Help identifying a memory expansion card

I searched around, both here and on the net, and even perused Ebay to no concrete end.

Located similar cards, but not this one. I'd rather like to finish off the memory in my 5150, but I'm not sure if I want to use this card or not.

I kind of wanted the old short IBM unit, if I'm honest, to keep simple things simple.

Maybe there's an advantage to using this thing, or perhaps a disadvantage? Perhaps someone can at least enlighten me as to what it is. There's no part number on the PCB; just "384k Multifunction Expansion Card".

Now, if I've missed something obvious, feel free to call me whatever you will. I did try, but many of the old resources I saw referenced simply weren't around anymore.

I was selling PCs around this time and there were a bunch of no-name clone boards, copies of the SixPacks ,and such. The "high-end" Taiwan boards where from DFI, but there where others with no names. This could be one of those fakes.

384KB RAM, real time clock with battery backup, parallel and serial ports. Connector in the middle might be for a joystick port.
I use a similar card, the AST SixPakPlus, in my 5160 machines.

The main advantage is all the connectors, RAM, and the real time clock are in a single card - on a 5150 you can run out of card slots pretty quick*. The disadvantage (unless someone can ID it) is not knowing the jumper settings (although that may not be necessary or guessable).


* e.g.
Slot 1 - CGA
Slot 2 - Printer
Slot 3 - FDD
Slot 4 - Serial
Slot 5 - RAM

We're out of slots!

Having one of those cards, i can say that identifying it is close to impossible, the card however, just works, the middle is for a game port i believe, and the pin header on the right is either for parallel or serial. Your going to more than likely trial and error this one. Mine i believe has everything turned on, and it all just chugs along.

I don't see why I'd need a real time clock on this thing. I'm not sure if anything I'd be interested in would work on this PC via the game port. Unless a mouse or gamepad or similar would work, I don't see a point to having it. I can't really imagine a need for the headers, either, unless I can run the floppies off it.

Maybe back when this was new it would have made sense, but unless I'm missing some obvious benefit, I'm not seeing the relevance nowadays. I might be better off selling it to take the sting out of a nice IBM 384k short card.

What do you think? Would any of you prefer this, rather than the plain IBM card?

Honestly, I'm not really sure what this 5150 can take. A sound card would be cool, but I don't really think I can run anything on this where it will make a difference, and I do have that ISA hard drive in there (which pretty much takes up two slots unless I move the short Hercules Color Card over). If I yank the modem, I have one slot free. If I move the Hercules, I've got two free.

That leaves me room enough for a sound card if is makes any sense, and a conventional RAM card.

Not sure what I want to do.

SpidersWeb said:

* e.g.
Slot 1 - CGA
Slot 2 - Printer
Slot 3 - FDD
Slot 4 - Serial
Slot 5 - RAM

We're out of slots!

Click to expand...

Exactly. One my 5160 I have:

8: Processor expansion card
7: XT-IDE (or HDD controller)
6: FDD
5: VGA card
4: Network card
3: Sound card
2: RAM expansion + serial + parallel
1: Used for CF card holder.

Having sound + network + serial is a real advantage. There are some things on the 5150 that will run with a mouse and a sound card (earlier sierra SCI games like SQ3, KQ3 etc). The network is a must-have for me; beats using the tweener system to copy files 360k at a time! RAM expansion is also mandatory for me, I couldn't get much to run on the stock 256K at all.

This is one reason I don't have a 5150; everything I want to do is impossible with 5 slots.

Depending on what you want to achieve you could sell the card and get the genuine IBM unit. If you ever decide to sell the 5150 it would have more value this way. But for me personally I would take the functionality of the multi-card.

I'll think about it. I think I can get by with the slots I have available. I wanted a 5150 anyway, just for fun.

I also ended up with a Heath 150-307 EGA/VGA card. That bugger looks pretty serious.

I've got a Hercules "Color Card" in there now. It's a short card, that I believe will fit right in the slot that's partially covered by that ISA hard drive, and includes a printer port. Haven't messed about with it, but I think it's CGA. It would leave me another free slot, though, if I move it, and ditching the modem as I said will clear yet one more.

It's in my other thread, but since we're talking cards, I'll load the shot of the computer here as well, so you can see what I'm on about.

You can see the modem at the far end, and then the short video card, the "Flash Card" HDD, a free space, and then the floppy controller. I do want extra RAM. Sound would be cool, but I don't really think this thing can handle the juice to run much where sound might be important, even if I drop in a V20. I'll have to look through the games I have and those that I want, to be sure.