Help! My Intel Inboard 386/PC is dead!

[Mike1978]

Bummer... Unfortunately with old electronics, every power on can be it's last.

Yeah still it remains dead but I remain hopeful there is enough expertise in the community to perhaps resurrect it again.

It’s still something I’d love to get going again and would then want to get it into a 5160 and continue my journey with exploring Windows 3.11 and the advantages of that over 3.1 and it utilising the 32bit code.

Which is great for an 8088 based system

One day!

If there is anyone out there wants to help me get it back up and running then do reach out.

I’m UK based also should anyone be wondering

Mike

 

[Mike1978]

Here is an update I didn’t think I’d ever post.

So I sold my inboard to a forum member (Paul) and with it I sent the original cpu. Additionally I bought a new crystal as the one I removed from the board didn’t have sufficient legs to stay in the socket this I sent on after it arrived to me.

He tried the board yesterday with the original cpu and new crystal and it just worked!

So while I’m mildly frustrated, I hadn’t bought a new crystal before parting with it. It’s left me a little confused as to why I couldn’t see any life I didn’t just try it once and I did try it with the original crystal and the old cpu.

Could a crystal really fail or maybe it wasn’t right in the socket.

It’s also an expensive lesson, as we all know these boards aren’t readily available or cheap.

However I do have a replacement and I don’t in anyway feel any malice towards anyone who took a punt on a dead board, Paul gave me a fair price for a dead board.

So I guess there’s a learning for me to always replace all removable components with additional ones.

But additionally it also shows I didn’t kill it through the crystal change. So I’m in that quandary place of asking others here for thoughts.

Should I stay with the stock crystal or do I modify again? Live life in the fast lane, what is the risk over clocking again, I have overclocked other old hardware many times.

Can I ask how many owners of these cards have swapped out the crystal and do you perhaps think it’s crazy of me to be considering doing it again?

Thoughts..

Also Paul if you see this welcome to the club I’m glad for your success despite my misfortune of not checking and checking again..

Good job they only sell for nearly a grand… (ouch)

Mike

 

[chjmartin2]

Here is an update I didn’t think I’d ever post.

So I sold my inboard to a forum member (Paul) and with it I sent the original cpu. Additionally I bought a new crystal as the one I removed from the board didn’t have sufficient legs to stay in the socket this I sent on after it arrived to me.

He tried the board yesterday with the original cpu and new crystal and it just worked!

So while I’m mildly frustrated, I hadn’t bought a new crystal before parting with it. It’s left me a little confused as to why I couldn’t see any life I didn’t just try it once and I did try it with the original crystal and the old cpu.

Could a crystal really fail or maybe it wasn’t right in the socket.

It’s also an expensive lesson, as we all know these boards aren’t readily available or cheap.

However I do have a replacement and I don’t in anyway feel any malice towards anyone who took a punt on a dead board, Paul gave me a fair price for a dead board.

So I guess there’s a learning for me to always replace all removable components with additional ones.

But additionally it also shows I didn’t kill it through the crystal change. So I’m in that quandary place of asking others here for thoughts.

Should I stay with the stock crystal or do I modify again? Live life in the fast lane, what is the risk over clocking again, I have overclocked other old hardware many times.

Can I ask how many owners of these cards have swapped out the crystal and do you perhaps think it’s crazy of me to be considering doing it again?

Thoughts..

Also Paul if you see this welcome to the club I’m glad for your success despite my misfortune of not checking and checking again..

Good job they only sell for nearly a grand… (ouch)

Mike

I am happy to hear Mike that your original board wasn't, in fact, dead because that means there remains a working one out in the world. I swapped my crystal and have used numerous other CPU configurations and it is still working. An inboard doesn't have a real purpose unless you just want your XT-class software to run much faster. If you want to ride the lightning, only way to do it is to mod it!

