• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

"New" 486 8 ISA/1 PCI motherboard

vwestlife

vwestlife

Veteran Member
Joined
May 2, 2008
Messages
5,409
Location
central NJ
Here's an unusual 486 motherboard on eBay, claimed to be a "Brand NEW current production 486 premium motherboard manufactured in 2008", with an oddball arrangement of 8 ISA and 1 PCI slots...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160372459899

!BdQtGYQ!2k~$(KGrHqQOKiQEq47YWg4UBK4IhF7O8Q~~_12.JPG


Obviously it is designed for industrial control/monitoring applications which still rely on a large number of ISA cards. It appears to have provisions for a ZIF CPU socket and onboard L2 cache, neither of which is implemented.

The spec sheet claims support for a wide variety of 3.3 volt CPUs, but isn't Socket 1 natively 5 volts-only? Also, it uses an infamous Dallas-type clock chip.

Overall, noting too useful for a home PC user/hobbyist, but an interesting design nonetheless.
 
Overall, noting too useful for a home PC user/hobbyist, but an interesting design nonetheless.
Click to expand...
Well, it seems to me that the same thing that makes it suitable for industrial use would make it good for "home use". Those slots are handy for simple I/O. How about home automation? ... An amateur weather station? ... Affordable theatre lighting control? Home brewery control? :)
 
Later upgrade chips for Socket 1 used an external regulator to drop the voltage to 3.3V.

But I also note that there's empty space where the cache RAM would be, so it's not going to be a high-performance unit.
 
Brand new production of an old board design I asume. The one PCI slot is probably just for video.
 
Chromedome45 said:
The price is up in the stratosphere! 299.00 for a 486 board! :confused:
Click to expand...
Well, the way they see it, if your factory has $100,000 worth of industrial equipment out of order due to a dead motherboard, then $299 is a bargain to get it up and running again.
 
Well, the way they see it, if your factory has $100,000 worth of industrial equipment out of order due to a dead motherboard, then $299 is a bargain to get it up and running again.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's about right. I used to work in an industrial setting; our boss had paid some pretty high prices to get pretty mundane hardware. Paying a high price for a new-in-box or reconditioned piece of retro hardware can save you money in the long run since it will probably be more reliable than some used board you pulled out of an old machine. For some applications, you'll see more than $1000 of loss per hour of downtime.
 
The design of this motherboard was will thought out tho, the CPU was placed away from the ISA slots, this will allow you to utilize all the ISA slots for full length cards. If it weren't for the price, I would buy one...
 
Frankie said:
The design of this motherboard was will thought out tho, the CPU was placed away from the ISA slots, this will allow you to utilize all the ISA slots for full length cards. If it weren't for the price, I would buy one...
Click to expand...
The one downside of that CPU placement is that normal desktop and smaller tower cases often have the drive bays overhanging the motherboard in that corner, sometimes low enough to block placement of a CPU cooler underneath. That isn't as much of a problem with older 486s (or some AMD 5x86 upgrades) which only need a heatsink, though, and most industrial PCs probably have full access to that area of the motherboard anyway. But I do remember having to buy a new case when I tried to install a new IBM 486SLC/2-66 motherboard (remember those!?) and its pipsqueak 1-inch-square CPU cooler fan just wouldn't fit under the drive bays in my 386-era desktop case.
 
Just since it doesn't seem to have been touched on, a CPU and some RAM (not much, but enough to run) are being included. This helps make it closer to being worth the price.

Might be worth investigating who the manufacturer is...if a small bulk order was made (say 5 members wanted 2 each or something like that) the manufacturer may consider a lower price point (especially if they know the buyers are hobbyists...it's possible they're marked up quite a bit on the basis of most buyers "NEEDING them NOW"). I don't know if 10 is a large enough quantity to motivate them to do it, but it depends on the size of the operation I guess. For the record I wouldn't be in on that, I'm just proposing it as an option for interested people to look at.
 
If they made a version with a ZIF CPU socket and on-board L2 cache I might be interested. Judging by the layout of the board it certainly looks like provisions were made for such a version to exist.
 
Yes "New" 486 8-slot/1 PCI Baby-AT motherboard

Yes "New" 486 8-slot/1 PCI Baby-AT motherboard

I helped design this motherboard back in 1998/99.

Any questions you need answered about this board you can just ask me. I will get back to you when I have time. I no longer work for the company that builds and sells this product.

This board was originally designed for an industrial application (it was used extensively in a very large number of security systems). I know for a fact that more than 60,000 of this board were manufactured over the life of this product (close to 10 years in production). This board found its way into many different products: phone voice mail systems, security systems, medical diagnostics systems, CNC equipment, factory automation controls, music studios, etc....

This board is available in several different versions: with 0K cache, with 256K cache and with 512K cache. The CPU socket can accommodate both 5v and 3.3v CPUs of all types. We successfully used CPUs from Intel, AMD, SGS, Cyrix, and Texas Instruments.

ZIF sockets were available until they were no longer manufactured by their respective manufacturers. Sadly since only PGA sockets are readily available that is the only choice now.

This board also accepts any configuration of RAM in two SIMM sockets up to 128MB. They can be either fast-Page or EDO but you cannot mix them.

CPU placement is in a bad spot if you have a really old or a small chassis, the placement of the CPU was to allow 8 full length double height cards to be used in that security system I mention in the beginning of this post. The CPU plus heatsink and fan are not in the way of any full length card you might need to use. I had to cut out some space in a few chassis to get everything to fit a few times over the years.

As far as I know the last production run on this board was in 2008 or 2009 (the only thing stopping the production of this motherboard is the scarcity of chipsets).

I tried to attach a copy of the manual of this board but the size was too large for this forum. Anyone knows how to post a 3.1MB PDF for review by those that are interested?

I still have lots of documentation on this board, so if you are interested let me know.
 
Last edited:
Larry63 said:
quite right; major error, I was writing another piece with 1989/90 in it; going back 10 years from the last production date brings us to the correct design years of 1998/1999. Thanks for keeping me on my toes. I will edit and correct my post. Thanks....
Click to expand...

No problem... I figured it was either an evolved motherboard with many revisions, which lead to the inclusion of a PCI bus, eventually... Or, a date typo. :)

Thank you for offering info/insight on this!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top