VOGONS


First post, by Stojke

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Has any one seen an NEC 486 motherboard chipset before?
Found this board among some others so I took it home right away. Can any one give me some info on this board? Stability, performance, supported hardware, PCI version, anything?

uBMbB3yl.jpg

Board name is - Main board GC10A REV 1.0 EAGLEN486
Chipset is - NEC ADC006
Support chipset is - LGS Prime 3B

From the markings on the PCB and components the board is from 1996 week 40. Sold 20.11.1997. . Processors supported seem to be every Socket 3 type (5x86, DX4, DX2, SX, DLC, SXL ; 3.3V and 5V). Cache is an, scraped and relabeled, ISSI Write Back Cache 61c328AH-15 (16x32k). It has an unknown bios named bios, and an wide variety of voltages to choose from - 3.3V , 3.45V , 3.6V , 3.75V , 4V and 5V. Also an SERIAL , IDE , FLOPPY and what I assume is an PARALEL port.

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Reply 1 of 19, by SquallStrife

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Are you sure about the cache chips?

Having "WRITE BACK" written on them screams PC Chips fake cache.

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Reply 2 of 19, by HighTreason

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I thought it looked like a PCChips but just kept quiet...

Sorry, man, I have to be honest. That might just be the ugliest 486 board I have ever seen, though that says nothing of its functionality. Like women, sometimes the ugly ones can be the most fun to mess around with.*

* Awaits "boo"s and jeers from the viewing audience.

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Reply 3 of 19, by Imperious

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I searched that entire 486 motherboard database that's in Germany, couldn't find it. In fact can't find any 486 mobo with only 2 PCI slots.

You are just going to have to hook it up and test it. Run Cachechk to see it it has real cache or not.

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Reply 4 of 19, by keropi

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could be a fake NEC label too.... wouldn't surprise me tbh

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Reply 5 of 19, by GeorgeMan

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Do actually the traces from the "WB" chips go to somewhere?
We need a photo from the back of the board.

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Reply 6 of 19, by Stojke

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Wow, this board is so fake I bet NEC would cry if they knew 😁

There is absolutely no information about anything, no POST information, nothing in AIDA, even BIOS is cryptic.
Cache chips are definitely fake because they do not rout to anything except them selves. Text on the chipset is laser engraved unlike cheap paint on "cache".

The board it self is extremely unstable, barely operates test applications and MS DOS from floppy.

What a load of crap 🤣

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Reply 8 of 19, by Anonymous Coward

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Speaking of fake NEC products...have you ever heard of this?: (from cracked.com)

"In 2004, NEC got word that some counterfeit computer products with their logo on them were coming out of China. Big surprise, right? But when they had someone investigate it further, instead of a single rogue factory they discovered a massive, multinational operation counterfeiting ... well, all of NEC.


nytimes

Which one do we sue? Which one do we sue?

Someone in China actually created an entire parallel NEC enterprise with business cards, R&D commissions, detailed production plans and even warranties all bearing the NEC mark.



This fake NEC also had a network of over 50(!) factories across China and Taiwan producing existing NEC goods and totally new products like MP3 players and entertainment systems ... for which the evil-twin NEC was receiving "royalties." Some of their products were even found in stores of major retailers.

But here's the craziest part: The real NEC guys admitted that those "original fakes" were actually of a pretty good quality, which was probably like being told that some guy stole your identity and then used it to win the Biggest Penis World Championship."

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Reply 9 of 19, by Stojke

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PeterLI wrote:

More importantly: how come you are not reading a Cyrillic newspaper? 😠

I don't read Politics 😁

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Speaking of fake NEC products...have you ever heard of this?: (from cracked.com)

"In 2004, NEC got word that some counterfeit computer products with their logo on them were coming out of China. Big surprise, right? But when they had someone investigate it further, instead of a single rogue factory they discovered a massive, multinational operation counterfeiting ... well, all of NEC. ...

That sounds pretty amazing.
This NEC board seems to be using very visually similar NEC logo, but not quite it.

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Reply 10 of 19, by HighTreason

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NEC products are small fry... No, seriously;

China-3-Series-3998.0.html.jpg

They make counterfeit cars that are a copy of one of the largest German auto manufacturers. Sounds wonderful - All the great things that come with a German design coupled with awesome Chinese build quality (Probably smaller engines too, or so I heard), bound to be a great car.

