Interesting board with a full 32-bit CPU, but 16-bit data bus. Didn't see something like this before. Is not really important, but U2 is the Real-Time clock. The keyboard controller on this board is most probably integrated into the chipset. The 0-wait state jumper is very easy to find, just by looking for the trace, which goes into B8 pin of the ISA bus. The chipset can be resoldered, with a microscope you can try to fix just the pins alignment, without desoldering the whole chip.
That ´s a weirdo board indeed! I have never seen 386DX class with a 16bit ram width. The PLCC socket is most likely for a 386sx cpu. (?) And no FPU soclet at all? Or? Becouse a proper DX board has to have two sockets and sx board should have two plcc. This looks like they hooked up dx chip on to a sc board 😀. Wild times!
@@pavelfara9333 That socket is for the FPU, though, just like it was used on 386SX boards. Everything about this board looks like 386SX, but the CPU is a DX like Ti486DLC
Soldering such tiny pins requires at least some experience in micro-soldering, otherwise there is a risk of making it worse if you are doing it for the first time. It is better to give the board to someone who already has experience with such repairs.
I had the screaching sound issue with a socket 3 MB, the isa slots where not provided with 12V power because of a broken trace. I fixed the trace, sound is 👌 again.
Motherboard repairs : do you think maybe we could do some sort of collaboration there Phil? Also I'm finding a lot of retro motherboards (working) that I don't need including some really unusual ones...
Nobody ever loves near me and shipping stuff around is a pain in the neck and makes everything expensive and slow. I really need to learn some basics myself, practice on broken boards, that sort of stuff.
For fixing the legs on the chipset, all you should need is: 1. Soldering iron with a very fine tip 2. No clean flux - Maybe some regular paste style flux as well for the soldering iron cleaning and tinning process. 3. Decent solder (lead bearing). 4. A good desk magnifying glass. 5. A small pick to line the disconnected leg(s) back up as well as to possibly hold the leg(s) in place while soldering. Each leg that needs top be resoldered should take less than a second once touching the soldering iron tip to the leg. 1. If leg is loose, very carefully move back into position with pick. 2. Apply no clean flux to area being soldered 3. Clean and tin soldering iron. 4. Apply a very small amount of solder to soldering iron tip (will work better if you dip solder in paste flux first. 5. Hold leg down with pick and then solder it. You may not even need to add any new solder. Just applying flux and then remelting what is already there will most likely be enough to re-attach the leg(s).
My my! Going from Clint's dual Pentium Pro to Phil's 486-that's-more-like-a-386 kind of brings back the feeling I used to get after putting down a copy of Byte magazine circa '95 and using the old clunker on my desk. LOL. What a great Friday for retro computing RUclips vids!
Another great video, Phil. I remember struggling to get my 486DX40 to work correctly with some cards that couldn't handle the non-standard bus clock. Repairing motherboards is fun and the skills aren't too hard to develop with some practice. However, you will need to invest in more and better soldering tools. Surface mount chips and PGAs on vintage PCBs are very, very hard to do with just an iron or gun without damaging parts or lifting pads; you need lots of the right kind of flux (depends on kind of solder used on PCB), braid, and a hot air station (959D rework station is an affordable and capable tool to start with). Practice first with some damaged/hopeless PCBs and components you don't care about.
Great video! It looks like that chipset IC just needs a reflow - hopefully that will fix it! If I were nearer I would offer to look at it for nothing, but the distance means shipping is nuts expensive!
wow 65 on norton si is mega impressive for 386 m/b/ The TI usually has a full 8Kb cache as well, you lucked out my friend. That's best 486dlc maker. Cyrix only came with 1Kb cache. To have 486-30Mhz performance on a 386 board is awesome. I used to sell pcs with dlcs on them. EVERYBODY wanted the Ti version. Ti actually did a x2 50 Mhz version as well. But they were rare as hen's teeth. And consequently, almost as expensive as an actual Intel 486dx2-50Mhz system to build. wrt sound. Is your M/b getting the -5v and -12v with that adaptor. Just a thought, as if card is using push-pull configuration zero to gnd, then you may be hearing a rectified version of the sound. Great video, brought back memories. I'd forgotten just how much I totally loved the the Ti version of dlc.
Glad it scrubbed up pretty well in the wash, definitely not hitting 40 Celsius in our Australian winter! Closer to 4 Celsius this morning in Adelaide. You'd need some good soldering equipment & skills to reflow that chip.
If I recall correctly, the VGA interrupt still has to be enabled in software as well, regardless of whether or not the jumper is shorted. It could very well be that none of the games you tried uses the VGA interrupt in any way and simply polls one of the VGA registers to determine, for instance, when the vertical retrace happens.
