HAH W0 is using an OLD system! The 2/386 we used to have had that!
Alot of old systems had just the keyboard connector on the board itself, and everything else on a I/O card, much like CDROMs used to plug into soundcards.
When IBM 1st made ISA, it was short and 8Bit, shortly afterwards, IBM made 16Bit ISA (Backwards compatible!). IBM released both specs without requiring licensing. That made ISA sooo popular that we still have it on some modern boards.
Those are VESA by the sound of it. VESA was a stopgap measure before PCI, ISA ran on the buses 16Bitwide databus, VESA ran off of the processors 32Bitwide bus, giving it alot more speed. VESA was usually used by video cards.
heh...I had the same problem. Hold on while I got some links that helped me a bit. Well for starters, I identified my chipset.
http://motherboard.8k.com/
at that site, it listed tons of motherboards for pentiums and 486's. The best way to navigate is by clicking one of the categories at the top for ISA, 1&2 VLB, 3 VLB, or 486 PCI. For you slash, I guess you'd click the 486 PCI section as you said you do have PCI.
What I did next was copy and paste all the motherboards that were very similar to mine (same amount of ram slots, chipset used, isa/pci/vesa slots, etc.) Your lucky as the 486 PCI section is much smaller then the section I was looking through. After you have narrowed it down to a select few, I tried to find their websites. If they don't have a site listed I just googled for the name of the motherboard and found it's stats listed somewhere.
Well the chipset is really going to be the biggest factor in narrowing the board down, so what is it? If you don't know look at the larger chips on the board and tell us what brand they say. There will probably be at least two chips with this same brand labeled on it.
Comments
Alot of old systems had just the keyboard connector on the board itself, and everything else on a I/O card, much like CDROMs used to plug into soundcards.
When IBM 1st made ISA, it was short and 8Bit, shortly afterwards, IBM made 16Bit ISA (Backwards compatible!). IBM released both specs without requiring licensing. That made ISA sooo popular that we still have it on some modern boards.
Those are VESA by the sound of it. VESA was a stopgap measure before PCI, ISA ran on the buses 16Bitwide databus, VESA ran off of the processors 32Bitwide bus, giving it alot more speed. VESA was usually used by video cards.
How about 4 8MB sticks? 32MB?
-Q
alright, cancel that! I kept looking and the next site on my google list showed me this
http://www.elhvb.com/mboards/chicony/ch ... -471A.html
If this isn't my motherboard then I don't know what is... this is so close that I haven't found anything incorrect with it.
I am so fricken happy now that I finally found the mobo. (It's 1:20 am so I'm too tired to be jumping around, but I do feel rather excited.)
well anyways, it seems that this thing can handle up to 128 MB of DRAM (uh...that is 72 Pin SIMM right?) in the following combinations
128MB: 8M x 36 8M x 36 8M x 36 8M x 36 (four 32MB sticks I suppose)
or
128MB: 16M x 36 16M x 36 (two 64MB sticks).
Alright, now I know the memory can go much higher then the 16MB that is in it now.
http://motherboard.8k.com/
at that site, it listed tons of motherboards for pentiums and 486's. The best way to navigate is by clicking one of the categories at the top for ISA, 1&2 VLB, 3 VLB, or 486 PCI. For you slash, I guess you'd click the 486 PCI section as you said you do have PCI.
What I did next was copy and paste all the motherboards that were very similar to mine (same amount of ram slots, chipset used, isa/pci/vesa slots, etc.) Your lucky as the 486 PCI section is much smaller then the section I was looking through. After you have narrowed it down to a select few, I tried to find their websites. If they don't have a site listed I just googled for the name of the motherboard and found it's stats listed somewhere.
Well the chipset is really going to be the biggest factor in narrowing the board down, so what is it? If you don't know look at the larger chips on the board and tell us what brand they say. There will probably be at least two chips with this same brand labeled on it.