I have a 3Com 3C509 that was made in Ireland, believe it or not. I didn't know Ireland had any manufacturing at all, even back in the 90's.

keenmaster486 wrote:

I have a 3Com 3C509 that was made in Ireland, believe it or not. I didn't know Ireland had any manufacturing at all, even back in the 90's.

There are video and hard drives made in Ireland too.

I have 2 motherboards that were made in Ireland

I am pretty sure they made some PII and PIII CPUs in Ireland..because I had one.

Trying to boot up my build.
I get no video.
I double checked my setting and they are fine.
I have 32mb. of FPM ram installed in bank 0 ( 16mb x 2 ) I don't know if FPM ram needs to be in pairs ?
I only have the VLB video card connected.
I am using a Cyrix dx2 66mhz CPU.
I also tried the Intel DX2 66mhz CPU.
Keyboard light come on and all appears good but no video.
Display reads "NO VGA cable" but it is good and attached correctly.
I checked on another 486 and the display works fine.
I removed the CMOS Dallas battery just to eliminate any possibilities as it is a NEW battery.

Any Ideas ?

have you tested this with an ISA vga card?

Yes, same result. No video output.
PSU is working fine.
Power led from motherboard turn on.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

Yes, same result. No video output.
PSU is working fine.
Power led from motherboard turn on.

do you have a speaker plugged into the motherboard? I'm curious if there are some POST codes. Are you sure it's working at all? do you have floppy drives hooked up, and if so do they access/perform some kind of boot sequence?

I know you have a motherboard on hand, but if you (or others) are looking for a product made in the USA, check out the Mecer B860, and Diamond Speedstar VGA.

I hooked up a PC analyzer with no results or readings. Not even computer beeps.

Any Idea ?

Well, I could not get the last 486 motherboard to post so I have a NEW candidate.
In fact it is almost Identical to the Mecer B860.

Atrend VLB 486 Galaxy motherboard.
It has 128kb cache which I will see if I can bump that up to 256kb.
And it supports a 486dx2-50 or 66mhz.

I have some questions about this motherboard.
A) What does PGA CPU mean ?
B) What does PQFP CPU mean ?

Manual:
http://www.elhvb.com/webhq/models/486vlb2/4gpv3.html

4GPV3 486 VESA Motherboard

- BIOS ID string X0-0100-001117-00101111-060692-CTQ596-F
- 8-30 pin SIMM slots (1-128meg FPM DRAM)
- 2-32bit VESA Local Bus slots
- 8-16bit ISA slots
- 64-256k cache support in 8-28pin sockets + 1 TAG RAM sockets
- AMI/Award/MR Bios
- CONTAQ (German) 82C596 A Chipset
- Supports the following cpu's at 25/33/40/50/66MHz
INTEL 80486SX/80486DX/80486DX2, P24C, P24T
CYRIX CX486M6, CX486M7
AMD AM486DX/DX2
- Green PC Connector
- Manufactured by: Atrend Technology Co. Ltd. or VisionEx + CTL corp. 1993

Pin grid array. A CPU that has pins that is inserted in a socket.

Other one I am not sure sounds like a IC integrated component. CPU is soldered on the motherboard. either that or CPU is soldered on a PCB and the PCB has pins underneath. Could mean many things. But essentially PGA is pin grid array foud on a CPU that is installed into a socket..

This motherboard is strange. It has some jumper options fixed and I am not sure what the settings are.
It is if this motherboard was only designed for certain CPU’s.

It is is more like the Mecer B860 motherboard than the Atrend.
The Cyrstal is at 33mhz.
https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/M/M … B860-REV-A.html

What CPU’s do you think should work with this motherboard.
I already tried the 486dx-66 and 486dx-50 with no success.

Do you think a 486-33mhz should work by default ?

Update:
Okay , the motherboard is actually a “MB-486-CONTAQ 012093 U4L2-0 Socket 3 82C596, intel 486DX-33, 8Mb Edo Ram U.S.A”

Similar to this one By VisionEx corp.
https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/V/V … OTHERBOARD.html

Does anyone know where I can get this CONTAQ manual ?

It looks like this motherboard was sold by many USA companies.

You did put 4 memory sticks into the computer right?

the 486 requires 4x30 pin SIMMs in banks of 4

So I need to fill up bank 0 right ?

Intel486dx33 wrote:

So I need to fill up bank 0 right ?

Yes, 4 identical memory sticks in bank 0. Otherwise the system won't boot.

Thanks, that worked.

I'm amazed there are that many US parts that recent. I figure to go 100% you have to go back to...maybe the early 80s. Maybe earlier! Stuff not available, and if it were it would be a dinosaur that stuggles to print text.

Too bad we can't build our own things. It's like we can't wipe our own butts, we need Asians to do it for us. 😵

Not having 4 sticks of ram in my original choice of motherboard may have been why it would not post. As I only had 2 sticks of ram in it.

Duh !

Hey, if i can save a 2nd VLB motherboard from being tossed, all the better. Definitely give it a try with 4 memory sticks in bank 0.