VOGONS


First post, by perhenden

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A mystery motherboard has found it's way to my house!
Can you identify this Socket 7 motherboard?

I can't find the model and manufacturer of this Socket 7 motherboard, nor it's jumper settings documentation
On the back of the board, TGS 90200 REV B 960228 is printed.

It's using the Intel 430fx chipset, and an onboard Trident tgui9680 - 1 graphics chip.
It has a 60 pin SCSI header (EDIT: No, that's something else).
An Intel Pentium 100Mhz and EDO-ram came with the board.
There is a riser board (2 isa, 2 pci), and there is a cache expansion slot.

Picture attached.

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  • mystery_board.jpg
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    mystery_board.jpg
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    TGS 90200 REV B socket 7 motherboard
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    Public domain
Last edited by perhenden on 2020-05-08, 19:20. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 17, by synrgy87

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It's a TriGem board used in prebuilts like compaq or hp or olivetti, I can't provide much more information than that but maybe looking for socket 7 models or pentium models of oviletti(and others they supplied many OEMS) systems would help, if it boots it may have a useful bios id string, worth checking for.

Reply 2 of 17, by dionb

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Not at all sure that 60p connector is for SCSI - for starters there don't seem to be any SCSI controller chips on the board, also 50p and 68p SCSI were a thing, 60p wasn't.

But jumper settings seem pretty well documented on the board - what are you trying to do that you're stuck with?

Reply 3 of 17, by perhenden

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dionb wrote on 2020-05-07, 16:14:

Not at all sure that 60p connector is for SCSI - for starters there don't seem to be any SCSI controller chips on the board, also 50p and 68p SCSI were a thing, 60p wasn't.

That makes sense, I noticed a label saying SCSI somewhat close to the header, that's where my guess came from.
EDIT: the manual says it's for an audio expansion card.

Last edited by perhenden on 2021-04-21, 17:12. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 4 of 17, by perhenden

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dionb wrote on 2020-05-07, 16:14:

But jumper settings seem pretty well documented on the board - what are you trying to do that you're stuck with?

I didn't see how to select frequency and multiplier for the CPU

Reply 7 of 17, by evasive

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J7 J8 Bus speed
2-3 1-2 50
1-2 1-2 60
2-3 2-3 66
1-2 2-3 not documented

J1(BF1) J2(BF0) Multiplier
2-3 2-3 1.5x
2-3 1-2 2x
1-2 1-2 2.5x
1-2 2-3 3x

So if you have a Pentium 90, use 60MHz bus speed and 1.5x Multiplier

J10 CPU voltage
1-2 3.3V
2-3 3.5V

J11 AT bus clock
1-2 PCI clock /3
2-3 PCI clock /4

It seems the maximum this thing will take is a 166MHz Pentium, pay attention to the voltage setting.

Reply 8 of 17, by dionb

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perhenden wrote on 2020-05-07, 19:37:
dionb wrote on 2020-05-07, 16:14:

But jumper settings seem pretty well documented on the board - what are you trying to do that you're stuck with?

I didn't see how to select frequency and multiplier for the CPU

See above for the spoonfeed version, but in terms of background/how to figure this out yourself:
- BF0 and 1 are the So5 multiplier pins, you can read the encoding in Pentium datasheets if nowhere else.
- S0 and S1 are not as universal, but if it says CLK, that's your FSB. By setting a low (1.5x) multiplier, you can safely test what all four possible S0/S1 combinations do.

Reply 10 of 17, by perhenden

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This BA2284 motherboard comes from an Olivetti PCS 5130, I found the manual.
https://www.ardent-tool.com/Olivetti/Docs/ser … tems2/cap16.pdf

Last edited by perhenden on 2021-07-31, 08:27. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 12 of 17, by charliegolf

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I have an olivetti xana 53-120 and this is the motherboard that is in that. It takes up to 200 non mmx pentium. The big brown slot is for a riser that you need for expansion. Has built in s3 graphics. The funny connector behind the riser slot is for a proprietory soundblaster that came with it.

YouTube:
66Mhz Brain

Reply 15 of 17, by perhenden

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I upgraded the bios, from 1.2x to version 1.30-0 (rom0130.zip), from https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=1125.
Unfortunately the new bios version has a very long delay during POST, before RAM test, because it takes super long to initialize the IDE-devices.
My backup bios cannot be found, or I'd submit and use that.
I've done a backup of this bios (attached). The motherboard works well with it, except the long POST time.
The sticker on the bios chip of this board says "Milano v1.13".

Charliegolf provided the bios from his olivetti xana 53-120, attached as bios_xana_53_120.zip.
Within this zip file there are two files. The file called bios was done using NSSI the file called unibios was done using uniflash.
In my case uniflash reported a checksum error when flashing the 'unibios' file and a size mismatch with the 'bios' file.
It's unsafe to reboot after this checksum error on write, best to reflash the backup instead, which worked well in my case.

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  • Filename
    bios_xana_53_120.zip
    File size
    65.24 KiB
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    32 downloads
    File comment
    BIOS 1.2x for PCS Xana 53-120, unverified
    File license
    Public domain
  • Filename
    romo130.zip
    File size
    851.65 KiB
    Downloads
    36 downloads
    File comment
    BIOS 1.30-0 for PCS 51xx & PCS 61xx & Xana 53-xxx & Xana 73-xxx, verified, uniflash
    File license
    Public domain
Last edited by perhenden on 2022-11-19, 13:12. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 16 of 17, by perhenden

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evasive wrote on 2021-05-03, 07:32:

Thank you for that info, could you please make a bios dump so it can be added to the page-to-be-in UH19?

Ready now, @evasive.