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found some 8088 stuff at goodwill. help identify.

oblivion

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I recently picked up some stuff at goodwill and it seems 8088 era. I really am just getting into that era and don't know alot so I'm not 100% sure what this stuff is

1004817b.jpg


heres the motherboard I picked up with an AMD 8088. will a regular AT PSU power these?

1004818w.jpg


I don't know what the smaller card is. maybe a ram board. says hi-tech ht202 on the back but a quick yahoo search turned up nothing.

the larger card looks to be a video card. has a composite jack and 2 cga? mda? ports

1004819n.jpg


these appear to be a 1mb and a 2mb ecc ram expansion cards but there not ISA, so i'm unfamiliar with them.
 
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Well, the top motherboard is a generic PC-XT type. You can match it up with the graphics on http://artofhacking.com/th99/.

The ISA board with the 34-position edge connector at one end is a comparatively uncommon Micro Solutions Match Point PC card, used to read and write 5.25" Apple II floppies.

The graphics card is a mystery; perhaps with some part numbers, we might identify it.

The two memory boards are unfamiliar to me.
 
I don't remember if XT and AT motherboard power connectors were the same.

The second picture's smaller card is a Copy II PC card (the Central Point marking and the floppy style connector gives it away). That is an awesome card. If it works, you got a gem. Breaks copy protection and can read Mac formatted floppies.

The larger card is most likely a dual port EGA and Monochrome though count the pins on the output connector. If both are 9 then EGA plus other type but some VGA (15 pin) plus earlier video mode cards were made. It has too much memory for a pure CGA or MDA card but I can't read the labels of the chips.

The last set of cards have 50 pin fingers which suggests S-100 but closer examination might show me to be wrong.
 
well the ports on the video card are both 9 pin. on the ports they say AMP 8235 and one has a sticket that says sr-13. the biggest chip is an NEC d7220ad 8424k5

one of the bottom cards says 2mb ecc memory ec: a07324 pn :6298286 pwb-1778

got all these plus a 16 bit scsi card for about $18. there was acually a whole stack more of similar cards but i wasnt sure if it was mostly junk so I just grabbed what i though looked the most intresting. there were mostly more of those bottom cards with the odd 50 pin connector.
 
I don't remember if XT and AT motherboard power connectors were the same.

They are. This is an XT-type board.

The second picture's smaller card is a Copy II PC card (the Central Point marking and the floppy style connector gives it away). That is an awesome card. If it works, you got a gem. Breaks copy protection and can read Mac formatted floppies

I stand corrected--it is indeed an early Option Board. The rare Microsolutions Match Point PC will stay very rare. :)

The last set of cards have 50 pin fingers which suggests S-100 but closer examination might show me to be wrong.

Wrong spacing on the connector (0.100 vs. 0.156) and way too wide. Here's an S100 board:

EconoRAM-II.jpg
 
i don't have an EGA monitor. if it is a EGA card will it work on a CGA monitor in cga modes just to see if it works?
 
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well the ports on the video card are both 9 pin. on the ports they say AMP 8235 and one has a sticket that says sr-13. the biggest chip is an NEC d7220ad 8424k5

About the only early 8-bit graphics card using a 7220 that I remember were the Artist cards (there were various models) from Control Systems, Inc. This may be one of them. ISTR that the resolution on these topped out at 1024x768--very high for the day. An EGA monitor may not be up to the task--I seem to recall that these cards required driver software in addition.

It could also be an early Number Nine Revolution card--there were some large 8-bit ISA cards that used the 7220. There was the 512, which did 480x512 with 3 8-bit palettes (24 bit color). Documentation is very thin on these old models.
 
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There are a few systems out there that use proprietary RAM cards like that.

Is the keyboard connector on the XT broken? The power connector is slightly different on there (the pins are square not flat) but I think a normal PX PS will work.

The video card looks interesting because it has dual video and RCA (in or out). Any writing on the back?
 
The XT Motherboard is better than most clone boards, this one has all the chips in sockets, sure makes replacement easy.
 
The power connector on the motherboard is a plain old round-pin Molex. It will still work with a standard XT power supply. You have to remember that manufacturing XT clone boards was a Taiwan government-sponsored activity. ERSO provided the basic design, and cheap labor assembled them. It could be that sockets were perceived as a selling point.

Without a closeup on the keyboard connector, it's hard to tell what it is. It could well be a mini-DIN. The PS?2 was not the first system to use it.
 
I'll take a better long when I get home tonight. Its definatly not a ps/2 port. I do have a fully runny xt class machine coming to me next week. I'd test the video card but I'm a little worried about testing it on my cga monitor not exactly knowing what kind of card it is.
 
You won't hurt the CGA monitor (but do not try this with a monochrome monitor--you can damage those with the wrong sync frequencies)--it just won't sync.

I think these boards want to output either EGA or VGA-type signals, however. The amount of RAM indicates a rather big (24 bit) color palette. CGA can render 16 colors and EGA 64 because their inputs are digital, not analog. But who knows?

(There were monitors capable of analog VGA reproduction that had only a DE9 input connector. The Sony CDP1302 for example, can do 800x600 VGA).
 
It could also be an early Number Nine Revolution card--there were some large 8-bit ISA cards that used the 7220. There was the 512, which did 480x512 with 3 8-bit palettes (24 bit color). Documentation is very thin on these old models.
Nope, they had separate RCA jacks for RGB instead of using D-Shell connectors for video out, and they had a different layout where the RAM was included on the main board. The connectors on this card may use somewhat the same pinout as the IBM PGC and some really early VGA cards, in wich case you should be able to connect it to a modern VGA monitor with a 9-pin D-shell to 15-pin VGA cable.

I don't know if the early CopyIIPC option board could read MAC floppies; as of I unserstand that feature was only available for the Deluxe version.
 
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well the connector looks like an AT connector for the keyboard and the plastic does indeed look broken but the connector appears to be connected to the board fine.

as for the video card. I looked it over very carefully and theres nothing except the NEC chip to give a hint of what it it. I tried it with that XT motherboard and a CGA monitor. I got nothing except when it was plugged into the upper most port. when it was connected there upon hiting the power switch the screen got noticely brighter but thats it.
 
On the video card, can you safely remove what looks like a daughter-card with lots of memory? There might be a clue on the part of the main card hidden by the daughter card. I suspect that the jumpers can be changed to make it work with a different display but I don't like randomly flipping switches.
 
On the video card, can you safely remove what looks like a daughter-card with lots of memory? There might be a clue on the part of the main card hidden by the daughter card. I suspect that the jumpers can be changed to make it work with a different display but I don't like randomly flipping switches.

yhep. tried it. nothing but what appears to be more ram under there.
 
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