I switched the 2 driver chips and voila - second serial port appeared for the machine and all ports are working!
In total, i replaced the IO controller chip, 2 driver chips (you can recognize them by seeing 2 "Goldstar" chips instead of Motorola chips) and 2x6 switch sets (red), because i accidentally melted them when i removed the IO controller chip. And of course the battery is also brand new Ni-MH type one.
I also documented few switches and am going to try to make sense of them to contribute for the documentation.
I'm gonna set it fully up with 8MB of ram, ~100MB of HDD, SoundBlaster compatible soundcard, 3com NIC and a good assortment of software starting with DOS 6.22, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Microsoft Entertainment Pack and if there's more room, a Word 6.0. (There's definitely not enough room for full Office 4.3 suite)
... and then, because i already have my own 386 pc to play with, i need to find a good person to give a new home to this computer. 😀
But for now, here's the latest pic of the board in full working condition:
The attachment IMG_20211108_213236.jpg is no longer available
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - And i intend to get every last bit out of it even after loading every damn driver!
A little about software engineering: https://byteaether.github.io/