The board probably has the ability to multiplex RAM access so that a 16-bit RAM configuration can be used with a 32-bit CPU, at the cost of performance. It was both a feature and a cost-cutting measure. Some Socket 5/7 boards did the same, with the ability to use a single 72-pin SIMM. The majority of them required them to be installed in multiples of 2.
Try putting the sound card in different slots and test the capacitors close to the slot. Noise and interference is what filtering caps are supposed to get rid of. Try a different power supply as well.
Just check continuity either side of the scratch, ie, sand solder-mask and solder wire if cut. Get a magnifying visor and straighten the pins on the chipset and resolder - Jaycar has Caig/Deoxit rosin flux which is pretty good, it's just that it's hard to clean off afterwards, ie, I use IPA and Nifti. If there is no info on that graphics card it might be an idea to cut that section out of the vid an make a separate vid for it so it's easy to find on the web.
Besides resoldering the pins, I'd maybe check for shorts, voltages and maybe even an oscilloscope to see how 'clean' the signal/voltages are. Maybe even try an AT PSU in case it's the ATX causing issues.
Well done for dumping the bios and uploading it. There's A LOT of random people with collections of PC stuff and almost none of them are either aware or smart enough to realise that it's important to back up bios roms since the data inside only lasts a finite amount of time before it starts to get bit rot.
The scratches on the back that you showed on the camera, look quite harmless, IMHO. I'd concentrate on the chipset - as I saw, some of the legs will certainly have bad connection, or none at all. And as FDD controller also requires an IRQ to work properly, it will probably be the same issue as with the soundcard. At this point, I'd suggest going the Necroware route, try to bend the individual pins back to their positions, cover the solder joints with flux and re-solder them, just like he does every so often :-) My guess is this should solve most, if not all of the board's problems. But of course, inspect visually the rest of the board as well for any potential damage anywhere else. Also, it often happens that when stored, the protruding pins from THT components on the bottom get bent and sometimes may touch something else. So pay attention to this kind of "damage", and if you find anything suspicious, just straighten the pin back :) Good luck, I'm quite sure the board is salvageable ;)
Get your multimeter out Phil - in continuity mode. Test top of the chip to bottom of the trace - corresponding pin then both from either side. That's a first step only but guaranteed this is a point of issue. There are obvious signs of lifted traces too and you probably should be scraping away solder mask and testing pin to trace slightly further down the circuit.
Turbo button on those boards was the normal. What I can't believe is how many of that style was sold. I don't remember the ALD chip though. A good type of board to upgrade a clone that either died or needed to run faster for say windows 3.1
The traces shouldn't be too hard to repair, but that chipset is going to require some more serious soldering skills (not that I could do either myself…) Hope you can find someone to do the resoldering on the chipset, and I hope that fixes it!
I also got this M/B recently from China. Unfortunately, it was not working. I have to check it more. Visually it looks fine. I will go now and check it with the Bios you uploaded.
True my board has some corrosion and rust, but In the end it worked :) It is the same as yours rev 1.1. Now I run all test, the conclusion is that the board is 32 bit. The memory controller is 16 / 32 bit. I got same results as you there with 4 simms. Cache check tool reports memory speed as 23MB/sec. That is similar to my other 32bit 386 boards, thought the final performance is lower due to lack of cache. Yes, the board works with only 2 memory on the bottom slots. The performance is lower in all benches. (15MB/sec). The board is picky with memory modules some only work here in 16-bit mode only or my top slots are too corroded :/
I can’t help but wonder if most of the ICs and ISA sockets are “recycled”. I see some broken plastic,on one of the ISA sockets. Some time ago I bought a small quantity of POST cards. It was obvious that the ICs used were a mixture of brand new and re-cycled parts.
Hi Phil, will you make a video about empty fake cache chips on cheap 486 motherboards like PCChips? I think it could be an interesting topic, showing the boards and testing them
Very unusual for 386sx board to use coin battery and 486 soldered ceramic CPU., also some SMD ICs. Also very cool to have WIN BIOS. I hade this BIOS on 486 and 586 boards, and so on the interest that this BIOS was use even on Pentiun 2 and 3 boards. Nice to have it in 386 😊
When you are showing the scratches on the backside of the board I see some pins bent over maybe an inch to the right of the scratches and they might be touching other traces...
