VOGONS


Mystery Card

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First post, by pixelmischief

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I have an ISA card here that I can't seem to get working. And, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what it is. I see it has FD and HD headers and, presumably, a serial port and a couple of PS/2 ports. But still...anyone have any idea?

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Reply 1 of 11, by Scali

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It looks like it's a complete PC on an ISA card. There is an AMD 386SX CPU on there, and also a BIOS chip, memory, an Opti chipset and everything. The empty socket is probably for the 387SX coprocessor.
It is probably some sort of industrial PC card, supposed to be installed in some kind of ISA backplane case.

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 2 of 11, by SW-SSG

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Indeed, that's an SBC (single-board computer). One needs a suitable backplane to make use of it; plugging it into any old motherboard won't do very much.

Reply 3 of 11, by pixelmischief

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Thank you!

Reply 4 of 11, by obaltus

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Hello,

Great piece of HW.

There is a Mr Bios ROM on your card. Would be great if you could dump its content and make it available to the community.

Reply 5 of 11, by Deksor

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I have some card like that with a 286 and another one with 8088. I should try to make them work someday : I have the backplate that came with the 286, all I need now is probably to remove the tantalum caps as I think they're making a short circuit

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 6 of 11, by konc

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Also don't count on this being an ISA connector. I mean pin-wise it may physically fit, but there's a strong chance that it's not electrically compatible with an ISA slot. Which in its turn means that you can damage the card by inserting it into one.

Reply 7 of 11, by Anonymous Coward

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Indeed a dump of that BIOS would be nice. I think I have a 386SX board based on the same OPTI 82C291 chipset...or maybe it's the 293. Either way, that SBC is nice because it has 64kb cache, a rare feature on a 386SX.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 8 of 11, by pixelmischief

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I don't have the equipment to dump the ROM. But if someone else does and wants me to send them the chip, I'd be happy to do it.

Reply 10 of 11, by pixelmischief

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I am in the U.S. I see you are in Greece. The card is yours if you want it, but you'll need to pay shipping.