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[Ioncannon]

ok I said a long time ago, how I fried my p1s mobo and put a pentium pro in there. Before The p1 mobo was there... it was A 386!!! and guess what? I FOUND IT AHAHAHAH!!!! So once I have time, I will look deep in ym basement for its IDE controller, and I will put it all together. Hopefully the reason my dad upgraded was not because it was fried. Whats even better is that the videocard was also with it. Anyway a few questions sicne I don't know that much with old mobos

I asked my dad were the ide sltos were and he said they used ide controllers, what do they look like? Also is the floppy port also on this?

No com port either, where do they comfrom? Com Controllers?

What ram did pcs uses back then? I ahve 2 sticks from long ago so gotta check

Anyone want to donate a soundblaster 1.0 (preffered) or 2.0 ISA card?

Best of all, its by AMI (American Megatrends) my fav bios/mobo company (mostly cause all my old pcs and some newer ones had there stuff in it. I am so happy today )

[Tulac]

Well I can tell you about the RAM, it was EDO RAM...

[Ioncannon]

ok googled ide control 386 and saw what it looked like. i remebered once finding it in a mobo case in my basement but never knowing what it was. A quick recheck and I found it. Yea the floppy port is on there and 1 ide, but no com port. Where do the com ports go? I am gonna make a website of the journey of my rebuilding the 386.

[Ioncannon]

oook, done the Prologue :

Prologue
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In my early years, I would say 1993 to 1997, I had a 386; my first computer. It sat in the coloured under the stairs, my fathers office. Me and my father would play great games like Wolfenstien 3d, and Doom on it. Running MS-DOS and Windows 3.1, with a AMI motherboard, and a 386 CPU, it served all my needs. I have many fond memories with it and most of my childhood was spent on it.

One day, (I do not remember the year since I was very young) My father upgraded the pc with a new motherboard and... a Pentium 1. The motherboard wasn't by AMI but the BIOS was. Also he upgrade the RAM from 8mb to 16mb. In 1996 or so my father bought a IBM Aptiva running Windows 95 and a whopping 32 mb of RAM, and gave the Pentium 1, to me. I was overjoyed, my very own computer. I played on it every day. This of course created my addiction to computers; but that is another story.

In 1999 I would guess, my father bought again, a new computer. He this time built it (the 386 was also home-built by the way). A Pentium III with 64mb of RAM. Again his old computer came to me. The Pentium I sat in the basement for four to five years, until that stupid day. Me and my friend found an old pc. At the time I was new with computer internals and thought maybe the CPU was removed. So I brought my Pentium I's CPU. Later we found out it wasn't, so I returned it home. Now as stated before, I was new with internals and didn't know one pin is removed in the corner of the socket. Most of the pins were crushed on the CPU after I tried jamming it inside . So the Pentium I, now sat in the basement CPUless.

Then came the second day of my stupidity. I should have learned from my mistakes, that hardware is fragile, but noo, I put in a AMD K-6 CPU into a Socket 7 motherboard in a hopeless attempt to revive my favorite PC. I heard crackling, saw a black screen, and smelled burnt plastic. The CPU became so hot it burnt my fingers. Then it hit me...... I killed the motherboard.

I went on message boards in a hopeless attempt to turn away from the truth, the motherboard was dead, and there was no way of fixing it. Then I had a plan, I would buy a new motherboard similar to the old one. I went to my favorite tech message board, modthebox, and posted for a motherboard with stats and techs similar to my old one. I put it in, and was disappointed. The motherboard felt too new. The BIOS screen was the same one that most PCs have today, the AWARD BIOS screen with the energy saver logo. The pc began to sit in its new home... under my desk. I has been there ever since.

Then today (Thursday June 23, 2005), I found something... While looking for my fathers old Visual Basic 6 cd, a medium sized circuit board (bigger then a expansion card but smaller then an ATX motherboard). At first I didn't know what it was. All I knew was it had 6 ISA slots, the older keyboard interface slot (don't know the name) four ram slots, a power slot, and a chip... that read AMI 386. Then it hit me, it was my old pcs original motherboard. Now I plan to rebuild my original pc's parts to its former state. I will write everything down and post it on this site. I cannot wait to use my old pc, once again.

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suggestions/comments welcome. Also please tell me if you find any grammer/spelling errors.

[Apocalypse Dude]

I have a stripped down 486 somewere. I can check if there are any usefull parts left in it. Only problem is that you live in canada and I live in the Netherlands..

[The Fifth Horseman]

Well, in these old times, you needed separate IDE and I/O cards. Basically, they are standard ISA or EISA extension cards, cept that the first has got the IDE ports for HDD and floppy and the other has got a COM and LPT ports.

[Ioncannon]

well the motherboard has an AMD 386SX-33 in it, 4 ram slots (unkown type) and 6 ISA slots. I found the pc's old IDE controller, an ISA card with 1 ide slot and 1 floppy slot. So com ports have something simmiler? An ISA card with 4 com slots in it? Well I plan to head to value villige (a thrift store with lots of junk) and umm...borrow some ram from the old pc's LOL. One last question... will different types of ram be compatable with my mobo? I am on ebay and se alot of compaq ram, will it work in this mobo? I was told that back then many pieces of hardware were not compatable with each other...

[The Fifth Horseman]

So com ports have something simmiler?

Basically, yes.

An ISA card with 4 com slots in it?

No. One COM (the well-known COM type used for computer mice) and one LPT (for printers).

will different types of ram be compatable with my mobo? I am on ebay and se alot of compaq ram, will it work in this mobo? I was told that back then many pieces of hardware were not compatable with each other...

Well, the first thing is to determine which actual type of RAM slot do you have on the motherboard.

[Ioncannon]

I see, and look what I found on the net:
http://www.thegreenhouse.us/th99/m/E-H/33552.htm

I reads dram config. So thing uses dram? Or EDO?

[The Fifth Horseman]

:blink: Seems pretty damn similar to one we have in the storage here at the office.

However it looks like the one you posted has EISA expansion slots.
EISA was a sort of evolutionary step between ISA and PCI. Better then ISA, worse then PCI.

As for RAM... humm... maybe try 32-pin SIMM chips? I remember the one here uses that very sort.