I had a problem with a WinTV card in the 90s when I overclocked the cpu, wonder if that is causing your sound issue? I had to set it back to stock 33MHz and all worked. I had overclocked to 40MHz. If not could be a dodgy capacitor maybe? Hope you find out what it is and sort it ok
For a board this old, I wouldn't call this a scam, it works. it has some issues that are not seen without some testing. unless the seller advertised it as gem mint in 'as new' condition this is just what you can expect from something more than 30 years old
Honestly resoldering the chipset legs can be a bit tricky for a beginner, better leave someone like Louis Rossmann or Adamant IT for example take care of it, or dive into the rabbit hole of repair and learn on something else first. The scratched coating on the back of the board is harmless as no copper was damaged, but you can always re-coat it to avoid oxidization, but really it's not critical.
Hallo, try to check the whole QFP chipset under a magnifying glass. Use a medical needle and check meticulously every!! single pin. I bet the issue is there. These are notorius for that and my experience is ALD boards are late chepo low-quality 386 parts for people who were not able to afford better. 😅 If you find loose pins you have to reflow it. Necrowere has a lot of good videos to learn. I have saved dozens of parts like that.
You might give the board -5V and the sound beep might go away. (There is a self build solotion around for injection -5V into the ISA bus or use an AT PSU)
The area around the chipset looks awful. I would try cleaning it first and then with magnifying glass, soldering iron and fine tweezers get the chipset legs in place. The board mostly works so most of the board and the main chips are likely good. Looks at some videos by Tony359 and Adrian Black on restoring retro hardware. That board is too good to let go. Good luck.
Very nice little mainboard. I did not even know it was possible to use that CPU with a 16-bit wide bus, maybe this is specific to the DLC. Not sure if an Intel 386DX would accomodate this (and since the CPU is soldered, that prevents any attempt unfortunately). Thanks Phil !
G'day Phil, Speaking of installing jumpers I had to install mine as it's 🌧🥶Wet & Cold here atm, been so long since I've seen it I think the Sun has gone for a few weeks Holiday 😂 😞Sad the board has some issues, 🤔how good are your de + re soldering chip skills?
Back in the day, most ISA sound cards needed -5 volts at the connector to work properly. Converting from ATX to AT may not work correctly because you are missing -5 volt rail. Just a heads up. You may not have gotten scammed as you thought... Just an idea... Nicely done... =)
Hey Phil. The bent leads on the chipset may be cold solder joints or possibly knocked loose but still contacting. If they are making poor contact that may be the reason you have noise on the sound card and only 2 RAM slots working. They can be straightened and re-soldered. And the scratch on the back can be re-masked as well. I would contact someone like NW Repair and see if he would do it, and what he would charge you (He has a you tube channel) . He has done retro hardware repairs before and is very thorough. The only caveat is he may not have a good way to test it after the repair because it is such a unique board.
6:12 what about -5V? Are you using your custom solution for that? Maybe that's part of the problem with the sound cards? Although those traces are a concern...
DAT Motherboard seems to be iffy, (Sorry for the bad pun 😅) It surely needs fixing. My best guess would to reflow it... I'm not sure if those things at the back could affect this MB's way of how it is working. I doubt it, but I could be wrong.
I have a similar board with almost the same arrangement, same CPU, and it's not working at all - so call yourself lucky! ;) About the ET4000's IRQ: It might be that it will never get called in pure DOS applications. It's likely only being used by and called for software that addresses the features of the ET4000 directly. After all, why should a graphics card make interrupt calls for standard software with standard video modes that doesn't know about any specifics of this card anyway?
@@philscomputerlab If you're interested, I have a test suite some guy made for about every graphics chipset up to the mid 90s, that also addresses several chipset specialties, like HW cursors, bank switching, scrolling, RAMDAC specialties, including Turbo Pascal sources. Can't recall its name right now, and am not sure if it also fiddles with interrupts, but I can dig it up, if you're interested.
I'd reseat the chipset and test the rust damage with a couple of botch wires. You probably had a similarly brilliant plan, but a comment never hurts the channel. Why would a board with 16 bit memory and a 32 bit CPU be made? Given the four RAM slots, an overall 32 bit seems an obvious choice (to me).
386SX was just like that, 32 Bit CPU with 16 Bit bus. And the Cyrix is compatible with such boards, adding a few enhancements and better performance. Heck it outperforms a fast 386DX-40 which is impressive.
you said it have issues with sound cards, so...if i ever happen to get such a board, that would ne a no-go for me. I had a 386 back then that had a sound card and everything worked fine, so i always had a computer with a sound card in it, but i must say that i often played games that didn't used one, it was in that transition from PC Speaker to Sound Blaster and clones era
I can fix that board while you wait if you bring it here (Perth). Re-mounting large QFP chips is one of my specialities :-) If you want to learn how to do it I can teach you.
