SIPP Sockets on those 286 boards:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIPP_memory

Here's a good place to start to try to identify them:

Look here:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/m286 … ml#.UoKGBJzhSF8

and here:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/m286 … ml#.UoKGH5zhSF8

Try to identify them by silhouette.

The second board, seems to have a problem on the 16bit part of an ISA slot. A pin seems to be broken. Take a look and see if it's broken or if it's touching some other pin.

Seems like it has no cystal oscillator, and it has been pulled from the board, right above the 80287 socket.

I avoid boards with SIPP sockets because high density SIPPS are very hard to find. 30 pin SIMMS are still easy to locate so I only go for late 286 boards with sockets for those and I completely forget about early 286 boards that require you to plug individual RAM chips into the board.Those are just a huge PITA tracking down the appropriate chips in sufficient quantities to fully populate all the sockets if they come unpopulated or only partially populated.

Both boards seem to be pretty good quality, though I'd probably go with the smaller one since the technology is more mature (CHIPS is a good 286 chipset).

If you want i can buy that bigger board from you.. I have a set of those Sipp memory here. Those are 1MB ones. But more then 2MB on 286s motherboard is useless.

Can't one just retrofit 30-pin SIMM sockets in place of the SIPPs?

Hi guys, thanx for the answers.
Carlostex, yes, there seems to be a problem with one of the ISA sockets. A pin is missing, or broken....a pitty.

Well no problemo, it is just additional +5 Volt rail, so it should not be a problem to use this ISA slot.

And yes you can desoldel and retrofit a 30pin simm socket there, and if you do not want to solder, then you can push the legs of the SIMM socket in there, and then install new memory.

I don't know if something else is generating a clock signal but it seems to me that the bottom board is missing a 33MHz oscillator crystal. Assuming that its a 16MHz 286 of course.

At some point weren't there SIPP to SIMM adapters, or vice versa? I remember 8-bit to 32-bit SIMM adapters...