The One Demon wrote on 2025-11-07, 18:41:

I wasn't really considering getting the 386 or 486 period PC previously, but looking forward to checking them out!

That was me too and it turns out the 386 is my favorite machine of them all, even if it's not totally ideal for gaming. It feels more like a "real" computer if that makes sense.

The one that you got looks like a good purchase, I really like that little MHz display.

sunkindly wrote on 2025-11-08, 07:40:

The One Demon wrote on 2025-11-07, 18:41:

I wasn't really considering getting the 386 or 486 period PC previously, but looking forward to checking them out!

That was me too and it turns out the 386 is my favorite machine of them all, even if it's not totally ideal for gaming. It feels more like a "real" computer if that makes sense.

The one that you got looks like a good purchase, I really like that little MHz display.

Yeah I totally get it xD

What do you mean by MHz display?

Also I need a IDE HDD for that one and maybe the 386 one (doesn't say if there's one in it and I don't think I can see one), I've seen that some bios/motherboards won't detect some drives bigger than a certain size.. I can get some from eBay from an Aussie seller in dflifferent sizes ranging from 3.2GB, 4GB, 8GB, etc all the way up to 250GB. I'm guessing it'd be best to go for the 3.2GB or 4GB for best chances of them being detected?

On a 386... better aim for <500MB

dionb wrote on 2025-11-08, 15:52:

On a 386... better aim for <500MB

Thanks! I have a lead or two, so I should be able to find something.

Out of curiosity, how did you know the 486 system with the keyboard and monitor had a 486? I see the 386 in the photos of the other one, but I can't find anything identifying on that one. Is it the motherboard layout or something? Also do you know what the empty bay on the right of the attached photo would have had in it?

Also they sent an offer for $100 off after I looked at the listing, so that covers the shipping costs anyway!

One of the pics showed a VLB slot, which is pretty 486-specific (and the few exceptions where you find one on 386 or Pentium are even more desirable).

As for that bay: a 3.5" drive, usually floppy, mounted vertically.

The One Demon wrote on 2025-11-08, 14:27:

What do you mean by MHz display?

Also I need a IDE HDD for that one and maybe the 386 one (doesn't say if there's one in it and I don't think I can see one), I've seen that some bios/motherboards won't detect some drives bigger than a certain size.. I can get some from eBay from an Aussie seller in dflifferent sizes ranging from 3.2GB, 4GB, 8GB, etc all the way up to 250GB. I'm guessing it'd be best to go for the 3.2GB or 4GB for best chances of them being detected?

Assuming this is the one you got, it's the LED display that's showing 20. If it's set up correctly, if you press the turbo button it should switch to 40. It doesn't actually read the MHz from the CPU, you set up the display manually by jumpers if you ever want to change it. Cases with these displays are harder to come by these days (especially desktop ones), and they add a nice little retro touch.

Just adding my input on the hard drives, I agree with dionb about <500MB. Compatibility aside, a 386 doesn't even need more than that anyways. Most games of that time period were 10MB at maximum and if they were early CD-ROM games they would play off the CD most of the time. Later games like Daggerfall that do install to the drive are more for a 486 anyways. To put things into perspective, I have a 170MB hard drive in the 386 and I still have a bit of free space.

Alright, it arrived, the speaker cable was disconnected, but assuming the speaker is in working condition, still no beeps at all with the speaker connected to the mobo.

I pulled the motherboard out, battery corrosion has spread quite far and travelled up a few of the ISA slots too. The KBD chip socket looked quite bad, so I pulled that out so I could clean up in there... A few of the metal contact points in that socket came out with it...

Is it worth going further with this motherboard?

That looks fairly bad imo. You could try to neutralize the corrosion as much as possible but unfortunately what's visible is only one part of the equation. Apart from probable trace damage, some of those components look completely done for (like that diode engulfed in corrosion). It's not totally a goner, but a project that would take time, effort, skills, and some money if you don't have the tools.

On a positive note, the cache chips look unscathed and I def would hold onto those. Hopefully the RAM and CPU are okay too.

How's the back of the board?

sunkindly wrote on 2025-11-11, 08:42:

That looks fairly bad imo. You could try to neutralize the corrosion as much as possible but unfortunately what's visible is only one part of the equation. Apart from probable trace damage, some of those components look completely done for (like that diode engulfed in corrosion). It's not totally a goner, but a project that would take time, effort, skills, and some money if you don't have the tools.