 

[Mike1978]

I am happy to hear Mike that your original board wasn't, in fact, dead because that means there remains a working one out in the world. I swapped my crystal and have used numerous other CPU configurations and it is still working. An inboard doesn't have a real purpose unless you just want your XT-class software to run much faster. If you want to ride the lightning, only way to do it is to mod it!

I agree whilst it was frustrating I’m pleased for Paul, and glad I didn’t kill one of these rare beasts.. I’d better order a socket again

 

[saifbadri]

Great news Mike! Sorry that you had to go the expensive route to know that!
I also had to spend a lot of money on an inboard that didn't work the first time. the seller was not knowlegable so it was hard to explain and they didn't even offer a partial refund to help offset the repair cost even when I sent photos and explained that the board was not posting, although they did offer a full refund and wanted to recycle the board which was a terrifying idea for me because I know I won't find another one easily.
I could not return the card due to its rarity and swallowed the full price. after some attempts I got the board to work. it had a bad cpu for some crazy reason! I'm tempted to swap the 32MHz crystal but for now, I'll be using a stock crystal with a Cyrix 486DRx2-16 which is good for my use and does not require any heatsink.

 

[Mike1978]

Great news Mike! Sorry that you had to go the expensive route to know that!
I also had to spend a lot of money on an inboard that didn't work the first time. the seller was not knowlegable so it was hard to explain and they didn't even offer a partial refund to help offset the repair cost even when I sent photos and explained that the board was not posting, although they did offer a full refund and wanted to recycle the board which was a terrifying idea for me because I know I won't find another one easily.
I could not return the card due to its rarity and swallowed the full price. after some attempts I got the board to work. it had a bad cpu for some crazy reason! I'm tempted to swap the 32MHz crystal but for now, I'll be using a stock crystal with a Cyrix 486DRx2-16 which is good for my use and does not require any heatsink.

Glad you got your card working also! These old girls like to keep us guessing. I have now a 5160 also so looking forward to experimenting. I do feel the crystal mod should be safe perhaps after last time I should be cautious but then there are others doing similar changes and they have been done for a while. I feel some passive heat dissipation has no harm. You can also power a fan easily enough from a floppy drive power extender. I feel I’ll do so for both my inboard and vga card. I have an Intel above board coming also, a little extra ram can’t go amiss

 

[saifbadri]

I wanted to hunt for an above board but my 5155 portable pc has a full isa slot now with the inboard and the rest of cards. I have to find time to build my 4MB expansion, I got all the parts now but haven't gotten the time to build it yet.

 

[Mike1978]

I wanted to hunt for an above board but my 5155 portable pc has a full isa slot now with the inboard and the rest of cards. I have to find time to build my 4MB expansion, I got all the parts now but haven't gotten the time to build it yet.

I previously modded my 5155 to have 1mb on the system board and fitted a pc sprint in it. I had initially planned the inboard for it but after changing out a lot of components it felt the less obvious choice for that machine given the screen resolution unless you output to an external screen. The only other thought would be to use a vga card to drive the screen and have a composite converter to feed back to the internal screen so you can then push the resolution but the call to have more colours seemed better on a higher res screen. I did also try an Orchid Tiny Turbo in my 5155 but that card is a little picky which mode it will boot in. It almost needs time to boot and warm before the 286 works every time. It didn’t work reliably from a cold boot and I didn’t want to stress the other components by repeatedly shutting it off just to boot. Previously I had the inboard in a 5150 but it hit a limitation where it couldn’t get to a stable Windows 3.11 configuration. The 5155 should as it’s a modified 5160 board so should handle it. You can free up slots in the 5155 by swapping out the video and use a multi i/o for floppy and external connectivity such as parallel / serial. Even a 16bit card can work and be short enough to fit the machine that and a Xtide in slot 8.

 

[saifbadri]

I can do EGA on that built-in CRT, the trick is to find an ATI EGA Wonder 800 (not the 800+) the 800 (without the +) has the 3 pins for the CRT, this will allow you to run EGA games with no issues.