Lots of talk about bad VIA chipsets. I guess I've been really lucky as the only VIA chipset I've ever used is the Apollo pro 133A and I've had three boards based on that set over the years and all have worked fine.

Is this just bad timing with DMA and the PCI bus and things of that nature, or is it a hardware nightmare?

Robin4 wrote:

Should we going further with posting buys with pictures?

pictures always make posts better but only if its not too much effort on your part, have a camera etc

awergh wrote:

Robin4 wrote:

Should we going further with posting buys with pictures?

pictures always make posts better but only if its not too much effort on your part, have a camera etc

Personally I enjoy posting pictures, photography is a (somewhat latent) hobby of mine 😉
And I definitely enjoy seeing pics of other hardware as well as it always gives a better picture of what hardware someone is talking about 😁

SavantStrike wrote:

Lots of talk about bad VIA chipsets. I guess I've been really lucky as the only VIA chipset I've ever used is the Apollo pro 133A and I've had three boards based on that set over the years and all have worked fine.

Is this just bad timing with DMA and the PCI bus and things of that nature, or is it a hardware nightmare?

For what it's worth, I used to run a pa-2013 socket 7 board with a via chipset. It was hopeless, completely unstable, had it from new and it crashed randomly both when I used it at work under 95/nt4 with s3 video, and then later when I took it home and used it with voodoo's and any sound card I could find. Utter shite imho. The crashes all "felt" like they were to do with bus conflicts... like it seemed your game accesses a cd or the network and a crash happens.

Since then I've had via chipset 370 boards [a tualatin] and a couple of asrock 775 boards which were also via. Stable and problem free over long periods of heavy use, especially the 775's.

So I suspect they got bad rep from s7 days myself.

PS. ironically i used a soyo ss7 board with via chipset and that was problem free [i used soyo's bundled drivers rather than via's own on this].

So... steering the thread back towards the original topic, here's some of my recent acquisitions.

First off, there's an Asus ISA-486 board. It is, as one might guess from the model name, an ISA 486 board. It was made towards the end of '91 judging by the date codes on the various chips, and it appears to be new in box... there's no scuffs around the mounting holes or any other signs that it was ever installed. It came with the manual, and even a couple of the original CMOS batteries (which still have a full charge). The only downside is that it only has 64K of 25ns cache, so I'll probably end up swapping that out for something better.

To go along with that board, I also got from the same seller a Diamond Speedstar64. This is a factory 2MB version.

Then here's some of the random stuff I mentioned a few posts back. Those are AA holders pre-wired for use as external CMOS batteries, a clip on 486 heatsink (there's another one installed on the CPU in the 486 board above, as well), and a couple SIMM adapters which I'm hoping will work in a couple of my old Macs.

And finally, this is something I picked up a few weeks ago, but I haven't had a chance to show it yet. I actually got it free. A mATX Slot A board with the AMD 750 chipset, and a 750mhz Athlon. If anyone's keeping count, that makes two Slot A systems I own now... 😁

that slot A board is AWESOME. If memory serves me correctly, the #1 problem with early athlon systems was overheating of teh power regulation/capacitors on the motherboards. And that board is designed with heatsinks on said regulators! The 486 from asus is also real cool! I wish I had one. I wouldnt "do" anything with it, i just like asus boards.

Another interesting thing I forgot to mention about that 486 board... it's not actually branded anywhere on the board or in the manual. Normally Asus plasters their name all over everything, but apparently on their early boards they didn't. The only external indication that it's an Asus is the distinct typeface used for the model name.

Here's a pic of the motherboard I'll be getting. Does anyone know if these were available as a retail board? It's from an IBM Aptiva. The motherboard is called Anigma S30. (This isn't the motherboard I actually bought, just a pic of another one like it)

Does anyone know if these were available as a retail board?

Nope. Anigma was a shop that made custom boards specifically for OEMs like IBM.

Luckily, though, the locked-down OEM BIOS shouldn't be too much of a problem on a Slot A board... there's just not a lot of settings you'd really need to mess with anyway.

I received this thing today. P-III Tualatin-S 512kB Cache E.S.. Unlocked for my underclocking enjoyment. Cleaned it up a little and tested it: Does multiplier 4x to 9.5x, as expected.

Recently received this board

Came with a couple RIMM modules also 😁

Haven't tested it though, but even if the board is non-functional, I should have another working one (which curiously came with 3 RIMM sockets instead of the usual 2 as later Intel found out it's chipset wouldn't even work with 3 modules installed 😜).

gerwin wrote:

I received this thing today. P-III Tualatin-S 512kB Cache E.S.. Unlocked for my underclocking enjoyment. Cleaned it up a little and tested it: Does multiplier 4x to 9.5x, as expected.

Well done! What unlocked Tualatins are concerned, it hardly gets better then this 😉

Tetrium wrote:

Recently received this board http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z383/tetriuminside/th_DSC00653.jpg Came with a couple RIMM modu […]
Show full quote

Recently received this board

Came with a couple RIMM modules also 😁

Haven't tested it though, but even if the board is non-functional, I should have another working one (which curiously came with 3 RIMM sockets instead of the usual 2 as later Intel found out it's chipset wouldn't even work with 3 modules installed 😜).

gerwin wrote:

I received this thing today. P-III Tualatin-S 512kB Cache E.S.. Unlocked for my underclocking enjoyment. Cleaned it up a little and tested it: Does multiplier 4x to 9.5x, as expected.

Well done! What unlocked Tualatins are concerned, it hardly gets better then this 😉

I've got one of those 😀

It was as cheap as free too (and with 512mb of RDRAM to boot). I'm tempted to play with it some more now. It's such an oddball chipset as everyone hated it, but if you're okay with coppermine support only, it can trounce the 815e in some benchmarks.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

Does anyone know if these were available as a retail board?

Nope. Anigma was a shop that made custom boards specifically for OEMs like IBM.

Luckily, though, the locked-down OEM BIOS shouldn't be too much of a problem on a Slot A board... there's just not a lot of settings you'd really need to mess with anyway.

This same board was also put in Gateways and called the Jabil Kadoka but with a different BIOS. Were Anigma and Jabil the same company? I've seen pictures of both the Anigma and Jabil boards and they are identical other than the BIOS. It's like the difference between PC Chips and Amptron.

Here's a Jabil Kadoka.

I believe Anigma is the company that does the circuit design, and Jabil is the manufacturer... or maybe the other way around, but it's something to that effect anyway. I don't know whether they're part of the same company or not, but they seem to be pretty closely related.

I know there's a couple big companies (atleast in those days) that manufactured only OEM boards and were pretty big volume producers. One company made boards for Fujitsu Siemens and Packard Bell or Compaq.

"All your soundcard are belong to me-ow." - Evie (the cat)

Recently received all of these (sans cat) from the same incredible guy. Kind-of a cool assortment o' wonder.

Nice findings! Nice to have them all boxed.. And boxes are in good quality!

I still want cloudschatze's 8bit PAS 😀

schlang wrote:

I still want cloudschatze's 8bit PAS 😀

Black caps, or blue? 🤣