Uncreative Labs

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

http://cgi.ebay.com/486-EISA-MOTHERBOARD-256MEG-8-EISA-2-ARE-VLB-30-DAY-WAR_W0QQitemZ220093504222QQihZ012QQcategoryZ1244QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Hurry and up and buy this before it's gone! At only $500 it won't last long. Some other sellers want as much $1000 for a board that isn't even half as good! Buy now, and he'll even throw in a Genoa VGA card. Need he say more?

Geeeez. You know, the AMI boards are good and everything, but these guys on ebay are just so full of it. I thought the $300 EISA boards were retarded, but this just pushes it to a whole new level of retardedness. I'd sure like to see this $1000 board.

I guess the 256MB RAM on a 486 is somewhat unique...it's just too bad the seller fails to mention that because the board only has 256kb of SRAM that it can only cache 64MB of it.

I should open a vintage PC shop on eBay and retire to the Bahamas.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Yeah, the line:

Quote:

BOARD HAS IDE FLOPPY 2 SERIAL AND PARALLEL BUILT ON BOARD --- THE LAST ITEM MAKES THIS SEEM LIKE A 10 SLOT BOARD

is "really impressive" (not). Wonder if the guy even knows what he's talking about (although he does appear to sell lots of stuff....). Anything like this, however, and even a 100% positive feedback rating wouldn't help.

Joined: 28 Feb 2006 Posts: 127 Location: LI, NY

ha. that's amazing. I feel like someone has be buying them for people to continually list prices at this level. *gasp*

edit:
After going through some of his feed back, I see people actually do pay prices like that... jeeze. (Ex: mfm hdd going for $100!?!)

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

IT has AT PS and a half, needs a special power supply?

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I believe the 3rd connector is optional. I think it was some kind of standard for server motherboards. I've seen a few power supplies that have the extra connector. The cards that plug into the EISA slots tend to be full sized and have a lot of complicated microprocessors that draw a lot of power. The extra power connector is probably just for heavy loads. You know how AMI is about the hardware...they over-engineer the crap out of everything.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Geez, I just remembered, we've got one of those @ work. Came out of an old server to control a pick 'n place machine (from back around 1996). Think it's still got a "high-end" SCSI controller card on it (with about 16MB of RAM on the controller) and 64MB on the MoBo. Maybe I should "borrow" it for e-bay... Wink

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 22 Location: near myself

I never owned a 486 EISA motherboard and looking at that price i believe i can survive without. I don't know, probably if i would have sense of business i should sell my oldest stuff but... Hey i like my old, crappy, unuseful (and dirty) oldware. Wink

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I really love the old EISA 486 boards with VESA slots. I'm always in the market for another, but I think $500 is really out of the question. TRA, if it's the same AMI board, Let me know if you list it.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

You probably don't need VESA when you have EISA since they both kind of top out around the same speed. VLB video cards are easier to come by and have more RAM.

I like my EISA 486, the only thing I would like to add to it would be a caching IDE controller and a Targa 2000 EISA capture card.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Yes, but what we need and what we want are two totally separate things. Very Happy

In theory the bandwidth of EISA and VLB are about the same speed. In practice, VLB is much faster. Not to mention, there aren't really any decent EISA graphics boards out there. It's not that they are hard to find, they simply do not exist. I have an S3 928 EISA board...that's really as good as it got unless you go TIGA. What really makes EISA attractive though is that it's really stable, can bus master properly, and doesn't fudge up the memory below 16M.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

The problem was VLB was sold to the masses who wanted a fast video card for graphics and gaming and for a speedy IDE drive (or rarer SCSI). EISA was mostly just for servers or high end workstations.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Yeah, I had a Compaq Prosignia Server (normally a 486/DX66) with a K5-133 upgrade CPU that was all EISA. It had 96MB of RAM and ran NTWS4 amazingly smooth. It was the first machine that I actually installed NT on successfully (without various boot errors). Still have another around here, but someone's shoehorned a butchered version of Win98 on it. Needs a reformat and a little TLC...

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Mine is a 486DX50, 32MB RAM all EISA. Runs faster then I figured it would.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

i have a lifetime supply of 486 pentium 1 mb
some , like the intel ZAPPA had a 3rd AT style connector to the right of the pci slots
TEE FRED commented that the pci slots did not work
needed that at and a half power supply so the pci slots woul;d be powered.
the boatrds only supported 120/133 pentium cpu's.

Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 138 Location: Lynnwood,WA

I never use E-bay anymore for that reason. For starters, there's no real good stuff on there anymore, except in very rare cases, and the good stuff that often does come up, is usually UBER expensive...

- WOW!!! LOOK!!! VINTAGE 486 RETRO MACHINE - Only $2000!!! - Buy this now, these are becoming very very very rare,, it even has the uber rare 486 DX-33 CPU, and 8MB of very rare 72 pin Memory! Act now and I'll throw in a copy of ZZT I downloaded off of 386page.com!! I don't even know what the brand is, all I know is it's collectable.

- Vintage IBM XT System - $50.00 - Just the system unit only, I don't even know if it even works, all I know is I turn it on and it sounds like a leaf blower with bad bearings, so I guess that means it works, who knows what's on the hard drive. Shipping is $99.00, oh, and I 'll throw in a CD-ROM full of freeware utilities for DOS, I'm sure it'll work with that funny looking CD-ROM onn the front.

Instead, I've gone back to my old haunts, the Thrift Shops, so far I've kicked up the following in the past year....

- IMTEC EGA Monitor, 14" complete with swivel base
- IBM Model "F" XT/PC keyboard
- Seagate ST-277N SCSI Hard Disk in enclosure
- Tandy 1000 EX Computer, complete and fully working, with a Modem and 640K Memory expansion
- Microsoft Bus Mouse from around 1985, like new, in original box, complete with manuals and software
- tons of VGA cards, network cards, memory DIMMS/SIMMS
- a Network hub complete with BNC and AUI connections to go with the Ethernet connections on the front.

Overall, total out of that stuff, I've maybe paid only half as much as I'd spend on E-bay.