There might be other components missing, It would help if you could get a picture of the same board that has everything in place so you could compare. Or at least a manual to see what settings are needed for 386 mode.

if you are thinking of having a 386 with VLB slots, it won't work. I hate to rain on that parade, but the 386 just doesn't have the interconnects for it.

That said, soldering braid wick is what you are looking for. its relatively cheap and easy to use.

luckybob wrote:

if you are thinking of having a 386 with VLB slots, it won't work. I hate to rain on that parade, but the 386 just doesn't have the interconnects for it.

That said, soldering braid wick is what you are looking for. its relatively cheap and easy to use.

It'll take an age and a half to desolder that socket with braid. A solder-sucker would do a better job, I think.

luckybob wrote:

if you are thinking of having a 386 with VLB slots, it won't work. I hate to rain on that parade, but the 386 just doesn't have the interconnects for it.

That said, soldering braid wick is what you are looking for. its relatively cheap and easy to use.

Not actually interested in the Vesa Local Bus slots. I used to have a similar board (which unfortunately died a while ago) and I know it doesn't work that well with a 386 CPU.
Just interested to see if one can solder a 386 PGA socket onto the board and how easy it would be.

Seems like it be done without too much frustration.
The only issue is to check whether all the components are there for the 386 CPU to be recognised by the motherboard.

First of all ... don't teach yourself to solder on hardware you don't want to break. Practice on some junk hardware (either useless stuff like VCRs or stuff that's known to be broken/of little value).

Better get a soldering station + solder sucker/desoldering pump. There are combined ones but those either suck (no pun intended) or start at a price range above the usual investment for a possible "one time thing"
Desoldering braid for is SMD and/or cleanup.
Doesn't matter if the solder point are actually populated with parts or just flooded with tin.

Alternatively, you can just solder rows of SIP sockets.

luckybob wrote:

if you are thinking of having a 386 with VLB slots, it won't work. I hate to rain on that parade, but the 386 just doesn't have the interconnects for it.

Are you stating for this board or in general? As I have one 386/486 combo VLB board with OPTi chipset and VLB cards work normally.

You don't even need a solder sucker to open the holes. Just use a pin and a low wattage soldering iron. It's a bit tedious, but it works. I've added sockets to boards several times this way before.

kixs wrote:

luckybob wrote:

if you are thinking of having a 386 with VLB slots, it won't work. I hate to rain on that parade, but the 386 just doesn't have the interconnects for it.

Are you stating for this board or in general? As I have one 386/486 combo VLB board with OPTi chipset and VLB cards work normally.

I recall that, on my previous 386/486 combo board, my VLB IDE controller worked fine but, my S3 805 VLB graphics card didn't. Although, I think it was merely an incompatibility issue and not related to which CPU was installed on the board because, the VLB graphics card worked fine on other boards.

shock__ wrote:

First of all ... don't teach yourself to solder on hardware you don't want to break. Practice on some junk hardware (either useless stuff like VCRs or stuff that's known to be broken/of little value).
Better get a soldering station + solder sucker/desoldering pump. There are combined ones but those either suck (no pun intended) or start at a price range above the usual investment for a possible "one time thing"

I bought myself a soldering iron and a separate desoldering pump. So far, I've had great success with desoldering the old batteries off my old motherboards.
I have practiced a bit my soldering skills on an old power supply of mine that wasn't functioning anymore (removed the soldered fuse, replaced it with a fuse holder and inserted a new fuse but, unfortunately, it was still dead).