More information: In particular, I can get it to post with an ISA VGA card in it. But I can't get any video from my nifty VLB card. I am betting there is a jumper I need to set to use the VLB slot, but I have no idea which one it is and I am afraid to start moving stuff around without a manual or some other guidance.

I think the brown slot is an OPTi local bus. Do you have the matching video card? I don't see any "normal" VLB slots on your board...

Weird. It has a model number, but nothing can be found with search engines.
Interestingly, it uses the rather uncommon OPTi 498 chipset. I don't really know that there's anything particularly special about the board though, except for the OPTi local bus slot.

Are the jumper settings necessary? It looks to be a pretty basic board without many jumpers on it. I doubt the manual would reveal much of interest.

It would reveal jumper settings, no?

Yes, but there are so few jumpers, you can generally figure them out by trial and error.

Just to emphasize the point, a VLB card must be installed into a VLB slot. Your board has no VLB slots. Your board seems to have an OPTi Local Bus, but there are very few of these.

Yup. Thanks for the correction. It's been so long since I've worked on one of these that the brown color threw me off. Lucky I didn't fry the board. I slipped a VLB video card into the slot and it fit just fine. But yes, I see now.

Are there any other owners of OPTi localbus systems around?
I own a Galaxy local bus board using the same EISA Connector for its proprietary local bus. It is probably OPTi 498 based as well and came with an S3 based video and a DC880 caching controller.
Am I right these things are quite rare? Never came along another one for years.
These local bus cards were often sold as EISA-cards, but probably trashed due to the fact they will not work in an EISA slot. So the matching cards will be hard to find.

The Opti Local Bus video cards appear to mostly be Tseng ET4000 based. There was never a Tseng EISA card made, plus the cards are usually labelled LOCAL BUS on the PCB.

http://vgamuseum.info/media/k2/items/cache/91 … fe8d09d4_XL.jpg

NJRoadfan wrote:

The Opti Local Bus video cards appear to mostly be Tseng ET4000 based. There was never a Tseng EISA card made, plus the cards are usually labelled LOCAL BUS on the PCB.

http://vgamuseum.info/media/k2/items/cache/91 … fe8d09d4_XL.jpg

Are you shure? Seems as there are at least two ET4000-EISA described on this page:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/graphics-cards/EISA_1.html

Is it possible that the brown slot on this is an EISA slot?

I am told that this Tseng Labs ET4000AX card is an EISA board. I have it right here.

Yeah. The brown slot is definitely EISA. I have looked more closely at the side of the slot and it says EISA. Can't believe I missed that.

That Tseng card is Opti Local Bus. Note the silk screened LOCAL BUS text near the edge connector.

The motherboard itself does not have an EISA BIOS on it either. AMI used a gold sticker on EISA boards and clearly stated it was a EISA BIOS on boot and the BIOS label. Also, EISA boards usually do not have a single EISA slot. All the slots would accept EISA cards with the exception of HiNT Ceaser chipset boards, which use a dumbed down 3 slot implementation of EISA. Not to leave out the obvious but, the OPTi 82c498 isn't an EISA chipset.

brostenen wrote:

Are you shure? Seems as there are at least two ET4000-EISA described on this page:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/graphics-cards/EISA_1.html

One of the cards is the card pictured above and clearly states that it is "local bus". The 2nd card has wait state configuration jumpers, something a real EISA card wouldn't have.

What say you now?

having read the above I'd say go for it BUT also be prepared for something to go wrong and have a dead mobo or vga in the end...

NJRoadfan wrote:

The motherboard itself does not have an EISA BIOS on it either. AMI used a gold sticker on EISA boards and clearly stated it was a EISA BIOS on boot and the BIOS label. Also, EISA boards usually do not have a single EISA slot. All the slots would accept EISA cards with the exception of HiNT Ceaser chipset boards, which use a dumbed down 3 slot implementation of EISA. Not to leave out the obvious but, the OPTi 82c498 isn't an EISA chipset.

Maybe it is indeed an OPTi local bus slot and the "EISABUS" marking in the slot is just due to them using slots that were originally intended to go into EISA boards but were repurposed? After all, it seems to be physically identical to an EISA slot so it wouldn't be surprising if they reused some leftover slots in this case.

I would personally look up the pinouts for OPTI LOCAL BUS and EISA before you turn anything on. I remember hearing about motherboards or graphic cards getting destroyed by putting EISA cards into an OPTI LOCAL BUS slots. I also recall that the physical connector for OPTI LOCAL BUS and EISA are the same, yet the technology used is different, and they are thus incompatible. My guess would be that the motherboard manufacturer could only find the slots which said EISA on them, or didn't know they would say EISA on them when they were ordered and went ahead and used them anyway. If it was me, I would have dremelled out the EISA word on the slots before installing them. But that extra work costs.

EDIT: Another way to look at the situation is if you absolutely do not care about this hardware and aren't interested in looking specs up, then fire up the board with your finger on the power button. But be mentally prepared to never use this hardware again.

pixelmischief wrote:

What say you now?

20180608_125245.jpg

Graphics card: OPTi Local Bus
Motherboard: OPTi Local Bus

You have to ignore the EISABUS on the socket.
EISA and OLB use identical sockets. They are even in the same position of the motherboard.

To distinguish there are a few hints:
EISA boards usually have more than 3 EISA sockets.
OLB boards usually have not more than 3 OLB sockets.
OLB boards use ISA chipsets and ISA BIOS, EISA boards use special chipsets and BIOS.
Your OPTi 82C498 is an ISA chipset, not an EISA chipset.
Your BIOS is an ISA BIOS, not an EISA BIOS.

And I never have heared about an ET4000 for EISA.