I have pretty much the exact same motherboard in my very first PC...a CompuAdd "Standard Turbo 10" XT clone.

I'm not certain, but it looks like your board is missing the BIOS PROM which would have been in one of the two sockets labeled U36 or U49. It is fully populated with RAM though.

If you have access to an EPROM programmer I could provide a .bin of the BIOS from my board. Otherwise, I could program an EPROM and drop it in the mail for you.

Regards!

FesterBlatz just beat me to it

Have a look at this website - there are schematics of hundreds of different motherboards, controllers, etc.
http://arvutimuuseum.ee/th99/

A quick search has revealed this one, which appears to be a close match to your motherboard:
http://arvutimuuseum.ee/th99/m/U-Z/30471.htm

However, based on the schematics of the above, I agree with FesterBlatz that your motherboard is missing its BIOS chip(s). Some older motherboards required two BIOS chips, but I can't say from the attached whether your motherboard only requires one. There are, however, no jumpers specified on the attached schematics to choose between different ROM sizes.

FesterBlatz wrote:

I have pretty much the exact same motherboard in my very first PC...a CompuAdd "Standard Turbo 10" XT clone. […]
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I have pretty much the exact same motherboard in my very first PC...a CompuAdd "Standard Turbo 10" XT clone.

I'm not certain, but it looks like your board is missing the BIOS PROM which would have been in one of the two sockets labeled U36 or U49. It is fully populated with RAM though.

If you have access to an EPROM programmer I could provide a .bin of the BIOS from my board. Otherwise, I could program an EPROM and drop it in the mail for you.

Regards!

That makes sense to me - I did notice the lack of a BIOS, but I thought nothing of it due to my lack of experience with stuff like this. I unfortunately don't have access to a programmer (or have an EPROM to program). That's a rather generous offer, and if you think that that might get the board working, then I'd love to take you up on it! You say one of the two sockets - does that mean that I'd just have to guess which and hope it doesn't bust the EPROM or the board, or does it mean that it could go in either and it doesn't matter?

I'm guessing that the bank of small, socketed chips is the RAM?

AppleDash wrote:

That makes sense to me - I did notice the lack of a BIOS, but I thought nothing of it due to my lack of experience with stuff like this. I unfortunately don't have access to a programmer (or have an EPROM to program). That's a rather generous offer, and if you think that that might get the board working, then I'd love to take you up on it! You say one of the two sockets - does that mean that I'd just have to guess which and hope it doesn't bust the EPROM or the board, or does it mean that it could go in either and it doesn't matter?

I'm guessing that the bank of small, socketed chips is the RAM?

Regarding the BIOS - if your motherboard only requires one, then you need to populate the correct socket with the correct ROM size. It's printed on the PC board ("2764" and "27256").
2764 refers to a 64 kilobit (i.e., 8 kilobyte) ROM chip and 27256 refers to a 256 kilobit (i.e., 32 kilobyte) ROM chip.
However, without further information about your specific motherboard, it's difficult to say whether you require just one or two BIOS chips.

You could also have a look at these sites if you can perhaps track down your motherboard's BIOS, but chances are that FesterBlatz's motherboard BIOS will do the trick:
http://chukaev.ru54.com/bios_cs_en.htm
http://minuszerodegrees.net/xt_clone_bios/xt_clone_bios.htm (the site appears to be down currently).

Yes, the socketed chips are the RAM.

Since you don't have much experience with the XT architecture (like I did up to recently), it might be a good idea to read up about it and what else you require to get it running.
Since you only have 8-bit slots, you need to find controller cards and display adaptors that will work in these 8-bit slots, but that's a totally different topic.

Unlike some boards where the BIOS was into ODD/EVEN PROMs, yours takes a single device for the BIOS. It's been years since I've looked at the manual, but I seem to recall the 2nd socket's purpose was for a PROM to supplement the BIOS with something like BASIC--similar to the IBM 5150/5160.

Yep, the bank of chips in the corner is the RAM. It looks to be populated for 640K of RAM which is the maximum it can take. Unless you can get your hands on something like an AST SixPak Premium to add extended RAM using 3rd party drivers (hard to find and not very useful on an 8088), 640K is as far as XT's go...

Send me a PM and we can work out the logistics of getting you a programmed EPROM with the BIOS on it.

You'll also need to know how to properly set those DIP switches next to the power supply socket. Back in the day you had to configure those switches for the number of floppy drives, amount of RAM, Color/Mono video board, and even whether or not there's an 8087 co-processor present. My manual is long lost, but I'm sure I can dig up the dip switch settings somewhere since in my experience they're pretty much universal among the later XT clone boards.

FesterBlatz wrote:

Unlike some boards where the BIOS was into ODD/EVEN PROMs, yours takes a single device for the BIOS. It's been years since I've […]
Show full quote

Unlike some boards where the BIOS was into ODD/EVEN PROMs, yours takes a single device for the BIOS. It's been years since I've looked at the manual, but I seem to recall the 2nd socket's purpose was for a PROM to supplement the BIOS with something like BASIC--similar to the IBM 5150/5160.

Yep, the bank of chips in the corner is the RAM. It looks to be populated for 640K of RAM which is the maximum it can take. Unless you can get your hands on something like an AST SixPak Premium to add extended RAM using 3rd party drivers (hard to find and not very useful on an 8088), 640K is as far as XT's go...

Send me a PM and we can work out the logistics of getting you a programmed EPROM with the BIOS on it.

You'll also need to know how to properly set those DIP switches next to the power supply socket. Back in the day you had to configure those switches for the number of floppy drives, amount of RAM, Color/Mono video board, and even whether or not there's an 8087 co-processor present. My manual is long lost, but I'm sure I can dig up the dip switch settings somewhere since in my experience they're pretty much universal among the later XT clone boards.

The (quite useful!) link from jesolo shows a board that is remarkably similar to mine, with everything just about in the same positions. Looking at the current DIP switch settings, the documentation there seems reasonable to me.

Ah! Useful links indeed! I spotted my exact board right away, the DTK PIM-TB10-Z. I recognize the DTK/ERSO bios string too...

thanks to this thread i was able to find some details on my board! mine is very close to this but had no markings