VOGONS


First post, by TheAbandonwareGuy

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I got this machine in a lot of PC along with a working twin Pentium tower. It had been more or less canabalized. No drives, only the 1 stick of RAM, no ISA cards, nothing but the board and power supply unit. The RAM is an 8MB module i think. So far I've installed a floppy drive, and mounted a CD Drive in the case (although i haven't hooked it up yet. When i flip the power switch all that happens is a blue flash in the power supply unit, a quiet whining sound that goes away after 2 seconds or so, and the fan turns about a quarter of a rotation. The fan movement isn't even consistant. Im really hoping the power supply just isn't doing anything because the rest isn't turning on since i doubt I'll be able to find a replacement power supply since the power switch appears to be hardwired into the power supply and it doesn't use a method of connecting to the board that i personally recognize. I also don't recognize the CPU socket type (it actually has a 486SX onboard the mobo, so I'm assuming this is an overdrive socket?). It came with a CPU installed in it but some dumbass had installed one for another socket that by sheer luck still fit into the socket (leaving the outermost pin holes empty.....). It was a Intel Overdrive proccesor so take what you will from that info. It appears to have onboard VGA by Cirrus Logic so I'm guessing this was a higher end board for the time. In the same lot there was another equally useless power supply with similair connectors but again no power switch. I'm not entirely sure what the core logic for this board is as of right now. Judging by the Cirrus VGA, Cirrus is my first bet.

Here are the pictures.

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Anybody see anything obviously wrong that i missed or have a good idea where i should start?
I could also use some help identifying the CPU socket.

Thanks in advance

Cyb3rst0rms Retro Hardware Warzone: https://discord.gg/jK8uvR4c
I used to own over 160 graphics card, I've since recovered from graphics card addiction

Reply 1 of 2, by Stiletto

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Fixed the image links.

here's the easiest explanation in fact to embed Imgur photos:
Re: Making clickable embedded images using Imgur image hosting service
if you don't have an Imgur account, it's a little harder (see above in that thread).

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 2 of 2, by akula65

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I still have an AST Advantage 6033s 486SX/33 system that I bought in 1995 which is similar to yours, but more compact (AST Part No. 501540-001). The upgrade CPU socket is just holes in the board. The CPU upgrade socket supports the following processors (depending on jumper configuration):

80486SX
80487SX
80486DX
80486DX2
OverDrive (5-Volt only)
Pentium OverDrive (5-Volt only)

I upgraded the CPU first to a Cyrix DX2 processor which basically doubled system performance. I then upgraded to an 83 MHz Pentium OverDrive which basically doubled the performance over the Cyrix DX2 processor.

The graphics processor is a 16-bit local bus Cirrus Logic 5424 Super VGA graphics adapter w/ 1 MB of memory (upgraded from 512 KB). The video memory upgrade required a 256KX16-KB, 70-ns video DRAM chip.

You might want to have a look at a post I made over ten years ago:

AST Support Files Site

It looks like the archive is still accessible in the Wayback Machine.

Good luck with the troubleshooting!