Bump

Surprisingly, I seem to have found some info regarding the board!

First, found a decade-old thread on VCFed: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/a-f … ainboard.30354/
Pasted the support page into the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20080725071811/ht … tal/epid28.html
Manual is not at the Wayback Machine, but a variant is here: https://manx-docs.org/collections/mds-199909/ … pc/pct60saa.pdf

Then... Found out this entire DEC section has been mirrored (Links work, too!):
http://declegacy.gomtuu.net/legacysupport/dig … tal/epid28.html and http://declegacy.gomtuu.net/legacysupport/digital/mte.html

Probably should be archived.

As for the BIOS chip, I suspect a 28F variant, likely 28F010, but in some cases, either the flash utility or BIOS build itself (in the case of some PhoenixBIOS variants), the flash chip info is usually embedded in the file, viewable with a hex editor.

Edit: the second image in The Retro Web shows an Intel flash chip... I'll have to check the BIOS contents.

Edit 2: the BIOS file is 128K (1M) in size. Did notice the MT (not MTE) variants had an EPROM installed instead. [Since hex viewer yielded nothing, the original flash IC is likely 28F or 28C variant.]

Thanks AmiSapphire ! I had the one link in my bookmarks. Somebody already archived the one set: https://web.archive.org/web/20220609031904/ht … l/epidmstr.html
and most pages linked work, tested one link to and got a file too but many files do not DL.....am going thru and having archive.org rescan the files. ..
new scan: https://web.archive.org/web/20220930002941/ht … l/epidmstr.html it may take a while for everything to work proper...
unfortunately I do not have a master scan type account so have to manually add each missing item after the new scan 🙁
Think I got all of files at new archive of https://web.archive.org/web/20220930003041/ht … tal/epid28.html
May take a bit for archive org to show them in other manors but at least arched this mobo's files...

Gomtuu.net isn't the only place with that stuff. I took a mirror of the legacy support site years back when it was still online: http://www.zx.net.nz/mirror/h18000.www1.hp.co … ital/index.html

@AmiSapphire
@Horun
@davidrg

GUYS THIS IS AWESOME!!! You are my saviors! 😀)) Thanks a heap!

I'll update the thread as I progress. I found a 32 pin EPROM Am27Co10-205DC 12.V 1Mb that fits the socket. It is possible that the original one is of a smaller capacity. We'll see. Atm I don't have another 32 pin BIOS chip available.

I also saw in the pics on the net that the board originally had an Intel EPROM/FLASH BIOS chip but the labels obstruct the writing so I can't make out the model.

I found an AMD 486 DX2-50 5V that is great for testing. At the most I'll use a 486 DX2-66 5V.

Near the missing Intel 32pin BIOS chip there is another flash chip, made by Intel, in a PLCC form factor and under it is written Phoenix BIOS. I tried to power the board but I got no beeps. This might be for configuring other stuff on the board.

I also got the manual and in it I found details for making a BIOS flash diskette.

Let's see how far am I going to get. 😀

I'll download all of the files to safe keep them. The Retro Web has no BIOS files uploaded for this board. Maybe someone who manages the site should upload the BIOS files there. I am truly amazed that the files in the links are even downloadable. This made my day for sure. I'll have to celebrate with a couple of beers tonight. 😁

Again thanks for your help. 😀 I wasted two days and I couldn't find a single thing. I was close to throw in the towel. I was even going to try some old BBS links that I found in the manual even if I knew that for sure it was a no go.

Any other information that might help me is greatly apprecited. 😀

More later. 😀

I soldered 6 out of the 8 missing inductors near the black ISA slot.

I also extracted the BIOS files from the archive. 1.02, 1.04, 1.05 and 1.06 versions are added to this post.

The motherboard also was missing a quartz oscillator near the CPU socket.

The Am27Co10-205DC threw an error while writing to it with my MiniPRO TL866A so I used an EEPROM that I took from an ISA Modem card.

After all this work I managed to make the motherboard beep. 😁 Chips are getting warm and the CPU is also warm. 😀

After I'll solder the last two inductors I'll try again.

My concern though is that this board requires a proprietary display adapter which I don't have. I also don't have an EISA display adapter. After some reading I found that I can use a regular ISA display adapter in an EISA slot as it engages only the top row pins from the EISA slot not the bottom ones that carry other proprietary EISA signals.

Also the manual states that I have to use 36bit SIMM memory. "The PRIORIS MTE Server requires 36-bit SIMMs that have an access time of 70 ns or less". I'll have to find the right modules for it too.

Also the top SIMM slot is missing and address pin.

I still have work to do but the signs are promising.

This is an awesome board. It'll work fine without the proprietary VGA. Performance is really quite excellent.

That other eprom is the recovery bios. There should be a jumper to activate it.

Well guys after 2 years I'm here saying that I found a similar board as Robert's

yeah there seems to be a special VLB graphics card that will output its signal on the motherboard back plane... this is so strange

In my case it is an S3 ... your 805 garden variety
And my board is missing the dallas RTC and some cache chips ... it came with a 486dx2 66mhz CPU

in the next days I will try to test it

Congrats! It's certainly one of the more interesting boards I have. I may have to plop it back onto my test bench and play with it.

I believe the Prioris MTE was previously known as the DECpc MTE which was sold as a higher-end workstation/server machine. Perhaps the weird video card situation was to let them put cheaper graphics hardware in machines sold as a server.

In 1994 DEC retired the DECpc line and introduced a bunch of new brands for different lines of computers - Venturis for low-end/value PCs, celebris for higher-end workstations, HiNote for laptops, and Prioris for servers. The DECpc MTE appears to have been rebadged as a Prioris and sold as a server for a time, before being replaced with new models designed from the start as servers.

In 1995 the Prioris MTE was retired and replaced with the new Prioris LX which uses largely the same case, just with different cutouts on the back. At the moment there is a DECpc MTE on ebay which shows how similar the cases are.