@@philscomputerlab You're missing the two most important tools... skill and technique ;-) You could post it to me if you wanted. I just sent a repaired board out in a 20cm x 20cm x 15cm box (easily big enough to hold that board) and it was only $18.50. I'll fix it for free of course and you just pay return postage. I'll do a repair log about it then you can follow that for any similar future repairs. Bear in mind I very rarely offer to fix stuff for random people and almost never for free and I'm doing both now.... so....
Copyright 1995? This seems like a very late 386 board so probably made as cheaply as possible, because whoever bought a 386 board in 1995 onwards must have wanted the cheapest thing possible, the Pentium was out 3 years by then, Windows 95 ran much better on a DX4, 5x86 or Pentium and the Pentium 2 would release soon after.
Live in WA, Au. Have soldering iron Lol. Have done a number of minor repairs, I might be able to help. Contact me if you would like me to take a look at the board. No promises of course.
Interesting board with a full 32-bit CPU, but 16-bit data bus. Didn't see something like this before. Is not really important, but U2 is the Real-Time clock. The keyboard controller on this board is most probably integrated into the chipset. The 0-wait state jumper is very easy to find, just by looking for the trace, which goes into B8 pin of the ISA bus. The chipset can be resoldered, with a microscope you can try to fix just the pins alignment, without desoldering the whole chip.
Thank you ❤️
That ´s a weirdo board indeed! I have never seen 386DX class with a 16bit ram width. The PLCC socket is most likely for a 386sx cpu. (?) And no FPU soclet at all? Or? Becouse a proper DX board has to have two sockets and sx board should have two plcc. This looks like they hooked up dx chip on to a sc board 😀. Wild times!
@@pavelfara9333 That socket is for the FPU, though, just like it was used on 386SX boards. Everything about this board looks like 386SX, but the CPU is a DX like Ti486DLC
Soldering such tiny pins requires at least some experience in micro-soldering, otherwise there is a risk of making it worse if you are doing it for the first time. It is better to give the board to someone who already has experience with such repairs.
I was not aware of this either. I thought SX CPUs worked in 16bit boards, DX in 32bit boards. Need to try it :)
I had the screaching sound issue with a socket 3 MB, the isa slots where not provided with 12V power because of a broken trace. I fixed the trace, sound is 👌 again.
Motherboard repairs : do you think maybe we could do some sort of collaboration there Phil? Also I'm finding a lot of retro motherboards (working) that I don't need including some really unusual ones...
Nobody ever loves near me and shipping stuff around is a pain in the neck and makes everything expensive and slow. I really need to learn some basics myself, practice on broken boards, that sort of stuff.
For fixing the legs on the chipset, all you should need is:
1. Soldering iron with a very fine tip
2. No clean flux - Maybe some regular paste style flux as well for the soldering iron cleaning and tinning process.
3. Decent solder (lead bearing).
4. A good desk magnifying glass.
5. A small pick to line the disconnected leg(s) back up as well as to possibly hold the leg(s) in place while soldering.
Each leg that needs top be resoldered should take less than a second once touching the soldering iron tip to the leg.
1. If leg is loose, very carefully move back into position with pick.
2. Apply no clean flux to area being soldered
3. Clean and tin soldering iron.
4. Apply a very small amount of solder to soldering iron tip (will work better if you dip solder in paste flux first.
5. Hold leg down with pick and then solder it.
You may not even need to add any new solder. Just applying flux and then remelting what is already there will most likely be enough to re-attach the leg(s).
i prefer a scalpel...usually picks are too big . a scalpel with a slightly used/blunt blade is perfect for chipset pins
My my! Going from Clint's dual Pentium Pro to Phil's 486-that's-more-like-a-386 kind of brings back the feeling I used to get after putting down a copy of Byte magazine circa '95 and using the old clunker on my desk.
LOL. What a great Friday for retro computing RUclips vids!
Definitely we are having a treat here! LGR’s video was awesome, this is the cherry on top
LOL I also watched those videos in the same order😆
Don't forget necrowares 386 video and today Adrian dropped a very interesting vid too. Insane fun and quality content all the way!
@@schonja9 Necro is the best of the lot, he actually repairs/solders. Phil is definitely the software king though.
Another great video, Phil. I remember struggling to get my 486DX40 to work correctly with some cards that couldn't handle the non-standard bus clock. Repairing motherboards is fun and the skills aren't too hard to develop with some practice. However, you will need to invest in more and better soldering tools. Surface mount chips and PGAs on vintage PCBs are very, very hard to do with just an iron or gun without damaging parts or lifting pads; you need lots of the right kind of flux (depends on kind of solder used on PCB), braid, and a hot air station (959D rework station is an affordable and capable tool to start with). Practice first with some damaged/hopeless PCBs and components you don't care about.
