VOGONS


First post, by rpocc

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I've got this board for parts with a set of other mostly dead motherboards, wasn't able to start it up with 486DX2-66 and probably going to extract some parts out of it, but maybe I've found something very rare?
I'm out of ideas of how to identify it.

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1. The most similar MB to this one is MB for IBM Valuepoint series PS/2, listed here:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/ibm-ps … 472,-6482,-6484

2. There are differences in layout and the most important difference is the obscure 112-pin slot marked Cache Slot. I wasn't able to find any information on this type of slot.

3. At least there is no any documentation on this board on theretroweb. There is only one 6-pin jumper marked J53V and when I've tried moving jumper from 1-2 to 2-3 and started it up, SUDDENLY it blown up the fuse in my test PSU. I've stopped further attempts to start it up.

4. It has Flash dual BIOS, Intel P28F001BX-T-150. The contents are attached.

The first half contains BIOS for Trio64 VGA integrated video, the second half consists of IBM BIOS. The only interesting strings I've found are these:

19551H: "AJAX for Pecan"
1402BH: "NCR BIOS Version . (., .)...!!! Pre-release version / for evaluation only !!!...QPS"

So, what are your thoughts on this board? Maybe I should keep it for history? The problem is that I can't even insert a post-card because I have no such type of riser.

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Reply 1 of 3, by pancakepuppy

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https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/atandt … globalyst-550-c
Has a lot of similarities with the AT&T Globalyst 550 including the security/speaker/LED headers near the cache slot. That board also has a J53V jumper for CPU type selection in its jumpers manual. I would think this is a relative of that board.

Reply 2 of 3, by Socket3

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looks like it came out of an IBM Valuepoint 466DX

At first I tought it came from an Aptiva but to my knowledge those come with Cirrus Logics on board video and socketed cache chips.

But the AT connector is in another location on the Valuepoint 466DX. At least on my unit.

Reply 3 of 3, by rpocc

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pancakepuppy wrote on 2023-08-24, 17:57:

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/atandt … globalyst-550-c
Has a lot of similarities with the AT&T Globalyst 550 including the security/speaker/LED headers near the cache slot. That board also has a J53V jumper for CPU type selection in its jumpers manual. I would think this is a relative of that board.

Looks very convincing.
The BIOS of AT&T Globalyst 550 looks very similar to mine with some portions shifted by several dozens of bytes but mostly identical, and the BIOS is also called IBM Surepath BIOS 1.2. The main difference is the riser slot.

According to one thread about Globalyst 520 and FIC 486-PAK-3, the jumpers configuration is the following:

1 +5V from PSU 2 Voltage to CPU 3 Gnd 4 Gnd 5 Voltage to CPU 6 +5V from PSU 7 NC […]
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1 +5V from PSU
2 Voltage to CPU
3 Gnd
4 Gnd
5 Voltage to CPU
6 +5V from PSU
7 NC

which explains why my PSU have blown: direct short circuit from +5V and GND via internally connected pins 2 and 5! What a moron have designed this board! But exact model or revision remains unknown because I haven't found this layout of MB in the entire Globalyst 5xx series equipped with 486 processors.