I have this board, but I’m travelling and can’t dump the PAL. You can try feipoa, he has one too.

Feipoa kindly tried to make the PAL dump for me but his programmer didn't support exact PAL type and JEDEC file content shown not valid. Please anybody else with this MB could help?

I just received the PAL chip from feipoa and hoped that victory is mine now but after I put the chip in the programmer and tried to read bitstream it failed immediatelly at device insertion test at pins: 3, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19
When I measured those pins with a diode test via DMM it proved they are completly floating (disconnected from silicon).
Also pins 16 and 18 showed too high Vdrop to GND (1,78 V resp. 1,22 V) while pin 12 has too low Vdrop (0,19 V / 255 Ω) to GND. This leads me to assumption that Abit used some defective batch of PAL devices that may lost data during age (I suspect the bonding wires get unbond from chip inside package or maybe some cracks in package let moisture in and degraded the chip, who knows...). This means that other MBs of this model may be in danger of PAL data loss. If not at all of them are dead now it would strongly need taking a dump od good one to preserve it working... I laso tried to ask help on TheRetroweb discord, maybe those who posted a photo or BIOS dump may still have the MB and be able to help...

Would the "TL866II Plus" be able to read the 16L8?

That's unfortunate, but good to hear it arrived with letter mail. Did customs try to charge duties on a $0 gift?

Are you meticulous enough to grind away the casing under microscope to reconnect those pins?

This particular motherboard of mine stopped working about 10 years ago. But before it ceased working, the RAM would get quite hot after sustained uptimes of around an hour. I think the RAM was running near 58 C, which seemed abnormally high for a 386. The RAM ran hot for a few years, then the board just stopped working entirely. I never bothered to figure out what was wrong with the board. Was it the PAL chip?

With a bad PAL chip, will the board light up? Do you want to put in the time to figuring out what the PAL does based on where the traces go?

majestyk wrote on 2026-06-19, 04:42:

Would the "TL866II Plus" be able to read the 16L8?

I tried that before sending RayeR the PAL. It read, but RayeR said the contents were junk.

I have the Abit FU3 and the Mitac clone
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/mitac- … -pwa-ib3033a-bd

I could try reading the PALs when I´m back home towards the end of next week.

The letter arrived directly to my mailbox without any problem. Here's a rule that personal packages from countries outside EU with declared price below 45 euro are free of charge...

Yes I'm thinking about some tampering inside the chip. Grinding is dangerous for the chip (you don't know how deep the chip is sealed in epoxy package), it's usually etched by hot nitid acid. I can try it but never done this before. Problem would be connecting so thin wires to the silicon chip. People who doing this have a special fixture with thin wire probes/springs that can be precisely aimed to a place on chip and holds there...

The PAL is not critical for MB functionality so it's not a cause of your's failure. I just controls the communication between CPU, FPU and chipset so it it's damaged or missing the FPU doesn't work - it hangs when some program tries to call some FPU instructions, as CPU doesn't then have correct busy line it hangs forever wainting for FPU done.

majestyk, you need to have a programmer that supports such old devices PAL16L8, it's not compatible with PAL16R8 or GAL...
Did you tried if your MB is still working - the FPU?