Great video! It looks like that chipset IC just needs a reflow - hopefully that will fix it! If I were nearer I would offer to look at it for nothing, but the distance means shipping is nuts expensive!
Hey Phil, hope the big changes went well! All the best
Thanks, you too!
That chipset leg issue is very easily fixed, I’m in Melbourne if you want some help. 👍
wow 65 on norton si is mega impressive for 386 m/b/ The TI usually has a full 8Kb cache as well, you lucked out my friend. That's best 486dlc maker. Cyrix only came with 1Kb cache. To have 486-30Mhz performance on a 386 board is awesome. I used to sell pcs with dlcs on them. EVERYBODY wanted the Ti version. Ti actually did a x2 50 Mhz version as well. But they were rare as hen's teeth. And consequently, almost as expensive as an actual Intel 486dx2-50Mhz system to build.
wrt sound. Is your M/b getting the -5v and -12v with that adaptor. Just a thought, as if card is using push-pull configuration zero to gnd, then you may be hearing a rectified version of the sound.
Great video, brought back memories. I'd forgotten just how much I totally loved the the Ti version of dlc.
Yeah, certainly those legs on the chipset will be causing issues. Even the ones that look ok may be detached from the board.
Glad it scrubbed up pretty well in the wash, definitely not hitting 40 Celsius in our Australian winter! Closer to 4 Celsius this morning in Adelaide. You'd need some good soldering equipment & skills to reflow that chip.
That is what I'm thinking
Do those sound cards require the -5V power supply? It's used by old sound cards to drive the negative rail of the audio amplifier chips.
No, Only the Roland LAPC-I and the Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum 16 need one.
If I recall correctly, the VGA interrupt still has to be enabled in software as well, regardless of whether or not the jumper is shorted. It could very well be that none of the games you tried uses the VGA interrupt in any way and simply polls one of the VGA registers to determine, for instance, when the vertical retrace happens.
I just want to know how your vintage boards look so shiny & new? What do you do with them? Oh later in the video you show it! Kitchen sink....
That chipset is perfect practice to improve your SMD soldering skills... You can even try out drag soldering.
The board probably has the ability to multiplex RAM access so that a 16-bit RAM configuration can be used with a 32-bit CPU, at the cost of performance. It was both a feature and a cost-cutting measure.
Some Socket 5/7 boards did the same, with the ability to use a single 72-pin SIMM. The majority of them required them to be installed in multiples of 2.
Try putting the sound card in different slots and test the capacitors close to the slot. Noise and interference is what filtering caps are supposed to get rid of. Try a different power supply as well.
It's such a beautiful board.
Just check continuity either side of the scratch, ie, sand solder-mask and solder wire if cut.
Get a magnifying visor and straighten the pins on the chipset and resolder - Jaycar has Caig/Deoxit rosin flux which is pretty good, it's just that it's hard to clean off afterwards, ie, I use IPA and Nifti.
If there is no info on that graphics card it might be an idea to cut that section out of the vid an make a separate vid for it so it's easy to find on the web.
Besides resoldering the pins, I'd maybe check for shorts, voltages and maybe even an oscilloscope to see how 'clean' the signal/voltages are.
Maybe even try an AT PSU in case it's the ATX causing issues.
Only an issue if using an atx supply that doesn't have the -5V rail.
Well done for dumping the bios and uploading it. There's A LOT of random people with collections of PC stuff and almost none of them are either aware or smart enough to realise that it's important to back up bios roms since the data inside only lasts a finite amount of time before it starts to get bit rot.
Man, stop posting these awesome videos, it makes me want to rebuild my first PC with a DX4-100. 😂
Go for it! 😁
Damn. Can't beleive 2014 was 10 years ago already.
What a lovely BIOS interface so much more pleasant than the later blue screen
It's a very late board, this BIOS was used on the 486 and maybe the P1 boards.
It has mouse support, too! I own an AOpen board with an AMI BIOS just like this.
@@redpheonix1000I love that GUI BIOS that imitates win 3.x and the mouse moves so smooth, not like in modern rubbish UEFI shits.
Always backup the biosses, just in case of a failure. And its better to reprogram a new eprom and stick it back on the board.
always loved the simple 386 motherboards, life were simple back then :D but yeah finding them these days are tough but such nostalgia
The scratches on the back that you showed on the camera, look quite harmless, IMHO. I'd concentrate on the chipset - as I saw, some of the legs will certainly have bad connection, or none at all. And as FDD controller also requires an IRQ to work properly, it will probably be the same issue as with the soundcard.
