First post, by Odiseo
Those of you who've been reading this topic know that I'm considering buying a Socket 7 motherboard. I have one but I killed it in a moment of negligence.
I'm in Belgium. There is nothing on my local second-hand and auction site. A comparable Dutch site has a few broken boards and maybe one that would cost me an arm and a leg.
So I looked on eBay, which was when two things became all too clear to me: (1)Socket 7 boards have indeed become a rare breed and (2)people still want to sell them for like $100. I'm expecting those two elements to be limiting factors.
This seller, located in Latvia, has some motherboards of this type in stock for a still somewhat reasonable price. They claim to have tested all of them and confirmed them to be working.
They listed the board in this auction as a DTK PAM-0057V E0. According to stason.org, this board exists in three versions (3.01, 3.02 and 3.03). Version 3.03 looks most like the board in the auction, with the exception of the FP header. That is to say, I can't find the FP header on the image uploaded by the seller.
However, I do see the FP header on a photo of the same board in another auction: right between the CMOS battery and the side of the board, as indicated on the page on stason.org.
So did the seller in Latvia incorrectly identify their board? Is (could) the board they have (be) another version of the DTK PAM-0057V E0? Or another model altogether?
I focus on the FP header because I'm inexperienced with connecting these cables to their corresponding pins. It's not the meaning of something simple like "HDD LED" that is a mystery to me; it's the variety in labels for the different FP header connections what can confuse me. Not to forget the fact that the layout of a specific (version of a) board may be difficult to find.
Where do I go from here? How can I find an interesting and tested to be fully functional Socket 7 motherboard for a reasonable price that someone who is not specialized, such as myself, can install without much trouble?
