I think I've heard before about that model. The GW refers to Great Wall(manufacturer). It can have RAM both in simms and chips, so I suppose it can take up to 5MB using 4 simms of 1MB and the rest in chips. The 8 DIL sockets have to be for main memory up to 1MB, and the 4 smaller ones are for parity chips. I don't think you're going to need the manual, unless you want to fit a 287 and there are jumpers for different speeds.

There's also a rather large Headland HT12 surface mount chip on the board - not sure what it actually is for

Er, that's the chipset. It's a very late model 286 board, probably one of the last, actually, and by that point most of the functions of the individual logic chips had been combined all into one package.

As for the manual, I'm not sure what more you need. Everything seems to be clearly labelled on the board itself. The memory configuration is pretty much standard across any similar board.

I think you're right actually - on closer inspection all of the headers and jumpers (except one, JP1, near the back of the board) are actually labelled.

I guess I just need to get a new CMOS battery and some 30pin simms!

The board looks cute!

Btw, I got a 386 which had bad acid spots on the pcb. I cleaned it up best I could and, even though it's greenish spots looks ugly, it still worked!
Your board seems to look remarkedly clean of those acid spots though, did any of it reach the pcb before you cought it?

Tetrium wrote:

The board looks cute!

Btw, I got a 386 which had bad acid spots on the pcb. I cleaned it up best I could and, even though it's greenish spots looks ugly, it still worked!
Your board seems to look remarkedly clean of those acid spots though, did any of it reach the pcb before you cought it?

It looks like I got it just in time - the battery was really furry, but there didn't appear to be any acid on the pcb itself.

It really is a neat little board!

Time to get started with the components!
I'm planning on:

Cirrus Logic 5422 (got one coming), SB16 (from my spares), Adaptec SCSI (with a SCSI-IDE adaptor), MPU401 (got one coming).... but I also need a multi-io card - preferably with a PS2 port for a mouse; does such a card (or even a plain ps2 interface card) exist?

In my opinion, those are too much for a 286! Any (s)vga card would do, and any IDE HD or a CF adaptor. The SB16 should be ok, but don't expect to find a card with PS/2 support for mouse. You have to get a serial one.