At this point, I'd suggest going the Necroware route, try to bend the individual pins back to their positions, cover the solder joints with flux and re-solder them, just like he does every so often :-) My guess is this should solve most, if not all of the board's problems.
But of course, inspect visually the rest of the board as well for any potential damage anywhere else. Also, it often happens that when stored, the protruding pins from THT components on the bottom get bent and sometimes may touch something else. So pay attention to this kind of "damage", and if you find anything suspicious, just straighten the pin back :) Good luck, I'm quite sure the board is salvageable ;)
Thank you!
I think the back just needs some conformal coating but the chipset definitely needs some rework.
I have a few of them under different names. Not a bad board. Some have a soldered on CPU with heatsink but all perform about the same.
Get your multimeter out Phil - in continuity mode. Test top of the chip to bottom of the trace - corresponding pin then both from either side. That's a first step only but guaranteed this is a point of issue. There are obvious signs of lifted traces too and you probably should be scraping away solder mask and testing pin to trace slightly further down the circuit.
Turbo button on those boards was the normal. What I can't believe is how many of that style was sold. I don't remember the ALD chip though. A good type of board to upgrade a clone that either died or needed to run faster for say windows 3.1
The traces shouldn't be too hard to repair, but that chipset is going to require some more serious soldering skills (not that I could do either myself…) Hope you can find someone to do the resoldering on the chipset, and I hope that fixes it!
I used a razor blade to get between tightly packed pins to separate them. just be gentle.
I am so sorry that board didn't work. I do hope you fix it and make another video. It seems interesting that it's everything on one board.
Dang dude got the double whammy 😆
Yup 😊
Thanks for the bios dump. +1 to your awesomeness
Fix the pins on the chipset. I have fixed worse tings with a smartphone and a big tipped soldering iron. There is no issue on the back of the pcb.
Straiten the pins and reflow
I also got this M/B recently from China. Unfortunately, it was not working.
I have to check it more. Visually it looks fine.
I will go now and check it with the Bios you uploaded.
Thanks for letting me know, yes please take a look. China is a very humid country and the condition of old parts isn't great, much corrosion...
True my board has some corrosion and rust, but In the end it worked :) It is the same as yours rev 1.1.
Now I run all test, the conclusion is that the board is 32 bit. The memory controller is 16 / 32 bit.
I got same results as you there with 4 simms. Cache check tool reports memory speed as 23MB/sec.
That is similar to my other 32bit 386 boards, thought the final performance is lower due to lack of cache.
Yes, the board works with only 2 memory on the bottom slots. The performance is lower in all benches. (15MB/sec).
The board is picky with memory modules some only work here in 16-bit mode only or my top slots are too corroded :/
Cachechk it to see if RAM performance improves between 2 and 4 SIMM
Have a go at repairing those pins, it should be easy enough. The closest slot to the cpu has damaged plastic and a bent first pin by the look of it.
I can’t help but wonder if most of the ICs and ISA sockets are “recycled”. I see some broken plastic,on one of the ISA sockets. Some time ago I bought a small quantity of POST cards. It was obvious that the ICs used were a mixture of brand new and re-cycled parts.
I would suggest a remount of the Chipset to fix the problem. You can either do it yourself or send it to a professional to fix it for you.
It's a nice board, I have the DAT4018 that is quite similar but has the barrel battery unfortunately
Hi Phil, will you make a video about empty fake cache chips on cheap 486 motherboards like PCChips?
I think it could be an interesting topic, showing the boards and testing them
Thank you.
Very unusual for 386sx board to use coin battery and 486 soldered ceramic CPU., also some SMD ICs. Also very cool to have WIN BIOS. I hade this BIOS on 486 and 586 boards, and so on the interest that this BIOS was use even on Pentiun 2 and 3 boards. Nice to have it in 386 😊
When you are showing the scratches on the backside of the board I see some pins bent over maybe an inch to the right of the scratches and they might be touching other traces...
I had a problem with a WinTV card in the 90s when I overclocked the cpu, wonder if that is causing your sound issue? I had to set it back to stock 33MHz and all worked. I had overclocked to 40MHz. If not could be a dodgy capacitor maybe? Hope you find out what it is and sort it ok
For a board this old, I wouldn't call this a scam, it works. it has some issues that are not seen without some testing.
unless the seller advertised it as gem mint in 'as new' condition this is just what you can expect from something more than 30 years old
Honestly resoldering the chipset legs can be a bit tricky for a beginner, better leave someone like Louis Rossmann or Adamant IT for example take care of it, or dive into the rabbit hole of repair and learn on something else first. The scratched coating on the back of the board is harmless as no copper was damaged, but you can always re-coat it to avoid oxidization, but really it's not critical.
