So I just won an auction for a bunch of random stuff. The pictures showed 4 motherboards.

1 Socket 478
1 that I think is either socket370 or socketA and that has some ram in it,
1 socket A that has a CPU in it
1 mystery board which has a heatsink on it so there is likely a CPU but no idea what it is.

In addition there were 9 loose CPUs of various types, some heatsinks of various types, and some DVDR/CDR disks.

Quite the random lot. I won the auction for 1 dollar with 15 bucks shipping. This was last week. The guy messaged me today and said it just went out and he apologized that it took a week to ship and because of that he threw some more random stuff in there so I have no idea what I am getting. I am really surprised he did that given I only paid a dollar before shipping, but who am I to argue. For 16 bucks hard to go wrong.

brostenen wrote:

Bancho wrote:

Was this the lot that was on UK ebay the other day? I was watching it. The Yamaha sound card was what peaked my interest and some of the boards. Glad i didn't bid in the end. People just see it as old junk, so no care is taken 😠. When i bought my shuttle board the other week, it was packed in a kiddies electric guitar box, with some a4 paper as padding and tape. I could hear the board, ram modules and gfx card just rattling around inside. I was like, that doesn't sound good. Thankfully the board was ok and cleaned up really nicely.

Its always a gamble buying old unwanted hardware.

Yeah.... Whenever I buy old hardware, I make shure that the seller knows that he or she need to pack well.
Most of the times I avoid lot's. Not to say that I never have bought any lot. Done it 2 or 3 times.

Understandable - I've always been lucky, but it's also the area where people tend to get lazy with packaging. Although the worst packaging is usually seen with laptop keyboards...

I bought this:

http://imgur.com/a/564vG

A single-board 486DX/33 computer.

It was a bit of an impulse buy, I don't honestly have any idea what it will take to bring this puppy on-line... I HOPE that some of the white plugs can be reverse-engineered into PS/2 or AT keyboard connectors and LED outputs, but who really knows...

keenerb wrote:

I bought this: […]
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I bought this:

http://imgur.com/a/564vG

A single-board 486DX/33 computer.

It was a bit of an impulse buy, I don't honestly have any idea what it will take to bring this puppy on-line... I HOPE that some of the white plugs can be reverse-engineered into PS/2 or AT keyboard connectors and LED outputs, but who really knows...

Just try to remember -DO NOT- plug it in to the standard ISA ports on any "normal" motherboard.. it most likely (more than likely) will short circuit and fry both it's self and the board. They're designed to go in to big AT backplanes only.

kithylin wrote:

keenerb wrote:

I bought this: […]
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I bought this:

http://imgur.com/a/564vG

A single-board 486DX/33 computer.

It was a bit of an impulse buy, I don't honestly have any idea what it will take to bring this puppy on-line... I HOPE that some of the white plugs can be reverse-engineered into PS/2 or AT keyboard connectors and LED outputs, but who really knows...

Just try to remember -DO NOT- plug it in to the standard ISA ports on any "normal" motherboard.. it most likely (more than likely) will short circuit and fry both it's self and the board. They're designed to go in to big AT backplanes only.

I've got a few passive ISA backplanes. I wouldn't stick this into a "real" motherboard!

I also found this picture from another ebay listing. I was under the impression that the backplane supplies power to the SBC through the ISA bus in circumstances like this, so it looks like maybe there's a +5v (red wire) running from the adapter to the wiring harnass. That same connector has three other connected wires, so that might be the keyboard input. The other two may be LED connections but the harness shares a common ground?

keenerb wrote:

I've got a few passive ISA backplanes. I wouldn't stick this into a "real" motherboard! […]
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kithylin wrote:

keenerb wrote:

I bought this: […]
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I bought this:

http://imgur.com/a/564vG

.............

A single-board 486DX/33 computer.

It was a bit of an impulse buy, I don't honestly have any idea what it will take to bring this puppy on-line... I HOPE that some of the white plugs can be reverse-engineered into PS/2 or AT keyboard connectors and LED outputs, but who really knows...

Just try to remember -DO NOT- plug it in to the standard ISA ports on any "normal" motherboard.. it most likely (more than likely) will short circuit and fry both it's self and the board. They're designed to go in to big AT backplanes only.

I've got a few passive ISA backplanes. I wouldn't stick this into a "real" motherboard!

