@bearking
ABit PT5 : Instructions are available here https://www.ultimateretro.net/motherboards/118
Acorp 5ALI61 : Bios and instructions are available here https://www.ultimateretro.net/motherboards/5855
Lucky Tech P5MVP3 : Instructions are available here https://www.ultimateretro.net/motherboards/5861

Lucky Star LS-486E rev D, rev C and C2 : We don't have these boards in our database. Would you like to share photos/bios dumps with us ? 😁

DTK GMB-386UMC : Bios and instructions are available here https://www.ultimateretro.net/motherboards/4365

Xicor wrote on 2020-12-09, 17:48:

[...]

Cool_stuff_003.jpg

Lots of PC Chips boards. The left hand one with 'Acer' branded chipset is odd - that' s a PC Chips M560 with ALi (Acer Labs) Aladdin IV(+) chipset. Not too rare, but PC Chips normally always relabels chipsets, in this case to TXPro. Never seen it with non-rebranded chips before.

dionb wrote on 2020-12-10, 00:34:

Xicor wrote on 2020-12-09, 17:48:

[...]

Cool_stuff_003.jpg

Lots of PC Chips boards. The left hand one with 'Acer' branded chipset is odd - that' s a PC Chips M560 with ALi (Acer Labs) Aladdin IV(+) chipset. Not too rare, but PC Chips normally always relabels chipsets, in this case to TXPro. Never seen it with non-rebranded chips before.

Honestly, I've grown to dispise PCChips. All of the boards I found were not in good shape. They feel generally flimsy and cheap. They really don't hold together very well.

Aublak wrote on 2020-12-10, 01:58:

[...]

Honestly, I've grown to dispise PCChips. All of the boards I found were not in good shape. They feel generally flimsy and cheap. They really don't hold together very well.

Build quality is generally pretty low, there's the relabeling of chipsets, and earlier downright fraudulent fake cache combined with modified BIOS (reporting cache when there isn't any there) soldered on. They were the lowest of the low end.

Still, they pioneered a whole host of chipsets and features no one else touched, and some were pretty good. This specific board, the M560, for example, was clock-for-clock the fastest So7 board I tested some 15 years back when comparing RAMspeed scores. It beat all the best Intel chipset boards, it beat a Biostar board with the same chipset - and it did so without clocking excessively highly (usual reason for exceptional benchmark scores). Plus despite wafer-thin PCB, it was perfectly stable while doing it. So if you have to have a PC Chips board, this is probably the best you could choose.

Aublak wrote on 2020-12-10, 01:58:

Honestly, I've grown to dispise PCChips. All of the boards I found were not in good shape. They feel generally flimsy and cheap. They really don't hold together very well.

They are not all bad. PCChips is very much like the company they turned into, ECS. Most of the boards they make are cheap and you know they will be subpar somehow when going into it, but sometimes the tradeoff is worth it. Same here. Some of their boards like the M560TG are among the fastest and most feature packed Socket 7 boards I've used.

sf78 wrote on 2020-12-09, 15:36:

Yes, those are the only mentions of them. Still no jumper configuration. I'll try to fire one up to see what it says. Oh, and they are Socket 5.

I have that spring circle board too, indeed socket 5 and it reacts strange to some overdrive cpu's
I have made a note at home about what speeds I could get it to boot/start, but there are alot of unidentified jumpers which I really need to know what they do.
My board didn't boot with any of the VLB cards I tried, and I suspect this is due to wrong jumper settings, with pci/isa it did work without problems.

Nvm1 wrote on 2020-12-10, 08:44:

I have that spring circle board too, indeed socket 5 and it reacts strange to some overdrive cpu's
I have made a note at home about what speeds I could get it to boot/start, but there are alot of unidentified jumpers which I really need to know what they do.
My board didn't boot with any of the VLB cards I tried, and I suspect this is due to wrong jumper settings, with pci/isa it did work without problems.

Let me know if you find something out.

Anyway, went back and got a few more.

dionb wrote on 2020-12-10, 00:34:

Xicor wrote on 2020-12-09, 17:48:

[...]

Cool_stuff_003.jpg

Lots of PC Chips boards. The left hand one with 'Acer' branded chipset is odd - that' s a PC Chips M560 with ALi (Acer Labs) Aladdin IV(+) chipset. Not too rare, but PC Chips normally always relabels chipsets, in this case to TXPro. Never seen it with non-rebranded chips before.

Didn't know that it could be a PC-chips, at the back of the pcb it has "Elpina" logo. In the elhvb.com motherboard database (https://www.elhvb.com/webhq/models/pcchips/m560.htm) it is stated that it was sold under a variety of brands.

Unfortunately this board had a serious problem, it didn't post. After inspecting all probable causes I found a deep scratch under the M1531 ic. After a patch it works fine...

The AMI bios id string is almost identical, but it ends in "-H " instead of "TX_PRO-0". The 001437 part of the id belongs to Pc-chips, maybe its an early version or a custom request from Acer ?!

