Hello dear Vogons members. I'd like to ask for your help with identification of this most probably notebook mainboard with 386 Intel CPU on board. I was googling for Interlink Business Network Corp. and for SL-0101 however with no luck.
Finding some references to Schneider and Rein laptops with Interlink Business Network BIOSes, e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/ … target_pc_7640/
Thank you for answer and hints with Rein and Schneider. I've tried to google photos of some 386 laptops from these manufacturers, however among all that I've found none of the photo shown back side of laptop with similar layout of connectors.
When I've searched for Interlink Business Network Corp. on archive.org the only thing I've found was related to BIOS'es made by that company in mid 80's. It seems that the name Interlink Business Network Corp. on the label is just related to the BIOS used on that mainboard.
Maybe I will desolder BIOS IC's to dump the content. I hope to find some ASCII text section with more useful information about this board.
It's got that ATM or payment processing system smell about it.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
I can't figure it out at all. I think the 50 pin J9 connector is probably video from the WD90C20 chip (think there's VGA on back panel). It's also got some sort of 100pin external connector (ISA bus?). J5 header might be for keyboard/mouse/pointer or floppy drive? Hard drive on J3&4? And, I think, 13 different oscillators or crystals. Which seems excessive. And who's AIELEC? Loads of chips from them (ATADP, BK0150, ATM02, ACTM, ATI1150). A lot of Panasonic and Mitsubishi stuff as well. Japanese make?
Where'd you find it? Have you tried applying power?
BitWrangler wrote on 2022-01-04, 22:25:It's got that ATM or payment processing system smell about it.
That could be the case here. I was focused on searching for laptop kind of device and you're right that it could be some kind of ATM mainboard...
snufkin wrote on 2022-01-04, 23:06:I can't figure it out at all. I think the 50 pin J9 connector is probably video from the WD90C20 chip (think there's VGA on back panel).
I've forgotten to add some photos of the back side. Please refer to attachment. Indeed there is VGA connector there.
There is also 2x RS232, LPT...
Looking on the production codes on IC's it seems this maniboard was produced in 2nd half of 1990.
snufkin wrote on 2022-01-04, 23:06:Where'd you find it? Have you tried applying power?
I was given with this mainboard somewhere in 1999/2000 from my cousin. I have no idea from where he could get it. It was lying on my shelve for all these years and now, during the cleaning of the boxes, I've found it.
For sure I will plug it in to DC power supply at some point in the time however I'd like to be sure which level of DC voltage to set before that. I hope to see something on VGA output while the board will be powered.
There was a AI Electronics Corp. in Japan: https://classictech.wordpress.com/computer-co … ics-corp-japan/
The resolution of the photos isn't great, but I think I can convince myself that the logo on the on the abc-24 is the same as on the AIELEC chips on your board.
Site here: https://www.dopecc.net/computers/ai/
That says they went out of business in the early '90s. I think most of the chips on your board were made in 1990, so maybe this was a very late model. Apparently their R&D went to Sega.
https://segaretro.org/SI_Electronics_Ltd.
Doesn't really help with your board. Working out the power requirement could be fun. Probably need to trace where it goes to find out what it connects to, and see if that suggests a safe voltage. Looks like a DC-DC converter about that 9-pin circular connector (combined keyboard/mouse?), might be able to work out what the output from that should be which would give an idea for the input voltage.
Thank you again for great help and all the news. I've found some better resolution of the ABC -24 computer and indeed the logo on some IC's is the one of Ai Electronics. At this point I'm 99% sure this board was manufactured by Japanese maker (Chips from Ai Electronics, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Hitachi).
One of the sources given by you suggest that in the late '90 TOMEN Electronics acquired manufacturing portion of AI Electronics.... Maybe the next logic link is to check some devices made by TOMEN Electronics...
This whole board starts to be more and more interesting in terms of the historical background 😀
However with this discovery of board being made in Japan my worry is that I won't find any ASCII string in the BIOS dumps.... At least not the one which will look like ASCII string to me.
Sorry for quite a long time with no response. Anyway finally I've found some time to desolder the BIOS chips and dump the content. You can find in attachment what I've found in both "High" and "Low" IC's (with the BIN files named to reflect this) and also one BIN file which is a merge of both to allow to read ASCII strings inside. I put all into ZIP archive, because I was not allowed by forum engine to upload neither BIN nor HEX files.
I've found in the merged BIN file a lot of readable (for myself) ASCII strings, however nothing which will make me closer to understand from which type od device this motherboard comes from.
I'm curious whether there are some Japanese strings... maybe we have some Vogons members from Japan who could try to check this....
You could always try to inject 5v on the mainboard.
a possibly easy injectionpoint could be the IDE board (connected to J3 & J4?) pins 42 & 41. Just verify there is a direct connection between pin 41,42 and the other chips 5v pins to be sure.
J5 is the floppy connector
J1&J2 I'm guessing keyboard&trackball (or little keyboard mouse nipple )
The big external connector is very likely for a docking station/bus extension.
The round connector with 9 pins next to the serial port is most definitly the psu port, though which pin does what will be an excercise to figure out.
For a moment I thought it resembled a mitac 4020F laptop, but that only has 8 pins
J9 makes me wonder if it's some sort of memory slot, since the board only has 2MB of ram on board (and some more ram for video memory)
Which leaves me J8 ?
good luck & enjoy !
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https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Serial_port
It's curious that the BIOS is "IBM Compatible 286 BIOS" - did they forget to update that string for 386? Or is it really a 286 BIOS, and the HW is based on 386SX simply because it was easier or cheaper to get that CPU at the time?
BIOS also seems to mention internal/exernal drives (so possibly it requires some sort of FLASH or EPROM memory bank to be present, to provide OS/software) as well as "CRTC" which is what they call a video card I presume, since I doubt this machine was limited to dumb text-mode only CRTC.
It would seem the "CRTC" is actually integrated, the WD90C20 is a VGA chipset. Curiously it also says "PROTO" on that chip...
IBM ATs were only ever 286, so to be IBM compatible to their 286 AT, you'd want to say that at the time.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-01, 02:23:IBM ATs were only ever 286, so to be IBM compatible to their 286 AT, you'd want to say that at the time.
Or you could simply omit the CPU designation, like most (all?) 386+ BIOSes did: "IBM COMPATIBLE IBM IS A TRADEMARK OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP." - so it is a bit odd I think. But, it's just a random observation, nothing more.
