yawetaG wrote:

You don't. Only for EISA cards. EISA is a 32-bit variant of ISA that was mostly used in high-end systems for companies. It is ba […]
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PCBONEZ wrote:

If it's not EISA they why do you need an EISA configuration utility?

You don't. Only for EISA cards. EISA is a 32-bit variant of ISA that was mostly used in high-end systems for companies. It is backwards compatible with the 16-bit and 8-bit ISA cards that were found in consumer systems.

The board has EISA connectors, which can take ISA or EISA cards. OP never mentioned the cards that were present were ISA...

At this point I'm getting lost. I probably messed with EISA years ago but don't remember anything about EISA. . I do remember me […]
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At this point I'm getting lost.
I probably messed with EISA years ago but don't remember anything about EISA.
.
I do remember messing with VLB and that went so ~well~ I went out and bought a PCI mobo.
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IMHO, it would be nice if the OP would give somewhat more information on the system. He only mentions what chipsets the two expansion cards have, not whether they are ISA or EISA. Do the cards have model numbers or a clear manufacturer name printed on them (or on stickers on the cards)? If so, what are they?
Has he tried replacing the CMOS battery yet? Some BIOSes don't function well with a dead or dying battery.
Has he tried reseating all cables, checked the cable orientation, or checking whether the floppy drives get power properly?

If the system worked for the seller, why doesn't Baoran ask the seller how he got it to work? If the seller meant the system worked before it was put away in storage 25 years ago, then who knows what might have happened to it in the time in between... 😐

I thought you could see in the pictures that there were 2 isa cards, video card and the I/O card and you could also see the model number of I/O card in the pictures. I just changed the lithium battery in the battery holder that was wrapped with tape and I also tried 2 different floppy cables and they didn't make any difference.

Baoran wrote:

I thought you could see in the pictures that there were 2 isa cards, video card and the I/O card and you could also see the model number of I/O card in the pictures. I just changed the lithium battery in the battery holder that was wrapped with tape and I also tried 2 different floppy cables and they didn't make any difference.

I did see them and all I saw was plain-Jane 16-bit ISA.
I have no idea what yawetaG is seeing that makes him think EISA.
AFAIK visually they are the same, so how could he even tell?

There are several descriptions of the I/O card (I linked to one) and any that say, say 16-bit ISA.
Nothing about EISA or 32-bit at all.
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PCBONEZ wrote:

I did see them and all I saw was plain-Jane 16-bit ISA. I have no idea what yawetaG is seeing that makes him think EISA. AFAIK v […]
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Baoran wrote:

I thought you could see in the pictures that there were 2 isa cards, video card and the I/O card and you could also see the model number of I/O card in the pictures. I just changed the lithium battery in the battery holder that was wrapped with tape and I also tried 2 different floppy cables and they didn't make any difference.

I did see them and all I saw was plain-Jane 16-bit ISA.
I have no idea what yawetaG is seeing that makes him think EISA.
AFAIK visually they are the same, so how could he even tell?

There are several descriptions of the I/O card (I linked to one) and any that say, say 16-bit ISA.
Nothing about EISA or 32-bit at all.
.

Sigh, the motherboard looks like it has EISA slots. Check out the Wikipedia link I shared in my first reply, compare the picture on that page to how the slots look. The only way you can clearly see whether the cards are EISA or not is by pulling them out of the slots, since the form factor itself is exactly the same as for an ISA card.

Well, whatever. I'm out of this thread. 😠

yawetaG wrote:

The only way you can clearly see whether the cards are EISA or not is by pulling them out of the slots, since the form factor itself is exactly the same as for an ISA card.

What do you look for to ID EISA when you pull them out of the slot?

Eisa cards are so rare that I don't think I have ever seen one. Does an eisa version of the I/O and video card the computer has even exist?

Baoran wrote:

After bit of testing the computer seems to work except couple of things. When I set the year to 2018 in bios, the next time I go to bios it is changed to 1998, which I assume means that it only knows years from 1980 to 1999?

For convenience, you can set the year to 1990, which had the same date_to_day-of-week relation as 2018.

Azarien wrote:

For convenience, you can set the year to 1990, which had the same date_to_day-of-week relation as 2018.

I forgot all about that trick until you said it. - Clever.

Baoran wrote:

Eisa cards are so rare that I don't think I have ever seen one. Does an eisa version of the I/O and video card the computer has even exist?

I looked at Ebay.
There are all manner of EISA I/O cards and 3 video cards. Probably others, didn't look.

It was bugging me hoe they could have 16 and 32 bit in the same slot and how to tell the difference.
Since yawetaG didn't answer I poked around until I figured it out.

Can't tell with 100% certainty from the photos but it looks like your slots are EISA but your card is just ISA.

