 1MB CPUs are probably going to be the max CPU configuration.

If any of you are interested in researching the two ALR dual Socket 8 boards here is my post about them. Luckybob and I have figured out enough about the boards to get them working smoothly. The little brother is the top one in the post and the one Electrohacker and AlaricD are using is the big boy below it. That second board is a tough fit without some case mods due to its sheer size and slightly odd shape. Would love to find some docs on these models, but I think they came as part of a complete system solution from ALR and the NOS boards I acquired were spares. They have a date stamp of 1996 which is about a year before Gateway purchased ALR.

luckybob wrote on 2019-05-19, 04:25:

The pin to start the board is inside the 20-pin header on the front (ish) of the motherboard next to the IDE. I dont remember exactly which one, but iirc its near the middle and on the side farthest from the cpus.

liqmat wrote on 2019-05-19, 05:14:

Just to clarify:

JP31 will power on the board

JP31 is part of a 4-pin header-- is it pins 1-2 for the momentary switch?

The 20-pin "server management" header is also labeled JP22, but it seems there are numbering collisions or something.
I used to almost breathe this stuff in the '90s but I've lost a lot of my touch. Which, of course, makes sense because if you're breathing it you're not really trying to touch it with your fingers.

I am not with the boards at the moment while I help a family member and Luckybob's is buried right now, but I remember using a screwdriver head to power cycle the board while testing so probably what you said on JP31.

That is correct. "server management" is what this manufacturer calls the front panel

liqmat wrote on 2020-05-30, 16:40:

I am not with the boards at the moment while I help a family member and Luckybob's is buried right now, but I remember using a screwdriver head to power cycle the board while testing so probably what you said on JP31.

Alright, I'll see what I can come up with, thanks!

Edit 1541hrs 30MAY2020: Yes, pins 1&2 of the block marked JP31 are it. (Are 3&4 for an LED? Afraid to hook up even that tiniest of loads to the pins.

Didn't have a keyboard hooked up but I saw it counted both processors and said there was no battery (OBVS! Very neatly snipped off by liqmat as part of the preparation to send to me. Also, I gotta commend his packaging skills!) and then asked me to press F2 to continue-- so I just powered off again. Still, progress!

Am I threadjacking? Maybe I'm threadjacking 🙁

I'll start a new thread soon once I get more pics and stuff.

Yeah, all the ALR mobo batts were snipped as they were large barrels and all starting to leak. Luckily the leaks were fully contained and zero damage to the boards. Those boards have an external battery hookup and I'm sure you have already found the pins.

Edit: I take that back. One of them did have some oxidation damage from this belching barrel, but believe it or not the traces were solid underneath.

so much barf and no oxidation on components? wow ^^

liqmat wrote on 2020-05-31, 19:10:

Yeah, all the ALR mobo batts were snipped as they were large barrels and all starting to leak. Luckily the leaks were fully contained and zero damage to the boards. Those boards have an external battery hookup and I'm sure you have already found the pins.

Yep, nice and clearly marked and right where the Varta had been plotting destruction for years.

As to belch.jpg: Yikes!