VOGONS


First post, by starhawk

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Hello!

Looking for some info on two motherboards and one PC/104 graphics card. None of these have useful info on Google. One manufacturer no longer really exists, and the other one doesn't appear to want to talk to me, because I'm not a huge corporation.

The first is an Ampro Little Board of some subspecies. It's a variant of the LittleBoard/386 marked "LB/386SX II". Layout does NOT match a standard LittleBoard/386. I can find NOTHING on this model, as if it doesn't exist. Alas, Ampro was bought out some time ago, and ADLINK, the corporation that assimilated them, doesn't have time for little people like us.

The second is a Micro/Sys SBC3386EX Rev.M motherboard. I'm pretty sure this is EBX form factor. I'd love to have pinout and jumper info for it. I can find a minimal leaflet online but nothing actually useful.

The third is a Micro/Sys MPC204-1 graphics card in PC/104 form factor, and it supports VGA, a "matrix touch panel" (which I'm pretty sure is the old IR beam grid thing), on-expansion-board AT keyboard and beeper, and eg LCDs, EL LCDs, and plasma display panels that use the old, old Flat Panel Display protocol similar to really early DSTN laptop displays. But I don't have pinouts for it -- just a 'brag sheet' leaflet like the motherboard. Utterly worthless except as advertising.

I wrote Micro/Sys a few days ago, never heard back. I've ordered one of their free catalogs, which they claim is the "ultimate resource" for their stuff -- I bet it's either more useless-except-as-marketing stuff, or worse, never shows.

Can anyone help track down useful documentation for those three items?

EDIT: for the record, I've already been to VOGONSwiki. It was, unfortunately, not helpful.

Reply 2 of 8, by whitepawn

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Hi,
Could you please check attached pdf for LB?

Filename
5001031.pdf
File size
762.91 KiB
Downloads
36 downloads
File license
Public domain

Unfortunately you are out of luck about Micro/Sys boards.

https://web.archive.org/web/20000304180553/ht … _expansion.html

https://web.archive.org/web/19980212180237/ht … ml/sbc3386.html

Maybe this pdf is enough for sbc3386?

Filename
3386ds.pdf
File size
35.36 KiB
Downloads
31 downloads
File license
Public domain

Ampro has technical page.I downloaded above pdf link below:

https://web.archive.org/web/19990208003321/http://ampro.com/

You may dig old pages and archives. Maybe you can find from pdf names.

Good luck.

Reply 3 of 8, by starhawk

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

That looks VERY useful re the LB/386SX II -- I'm doing something else RN but I'll check in a few to be sure, but I think that's what I've been looking for.

Re the Micro/Sys stuff... that's the marketing flyer I alluded to earlier. Good for selling systems, but only barely enough useful info so you can't really argue when they call it a "technical document". The old website isn't a help either, unfortunately.

Two steps forward, two steps back.

Credit where credit is due, though -- I really appreciate the help with the Ampro board. Thxman!

Reply 6 of 8, by starhawk

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
starhawk wrote on 2022-10-15, 10:27:

Micro/Sys has advised me that spelunking through the specs drawer will take roughly a week "to verify the configuration of parts" I have.

Pffft.

I'll report back if they don't get lost in there.

Haven't heard back just yet. Color me unsurprised. If I've not heard anything by Thursday, I'll send em a 'tickler'.

Reply 8 of 8, by starhawk

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Good news and bad news.

The bad news first. NOTHING on the MPC204-1 video card. I'm gonna have to reverse engineer pinouts there.

The good news?

Full docs on the SBC3386EX. The PDF is, to put it kindly, an absolute MESS, but it's usable. Every PDF page is split into an even-numbered and an odd-numbered document page, but the order is backwards -- even numbers on the left, so that eg PDF page whatever has doc pages 4 and 3, and the next set is pages 6 and 5... etc... also, each PDF page is duplicated. So it's doc pages 4 and 3 twice, then 6 and 5 twice, etc. Oh, and some of the pages in the TOC are rotated the wrong way around, they're sideways!

I kind of want to go through and properly fix it in a PDF editor somewhere, but I really just don't have time right now because basically Real Friggin Life.

Unfortunately the PDF is too big to attach. So you get a Mega[dot]nz link. You will also need the decrypt key because Mega is weird.

DOCUMENT LINK -- https://mega.nz/file/YJRxQBAY
DOCUMENT KEY -- X1sSKt5NIFtXqII4m1r0HuvzdNZ1cwnymY3DTQIogvg

Go to the link, feed the website the key, you get the doc. Mega is my long-term storage, instead of Google Drive, because reasons... tl;dr I'm trying to migrate away from Google stuff as much as I can.

Sorry I couldn't directly upload the PDF, but I did my best... I just didn't feel right keeping it to myself, TBH, and since I didn't have to sign anything to get the docs, I'm electing to pass them along.