On a positive note, the cache chips look unscathed and I def would hold onto those. Hopefully the RAM and CPU are okay tooo
How's the back of the board?

Thanks, yeah I'll definitely keep the cache chips, the 386 looks untouched by corrosion altogether, so that should be good too.

Back of the board basically corrosion there where you can see it on the other side - see photo.

Surely it is not an impossible job, but the main obstacle is the removal of the socket of the BIOS keyboard, given the current conditions, it could create other damage if it cannot be removed, and if you are first experienced with welding, believe me the difficulty is maximum, for me it is better to do a good cleaning, and after re-examine the board, there will probably be traces to be fixed, because they are interrupted, maybe you could try to make bridges, but it depends on both the number and the thickness, it is not impossible to repair it, but it is quite complex if there is a high number of interrupted tracks, without considering that the hidden area should be checked, covered by ISA slots, but in conclusion I would tell you, if you have experience and skills in electronic repairs, and you have professional equipment such as a microscope welder 🔬 or other, you can do it yourself, if not, given the peculiarity of the work don't do it.
Personally I miss 😿 some equipment, for a job like that, in any case I would also be distant, where you live I know that there are people with the equipment and the skills, you can try to ask by making a new post, calling it: ASUS 386DX card to be repaired.

This is bad. But don't throw it away, this can be fixed. If you don't have the skills now, you might later on.

What this board needs:
- remove anything that's not soldered down (cache, CPU, jumpers.)
- desolder that battery whatever you are going to do
- wash the board with white vinegar, scrubbing hard with an old toothbrush - then rinse with water (demineralized if your water is hard)

If you're extremely lucky this will be enough to get it working, but I strongly doubt it given the extensive leakage.

Next steps:
- de-solder all components in area affected by the battery leakage.
- clean those components and test where possible (resistors, capacitors and - if you have a TL866 programmer or similar - the 74 and 40 logic chips). If not possible, assume dead.
- clean the now depopulated board again thoroughly with vinegar.
- check connectivity on the affected traces.
- if traces are broken, bridge the damage with bodge wires.
- procure replacement parts for anything that was dead or could not easily be tested (that keyboard controller...)
- solder it all back together and test the result

Here a very good step-by-step video showing fixing similar damage on a 286 board: https://youtu.be/XdT0byPMnZY?si=eL7GqS1cEPCFYAUy
(in fact, watch every one of Necroware's videos - even if he's messing around with very different stuff, he shows the techniques he uses clearly in every video and they can be applied to pretty much anything and I've found them invaluable)

To do something like this successfully you need good tools - above all some way to reliably and safely de-solder complex components. Old-timers will say it can be done with copper braid and some good flux, and that is technically true, but I'd thoroughly recommend a de-soldering iron/station given the number of pins we're talking about here. Apart from that, some fine wire, some leaded solder, some good flux and a fairly small soldering iron. In terms of testing, a multimeter that can measure resistance and voltages is a must. If it can do capacitors and transistors so much the better. I swear by my TL866 EEPROM flasher, both for reading flashing EEPROMs (like BIOS) but also testing SRAM (cache) and small (74) logic chips. Finally an oscilloscope is handy for things like checking whether oscillator crystals are doing what they are supposed to and whether correct clock signals are getting to CPU and other places. It can also help to reverse-engineer jumper settings on hardware without documentation (not a problem you will have with this Asus beauty). That said, a good scope is expensive and/or hard to come by and is probably the least essential thing in this list.

Thank you both! I don't plan to throw it out, but will do as suggested, remove everything I can, remove the battery, clean it, etc.

Thanks for the great info you've given! I don't think I'm up to the task atm and don't have most of the equipment I'd need to repair it, but will have to see what the future holds.

On the up side, the cache and 386 seem to be unaffected, so hopefully they're all working! The 386 looks clean as a whistle.

Ouch! That's definitely an expert-level repair job, and since you said you're new to the hobby, I would advise you to leave this one until much later.

I was ready to be annoyed at the seller, but I went back and looked at the listing and I guess the damage was visible in the photos. Their description is a bit hilarious: "as is / I don't have a monitor to suit this / looks good".

