Need to Identify a Socket 7 Motherboard

[Orangeman]

Hey Gang,

I need to identify a socket 7 motherboard. The processor is already on the board. It doesn't have any stickers on it but it has lots of markings.

The image is quite large so it may take a while to load but here is a picture of it:

[NooNoo]

Giving it a brush over would have helped Also the pic is not complete... Does this board boot?

Tried this?

[Orangeman]

Sorry NooNoo,

I gave it a brush over and took another picture. It is currently shown. Unfortunately my scanner cropped out the edge by the dimm slot.

Its an AT motherboard, Socket 7. It has 4 sims, 1 dimm, 4 PCI and 3 ISA slots.

There is also a long brown slot behind the 4 white PCI slots. I don't know what it is.

There also doesn't appear to be a battery on the mobo.

I've tried fitting a Pentium 2 on that slot on the off chance it would work, it didn't.

Thanks,
Orangeman

[MacGyver]

Can you get this thing to boot?

The only clue I can see is one chip with the word "DALLAS" on it. It could be a Houston.

[NooNoo]

The thing that says Dallas is your battery.

Its an intel vx chipset the brown slot is for vesa.

[Platypus]

Yes, the "Dallas" thingy is the Real Time Clock/CMOS backup battery, equivalent to Houston Tech, Odin etc.

The brown slot appears to be for a COAST Module (Cache On A Stick).

Identifying the board will be the key, especially to find out if it needs a BIOS EEPROM chip next to the Dallas block.

[Orangeman]

Hi Gang,

I haven't tried to get the thing to boot yet. I was going to try to identify it first so I could have ready any drivers I needed. That not being the case I think I'll have to.

Below is a picture of the type of RAM is uses. One is a sim and the other is a dimm. If I could establish what specific type of RAM it is, maybe I could establish what type it is. Each stick is double sided. Capacity on the simm is 96, capacity on the dimm seems to be 18.

Thanks for your help,

Orangeman

[Stalemate]

I found a pic of the PCChips M525 board which closely resembles it:



[url]http://web.tiscali.it/acorp/?http://web.tiscali.it/no-redirect-ti...hips-datab.htm

[Tacit_k]

looks like the pcchips is a match. PS the brown slot is not VESA (Virtually Extinct System Architecture) the brown slot is cache ram remember the bad old days when you could choose your level of L2 cache?

VESA was an extendend bus on ISA slots not PCI and the speed of PCI video cards negated the need for VESA much like AGP did to PCI

[Orangeman]

Originally posted by a d e p t
I found a pic of the PCChips M525 board which closely resembles it:


[url]http://web.tiscali.it/acorp/?http://web.tiscali.it/no-redirect-ti...hips-datab.htm

Yoou're an Angel,
Thanks Very Much Adept,

Orangeman

[Cyphrr]

I believe that this board was also packaged under the name of Houston or Houston Tech. Orangeman, let me know if you need the manual for it, because I may still have it. I had this board many moons ago.

[Orangeman]

Thanks Cyphyrr,

That's very kind of you. I have the jumper settings now. if I have any problems I will contact you,

Orangeman

[Cyphrr]

Glad to help Orangeman.

[Platypus]

I thought PCChips when I saw it, but strangely, the PCChips lottery didn't identify it from the parameters. If you really want to use it, looks like you'll need to find a suitable BIOS chip. The VX chipset has some limitations, including a 64M cacheable limit, and not being able to use standard SDRAM, so the DIMM is probably EDO. There were also limitations on the simultaneous combinations of SIMM/DIMM, as the VX had few CAS lines to share among the slots.

[Orangeman]

So what you're saying is that I'll have to get a new bios, not just upgrade the old one?

Here are the system specs

Thanks,
Orangeman