A taste of how the search page could look like:

Been kinda working on something similar. My version of allows you to view pictures by motherboard size, and socket type. But it's nowhere near complete. For example I've done socket type for Pentium, but not 486. I also split the 486 section by bus type. Mine is very much in the style of the original TH99 with static pages. Trouble is it takes ages to sort things. I do sections when I need them. Was also going to link it in with my chipset encyclopedia. You have a massive project. You end up with difficult decisions. For example Tandon 286 m/boards look nearly AT, but they have the Keyboard port offset. Do you put that in proprietary or AT? I put it in AT, because I assumed someone looking it up won't notice that. Even focusing on one or two things is a big task. You'll have to decide whats best feature wise. Personally I like things to work in old browsers. My chipset encyclopedia will work in the original linemode browser but then I'm excessively weird:-) I may be able to help.

Oh that's pretty cool !
I haven't taken the time to fully document the AT form factor (I only made ATX/Baby AT/XT) so that information could be added to my database.
Your chipset encyclopedia could be a neat addition too, I wanted to add the chipset datasheets in my database too.

Now if you pay attention, most motherboards in TH99 documented with a chipset don't have the specific chipset documented, only the brand name. That means for many of them you need to see the original mobo 😒

But anyways, as time moves on, the data will be more and more precise 😁

It would be neat if you guys could work together on one big project, but I understand that the desire to make these things is as much a personal desire to test one's website-making skills as it is a desire to help the scene. Besides, while many hands make light work, there's also such a thing as too many cooks...

Well, being two or three people working on this shouldn't be too bad.

Anyways, I got another idea after getting through the manuals I bought (Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today) and finding this :

See this sticker ? This is a handy thing you're supposed to glue in your computer case as a simple memo ...
What if I created some out of my database and let people download these as well ? 😁

Documenting which flavour the COM ports of mobo are could be very nice too (This is what I mean https://web.archive.org/web/20190405065828/ht … er_pinout.shtml)

Deksor wrote on 2020-05-21, 19:18:

evasive wrote on 2020-05-21, 18:05:

Once we get to the stages of matching boards with pictures/bioses/manuals call me in. Oh and I'm not done uploading to elhvb.com yet. I just found a folder called "mirrors" on one of my disks. Surprise!

That'd be great but there's one big bummer : POST strings. I haven't found a way to extract them out of a bios too unfortunately. Unless someone comes with a POST string extractor for Ami/award bioses, this will be a big problem 😒

Got one for award, have to check if I have something useful for AMI/Phoenix. All of this tooling is 16bit BTW so we'll need a 32bit windows or pure dos machine to run it. Given you'd want to run that one with a for/next loop, dosbox is not an option. Let me think on this...

Deksor wrote on 2020-05-24, 00:02:

Now if you pay attention, most motherboards in TH99 documented with a chipset don't have the specific chipset documented, only the brand name. That means for many of them you need to see the original mobo 😒

That is where the POST strings come in. They usually list what chipset model is used.

Regarding BIOS and POST: a field indicating which BIOS type and version is used. I don't mean manufacturer version, but which version AMIBIOS, Award etc. is used, and determines the diagnostic beep & post codes for that board.

computerguy08 wrote on 2020-05-23, 19:28:

A taste of how the search page could look like:

Please use more textboxes instead of drop-downs. I may not exactly know what i'm searching for.
You could implement auto-suggestion for text-boxes while i'm typing, that's fine. 😀

Other than that, great work! Can't wait to start using it time and time again. (Y)

dionb wrote on 2020-05-24, 11:59:

Regarding BIOS and POST: a field indicating which BIOS type and version is used. I don't mean manufacturer version, but which version AMIBIOS, Award etc. is used, and determines the diagnostic beep & post codes for that board.

Yeah I thought about this, I just have to think how I'm going to implement that without confusing people with manufacturer/bios revision.

@mR_Slug: is that version available somewhere? Would like to put that online somewhere or at the very least use as a basis, would make versions with the chipset manufacturer too.

Deksor wrote on 2020-05-24, 12:57:

dionb wrote on 2020-05-24, 11:59:

Regarding BIOS and POST: a field indicating which BIOS type and version is used. I don't mean manufacturer version, but which version AMIBIOS, Award etc. is used, and determines the diagnostic beep & post codes for that board.

Yeah I thought about this, I just have to think how I'm going to implement that without confusing people with manufacturer/bios revision.

board bios version/bios core version ???

Yeah why not 😁
This is another data that needs to be extracted from the ROM files though. But I'm sure there's a way to do that !

Edit : here we go !

For now I use the date in AMI bios as the core version, but there may be a better indicator than the build date.
By the way this dataexpert board was previously unidentified. Some parts don't match exactly, but the jumpers/led headers do match exactly, the chipset was made by VLSI and the CPU was the same. Only one of the ISA slot is different and the CPU and NPU are swapped. Considering TH99/MTL is full of mistakes, I think it's just one of them and that I identified the board.

