Wow, that's a real giant. Discrete logic chips everywhere! Four seperate clock generators. I would have said it was XT or earlier, but the fact is has 16bit ISA slots means it clearly isn't. A proper dinosaur that one is!

For comparison, here's what that same spec board (286 + 6 ISA slots) turned into in just a couple of years:

I bet if they hadn't included the old style DIP memory bank option the whole thing could have been a good 1/3 shorter.
I know the board has got some sort of onboard I/O, judging by the connectors to the right of the motherboard in the original image, but its still amazing how fast technology moves.

nemesis wrote:

Hey guys, I wanted to show you one of the very few pieces of hardware from my early computer days. This was old when we got it […]
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Hey guys, I wanted to show you one of the very few pieces of hardware from my early computer days. This was old when we got it and it didn't take long for us to dismantle the case and gut the hardware to combine with the other similar computers that were given to us way back then.
I managed to salvage this while we were cleaning out all of the old hardware and almost forgot about this, til I started digging for boards to reference for my 486 custom project.

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I doubt this board even works anymore, even if I replaced the missing hardware. I think it's an Advanced Logic Research board, but I haven't found anything online so far that matches it, and I'm too lazy right now to dig any further for matches.
I have a few more pictures that I'll post if anyone is interested.

Wow, what a collectable. You should try to get it running again, it would be worth much more if its working.

When I was a kid, and I'd been reading computer magazines, I really couldn't understand why they referred to all the boards I saw, as being of the "Baby" AT form. Nowadays I can see why...

When I was a kid, and I'd been reading computer magazines, I really couldn't understand why they referred to all the boards I saw, as being of the "Baby" AT form. Nowadays I can see why...

🤣 I agree, this puts things into perspective for "baby AT" vs "full AT" (though this board probably is an oversized AT anyway).
It was used for some business or government purpose so I guess it's a form of an industrial board.

You should try to get it running again, it would be worth much more if its working

I'm entertaining that idea, though it would be a lot of work, considering that I lack almost every necessary part to run it.
Btw the CPU is an Intel 80286 10MHz soldered onto the board (incase anyone didn't see it.)

I bet if they hadn't included the old style DIP memory bank option the whole thing could have been a good 1/3 shorter.

At least. Those things took up a lot of room. I remember seeing addon cards with the chips all over them for additional RAM.

Full 4 Mb of RAM!!! 😀

I've got a 2MB one of those 😀

Mine's got a serial and parallel port on it as well. I'm using it in my 286 😀

What the heck did you rip apart to get that massive AT board? a WANG?

As for the Memory Cards, I have a 256k Card like that in my PC/XT 5160. Same full size card, but only a quarter-meg.

What happens if you put such a board in a more modern computer (say, a 486)?
Will it "see" the extra memory?

Yes. Mine works as extended memory, and is detected during POST.
With the correct driver it can be used as EMS.

Some older ones may only work as EMS though

But on a 486, or even a 386, with bus speeds much higher than ISA's 8MHz clock, performance may not be so great (I haven't tested this myself though)

nemesis wrote:

🤣 I agree, this puts things into perspective for "baby AT" vs "full AT" (though this board probably is an oversized AT anyway).
It was used for some business or government purpose so I guess it's a form of an industrial board.

I believe that prior to 1990, very large motherboards should be common. I've noticed another fact. Almost every case I've got, which was originally bought after 1991-92, no matter if it's a desktop or mini tower type, has the power supply on the bottom of the case, near the "Baby AT" boards' right end. One desktop case I own though, a 1991 DFI 286, has the Power Supply mounted on the top right corner of the back of the case. That way it may suggest that it would be possible to house a board extending further to the right of the keyboard connector.

It seems like that was a giant 286 tower from maybe Zenith (we had a lot of those computers given to us for a while).
I looked online for a little while and noticed that it was almost exactly the same motherboard used in the IBM 5170 AT computers, so it might have been considered a clone.

Here is an image of the CPU. (I'm lovin' my new camera's macro mode. Yes, I finally bought a new camera).

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Another problem with powering this on is the proprietary powersupply connection. which makes me almost say for sure that it was a Zenith system, excpet that Zenith power connectors were usually more clustered and squared off.

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