VOGONS


First post, by cocoe68

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Hello,

I bought some months ago, a motherboard that has borrowed components, some was found and populated but others don't. I googled and search for images at forums, ebay and many other sites but it is a little bit uncommon mltherboard. I found in TRW site is an Compbal ISA486 33MB. The only picture there is really poor, i need to identify many resisitors, two transistors and main Oscillator.

Link to mobo at TRW: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/compbal-isa486-33mb

Since I bought, I clean in dishwasher, removed tin from vias, downloaded a compatible BIOS to chipset (ETEQ ET82C491/492 C&T 82C206), installed keyboard controllee chip (C&T 8042), 3x 74ls373 and 1x 74ls244.

It has pending 34 resistors (😬), 1x Cache TAG, 1x 74ls521, CPU oscillator (33MHz) and 2 transistors (Q1 and Q2). Everything is possible but i havent info about resistors and Q's.

I need some help from anyone who has a motherboard like mine to complete components missing.

Thanks in advance

Reply 1 of 3, by cocoe68

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I can see not very popular motherboard, but any schematics or similar one? I can see many of 386/486 boards were sold as different name using same product only relabeled identification.

Any idea where to find additional information? Any suggestion is welcome.

Reply 2 of 3, by rasz_pl

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Chipset wasnt all that popular. Your best bet would be reverse engineering diagram from pcb and deducing logically what makes most sense for missing components

https://github.com/raszpl/FIC-486-GAC-2-Cache-Module for AT&T Globalyst
https://github.com/raszpl/386RC-16 memory board
https://github.com/raszpl/440BX Reference Design adapted to Kicad
https://github.com/raszpl/Zenith_ZBIOS MFM-300 Monitor

Reply 3 of 3, by Intel486dx33

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I'd keep it. looks like a high end server motherboard from around 1992-93. what does the bios chip read ?
try a 33mhz cpu first.
fast page memory. must be in pairs. You need 2 pairs minimum.
you must occupy the first 4 slots of memory first
1mb , 30-pin SIMMs should work.
4mb to 8mb is good enough for a 386.
use a CF compact flash card for hard drive
IDE 40-pin CDROM or faster
floppy drives or Gotech
300 2qtt AT power supply