What they did (over ISA) was make the slot connector deeper and add a second row of pins below the ISA pins.
Visually this means the little holes along the top edges of the slots are 2x as many and smaller on EISA.
Also the card edge fingers are thinner and the edge taller.
Pretty easy to ID once you know what to look for.
(All the folks that haven't forgotten all this are prolly laughing their butts off about now... 🤣 🤣 🤣

Perhaps if you get rid of that EISA configuration file/settings your ISA card will work okay.
.

There is no eisa cards configured with the utility, so since there is no eisa cards it shows all expansion slots empty. It also doesn't load anything at startup so I don't think having the program on the hard drive matters. I think it is only used for configuring resources for eisa cards in similar manner as you need utility to configure some plug and play sound cards in dos.

I didn't mean actually remove it. I meant make sure it doesn't run.
Any trace in autoexec.bat or config.sys?

Jo22 wrote:

Windows/MS software on the other hand, will interepret anything ~00-29 as 20xx.

That's the default value but it can be changed at regional settings.

PCBONEZ wrote:

There are all manner of EISA I/O cards and 3 video cards. Probably others, didn't look. […]
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There are all manner of EISA I/O cards and 3 video cards. Probably others, didn't look.

It was bugging me hoe they could have 16 and 32 bit in the same slot and how to tell the difference.
Since yawetaG didn't answer I poked around until I figured it out.

Can't tell with 100% certainty from the photos but it looks like your slots are EISA but your card is just ISA.

What they did (over ISA) was make the slot connector deeper and add a second row of pins below the ISA pins.
Visually this means the little holes along the top edges of the slots are 2x as many and smaller on EISA.
Also the card edge fingers are thinner and the edge taller.
Pretty easy to ID once you know what to look for.
(All the folks that haven't forgotten all this are prolly laughing their butts off about now... 🤣 🤣 🤣

EISA_ISA_1.jpg

EISA_ISA_2.jpg

I'd like to warn you. There is something like OPTI Local Bus that has the same connectors as EISA has. But connecting OLB cards to EISA slots or vice versa may destroy motherboard and/or card.
A good way to distinguish is counting the number of slots on the mainboard. Local bus chipsets do not have more than 3 "EISA" slots, rest is plain ISA.
However, you can check the chipset type on google. Basically OPTI Local Bus chipsets are plain ISA chipsets, similar to VLB. EISA chipsets are always something different. That's more certain.

The Mylex utility calls it eisa system, so I assume it is eisa.
I think it is this model http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/M/MY … 486-MAE486.html

I think you can use dx2 cpus in it though because I found this article

https://books.google.fi/books?id=gasgHhfj-RAC … uration&f=false

In that article a 50Mhz dx2 system has the same mylex board.

PCBONEZ wrote:

I looked at Ebay. There are all manner of EISA I/O cards and 3 video cards. Probably others, didn't look. […]
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I looked at Ebay.
There are all manner of EISA I/O cards and 3 video cards. Probably others, didn't look.

It was bugging me hoe they could have 16 and 32 bit in the same slot and how to tell the difference.
Since yawetaG didn't answer I poked around until I figured it out.

Er, he did you know, it's all in that link he posted earlier and no one bothered to read. No wonder he frustratedly left in a huff...

Disruptor wrote:

[...] […]
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[...]

I'd like to warn you. There is something like OPTI Local Bus that has the same connectors as EISA has. But connecting OLB cards to EISA slots or vice versa may destroy motherboard and/or card.
A good way to distinguish is counting the number of slots on the mainboard. Local bus chipsets do not have more than 3 "EISA" slots, rest is plain ISA.
However, you can check the chipset type on google. Basically OPTI Local Bus chipsets are plain ISA chipsets, similar to VLB. EISA chipsets are always something different. That's more certain.

Fortunately the pic TS supplied shows at least 8 of these slots. That's ISA, not OLB.

Very glad OLB never caught on, the idea of taking an existing slot and making something different that will immediately cause the magic smoke to blow if you put in the cards designed for the original is about as brain-dead an idea as any in computing. The only comparable mess-up is the case of 3.3V-only AGP cards given universal keying...

dionb wrote:

PCBONEZ wrote:

I looked at Ebay. There are all manner of EISA I/O cards and 3 video cards. Probably others, didn't look. […]
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I looked at Ebay.
There are all manner of EISA I/O cards and 3 video cards. Probably others, didn't look.

It was bugging me hoe they could have 16 and 32 bit in the same slot and how to tell the difference.
Since yawetaG didn't answer I poked around until I figured it out.

Er, he did you know, it's all in that link he posted earlier and no one bothered to read. No wonder he frustratedly left in a huff...

I did look at the link.
There is nothing in it that explains how to tell the difference visually.
.

Disruptor wrote:

I'd like to warn you. There is something like OPTI Local Bus that has the same connectors as EISA has. But connecting OLB cards to EISA slots or vice versa may destroy motherboard and/or card.

Life before accepted Industry Standards was so much FUN!

