Hi,

i also just got one of these boards. Mine has an Intel DX4-100 in its socket. I also didn't find any information useful information on this board. Even Mitac itself does not have any information on it. Yes, I asked via contact form on their website.

Currently there is one MSC-242 NOS with manual for sale in US on Ebay (No link, not sure if it is allowed here). Maybe a fellow Vogon in US is willing to aquire this board and make the manual available to the public?

Nevertheless, i am just making some measurements on this board.
The white 8-pin Jst?-connector seems to be the power-connector (used when not powered via ISA-bus).
pinout seems to be: (from top of PCB to bottom)
+5V
+12V
-12V
GND
GND
-5V
+12V
+5V

I have yet no backplane/riser-card, so i am atm unable to test it. The board has no VGA onboard.

with best regards,

Alex

That nos board may be a good one to start with 😉 it seems the manual for this board is quite rare as well.

The other way around would be to reverse determine what jumpers and connectors might do.
You have made a nice start with the 8 pin connector. I'll go and look into which jumpers are set at my board and maybe there will follow others who do the same of they have different CPU's mounted. That way reverse determination is possible and may get to the most important stuff 😀

Please note my card is untested, also because I find have a backplane. I managed to identify the CPU as DX/2-66 looking at a a tag on the bottom of the CPU.

Here is my jumper config.
Starting at "conn2" next to the cpu going down:
J8: on
J7: 1-2
J7A: 1-2
J12: 1-2
J15: 1-2
J16: 2-3
J17: off
J19: off
J31: off
J32: off

Between CPU and vrm sink:
J33: 1-2 (select 3,3v or 5v)
J32B: 3-5; 4-6 (+3.3v power input connector?)

Com CPU to Dallas clock:
J21: off
J22: 2-3
J23: 2-3
J24: 2-3
J25: 1-2
J27 : 1-2
J29: 2-3
(above that)
J50: on
J28: off
J26: off
(Down to Dallas)
J34: on
J35: off
J36: on
J37: on

Next to bios:
J47: 2-3
J48: 2-3

Next to buzzer:
J6: external pc speaker
J10: keyboard diagnostic header
J11: keylock
Cnp1: PC/104 connector (as you described)
(Towards smsc chip)
J14: 2-3
J13: 2-3
J18: 2-3

At corner between ISA edge and ps/2:
J42: (white 5pin connector)
J45: 1-2

At corner between ISA edge and mem slot:
J43: 1-2
J44: 1-2

Mem slots: 72pin simm, max 64MB

Edit: it appears somebody is selling a manual for an unbelievable €57. He posted some pics on eBay and I kinda borrowed a pucture of a page in the manual. So if it is you selling it: thank you very much!

So I've acquired a backplane. Put the board on it, with a Video7 Cirrus GD542x (not sure what it is, there's a big V7 label on it) and a 64MB compactflash card. 2x 4MB FPM 69ns ram sticks should be enough for now.

It's alive!!!

I managed to set all settings to lowest timings in the bios setup and it turns out to be pretty fast! But that's for another thread.

So far it seems the jumper settings mentioned above will do for an Intel DX2-66 CPU, even WB L1 cache can be enabled in bios settings. My CPU doesn't like that though...

Even more jumper settings are incomplete, it would be nice to add in UH19 I think 😀
Would this pic do?

Sure you can add it 😀

Do you think you could draw a schema based on your physical PCB and the one from the manual ?

I can give you svg files that you can reuse

Now your picture is nice, although a bit cropped on the back of the card 🙁

And again a beter pic. This time without the ram/mem. Less shadows, more detail on silk screen. I'll get into the jumper/component drawing, that's not so hard 😀

Here are some SVGs taken from my HDD.

They're basically the source material to what have been used to create the images on TH99, but here you can easily move elements, and it'll be better for people to edit it later if something's wrong ^^

Hi, I am new here, ended up here because I am locking for manual and jumper settings for a Mitac MSC-1500E. I wonder if anyone can point me o a good source ?

Hi,

Sorry for ressurecting a dead thread, but i have been given both a MSC-242 and MSC-262 (among other stuff) WITH manuals. Are you still interested in a copy?

sparcie wrote on 2022-05-30, 14:32:

Hi,
I am interested in the manual of MS-242 mainboard

Sorry for ressurecting a dead thread, but i have been given both a MSC-242 and MSC-262 (among other stuff) WITH manuals. Are you still interested in a copy?

sparcie wrote on 2022-05-30, 14:32:

Hi,

Sorry for ressurecting a dead thread, but i have been given both a MSC-242 and MSC-262 (among other stuff) WITH manuals. Are you still interested in a copy?

Too bad I didn't see that earlier. Sure I am interested!!

sparcie wrote on 2022-05-30, 14:32:

Hi,

Sorry for ressurecting a dead thread, but i have been given both a MSC-242 and MSC-262 (among other stuff) WITH manuals. Are you still interested in a copy?

Also seeing this post just now, but indeed, I'd be very interested as well! Mitac had the infamous name of bad documentation so anything is welcome 😁

sparcie wrote on 2022-05-30, 14:32:

Hi,

Sorry for ressurecting a dead thread, but i have been given both a MSC-242 and MSC-262 (among other stuff) WITH manuals. Are you still interested in a copy?

YES please.

As can be seen we miss the bulk of the info. Front/back photos + Bios dumps are welcome too.

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/mitac-trigon-msc-242
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/mitac-trigon-msc-262

waterbeesje wrote on 2020-06-02, 10:05:

Yesterday I collected some interesting stuff. This included a Mitac MSC-242 industrial processor board. The seller told me it was a working system pull about 8 years ago, so it should work. It's got a DX/2-66 installed according to a sticker on the bottom of the processor. And a Dallas clock of course, probably dead.

I just acquired the same board and was struggling to get it working. No matter what hardware I used, I got nothing on my monitor. That is when I found this topic and this photo.

I used the photo to set my jumpers. I installed a 486DX2, some 72pin memory and a VGA card. After I set the jumpers I still got nothing. I then swapped the memory for a different 72pin stick and then it started to do stuff. I got 8 short beeps, which means an error with the graphical memory. I swapped the VGA card for a different ISA card and it sprung to life!

A few things I learned getting this to work:

• The jumper settings in the first post work for me
• You need to properly push down the CPU in the socket
• Try other memory when you get nothing on screen

Bizarrely, when I checked the bios yesterday it said 1st of April 2023, so the DALLAS clock was still working fine!

I found a datasheet for the MSC-242 which I added to my post as well as the ISA backplane that I used to get it all working. Hope it helps someone.

Thats great! The doc you linked has the archive link in it and it seems to work fine 😀

https://web.archive.org/web/19970217234655/ht … com/msc-242.htm

I was hoping to find something like jumper settings but i figure out still is Mitac style documentation (or lack of it)