VOGONS


First post, by Chr$

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Hello everyone.

I have this 486 m/b that had suffered battery corrosion and found this forum as the exact same m/b was mentioned and shown by Skyscraper a couple of years ago. Mine has less battery damage so I'm hoping it's ok. So far the graphic card it came with seems to be dead so although with power attached (and a replacement CMOS batt with diode) the keyboard lights flash and the CPU gets toasty warm, I am unable to get any video as I currently don't have another ISA VGA card. Oddly the speaker doesn't seem to beep either, so that's probably not a good sign.

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Apart from that old post on here and someone also looking for info on a German forum, I can find nothing at all about this m/b. I wondered about correct jumper settings etc.

Are you there Skyscraper?

Thanks,

Chr$

Hello, I'm Chris in Saxony, Germany. Old enough to have had actual experience with 1980s Micros and 1990s PC's. Still haven't got my head round any of them!

Reply 1 of 18, by Deksor

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I'm affraid the only info you can have is the one printed on the silkscreen ... But from what I can see it should be sufficient.

The battery damage on yours is actually worse in my opinion because compared to his board where the damage remained located around the battery, your board has damage on every ISA slots. Even traces between the ISA slots are impacted ...
If you want to go through the journey of fixing it, I think you'd need to take off the ISA slots to check each damaged trace and also buy a POST card for testing.

Can you make a clearer photo so I can add it to our documentation site (see my signature) ?
If you have access to a ROM programmer, please dump your bios as well !

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 2 of 18, by Chr$

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Hello, thanks. I thought the green corrosion on the ISA slots may be due to a damp storage environment. The BIOS socket was also a bit green, but I was able to remove the chip and read it (and put the contents onto a newer EPROM with clean pins). I'll attach it. I've deoxit'ed a lot and also checked connections around the battery and, along that side and also of the socketed chips - I also removed a few resistors to check under and around them. I couldn't find any broken traces (but who knows). A POST card is on its way to me. I'll do better pics.

zip of BIOS attached (which I also couldn't find anywhere online to verify, but it looks ok as far as I can tell). This is the detail on the chip:

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  • Filename
    486AMIBIOS.zip
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    40.33 KiB
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    47 downloads
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Hello, I'm Chris in Saxony, Germany. Old enough to have had actual experience with 1980s Micros and 1990s PC's. Still haven't got my head round any of them!

Reply 3 of 18, by Deksor

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Thanks a lot !
The bios looks fine by me. These things rarely die as far as I know (I've had some that died but these were eeproms. One was simply unreadable and the other broke after I tried to write to it)

If you pay attention to the traces in the red areas, they've been corroded.

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(even between the ISA slots) The green corrosion is usually caused by these batteries. I don't think I've ever seen any board with poor storage condition having their ISA slots that rusted that way (And I've had boards that had mud on them before I cleaned them ^^)

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 4 of 18, by Chr$

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You're probably right about the green. Odd that it seems to migrate to the tops of the contacts. I don't think it's going to be worth the time to remove every ISA slot, everything else in the red areas and maybe more. As an aside: by far the cleanest ISA slot with hardly any green is the one closest to the battery.

I have a POST card and a VGA card on the way to me, it won't hurt to try those out.

When Skyscraper sees this, perhaps he'll just sell me his 😉. I have all the rest, obviously, plus I have a working HDD containing Win3.11 and all the correct drivers for the cards it came with and the case, which is serviceable.

Hello, I'm Chris in Saxony, Germany. Old enough to have had actual experience with 1980s Micros and 1990s PC's. Still haven't got my head round any of them!

Reply 6 of 18, by Deksor

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I have created a page for your board here http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/7092
Please make a better picture (lighting is good on your image but it's really blurry) so I can add it to the page.

Sometimes pictures get blurry like this because the lens of your camera is dirty 😀

Last edited by Deksor on 2021-01-25, 23:55. Edited 1 time in total.

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 7 of 18, by Chr$

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This pic is better, including original BIOS chip.

I am involved a little with other types of computers, collecting software/hardware, recovering stuff, so understand that it's important for these things to be preserved. Someone will find this/your page and it may help out.