I also found this picture from another ebay listing. I was under the impression that the backplane supplies power to the SBC through the ISA bus in circumstances like this, so it looks like maybe there's a +5v (red wire) running from the adapter to the wiring harnass. That same connector has three other connected wires, so that might be the keyboard input. The other two may be LED connections but the harness shares a common ground?

............

I don't know how they work, so sorry on that. Most of them I believe were OEM and designed for a specific backplate in a specific chassis and may be proprietary. I really don't know much. All I know is they blow up if they go in normal boards. Good luck with that thing.

I have never seen the brown-colored slot between the ISA ans PCI slots before? What is it for?

chose007 wrote:

Some new schrott again. […]
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Some new schrott again.

...

one of first Abit board

...

Looks like EISA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Indust … rd_Architecture

Edit:
After some reading... it might not be EISA, but some raiser PISA slot.

kixs wrote:

Looks like EISA. […]
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Looks like EISA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Indust … rd_Architecture

Edit:
After some reading... it might not be EISA, but some raiser PISA slot.

There's one on offer on eBay at the moment if anyone's interested. As you can see from the manual this board only has ISA and PCI - the brown slot is completely undocumented and mysterious. I've had one since new and I have to admit that, when I first got it and was trying to work out what it was, I assumed you could plug in either an ISA or PCI card as the manual said 'one shared slot'. Obviously I worked out what that meant later on.

It's almost certainly EISA.

If it were EISA, wouldn't all the ISA slots be EISA? Besides, stason.org says that's a "PISA" slot, whatever that is: http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/S/SI … B4-REV-1-2.html

Sutekh94 wrote:

If it were EISA, wouldn't all the ISA slots be EISA? Besides, stason.org says that's a "PISA" slot, whatever that is: http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/S/SI … B4-REV-1-2.html

If the documentation says it's PISA then I'd believe that, they must just be using the EISA-style edge connectors.

Yes, it does look a lot like one. Should an EISA slot be higher than an ISA slot? I think so if I look at pictures of the cards. The angle of the motherboard picture makes it hard to see...

Another other possibility would be a slot for a riser card, but that doesn't make a lot of sense of course...

keenerb wrote:

It's almost certainly EISA.

keenerb wrote:

It's almost certainly EISA.

Oh, it's an EISA slot alright from a physical point of view, but its function is what's unknown. The M1489 chipset only supports PCI - the M1487 is for the ISA bus. The PISA claims are completely unsubstantiated until someone actually uses the slot for something other than ISA use.

I distinctly remember having a board with ISA and EISA slots, so the fact that they're not ALL eisa isn't particularly disturbing.

A combination ISA/PCI slot is pretty bizarre though, I've never seen one of those. How does it keep the ISA contacts from shorting PCI cards?

Also, there's this which claims to be a PISA adapter:

http://www.arbor-usa.com/catalog/p_pisa-675.html

Looks a lot like an EISA edge connector to me.

Huh even more interesting:

I don't know if I'd go sticking a PCI card directly into that connector...

I guess, here might be the correct explanation: http://support.advantech.com/Support/Knowledg … =Knowledge+Base
And the reason is quite obvious - if you want to install the motherboard in a low desktop case that needs a riser, but you don't want to lose the PCI functionality, then you're free to go with a PISA to ISA/PCI riser. And PISA could possibly stand for P[CI]ISA.

hard1k wrote:

I guess, here might be the correct explanation: http://support.advantech.com/Support/Knowledg … =Knowledge+Base
And the reason is quite obvious - if you want to install the motherboard in a low desktop case that needs a riser, but you don't want to lose the PCI functionality, then you're free to go with a PISA to ISA/PCI riser. And PISA could possibly stand for P[CI]ISA.

This is how I understand this PISA slot from the get go (my post above).

kixs wrote:

hard1k wrote:

I guess, here might be the correct explanation: http://support.advantech.com/Support/Knowledg … =Knowledge+Base
And the reason is quite obvious - if you want to install the motherboard in a low desktop case that needs a riser, but you don't want to lose the PCI functionality, then you're free to go with a PISA to ISA/PCI riser. And PISA could possibly stand for P[CI]ISA.

This is how I understand this PISA slot from the get go (my post above).

I much prefer the idea of installing a Pentium system-on-card in it 😀 If I can find either I'll see if they work! Would be nice to clear up the mystery.

Personally I'd leave that slot alone, it could be any number of proprietary interfaces that were around at the time and plugging in the wrong card could easily nuke the board. That would be a shame as it looks like a real nice board.