VOGONS


First post, by Nexxen

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The board came with a nice leaky battery that didn't do much damage, I guess luck had a saying in the matter.
First thing I removed the battery and put some vinegar. I still have work to do cleaning and removing last signs of damage.

I'll have to desolder the keyboard connector and rebuild a few traces.

It came with the original manual (see attachment).
BIOS is present and image shows support even for a 286 cpu.
Chip is ST M27C512; AMIBIOS 386DX ISA BIOS 1993 (AA2815660).

Edit: keyboard bios isn't missing, I took it off to take a pic if is under; jetkey v3 chip.

Last edited by Nexxen on 2021-09-10, 14:42. Edited 3 times in total.

PC#1 Pentium 233 MMX - 98SE
PC#2 PIII-1Ghz - 98SE/W2K

"One hates the specialty unobtainium parts, the other laughs in greed listing them under a ridiculous price" - kotel studios
Bare metal ist krieg.

Reply 1 of 9, by Nexxen

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To-do list:
- copy bios and attach file
- remove all socketed chips
- desolder keyboard connector and check traces
- add more vinegar and scrub
- wash
- rebuild traces
- test

Guess that's all for now.

Last edited by Nexxen on 2021-09-10, 08:00. Edited 1 time in total.

PC#1 Pentium 233 MMX - 98SE
PC#2 PIII-1Ghz - 98SE/W2K

"One hates the specialty unobtainium parts, the other laughs in greed listing them under a ridiculous price" - kotel studios
Bare metal ist krieg.

Reply 2 of 9, by Nexxen

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I desoldered the keyboard connector first and it took some time.
There is a lot to do in my opinion, many traces aren't doing that well.
I'll probably have to remove the power connector to work with ease.

Current situation is:

PC#1 Pentium 233 MMX - 98SE
PC#2 PIII-1Ghz - 98SE/W2K

"One hates the specialty unobtainium parts, the other laughs in greed listing them under a ridiculous price" - kotel studios
Bare metal ist krieg.

Reply 3 of 9, by Nexxen

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Today it's about rebuilding traces.

I'm going to scrub with a fiberglass pen. Then tin the traces and put some copper wire to rebuild traces.
If everything is working I'll put new masking on the area.

The crystal oscillator is 33mhz, it should work anyway with the 386 dx-40 @ 16mhz. It just needs to boot.

PC#1 Pentium 233 MMX - 98SE
PC#2 PIII-1Ghz - 98SE/W2K

"One hates the specialty unobtainium parts, the other laughs in greed listing them under a ridiculous price" - kotel studios
Bare metal ist krieg.

Reply 4 of 9, by Nexxen

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I repaired all the broken traces.
Slow boring job but yielded the desired result. Board woks perfectly.

Among the broken traces were BIOS connections, if I had tried a fast power on it would have done nothing.

I still need to put solder mask to avoid shorts and resolder the keyboard connector.
To test the keyboard I used dupont wires to connect the motherboard to the keyboard. I got inventive to avoid desoldering.

PC#1 Pentium 233 MMX - 98SE
PC#2 PIII-1Ghz - 98SE/W2K

"One hates the specialty unobtainium parts, the other laughs in greed listing them under a ridiculous price" - kotel studios
Bare metal ist krieg.

Reply 5 of 9, by Nexxen

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Screen pics.
BIOS is the usual purple/violet + orange etc.
Is there a newer version of this BIOS if generic or maybe it's specific to this board?

I'll test it in the coming days.

PC#1 Pentium 233 MMX - 98SE
PC#2 PIII-1Ghz - 98SE/W2K

"One hates the specialty unobtainium parts, the other laughs in greed listing them under a ridiculous price" - kotel studios
Bare metal ist krieg.

Reply 6 of 9, by Nexxen

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First tests aren't promising,
- ram issues: 2 chips isn't well supported; doom bench crashed at sprites issue
- booting from floppy hangs at loading ms-dos

I put different sticks and things work fine now.
- doom bench is close to 386 results: max 2134 gametics and 17642 realtics / slow 4291 realtics
- speedtest detects 486 dx2-66 but score is on par with a 386dx-0 at 9.77 points

Is there anything I could try to make this 386 with 486 support go faster?
Do I have to solder the disable pins of the pqfp anyway? even if jumpers are correctly set?

Cache is detected correctly to its amount of 128kb.

Last edited by Nexxen on 2021-09-10, 12:17. Edited 1 time in total.

PC#1 Pentium 233 MMX - 98SE
PC#2 PIII-1Ghz - 98SE/W2K

"One hates the specialty unobtainium parts, the other laughs in greed listing them under a ridiculous price" - kotel studios
Bare metal ist krieg.

Reply 7 of 9, by Nexxen

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I'm starting to think that those 386 to 486 upgrade motherboards were a bit of a scam.

I don't see how much faster it can go compared to a 386 if all the other components aren't 486 class too.

PC#1 Pentium 233 MMX - 98SE
PC#2 PIII-1Ghz - 98SE/W2K

"One hates the specialty unobtainium parts, the other laughs in greed listing them under a ridiculous price" - kotel studios
Bare metal ist krieg.

Reply 8 of 9, by Nexxen

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Landmark System speed test 6.00
Cpu 17.9, even below dx-33

PC#1 Pentium 233 MMX - 98SE
PC#2 PIII-1Ghz - 98SE/W2K

"One hates the specialty unobtainium parts, the other laughs in greed listing them under a ridiculous price" - kotel studios
Bare metal ist krieg.

Reply 9 of 9, by Nexxen

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I have to take back everything on performance:

in BIOS there is an option for TURBO switch to be either enabled or disabled. I thought it was an always on or off option. It makes no difference at all as it's always working and has to be open or close to do anything.
Actually you have to put a jumper on the header or have it always closed to perform as a 486 at full power.

Benchmarks' results are as expected for a dx-2 66. I didn't push it farther than the usual Phil's pack.

I didn't bother checking turbo but I made a mistake. Lesson learnt.
It was indeed a nice upgrade from a 386, having to buy a new cpu instead of a whole system.

** Quake finally finishes at 6.0 fps 360x480

PC#1 Pentium 233 MMX - 98SE
PC#2 PIII-1Ghz - 98SE/W2K

"One hates the specialty unobtainium parts, the other laughs in greed listing them under a ridiculous price" - kotel studios
Bare metal ist krieg.