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Reply 11 of 19, by Scali

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The NEC chip may not actually be a NEC design, but just NEC manufacturing these for a third party.
Early PowerVR chips were also made by NEC, so you see a big 'NEC' logo on them, just like this (later PowerVR chips were made by ST, so you saw ST instead).
The 'ADC006' should be an indication of what the manufacturer is, and what the chip does, but there is no info to be found (you find the chip on some vague Chinese sites, claiming it to be a voltage regulator: http://nl.aliexpress.com/store/product/ADC006 … ?storeId=726795).
'ADC' is a nomenclature often used by Analog Devices, but afaik they have never made any PC chipsets.

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Reply 12 of 19, by mcfly

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Stojke wrote:
Has any one seen an NEC 486 motherboard chipset before? Found this board among some others so I took it home right away. Can any […]
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Has any one seen an NEC 486 motherboard chipset before?
Found this board among some others so I took it home right away. Can any one give me some info on this board? Stability, performance, supported hardware, PCI version, anything?

uBMbB3yl.jpg

Board name is - Main board GC10A REV 1.0 EAGLEN486
Chipset is - NEC ADC006
Support chipset is - LGS Prime 3B

From the markings on the PCB and components the board is from 1996 week 40. Sold 20.11.1997. . Processors supported seem to be every Socket 3 type (5x86, DX4, DX2, SX, DLC, SXL ; 3.3V and 5V). Cache is an, scraped and relabeled, ISSI Write Back Cache 61c328AH-15 (16x32k). It has an unknown bios named bios, and an wide variety of voltages to choose from - 3.3V , 3.45V , 3.6V , 3.75V , 4V and 5V. Also an SERIAL , IDE , FLOPPY and what I assume is an PARALEL port.

I didn't want to create another topic - hopefully someone will check this 😉

I got the same board, only pcb is painted in gold (^^). Any chance you or anyone else have bios dump for it? By trial and error I was able to identify this chip - SST29ee010 - using TL866 programmer. Fortunately it has a familiar SST marking on the bottom with some ambigous symbols, but I narrowed down the choice to only a dozen models 😀. I tried to debug bios with ISA and PCI post card and it constantly stopping on B0 (ISA) and 85 (PCI) - suspecting bios image corruption after years. Unfortunately the bin image does not contain any sign of recognizable identifiers - or I was too blind to see this. Any help appreciated

Reply 13 of 19, by PcBytes

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I can confirm the cache is fake, BUT the chipset is real.

Oh, and it's not PCChips who made it, it's a obscure company named Eagle. Don't bother searching it, there's nearly nothing about them, except for an eBay ad for another motherboard they did, the Eagle Power586, with a NEC branded i430TX CLONE that supports K6-2s.

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Reply 14 of 19, by mcfly

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Yup, the traces don't go anywhere. I got same situation with PC Chips M919, but this at least I was able to resurrect. I am aware this board in question was made by Eagle - the markings are intact. Just tried to give it one more shot before throwing it into a dumpster 😀 and this is why I'd need that bios image of working board - just to make sure.

Reply 15 of 19, by yawetaG

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The original picture of the OP even has Eagle N486 printed on it (between the 2nd and 3rd ISA slots).

BTW, NEC 486 chipsets are not entirely out of the question...just not on regular x86 systems. Their x86 systems used Intel OEM chipsets.

Reply 16 of 19, by mcfly

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Just in case I am uploading my BIOS, I suspect the image is corrupted and working copy would be nice to compare. Unless of course somebody know how to identify parts from this cryptic ascii arts 😀

Attachments

  • Filename
    nec_sst29ee010_orig.zip
    File size
    43.44 KiB
    Downloads
    70 downloads
    File comment
    Eagle486 BIOS
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 17 of 19, by Anonymous Coward

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I highly suspect that this board might really be based on an ALD chipset. Except for the NEC label on the chipset, it looks pretty much identical to the ALD boards.

"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 18 of 19, by LeoAndFanny

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Hi Stojke, hi all,
anyone want to sell this Eagle board GC10A? Or exchange it for an other 486 PCI board (e.g. a Lucky Star LS-486E with SiS 85C496 chipset)?

I'm measuring the socket 7 version of this "NEC" chipset at the moment (Eagle E-AD586-3P2I-401 board with a "NEC Power TX" ADC009B chipset). I will publish the results on my homepage next European winter. This chipset is not uninteresting: single chip in a QFP package but it contains only "standard" components: no PCI-id or anything which gives an indication of its origin...
Now I would be also interested in the 486 version - even if the stability of the board is very bad.

Thank you very much in advance for any hints...