Even Compaq got in with Deskpro i series, two models used either motherboard (both same) one 486 with 395 cache controller, 386 and 387 sockets unsoldered, and other you can choose either 386 or 486 via switches and few jumpers in etiher sockets.

I have purchased such this motherboard with 386 processor installed with 395 cache controller and 387 socket, I can switch to 486 mode by exchanging and plug 486 in other socket. My goal is to convert a Deskpro 4/33i into 3/33i.

Cheers,

yeah I have a few of those 386/486 boards

it makes sense to make combo boards, but going through the effort of making an extra adapter to go back to older CPUs just seems funny to me ^^

Some recent free acquisitions from an old friend:
2 x 3.5" beige floppy drives
2 x Soundblaster AWE64
1 x Asus P2-99 (440ZX, Slot-1)

what a nice friend ^^

imi wrote on 2020-07-26, 21:05:

what a nice friend ^^

Definitely and they were going to the dump if I didn't take them!

pete8475 wrote on 2020-07-26, 19:15:

Some recent free acquisitions from an old friend: 2 x 3.5" beige floppy drives 2 x Soundblaster AWE64 1 x Asus P2-99 (440ZX, Slo […]
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Some recent free acquisitions from an old friend:
2 x 3.5" beige floppy drives
2 x Soundblaster AWE64
1 x Asus P2-99 (440ZX, Slot-1)

That's a nice mobo. 3 ISA slots always gets my heart beating 😁

Picked up a scrap lot a few day ago...

SOYO SY-5XAE with an AMD-K6-2/300AFR and 64 Mb RAM. It's working

PCChips M537 / Amptron PM-8400A / Elpina something ver. 5.2A with 16 Mb EDO(??). This board is in a really bad shape... Not tested yet...

ECS K7S5A PRO rev 5.0 with an Athlon XP 1800+. Looks good, it has only a couple of bad caps. Not tested yet. I also have the non-PRO version...

1. CHAINTECH GP-5464 Cirrus Logic CL-GD5464-HC-A 4 Mb PCI, working good
2. miroMEDIA miroMAGIC Premium nVidia Riva 128 4 Mb PCI. It's in a bad shape, full of rust on the connectors side but it's working
3. MSI MS-8816 ver. 1 GeForce2 MX 32 Mb AGP, not tested yet
4. SB CT4170; looks good, not tested yet...

1. Eagles 64/325 MK IV S3 Trio64V2/DX 1 Mb(?) PCI. A bit rusty on the VGA connector/bracket side, not tested yet
2. some nVidia Vanta 16 AGP, not tested

Thanks to fellow vogoners, I found out that the miroMAGIC Premium Riva 128 card is the same as the ASUS V3000...

Yesterday I got an AverMedia TVBox9 standalone VGA TV tuner for 2€, no PSU/remote/cables etc. No DVB, just analogue. Dunno what I was thinking, maybe probably to use it as a composite->VGA upscaler. Guess what; with a generic 12V PSU (positive tip) and a PSone connected, it worked, latency being on the low-"passable"-"you can actually play games on it" side! Output looks a bit cleaner than stock GBS8200, even with a lousy PSX composite cable. Maybe I'll try to figure out the mini-DIN pinout for the YPbPr input to get the Xbox or the PS2 on it. The PSone boots in B&W (maybe the box is just set to PAL while the onechip forces the console to boot @ NTSC), but when I get to the (PAL) game I switch source back and forth and get full color.

imi wrote on 2020-07-24, 16:06:

and in the 3rd row a Powerleap PL-Pro/II socket 8 to socket 370 celeron adapter that looks to be in good shape :3

A unicorn! 😁

Hi everyone,
On the past couple of weeks I came across this goodies....

A cool MB from DIGITAl for a 486 socket2 and VLB sadly no cache chips. (don't mind the "ram" sticker, only to protect the eprom window)

Guillemot Maxi ISIS, probably one of the last wavetable sound card. The DOS compatibility is nice to have, and it is amazingly quiet.

The original CD bundle for the Maxi ISIS..... Shoud I make a backup for the vogon's drivers LIB ?

Edit:
https://archive.org/details/Guillemot_Maxi_Studio_ISIS
Being a "Newbie" I cant yet send PM to de Vogon's drivers LIB admin, so did the second best thing, posted the iso @archive.org

A not so vintage Asus STX II, which found its way to my main rig ...

At last I present to you the mighty IBM ThinkPad 750c with the complementary docking station.
Its a 486SL @ 33Mhz, CS4248 WSS onboard audio, 8MB ram, 2.88 floppy, 170Mb HDD, and a cd-rom on the dock.
It has a bit of a problem with the lcd backlight that I plan to fix in the near future, everything else works fine.

Definitely make the CD backups for vogonsdrivers. Pretty sure I have the original ISIS install CDs, but I don't think I have the extra CDs. The regular CDs might actually already be on vogonsdrivers.

Xicor wrote on 2020-07-27, 16:20:

At last I present to you the mighty IBM ThinkPad 750c with the complementary docking station. Its a 486SL @ 33Mhz, CS4248 WSS o […]
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At last I present to you the mighty IBM ThinkPad 750c with the complementary docking station.
Its a 486SL @ 33Mhz, CS4248 WSS onboard audio, 8MB ram, 2.88 floppy, 170Mb HDD, and a cd-rom on the dock.
It has a bit of a problem with the lcd backlight that I plan to fix in the near future, everything else works fine.
finds04.jpg

This is a great portable setup for almost any reto tasks. Super flexible and expandable. I have one myself and use it either with 486 or Pentium laptop depending on my needs.
Onboard sound of 750c is rather crappy, but the dock can accomodate a ISA sound card with a MIDI daughterboard.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-07-27, 18:25:

Definitely make the CD backups for vogonsdrivers. Pretty sure I have the original ISIS install CDs, but I don't think I have the extra CDs. The regular CDs might actually already be on vogonsdrivers.