Well, I suppose the case does in fact look good, so there's that. It's not a total loss, but a project for the future.

jh80 wrote on 2025-11-11, 10:43:

Ouch! That's definitely an expert-level repair job, and since you said you're new to the hobby, I would advise you to leave this one until much later.

I was ready to be annoyed at the seller, but I went back and looked at the listing and I guess the damage was visible in the photos. Their description is a bit hilarious: "as is / I don't have a monitor to suit this / looks good".

Well, I suppose the case does in fact look good, so there's that. It's not a total loss, but a project for the future.

Yeah that's it mate, I love the case TBH so there's that xD Also made in Australia so there's an added bonus haha

Sellers will say rusty stuff with dead cockroaches falling out and clear dents from when someone kicked it are 'as new'. But in this case the leak was clearly visible and tbh the price was reasonable for just the case and other components (floppy drives aren't cheap either these days) as well as a damaged but pretty legendary motherboard.

And unless you're a masochist you can sell that EGA card to recoup some of the cost. I'm in a much better location for old stuff but it took me the better part of seven years to find an affordable dual sync EGA monitor for a price I was prepared to pay (partly because I'm a legendary cheapskate, I have to admit 😉 ) and even then the end result is not really different to what I can get on the same machine with a VGA card running EGA software. So unless very nostalgic or curious about EGA, don't bother.

The One Demon wrote on 2025-11-11, 08:29:

I pulled the motherboard out, battery corrosion has spread quite far and travelled up a few of the ISA slots too. The KBD chip socket looked quite bad, so I pulled that out so I could clean up in there... A few of the metal contact points in that socket came out with it...

Is it worth going further with this motherboard?

That's quite a bit of corrosion. I have a board with similar amounts of corrosion that required extensive trace repair and replacing sockets including ISA slots.

It's likely fixable, but would require a fair bit of work. The biggest challenge is removing the ISA slots. Trace repair is also quite tedious.

dionb wrote on 2025-11-11, 10:58:

And unless you're a masochist you can sell that EGA card to recoup some of the cost.

I had a look on eBay and that card might actually cover the entire cost or almost haha. I'll give it a whirl just to see it in action and experience it, but yeah.

Someone's offered this motherboard https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/ecs-us3486, well it's actually FX-3000D on the board, I can see some differences in the boars vs the one linked, but that's the closest mobo I could see on there. Unsure on price yet.

The One Demon wrote on 2025-11-12, 00:50:

dionb wrote on 2025-11-11, 10:58:

And unless you're a masochist you can sell that EGA card to recoup some of the cost.

I had a look on eBay and that card might actually cover the entire cost or almost haha. I'll give it a whirl just to see it in action and experience it, but yeah.

Someone's offered this motherboard https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/ecs-us3486, well it's actually FX-3000D on the board, I can see some differences in the boars vs the one linked, but that's the closest mobo I could see on there. Unsure on price yet.

In that motherboard of your link, you can install both 386DX and 486 CPUs, of course or one or the other, I have one with a 486DLC, which would be a middle ground between 386 and 486, so if it works and doesn't cost too much, it would be a good replacement for those who have a broken 386.

I've tried looking these up, but I'm having trouble 🤣. Does anyone know how big these SIMM RAM sticks are? I found the top RAM sticks 2 larger chips and 1 smaller chip on them. They're either 2MB each per large chip, or total I'm not entirely sure?

Interesting that the second lot of RAM is tinned, rather than gold.

These are from the same PC as the battery corroded Asus motherboard.

PC@LIVE wrote on 2025-11-12, 02:39:

The One Demon wrote on 2025-11-12, 00:50:

dionb wrote on 2025-11-11, 10:58:

And unless you're a masochist you can sell that EGA card to recoup some of the cost.

I had a look on eBay and that card might actually cover the entire cost or almost haha. I'll give it a whirl just to see it in action and experience it, but yeah.

Someone's offered this motherboard https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/ecs-us3486, well it's actually FX-3000D on the board, I can see some differences in the boars vs the one linked, but that's the closest mobo I could see on there. Unsure on price yet.

In that motherboard of your link, you can install both 386DX and 486 CPUs, of course or one or the other, I have one with a 486DLC, which would be a middle ground between 386 and 486, so if it works and doesn't cost too much, it would be a good replacement for those who have a broken 386.

Thanks! If I'm looking at it right, it has the 386DX-40 integrated/soldered on, and then another slot if you wanted a FPU or 486 instead right?