Starting to look great 😀
Mentioning shortcomings does help a lot!

It might also be useful to make it possible to include some useful data about bios support for peripherals, i.e:

- if 1 or 2 fdd are to be set
- which fdd sizes are supported (360-2.88)
- if 2 or 4 IDE drives are to be set
- if drive size is limited to 512MB / 8.4 GB
- if advanced memory timing is available
- cachable memory limits

This can be added by users if they come across these limits.

One question:
What if one board is sold under 2 or 3 different brand names? Will this make two entries, confusing somebody who is searching for what board he/she/it has.
I believe my PC Chips M577 is such an example: it might also have sold as Amptron PM9900. Both are basically the same board.

For the 4 first - this could be generated out of ROM files based on the bios version I think. But we have to figure out which version has what.
Memory timings is going to be tougher to describe as is, but may be doable too.
Cachable memory limits could be based on the chipset, which have to be improved

As for the question, it's a good one I've been questioning myself for a while, but I don't have any answer.
I think duplicate mobos with different names/manufacturers isn't that big of a deal as long as the data is the same between all the versions

Deksor wrote on 2020-05-24, 18:22:

As for the question, it's a good one I've been questioning myself for a while, but I don't have any answer.
I think duplicate mobos with different names/manufacturers isn't that big of a deal as long as the data is the same between all the versions

Duplicate models listed isn't a big deal indeed, maybe it could be mentioned in comments if board Y is identical to board X (as well as the other way around)

I see lots of suggestions here about adding information about what a motherboard can do. For example does a motherboard support 2.88MB floppys. While useful, every new tuple or field I also see it as a factorial(n) problem. That's the trouble with feature creep. I think the question needed to be asked is: What is the intent or primary function?

A: To help a user identify a board more quickly/accurately than with the existing th99 and point them to some links with more info e.g. a manual or another website.
OR
B: To have a kinda one-stop-shop database lots of precise details about (ideally all, realistically some) known boards.

I think A is doable, B is too but it's several orders of magnitude more work. If the intent is A, then searching for whether a motherboard can take EDO or BEDO RAM is far less useful that searching for all socket5/7 motherboards with a specific ISA/PCI slot pattern. As the intent is to identify and point to information. If B then the aims are somewhat reversed. For a given motherboard does this support MMX CPU's does it support EDO etc etc. As the intent is to provide detailed information.

I'm not saying these are mutually exclusive. There are obviously overlaps, and perhaps C, D, E and F. But I think it is probably more useful to make this project do a few things well than lots of things badly. What those few things are, are the primary function(s). The mods I made, primary function, was to search thru 75 boards instead of 175 boards.

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, just you have to understand this is a massive massive undertaking.

Sorry double post.

Attached is my modded version of the TH99. It just contains the modded files. Put the file in the root of your TH99 directory, where index.html is, then extract it. It should add the files in the sub dir's where needed. Probably want to make a copy of your TH99 dir in case it screws things up.

I've sorted some of the M/boards and hdd controllers into smaller category's. Also some of the hdd's are also listed by type. It's not finished, so YMMV.

Even this small addition took ages. EISA motherboards are folded into ISA. I know for sure some are EISA, but some motherboards I have no idea. If I had tried to have split it I'd have an incomplete EISA section, with another section labeled ISA that includes some EISA boards. See, just this little part would be hours upon hours of work. Also I think there are motherboards listed in the by manufacture section that are not listed in the motherboard section:-)

Well you're right in a way, some infos will be harder to grab than others and especially the ones stored in the BIOS (however if someone comes with a BIOS scanner which tells exactly what's the bios capable of, then it's going to be far easier).

For the time being, I try to focus on what TH99/MTL had stored and try to replicate it, but in a better way and with small additions. Then some more additions will come but it will depend on if getting the data is easy or not and if it is that important or not.
So basically the intent is A-ish and as time progress, the intent will turn more and more to B.
While EDO/FPM support isn't very useful for research (though other kinds of memory such as simm + fpm or edo + sdram), it is a very neat piece of information for boards you have to know wether it supports EDO ram or not.

Thanks for the link 😀

In my case, I'll add the EISA slots based on MTL's data (but as I use a older version of it, from late 1998, some boards will be missing, but this will still save countless human hours)

What I really was after with addition of these capabilities was this.

On my local trading website I come across a nice Pentium motherboard. Not too much details but there is a brand and model number. The more details I get, the more sure I am I have the parts to make it work.

When these are not searchable, it is not a big deal, it's just an addition to other static data like jumper settings.

Making a million extra search options to get a list of all socket 8 motherboards that are capable of 60ns EDO on 168 pin sticks AND support for both LS120 as well as 10+GB hard disks?
Pure madness if you ask me.

Most of us just get a brand and model number and search for its settings and capabilities.
Not to make a list of boards we want and just pray one of the shortlist magically pop up on ebay...