I've bought a few things from ebay that when they have turned up had postage costs stamped on them that were more than the cost I had paid for the item + shipping. In most of those cases I then sent the seller a few £ extra (not a lot, but enough for a drink or two at the pub!)... I figure it's karma 😀

Perhaps PC Chips believes that incorporating fake components in to their mobos is simply a matter of course. 😉

megatron-uk wrote:

I've bought a few things from ebay that when they have turned up had postage costs stamped on them that were more than the cost I had paid for the item + shipping. In most of those cases I then sent the seller a few £ extra (not a lot, but enough for a drink or two at the pub!)... I figure it's karma 😀

I think that's a really good idea.

megatron-uk wrote:

I've bought a few things from ebay that when they have turned up had postage costs stamped on them that were more than the cost I had paid for the item + shipping. In most of those cases I then sent the seller a few £ extra (not a lot, but enough for a drink or two at the pub!)... I figure it's karma 😀

Perhaps it includes the cost of packaging material and for the gasoline to drive to the post office?
In general, I don't really mind if the actual shipping cost is only a few bucks less then what I ended up paying for the shipping cost. Main thing is that the item I bought arrives in good condition 😀

You are right guys. I'll send him some more money.

I found out the name of the board. It's M549.
http://motherboards.mbarron.net/models/pcchips/m549.htm
Now, I wonder what's happening with the cache memory. Is it possible to have real cache, and speedsys can't see that?

Markk wrote:

I found out the name of the board. It's M549.
http://motherboards.mbarron.net/models/pcchips/m549.htm
Now, I wonder what's happening with the cache memory. Is it possible to have real cache, and speedsys can't see that?

I'd imagine that only happening if there is real cache, but it's somehow been disabled or unworkable otherwise.

Can VX boards use 2 DIMM slots for SDRAM?

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Can VX boards use 2 DIMM slots for SDRAM?

Yes, but VX only works with the early 16MB SS and 32MB DS modules. I believe a couple Vogoners have an Intel made VX ATX board that came with 2 DIMM slots.

Why would someone fake the Dallas RTC? Was having one a selling point back in the day? Even if that cap cost a penny to produce, I'd still call it a money waste. At least now, it has novelty value.

The board itself doesn't look too bad. Actual Intel chipset is a plus.

EDIT: Check out the first entry on this page:
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showt … ech-and-ODIN%29

Apparently, some "Houston Tech" capped VIA chips have batteries contained in them. Still an incredibly silly cost measure I think.

retro games 100 wrote:

Perhaps PC Chips believes that incorporating fake components in to their mobos is simply a matter of course. 😉

megatron-uk wrote:

I've bought a few things from ebay that when they have turned up had postage costs stamped on them that were more than the cost I had paid for the item + shipping. In most of those cases I then sent the seller a few £ extra (not a lot, but enough for a drink or two at the pub!)... I figure it's karma 😀

I think that's a really good idea.

It was done originally because people wouldn't buy a 486 motherboard without cache memory no matter how cheap it was so they put the fake chips on there to fool people into buying the cacheless boards. I guess they hadn't outgrown that mentality even into the Pentium era.

Heh... PC Chips at its finest.

I was unfortunate enough to get a PC Chips Socket 7 motherboard and it just reeked of cheap PC Chips junk. First, the chipset was one I did not recognize at all. Second, the BIOS chip has a marking that doesn't correspond to any known Flash ROM, EPROM or EEPROM. Fortunately, the board is dead(it doesn't POST). I say "fortunately" because I don't want to deal with PC Chips junk. At least I have a 200MHz AMD K6 to add to my small collection of Socket 7 CPUs.

The chipset on this board is a TX Pro chipset. It also has a built-in SoundPro HT1869V+ sound card, AT and ATX power supply inputs, 3 SDRAM slots, 4 72-pin SIMM slots, an AT keyboard input with a header for a PS/2 keyboard input, a PS/2 mouse plug, 4 PCI slots and 3 ISA slots. It does seem like a good board, but considering it's made by PC Chips, it's most likely crap.

As for the cache, I'm not even sure if the cache on the motherboard is real or not. It looks real, but it could very well be fake.

I like how there are an extra two solder pads where the actual cache memory is supposed to go.

the design of that board reminds me of my dead azza tomato 430FX board.... *HAD* a AMI winbios in it... and a dallas rtc chip... was a slow turd and when I tried to flash an upgrade to it, it didn't work and killed it! So I guess it was the wrong ROM after all. Oh well, it was an expensive excuse to get my Spacewalker 569 board (the very reason why I refused to get a super7 board because it was 3 months later.. I was livid!)