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First post, by Cga.8086

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hey guys i really need help from someone that actually has a pentium2 or pentium3 COMPAQ PC
this motherboard sp# 118053-001 i got for free but i got only the motherboard, I was about to trash it but noticed on ebay it has a high price!
I never liked compaq motherboards because i already know that during that era they loved to make things out of standard, so i knew that anything from compaq back then had their own power supply pinouts, which sucks because you have to find other components on sale or documentation.

so reading online i got a PDF manual for a compac deskpro (not sure if my motherboard belongs to any of those models) and the pdf manual practically has like 3 different Power supply pinouts, one for 24 pin (mine has 20 pin only) and two setups on the PDF manual for for 20 pin.

But the strange part is that if i check continuity with a tester, it doesnt even match what the manual says. So i am blind now, i just don´t want to connect a regular ATX power supply because i can blow the PSU and the motherboard.

can anyone with this motherboard share an image of the actual power supply 20pin cable?

sp# 118053-001 P2154AGEYIBR8V AS#010233-001 REV AG

deskpro.jpg

Reply 1 of 2, by dionb

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Compaq and odd pinouts? Where the connector was remotely standard, they always seemed to be normal enough (unlike Dell at in the same period...).

But if you have a continuity tester, it's easy enough to find GND, +5V (power LED) and +12V (fan headers) on the board and compare that to the power pins. Your documentation is ambiguous because of the sheer number of Deskpro models. Ignore that, just look at regular ATX pinout.

Reply 2 of 2, by Skyscraper

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You can use a normal ATX power supply with that motherboard.

The power connector isn't wired 100% like a standard ATX connector but close enough, the important stuff is the same. There are some guides listing the diffrences and how to modify but after a quick glance I figured it only mattered if you wanted to use the original Compaq PSU when upgrading to a non Compaq motherboard and not the other way around so I just hooked up an old early 2000 era ATX PSU without any modification and everything worked fine.

EDIT

I found an old post where I listed the diffrences between the Compaq PSU in the Deskpro and a normal ATX PSU. My source was probably "the Internet"...

"the pin that is "power OK" on a normal ATX PSU is 3.3VSB, 3.3V-pin #1 is named "3.3V/RS", COM-pin #8 is named "RTN/RS " and COM-pin #14 is named "Aux COM"."

"Basically a standard ATX PSU lacks some features the Compaq PSU has but it should not short out the board... I have read that some people cant get their PSUs to turn on without building a 3.3VSB circuit using the ATX PSUs 5VSB circuit but I do not seem to have that problem.* If you have a Compaq 118053-001 i440BX motherboard there is a good chance it will work with a standard ATX PSU, The board Im testing now at least work with the ~16 year old Seventeen ST-250PIIP PSU Im using on my test bench at the moment."

*I think this issue only applies when you try to get a Compaq server board that actually needs 3VSB running with a normal ATX PSU. I think Compaq 118053-001 can't even use 3VSB eventhough it's built to be compatible with a PSU providing this voltage when in standby on the pin otherwise used as "power good".

I'm pretty confident that the motherboards in the Deskpro EP/EN series of workstations were purposely built to support both Compaqs own oddball PSUs and normal ATX standard PSUs.

/EDIT

This is a great motherboard and it shouldn't be trashed. My bet is that it was built by Intel for Compaq.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.