This. I'd really like to have copies of the restore CD and floppies for both my thinkpad 360CE and 560X, but they are nowhere to be found so far.

I finally received my Sparkle FX 5900 XT from Russia today . Best packed card I have received in along time, possibly ever . I will put it through its paces tomorrow evening, but it looks practically immaculate, save for a little dust .

I really wish there was a way to adjust the sharpness (or lack thereof) of Nvidia scaling under DOS .

Potential Overpay on this non-functional, rusty Compaq 386:

Can anyone please direct me to beginner's guides on repairing motherboards that have rust via traces etc? Probably unlikely repair, though.

Taking it apart, looks like there are some cards of interest. Can anyone tell me what I'm dealing with?

Markings on sound card: MT-255s
Markings on expansion card (corrosion on other side): Expansion Memory 16-bit 4MB
Video card reads: TVGA9000i-3

Those pictures are really low resolution so it's very hard to say anything about the state of the cards or components, post some high quality high resolution photos.

As for the expansion cards:

MT255S: Sound Commander ISA, keep it. MT0252 chipset and YMF262 (or clone) genuine OPl3 sound card, probably SB Pro compatible, looks like an early ISA card that isn't all that integrated (possibly a noisy card) but that isn't surprising considering the age of the PC, and makes it a more uncommon piece. Someone with more knowledge will probably confirm the capabilities of the MT0252 soon I think.
TVGA9000: Run of the mill, slow ISA VGA but can run in 8-bit slots so that makes it useful if you want VGA output on an XT or something
RAM CARD: I don't know if that's proprietary but it's probably valuable. 4MB ram is quite handily enough for a 386 too.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-07-28, 06:37:

RAM CARD: I don't know if that's proprietary but it's probably valuable. 4MB ram is quite handily enough for a 386 too.

Those RAM CARDs are proprietary Compaq stuff. The Deskpro 386 series used memory cards that could be upgraded with square-shaped piggyback modules. This applies both to the 386s (SX, 16-bit) and 386 (DX, 32bit) series, although they used different cards. It says 4MB on the RAM CARD, so the card itself has 4MB of RAM. I see one upgrade module being installed, so the combination has 5MB at least, more likely 8MB. See https://retroviator.files.wordpress.com/2019/ … -spec-sheet.pdf for part numbers of the original 386s components. The 4MB memory card is Assembly Number 000969, as printed on your card and shown in that document. I have high hope that the upgrade module is 000993, the 4MB module, as upgrading from 4 to 5 MB seems to be useful only in special cases.

Repairing that Compaq won't be easy. I'd start by checking what works and what doesn't by testing the components individually.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-07-28, 06:37:

Those pictures are really low resolution so it's very hard to say anything about the state of the cards or components, post some […]
Show full quote

Those pictures are really low resolution so it's very hard to say anything about the state of the cards or components, post some high quality high resolution photos.

As for the expansion cards:

MT255S: Sound Commander ISA, keep it. MT0252 chipset and YMF262 (or clone) genuine OPl3 sound card, probably SB Pro compatible, looks like an early ISA card that isn't all that integrated (possibly a noisy card) but that isn't surprising considering the age of the PC, and makes it a more uncommon piece. Someone with more knowledge will probably confirm the capabilities of the MT0252 soon I think.
TVGA9000: Run of the mill, slow ISA VGA but can run in 8-bit slots so that makes it useful if you want VGA output on an XT or something
RAM CARD: I don't know if that's proprietary but it's probably valuable. 4MB ram is quite handily enough for a 386 too.

Appreciate your time: great insight into these pieces. I'll be sure to post some better pictures here once it is dismantled & the damage becomes more apparent. The sound card is in remarkably good condition, given the overall state of the PC (looks like battery explosion + left out to oxidise, although can't find a battery anywhere). Looking forward to cleaning the sound card up and having a play with it.

mkarcher wrote on 2020-07-28, 08:28:

Those RAM CARDs are proprietary Compaq stuff. The Deskpro 386 series used memory cards that could be upgraded with square-shaped piggyback modules. This applies both to the 386s (SX, 16-bit) and 386 (DX, 32bit) series, although they used different cards. It says 4MB on the RAM CARD, so the card itself has 4MB of RAM. I see one upgrade module being installed, so the combination has 5MB at least, more likely 8MB. See https://retroviator.files.wordpress.com/2019/ … -spec-sheet.pdf for part numbers of the original 386s components. The 4MB memory card is Assembly Number 000969, as printed on your card and shown in that document. I have high hope that the upgrade module is 000993, the 4MB module, as upgrading from 4 to 5 MB seems to be useful only in special cases.

That's a fantastic find, thank you for this data sheet. So, it's Compaq-specific. I have the square-shaped piggyback module - there are quite a few numbers on it that are mostly hidden. Have taken more photos of the layout of the board, as well as the oxidation of sorts - haven't done cleaning yet. Wasn't keen to remove the upgrade module yet - looks as if there might be some brittle plastic flathead bolts holding it on, however managed to wedge the camera for a partial shot of the underside.

devius wrote on 2020-07-28, 10:32:

Repairing that Compaq won't be easy. I'd start by checking what works and what doesn't by testing the components individually.

Appreciate your advice. I'll be photo-documenting every step of the disassembly process, and perhaps on the way I can document the journey here - which part of the forum would be appropriate for such a journal?

alienmannequin wrote on 2020-07-28, 11:28:

... which part of the forum would be appropriate for such a journal?

This one, only a separate thread. For reference: General Old Hardware You can already find a few repair related threads in here. It's always fun 😃