VOGONS


First post, by majestyk

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This might not be the catch of the day, but at least a 386 mainboard I hadn´t come across until today.
I had to adjust, cut and resolder loads of bent and shorted pins on the soldering side before I dared to insert a CPU and RAM and turn this thing on.
As expected it was still dead. The reason were lots of loosened pins art the 85C206 that needed to be resoldered completely.
Then it came alive again and I began fiddling with the jumpers because I couldn´t find anything on the net about this board that has printed "386IE-B-3-0" in the upper right corner.

The attachment 386xxa.JPG is no longer available

Initially I had populated all cache sockets for 256K but no matter what combination of cache and TAG chips I tried cache was either not recognized or the whole system was unstable.
Then I finally found a nearly identical ABIT board, the AB-FS3 (or AB-FS333, AB-FS340):
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/abit-ab-fs3

Even the numbering of the components is identical, mine has 2 additional 72-pin SIMM slots and no jumper-array for cache size just two single jumpers besides the DIL sockets.

In the jumper manual I learned that for 256K cache you have to populate 2 x 64K x 4 TAG chips that are quite uncommon today (and probably back then). So I ordered 2 chips and postponed the cache issue.

According to the manual for the ABIT board the maximum RAM is 32MB. I tried all sorts of combinations but I´m stuck at 16 MB maximum so far.
Does anyone know if the SIS "Rabbit"-chipset can handle 32MB? Or are there additional requirements to be met?

Reply 1 of 5, by MMaximus

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Just a thought, maybe this type of board doesn't allow for 30-pin RAM and 72-pin RAM to be used at the same time? I can see all slots are populated on your pic. Have you tried with one type or the other, check what it reports?

Hard Disk Sounds

Reply 2 of 5, by majestyk

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Wenn I put 4 x 4MB into the 30-pin BANK0 slots the system recognizes 16MB no matter what I insert into the slots of BANK1 or the two 72-pin slots.
The two SIMM slots add 8MB to total memory even if the sticks have more than 4MB each.

Reply 4 of 5, by Horun

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Also: use only Parity SIMMS, those 72pin are not parity (only 8 chip, not 9 chip). Also it may not like 3-chip 30 pin Parity SIMMS due to chip density.
Try 9 chip 30 pin SIMMS....just a thought 😀

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 5 of 5, by majestyk

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Horun wrote on 2022-12-14, 04:33:

Also: use only Parity SIMMS, those 72pin are not parity (only 8 chip, not 9 chip). Also it may not like 3-chip 30 pin Parity SIMMS due to chip density.
Try 9 chip 30 pin SIMMS....just a thought 😀

...and a good one!
I now have 32MB running with 4 sticks 4MB 9-chip parity in BANK0 and 4 sticks 4MB 5(?)-chip parity "topless" in BANK1

All the 72-pin parity sticks I have are double sided and can´t replace - or add to - the sticks in BANK1.
I´ll do some more research when I get the 64Kx4 TAG chips.

I aslo had to replace the 4 SIMM-slots of BANK0 due to breaking retention clamps after changing the sticks a couple of times (and I did this gently...).