Knowing PCChips there's probably nothing of interest behind that sticker. They LOVED to rebrand things to make things harder to recognise.

I'm not messing with the pc chip anymore, I switched to the ASUS VL/I-486SV2G, it seems the sis chipset is better than umc, at least I have no issues booting from the floppy drive (which never worked on umc boards).

So I was able to update the bios with the latest beta version which supports the LBA, but the hard drive is showed as 2gb (like the 2gb cf card).

About the network, I was able to retrieve the configuration utility for the realtek card (not the one in the picture), I was able to enable the boot rom, but I suppose I need help finding the right address?
I burned the ide_386l.bin xt bios, on my w27c512-45 eeprom then installed it on the socket.


It's weird because I have no life sign from the xt bios, I just get the normal post screen.

Edit: I tried the isa cards on another pc, xt-ide still doesn't get detected.
I then tried a pci network card with flashed xt ide bios and it worked,so now I know the eeproms are fine.
I think the issue could be with the eeproms I'm using and the isa network cards maybe the pinout, as dip28 I just have: W27C512-45 or W27E257-10 or 12.
This or both my isa cards are dead, I doubt since the diagnostic tool apparently works fine (on the realtek card, not sure the other one, since it has some quirks).
Any guess?

It works finally, with both isa lan cards (in one I used xtL at and the other the 386L xt!
The trick was to use xtidecfg and allow it make the autoconfiguration with xtidecfg tool.
That being said:

One vlb controller cards corrupts every floppy disk it gets.
The 3 vlb controllers are able to format the hard drive, but when it's time to write something (like sys c: or copy files) apparently it gets fine but when I do: c: and then dir, it says impossible to find files and just hangs.
The hard drive it's a fujitsu mpf3102at and it's the oldest I have, the cf card is a 2gb card.

I think I had more than enough, I think it's a problem with vlb chipsets because I was using the 2gb card on my 386 motherboard without issues!

So I did all over again.
Switched to full ISA cards (controller and video), the same isa controller i'm using on the 386 rig and works fine (with the 2gb tf).
Used the 2gb compact flash, the xt-ide 386L, booted from floppy drive, deleted and created a partition, formatted with format c: /s.
Everything went (apparently) fine, I did c:, dir and got the message: "unable to show files", then I switched to a: and did copy *.* c:\ then it asked me to overwrite command.com and then copied the other bunch of files.
Did c: and dir again, unable to show files (again), but the free space on it has diminished and if I do the copy again it asks me to overwrite the files.

Obviously if I try to boot from the hard drive it doesn't work, if I connect the tf card to my actual computer, it says it need to be formatted.

I really have no idea why I have those issues with vlb motherboards ONLY.