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Hello, I'm Chris in Saxony, Germany. Old enough to have had actual experience with 1980s Micros and 1990s PC's. Still haven't got my head round any of them!

Reply 8 of 18, by Deksor

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Awesome !!
I have added this image to the page. I also went through the effort of creating a new schema to illustrate the features of that motherboard.
The only thing it's lacking is a proper document to list what each jumpers do but I haven't programmed an easy way to do that way. The motherboard photo will do the trick for now.

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 9 of 18, by Chr$

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Deksor wrote on 2021-01-25, 23:54:

Awesome !!
I have added this image to the page. I also went through the effort of creating a new schema to illustrate the features of that motherboard.
The only thing it's lacking is a proper document to list what each jumpers do but I haven't programmed an easy way to do that way. The motherboard photo will do the trick for now.

You have the cache Bank 0 and bank 1 round the wrong way. Great diagram though.

Hello, I'm Chris in Saxony, Germany. Old enough to have had actual experience with 1980s Micros and 1990s PC's. Still haven't got my head round any of them!

Reply 10 of 18, by Deksor

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Whoops. You know what's worse ? I noticed that and I changed it ... But I think I forgot to upload the new image ...

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 11 of 18, by Chr$

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I also have a Gigabyte GA - 586ATV board that is working perfectly with a Pentium 100. As it's fitted it's hard to do decent pics, but it was a m/b that I was able to find a manual for:

https://download1.gigabyte.com/Files/Manual/m … al_586atv_e.pdf

Hello, I'm Chris in Saxony, Germany. Old enough to have had actual experience with 1980s Micros and 1990s PC's. Still haven't got my head round any of them!

Reply 14 of 18, by Dominus

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Please no buying or selling on Vogons.

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 15 of 18, by Chr$

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Right, ok, that's a shame but fine, it was not my intention to encourage the breaking of any rules.

Hello, I'm Chris in Saxony, Germany. Old enough to have had actual experience with 1980s Micros and 1990s PC's. Still haven't got my head round any of them!

Reply 16 of 18, by Skyscraper

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I have not done much with the PAT48SA-1.30 motherboard or the rest of that system after I removed the battery and the corrosion it had caused.

At the moment the system is probably in some pile of systems somewhere in storage. I'm looking for a new (larger) home at the moment so I can get stuff better organized! 😁

The only advice I can give would be to clean the ISA-slots with white vinegar and a toothbrush then with tap water / distilled water depending on the quality of your tap water. Also reseat all removable chips + the cpu and memory.

If this dosn't help you have to start checking traces and passive components with a DMM.

Having a card that shows POST-codes helps with troubleshooting as does having multiple sets of known to be good memory modules, CPUs and video cards. I see that you have already ordered a POST-card and a second video card.

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.

Reply 17 of 18, by Chr$

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Hello Skyscraper. Thanks for your comments. All the traces I can see around the battery area and along the whole length of that side, as well as some corroded ones further in closer to the battery, all check out fine. I'll have to assume that the problem is somewhere inaccessible and I don't think this one is worth my time removing things like ISA slots. I did get the working VGA card today and it still puts out no video, which I suppose could be the slot (the VGA card works in another machine). I have checked from the top prongs of the ISA slots to the solder side of the board. I'll see what the POST card says when that comes, but if it also doesn't connect or doesn't help much then I will give up on it and will have to find another board 🙁. The case is undergoing repairs and retro-brighting, so at least that will look the part.

Hello, I'm Chris in Saxony, Germany. Old enough to have had actual experience with 1980s Micros and 1990s PC's. Still haven't got my head round any of them!

Reply 18 of 18, by mrwho

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Good morning, all!

Just registered on this site to thank you for the info on this board - I'm trying to make mine work, but this one doesn't seem to be affected by the corrosion - already removed the battery.

If there's anything I can help with, let me know! Right now I'm diagnosing beep codes.

Cheers!

“Hey, you sass that hoopy MrWho? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is."
My home retro drivers repository: ftp://retro:drivers@mrwho.duckdns.org