First post, by RacoonRider
- Rank
- Oldbie
Yesterday I got lucky! As I was walking by the dumpster, I saw a bag filled with mobos! There were:
1) Intel PD440FX, 100% working, as good as new, although no plastic CPU holders;
2) ASUS CUBX-L, no BIOS chip, no damage as far as I can see;
3) ASUS CUSI-M, 100% working, no damage;
4) 2 brandless 440LX motherboards, no BIOS chips. I removed the plastic CPU holders from them to use in PD440FX and left them at the garage;
5) 2 brandless 440GX motherboards, no BIOS chips; left at the garage;
6) 1 brandless i810 board, broken socket. I stripped the board clean and left it where I found it.
The previous owner, whoever he is, removed all the DIP28 BIOS chips, as if they were useful in any semi-modern PC. I'm happy PD440FX has Bios soldered in and CUSI-M as well. However, CUBX-L does not, and I have no motherboard with DIP-28 socket to reflash the only DIP-28 Flash ROM I have 🙁 However, such boards are not hard to find and I look forward to get CUBX-L up and running one day, by the time I grow tired of my PC-300PL.
Also, today at work I received a PII-333 Mhz, an ideal CPU for PD440FX, as a gift! It was unexpected and made me very happy! The chip has no heatsink, which is not a problem with the old cartridge design, and a sticker dated 2000, the Athlon era. Makes it even more interesting.
Now, to the pictures:
PD440FX and CUBX-L. CUBX-L has an empty Flash ROM and a Celeron 466 CPU installed, both in order to prevent pins from bending.
CUSI-M
PD440FX has YMF715 onboard sound featuring two(!) wavetable connectors.
All praise intel flash ROM! If only this tiny chip was socketed, I would have no luck starting the board. btw, I've seen these inside ADSL modems and routers, but it's the first time a chip of this form-factor appears on a motherboard, at least to my memory.
The stuff mounted on a testbench with Matrox Millenium II 4Mb videocard. All works fine, although I did not try to boot from anything yet.
Now, if you're not tired of my blatter, here are some questions:
1) How do I know if I need a PSU with -5V for YMF715 to work?
2) What wavetables are these headers for?
3) How good is YMF715? Is it much different from YMF 718/719?
4) If I plan to make this a DOS machine, what videocard would you recommend? I have S3 Trio 32/64V+/3D, Matrox Millenium II, Matrox Mystique (currently inside Pentium rig) and a chance to get Ati Mach64 for $1, maybe something else, I can't remember :\ I've been trying to get ET6000 twice this year, both sellers disappeared shortly after my inquiry...
And that's all for today. Thanks for reading 😀
btw, both PD440FX and PI-333 were made in Ireland... What are the odds?