PCBONEZ wrote:

I did look at the link. There is nothing in it that explains how to tell the difference visually. . […]
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dionb wrote:

PCBONEZ wrote:

I looked at Ebay. There are all manner of EISA I/O cards and 3 video cards. Probably others, didn't look. […]
Show full quote

I looked at Ebay.
There are all manner of EISA I/O cards and 3 video cards. Probably others, didn't look.

It was bugging me hoe they could have 16 and 32 bit in the same slot and how to tell the difference.
Since yawetaG didn't answer I poked around until I figured it out.

Er, he did you know, it's all in that link he posted earlier and no one bothered to read. No wonder he frustratedly left in a huff...

I did look at the link.
There is nothing in it that explains how to tell the difference visually.
.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Indust … rd_Architecture

The EISA bus slot is a two-level staggered pin system, with the upper part of the slot corresponding to the standard ISA bus pin layout. The additional features of the EISA bus are implemented on the lower part of the slot connector, using thin traces inserted into the insulating gap of the upper / ISA card card edge connector. Additionally the lower part of the bus has five keying notches, so an ISA card with unusually long traces cannot accidentally extend down into the lower part of the slot.

Also:

"ELSA Winner 1000 for ISA and EISA"

Sure, AFTER you know what to look for it's pretty obvious.
Just posting a link to Wikipedia with no explanation didn't help anyone that didn't know what to look for.
(As evidenced by the way the conversation went afterwords.)
.

Just coming back to drop this one:

PCBONEZ wrote:

Sure, AFTER you know what to look for it's pretty obvious. Just posting a link to Wikipedia with no explanation didn't help anyo […]
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Sure, AFTER you know what to look for it's pretty obvious.
Just posting a link to Wikipedia with no explanation didn't help anyone that didn't know what to look for.
(As evidenced by the way the conversation went afterwords.)
.

Yeah, because reading (comprehension) is so beyond difficult that understanding that if someone on these forums provides a link it may contain, you know, useful information is completely unexpected. And then, if the person who posted the link dares to expect that the people asking questions in a thread actually properly read the page provided, well yeah, that too is completely unexpected, shocking even. Who'd have thought people might do such things on a forum, a place where most posts involve the exchange of information? Unbelievable, really, why would people do that? 🙄

And as it's likely that the sarcasm in the paragraph above just goes *WOOSH* over the heads of at least one person who contributed to this thread: THE PARAGRAPH ABOVE CONTAINS SARCASM.

(But then maybe certain people just belong to the modern mindless instant gratification generation who think everything should just work, period. In that case, don't bother with old computers.)

Just as I won't bother with you.

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@ yawetaG

The EISA derailement started when you jumped in with........

yawetaG wrote:

Also, your system appears to have EISA slots (SCORE!). That may mean that the I/O card and VGA cards are actually 32 bit EISA cards.

And

yawetaG wrote:

Wait. The board is an EISA board.

IIRC, EISA boards require a configuration utility on a bootable floppy for setting up the interface cards separately from the BIOS settings.

The very same Wikipedia link you are so proud of explains the slots take either EISA or ISA cards.
You should read your own links and/or so much for your own reading comprehension.

Further the OP's photo that you saw saw EISA slots in clearly shows the card fingers of an ISA card above the slot.
So much for your attention to detail and the relevance of EISA config files to the OP's system.

Even if you didn't see that there multiple images of the card found by the PN that clearly show ISA.
They are not hard to find. Took like 30 seconds.
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-disk-floppy- … s-GW2760PX.html
https://www.ebay.com/itm/262478736235
http://www.resoo.org/docs/_hardware/th99/c/U-Z/20464.htm

The whole EISA discussion was completely irrelevant to the OP's system.

Initially (when you brought it up) I did not remember enough about EISA to know that (I admitted that) but you, being the one that brought it up and by that the self proclaimed resident expert on EISA should have.

Were YOU not in such a hurry to get your "instant gratification" that you blew off determining if EISA was even applicable the whole EISA-Config derailment would never have happened.

I certainly make the same mistakes occasionally (rarely because I am not too lazy to do some research before I post, and rarely all those mistakes in one thread) but when I do screw up I have enough Integrity to do more research and come back to correct my mistakes. That is not a characteristic of someone looking for "instant gratification", it's characteristic of someone that actually cares about helping people.

You OTOH after popping in and confusing everyone with irrelevant information and failing to receive your "instant gratification" chose to have an immature hissy fit (the F*it I'm leaving post) over straightening out the mess you made.
That's a clear indication that "instant gratification" is ALL you care about and it shows in many of your other posts on Vogons.

Thanks for the refresher on hypocrisy and the demonstration of how NOT to help people.
Thanks for forcing me to study up on EISA so I could clear up the confusion you left behind. (There's your gratification.)

I'm not impressed with your "help desk" skills or your behavior and as such I could care less about your opinions.

If you would like to continue your hissy fit have some respect for the OP and do it directly to me in PM.
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