That's almost certainly a 286 board. The CPU is indeed missing.

wow man this picture is so small, its really difficult to tell. but there seems to be some simm slots, that makes it look like a 386 board.

It also has (filled) sockets for DIL memory, which would be unusual for a 386 board. Also, the CPU socket is the wrong type for a 386DX, and there are extremely few 386SX boards with sockets. So this is probably a 286.

The empty socket looks like 387SX, but with no 386SX around it's probably for a 286. What does the chip near the socket say? I don't seem to get what it is supposed to be doing.

95% chance its a late model 286. It looks to have 1mb of onboard ram and support for at most 16mb total.

I suppose it could be a late-model 286 board, but I'd be surprised:
- Usually there are a lot of (often socketed) DIP (RAM?) ICs on them.
- It also has a high number and percentage of 16-bit ISA slots for a 286.

It's quite similar to my own Headland-chipset 286 board:

If it's anything like mine (check the large Headland chip for a 'HT' number) it will support max of 1mb via the DIL sockets, and up to 4mb via the 30pin simm sockets - you can't use them both at the same time, unfortunately. Mine has the HT12 chipset which supports EMS in hardware.

That is the highest resolution I can upload, thanks for the replies guys.

Thanks for the details Megatron. Unfortunately I do not own this board yet and my question is: should I buy it without the cpu? Do I stand a chance of finding such a cpu somewhere?

Also, now that we are at it, take a look at this80086

This board too is missing the cpu or is it the one with the "paper" on it ?

Is it me or there is a cpu there but no math fpu installed. I remembering seeing that many 286 era machines used a dip packaged fpu instead of the normally socketed verity? If you are willing to take risks try powering the board up and if it beeps then proceeds to boot then you have the cpu but no fpu.

Dhall wrote:

Does anybody know what type of motherboard this is? Is it a 386? or a 286? […]
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Does anybody know what type of motherboard this is? Is it a 386? or a 286?

Is the cpu missing from the upper left socket?

80286?

Thanks in advance!

You may have gotten lucky with that one. Headland chipsets usually support the 20mhz 286 and sometimes even the 25mhz one depending on the rated speed of the other onboard components.

I suppose it could be a late-model 286 board, but I'd be surprised:
- Usually there are a lot of (often socketed) DIP (RAM?) ICs on them.
- It also has a high number and percentage of 16-bit ISA slots for a 286.

Those mini AT 286 boards aren't super common, since they weren't really big sellers, but they're not all that rare either. They were made all the way up to '92 or '93, and were primarily aimed at bottom-barrel systems... SIMMs were pretty standard on them, as were larger numbers of 16-bit slots. Usually those things were close relatives of the various manufacturers' 386SX board lineups, and the layout was just tweaked a bit to accommodate the minor differences, like coprocessor sockets and such... I guess it made 'em cheaper to manufacture when a lot of the components were shared between the different models.

To the OP, about whether to buy that board, it really depends on the price... 286 CPUs aren't all that hard to come by, and there appears to be a 287 coprocessor present which is a nice (though not particularly useful) bonus, but OTOH there appears to be some battery damage by the keyboard port. The picture is too blurry to tell for sure how bad it is, but it looks like there could be a couple traces corroded through.

The XT clone board looks to be in good shape, it is missing the CPU but 8088/V20 chips are easy to get... I dunno what they go for in Hungary, but in the US they can be had for $5 or so. The chip with the paper on it is the BIOS. But the thing to keep in mind about building an XT-class system is that the motherboard and CPU aren't the biggest problem you'll run into... 8-bit controller cards are considerably more difficult to find than 16-bit cards, especially for things like high-density floppy controllers and hard drive controllers. If you're just getting into retro hardware, I would not recommend starting out with a system like that, they can be quite a pain in the ass.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

To the OP, about whether to buy that board, it really depends on the price...

The price is around 4-5 dollars. Not much, but I know many other things to spend five bucks on...But now that you put it that way (about finding a 286 cpu) I'll buy this.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

If you're just getting into retro hardware, I would not recommend starting out with a system like that, they can be quite a pain in the ass.

You are quite right. Though I have 2 working 80386 systems which I put together piece by piece but I'm not as well versed in old hardware as you guys here. Hopefully I will pick up useful pieces of information here.

The thing is this 8086 board can be had for 5-6 dollars, so even if it will prove problematic to find hardware for, I lose nothing by buying it. It is considered somewhat of a rarity here. There are a few 80386 boards now and then but it's been over a year since I saw a 8086.

If you do pickup the 8088 board, and if it is less than $20 I WOULD, if you head over to http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/forum.php they specialize in older hardware. They even make a 8 bit ide card for new drives in old systems. They also are very helpful in setup and troubleshooting.

One other tell-tale sign of a 8086 or 286 board is the two BIOS chips. While not absolutely necessary, for performance reasons it is best to address the ROMs at 16-bit memory (32k x 8 x2) than 8-bit memory (32k x 😎. SIMM slots were very uncommon on 8086 motherboards. 386 boards and better tend to have a single 8-bit BIOS ROM chip and shadow the contents to 32/64-bit RAM to avoid performance issues.

Thanks Luckybob. Just bought it. If I manage to get my hands on a cpu and 8-bit cards I will head over there.

Good to know Hierophant. I'll keep my eyes peeled for boards with two BIOS chips.

That 286 board does infact have a CPU. It's the square AMD chip soldered to the motherboard. FPU is missing, which is normal.

That 286 board does infact have a CPU. It's the square AMD chip soldered to the motherboard. FPU is missing, which is normal.

I can only assume you're looking at the picture megatron-uk posted... yes, that one does have a CPU soldered onto it. But I think you didn't read very closely because that is not the same board that the OP was talking about. The one OP was referring to, does not have a CPU on it.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

That 286 board does infact have a CPU. It's the square AMD chip soldered to the motherboard. FPU is missing, which is normal.

AC,

I found a post made by you to another forum in a Google search where I think you said you had a Harris 25mhz system running. What motherboard were you using for that system and can you post pics?

It was actually a 20MHz 286 board that I had. It was made by PCchips. I believe the model was "M209". I had actually bought a 25MHz 286 chip and planned to upgrade it (the board does officially support it), but I ended up selling the board. Right now my only 286 is an original IBM AT.

I actually recommend getting a 0WS 12MHz 286 system instead. 20/25MHz systems usually aren't well designed, unless you can get a board from a company like Everex.

Sorry about the mistake in my post. I'm in mainland China and some of the photos must not be loading in properly. The only other board I saw in the thread was a 8086 board, which was too small to make out the details.