Purchased a fully sealed, never used, Microsoft Intellimouse for use with my 486 rigs. I know it would be considered a travesty if I had to open up the box, but I really need the mouse! 😁

Dmetsys wrote on 2020-12-10, 17:05:

Purchased a fully sealed, never used, Microsoft Intellimouse for use with my 486 rigs. I know it would be considered a travesty if I had to open up the box, but I really need the mouse! 😁

Unboxing videos are mandatory in such instances.

Dmetsys wrote on 2020-12-10, 17:05:

Purchased a fully sealed, never used, Microsoft Intellimouse for use with my 486 rigs. I know it would be considered a travesty if I had to open up the box, but I really need the mouse! 😁

This specific one? Serial port mice are not that hard to find. Unopened ones however...

RandomStranger wrote on 2020-12-10, 17:41:

Dmetsys wrote on 2020-12-10, 17:05:

Purchased a fully sealed, never used, Microsoft Intellimouse for use with my 486 rigs. I know it would be considered a travesty if I had to open up the box, but I really need the mouse! 😁

This specific one? Serial port mice are not that hard to find. Unopened ones however...

Sure, used mice that are full of dirt, grime, and other crap. No thanks, especially when they are being sold for the same price on FleaBay. 'Not hard to find' is a relative term. A hick town like mine doesn't have anything like this.

RandomStranger wrote on 2020-12-10, 17:41:

Dmetsys wrote on 2020-12-10, 17:05:

Purchased a fully sealed, never used, Microsoft Intellimouse for use with my 486 rigs. I know it would be considered a travesty if I had to open up the box, but I really need the mouse! 😁

This specific one? Serial port mice are not that hard to find. Unopened ones however...

I have two unopened serial mice but they are NOWHERE near the quality of an intellimouse, generic noname ball mouse stuff..

Deksor wrote on 2020-12-09, 23:26:

Lucky Star LS-486E rev D, rev C and C2 : We don't have these boards in our database. Would you like to share photos/bios dumps with us ? 😁

Thanks for the links, I'm already using your project for any mainboard I'm looking for info.

I'll try to make some time this weekend to take some decent photos of the boards, also to copy the BIOS ftom each board. I'm renovating my basement to make some space for my "junk", so I'm a little short on free time...

Just got these in the mail today, the package left the US on the 4th of November. Not bad...
Now I need to dig up my Asus P5A to see if they work...

I just managed to buy an SC-55 with control firmware 1.10 in a local pawn shop .

- Display backlight is OK, but LCD text is rather pale
- 1 or 2 of the front buttons don't work
- Battery was still in but had not leaked (removed it).
- it was covered in stickers and adhesive velcro pads
- it was filthy

Otherwise everything works fine in terms of MIDI and audio out .

I don't plan on replacing the micro-switches for the bad buttons (as long as power works, I'm happy), but I might end up trying to determine why the LCD text is so pale (not that I really care that much either, TBH ) .

At first listen, it is quite similar to my SC-88VL in SC-55 mode, at least in Duke Nukem 3D .

Anyway, for 80 CAN$ , I think it was quite reasonable . I can't realistically expect perfection for a nearly 30-year old piece of hardware and at that price .

darry wrote on 2020-12-11, 02:53:

I just managed to buy an SC-55 with control firmware 1.10 in a local pawn shop . […]
Show full quote

I just managed to buy an SC-55 with control firmware 1.10 in a local pawn shop .

- Display backlight is OK, but LCD text is rather pale
- 1 or 2 of the front buttons don't work
- Battery was still in but had not leaked (removed it).
- it was covered in stickers and adhesive velcro pads
- it was filthy

Otherwise everything works fine in terms of MIDI and audio out .

I don't plan on replacing the micro-switches for the bad buttons (as long as power works, I'm happy), but I might end up trying to determine why the LCD text is so pale (not that I really care that much either, TBH ) .

At first listen, it is quite similar to my SC-88VL in SC-55 mode, at least in Duke Nukem 3D .

Anyway, for 80 CAN$ , I think it was quite reasonable . I can't realistically expect perfection for a nearly 30-year old piece of hardware and at that price .

Is it pale when you look at it from a slightly above angle? The 1.0.0 that I have is best viewed from above.
Also, did it come with the front plastic bit for the big LED buttons? I'm still trying to figure out just how easy to break those are, since that is all I'm missing on my own.

Bought a new old stock Citizen W1D floppy drive for one of my 486 high end laptops as the 1 has head failures and the other has a bad belt, so I might take the belt out of the broken head drive and replace the belt. Both laptops use the same floppy drive, the boards are similar in functionality, except the Austin TFT has integrated sound and a modem installed and the AMS DSTN has the sound card.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-12-11, 05:42:

Bought a new old stock Citizen W1D floppy drive for one of my 486 high end laptops as the 1 has head failures and the other has a bad belt, so I might take the belt out of the broken head drive and replace the belt. Both laptops use the same floppy drive, the boards are similar in functionality, except the Austin TFT has integrated sound and a modem installed and the AMS DSTN has the sound card.

Not to discourage you but even with a new belt I found them to be very unreliable.

Bought a nice AT desktop pc today. It got one of those 386/486 VLB motherboards to my surprise. A dx2 66 OD. It also came with a soundcard i never heard about, a Mediavision Jazz 16, with a OPL ymf262 chip.