Ensign Nemo wrote on 2023-08-07, 02:38:
[...]
That's probably true. It's not really something that I look for, but I've seen it in my more modern PCs. It's been awhile since I've poked around in the BIOS of an older machine.
Modern EFI-based BIOS tend to be garish advertorials for their manufacturer as much as a place to do settings...
That wasn't the case in the old days - the BIOS setup programs tended to be generic. At best your board would identify itself at POST, either with a name at the top of the screen or with a BIOS string at the bottom. Resource for decoding the latter have become somewhat rare, but it's better than nothing.
However the biggest issue with identification in soft (or firm)ware is that the machine needs to be able to boot before you get that info - but to boot you need to know the right jumper settings first.
OP, a couple of methods to identify a motherboard without software:
- often the model name of the board is simply printed on it somewhere. Between the expansion slots is a common place to look. Generally no brand name will be given, but google the model name and if what you find looks like your board, that will be the right one. Note that this name can be as simple as a line of numbers - anything printed on the board is worth looking up.
- a variant of the above: look on the BIOS (E)EPROM chip. It will frequently have a little paper sticker on it with BIOS version and sometimes model name too. If it's only a version number, try googling that in combination with other information you may have.
-some brands characteristically relabel components. Soyo relables chipsets with the (non-existent) ETEQ brand, Biostar does the same with Bioteq, and pretty much any chipset heatsink with something-or-other-"pro" is going to be PC-Chips or one of its many synonyms.
- the board may haven an FCC ID. If it does, go to fccid.io and enter the ID into the search field.
- still no luck? Time to go to the https://theretroweb.com/ - enter everything you do know into the search engine and see what it dredges up. Note that it's based on the old Total Hardware 99 database which had a partial info (in particular: no chipset name) for a lot of boards, particularly ones already older in 1999. So first search with chipset brand and type, then failing that repeat the search without those fields. A particular combination of CPU socket and number and type of expansion slots can narrow down the search a lot, leaving you to visually check through the final results.
If you really can't identify the board, it's still possible to reverse-engineer jumper settings, particularly in later (Pentium or Pentium 2 era) boards with an overseeable number of jumpers. Similarly, most XT boards use exactly the same jumper/switch settings. But if you have a late era 486 board, you'll need documentatoin.