Hallo, try to check the whole QFP chipset under a magnifying glass. Use a medical needle and check meticulously every!! single pin. I bet the issue is there. These are notorius for that and my experience is ALD boards are late chepo low-quality 386 parts for people who were not able to afford better. 😅 If you find loose pins you have to reflow it. Necrowere has a lot of good videos to learn. I have saved dozens of parts like that.
You might give the board -5V and the sound beep might go away. (There is a self build solotion around for injection -5V into the ISA bus or use an AT PSU)
The cards used don't require -5V so that shouldn't be the issue.
The area around the chipset looks awful. I would try cleaning it first and then with magnifying glass, soldering iron and fine tweezers get the chipset legs in place. The board mostly works so most of the board and the main chips are likely good. Looks at some videos by Tony359 and Adrian Black on restoring retro hardware. That board is too good to let go. Good luck.
Very nice little mainboard. I did not even know it was possible to use that CPU with a 16-bit wide bus, maybe this is specific to the DLC. Not sure if an Intel 386DX would accomodate this (and since the CPU is soldered, that prevents any attempt unfortunately).
Thanks Phil !
Yea this Cyrix CPU was quite flexible and could extract some extra performance out of pretty basic 386 systems.
breakfast with Phil's. Technically it's breakfast for dinner but it's steak and eggs just the same!
I've got one of those Texas instruments 486 on a board, I haven't seen it for about 20 years & not sure if its same or if it works anymore.
G'day Phil,
Speaking of installing jumpers I had to install mine as it's 🌧🥶Wet & Cold here atm, been so long since I've seen it I think the Sun has gone for a few weeks Holiday 😂
😞Sad the board has some issues, 🤔how good are your de + re soldering chip skills?
I've never done anything with large chips. I have replaced capacitors, battery sockets and other simple stuff.
I was looking forward to tests with the 8kb L1 enabled :)
I don't think this CPU model is the one with 8KB Cache...
Back in the day, most ISA sound cards needed -5 volts at the connector to work properly. Converting from ATX to AT may not work correctly because you are missing -5 volt rail. Just a heads up. You may not have gotten scammed as you thought... Just an idea... Nicely done... =)
Actually, only very few cards require -5V. This wasn't the issue with this particular board, rest assured.
@@philscomputerlab Got it... =8-)
I don’t care what no one’s says Mr. Phil is the GOAT!!!
Very interesting board, shame about its 16 bit bus. I hope you can resolder the chipset :-)
very interesting board
Hey Phil. The bent leads on the chipset may be cold solder joints or possibly knocked loose but still contacting. If they are making poor contact that may be the reason you have noise on the sound card and only 2 RAM slots working. They can be straightened and re-soldered. And the scratch on the back can be re-masked as well. I would contact someone like NW Repair and see if he would do it, and what he would charge you (He has a you tube channel) . He has done retro hardware repairs before and is very thorough. The only caveat is he may not have a good way to test it after the repair because it is such a unique board.
6:12 what about -5V? Are you using your custom solution for that? Maybe that's part of the problem with the sound cards? Although those traces are a concern...
The cards don't require -5V, so that shouldn't be the issue.
So you'll learn to solder my friend!
Love your way of washing MB in the sink. Please make an YT Short whenever you will do it again - it is kind of ASMR for PC Retro Maniacs like us 😅
Ahhh, I really don't want to do shorts. Very much prefer this video format.
@@philscomputerlab How about an entire video of motherboard washing ?
DAT Motherboard seems to be iffy, (Sorry for the bad pun 😅) It surely needs fixing.
My best guess would to reflow it... I'm not sure if those things at the back could affect this MB's way of how it is working. I doubt it, but I could be wrong.
The world would be a safer place without puns ☺️
@@philscomputerlab True 😆
Still 40 Celsius degree? Summer in Korea now 34 Celsius at most.
Maybe reach out to Neil at RMC Retro / RMC The Cave for some tips and help with fixing the board.
Your social credit score just wasn't up for the original
I have a similar board with almost the same arrangement, same CPU, and it's not working at all - so call yourself lucky! ;)
About the ET4000's IRQ: It might be that it will never get called in pure DOS applications. It's likely only being used by and called for software that addresses the features of the ET4000 directly. After all, why should a graphics card make interrupt calls for standard software with standard video modes that doesn't know about any specifics of this card anyway?
That makes sense, AFAIK some specific CAD software was mentioned when I did research...
@@philscomputerlab If you're interested, I have a test suite some guy made for about every graphics chipset up to the mid 90s, that also addresses several chipset specialties, like HW cursors, bank switching, scrolling, RAMDAC specialties, including Turbo Pascal sources. Can't recall its name right now, and am not sure if it also fiddles with interrupts, but I can dig it up, if you're interested.
Hi Phil! Are you going to make a video about Pocket 386 PC??
I'dove to, but seems quite expensive to just buy for a video review. Have you bought one?
I'd reseat the chipset and test the rust damage with a couple of botch wires. You probably had a similarly brilliant plan, but a comment never hurts the channel. Why would a board with 16 bit memory and a 32 bit CPU be made? Given the four RAM slots, an overall 32 bit seems an obvious choice (to me).
386SX was just like that, 32 Bit CPU with 16 Bit bus. And the Cyrix is compatible with such boards, adding a few enhancements and better performance. Heck it outperforms a fast 386DX-40 which is impressive.
Shouldn't it be cool in Australia now? You get 40°C days in the southern hemisphere "winter"? (Or does cooler weather not come until July / August?)
The video was produced a while ago 🙂
Modern Power supply does not have -5V. It can be problematic with some Audio cards.
Yes you are right, but not with the soundcards I used 😊
This board is just super simple. Not much more than just a backplane for the CPU
dat highly integrated chipset tho
the chip looks reparable pity it came in such bad condition
you said it have issues with sound cards, so...if i ever happen to get such a board, that would ne a no-go for me. I had a 386 back then that had a sound card and everything worked fine, so i always had a computer with a sound card in it, but i must say that i often played games that didn't used one, it was in that transition from PC Speaker to Sound Blaster and clones era
Is there a link to purchase this board?
You could do a collaboration with some other RUclips:er that focuses on repairing hardware.
I can fix that board while you wait if you bring it here (Perth). Re-mounting large QFP chips is one of my specialities :-)
If you want to learn how to do it I can teach you.
I'm not near Perth I'm afraid :(
I watched a few videos and it seems I need solder wick, flux, iron, solder, knife or razor blade, magnifier or microscope?
@@philscomputerlab You're missing the two most important tools... skill and technique ;-)
You could post it to me if you wanted. I just sent a repaired board out in a 20cm x 20cm x 15cm box (easily big enough to hold that board) and it was only $18.50. I'll fix it for free of course and you just pay return postage. I'll do a repair log about it then you can follow that for any similar future repairs. Bear in mind I very rarely offer to fix stuff for random people and almost never for free and I'm doing both now.... so....
@@g4z-kb7ct Yea I'm nowhere near Perth, most parts are in storage, so it isn't happening I'm afraid. Maybe in the distant future...
YOU were Mau1wurf1977? I had no idea. That guy actually seemed to know stuff. :p
I don´t see any L2 cache, or is it included in the chipset ?
Yes likely it's inside the chipset! The CPU also has a little bit of L1 Cache.
13:30 Can't you run a tool that hooks IRQ2 and prints a msg if it's received?
Maybe? Afaik from the comments, specific software would use IRQ2, like CAD software. I wasn't able to find any concrete evidence online (yet).
@@philscomputerlab Someone should be able to write such a tool for you. ;)
It's not that many lines of code.
@@philscomputerlab The IRQ might also be disabled by default, so it won't be requested unless enabled by software.
Basically its a super Nintendo luxury edition.. Or a DEV kit
I'd love to find a socket 5 or 7/super 7 motherboard
Washing electronics in the kitchen sinks looks so unnatural. :D
Copyright 1995? This seems like a very late 386 board so probably made as cheaply as possible, because whoever bought a 386 board in 1995 onwards must have wanted the cheapest thing possible, the Pentium was out 3 years by then, Windows 95 ran much better on a DX4, 5x86 or Pentium and the Pentium 2 would release soon after.
Yes these boards are very late, and one of the reasons I like them, very simple design, and simple is usually good.
Nice BIOS ❤
you destroyed it by brushing and soap water ......
Reflow the solder
TI should ask license to make new intel clones. To spice up the market.
Live in WA, Au.
Have soldering iron Lol.
Have done a number of minor repairs, I might be able to help.
Contact me if you would like me to take a look at the board. No promises of course.
cant watch this in 720p or 480p
WTF YT ?
wow maybe the smallest baby AT board i've ever seen
send it to adrian black and he make a vidio on it
Off topic but I have to ask, if England plays Österreich in the next round of Euro 2024, will you still support us English? 😂
Haha, I'll always cheer for Austria, but of course we don't stand a chance 😊