Hey all, Someone gave me an Intel 80486 embedded board with 16 mb of ram. I have lots of plans for this thing, but I need to first know if it’s working or not. The guy who gave it to me said it was working, but I have no idea how to test it.
It has a vga port, but it’s not a D-SUB connector. It has an ethernet port, but it’s not a standard ethernet port. They’re all block connectors. Also has an IDE port, but again, not standard connector. It does, however, have serial ports with standard connectors and a floppy port with standard connector. I want to somehow test if this board is working. I don’t want to go making any special connectors to hook up the VGA just yet. I want to first make sure if its working.
In summary, I have an accessible serial port and a floppy port and a working floppy disk drive. I think it also has a pc speaker (the ones on the motherboard that make the “beep” noise). I was thinking, if somehow I could get a bootable floppy or something to boot and just make a beep noise, I would know if it was working, but I have no idea where I could get such a floppy. Does anyonee have any ideas on how to test if this embedded board is working? It also has non-standard keyboard and mouse ports.
Even if you could make a floppy ( easy enough create bootable dos disk and there are plenty of beep application on the web…) it’s not a guaranty that it’s working. You may not hear a beep, but it could be stop waiting for the “Press F1 to continue” message. It could be complaining their is no floppy, the floppy cable could be bad, the speaker could be disable, etc . At least get a video connector going. Even if it’s only with 2 wires ( you can get an image with only 2 wires on a VGA connector, use the ground and the GREEN).
I have only a few more questions, if anyone can answer them, I would be greatful.
Do I need insulation when connecting my monitor’s cable to the connector on my board (using normal wires)? I plan to stick two wires into the female vga connector of my monitor, then connect the wires to the pins sticking out on my board’s vga connector.
Will green and ground produce a working picture?
Is it safe?
Is this the right pinout?
Just relized that these types of connectors are called IDC connectors and usually, the pinouts go like this (please correct me if I’m wrong as I might make a mistake when wiring).
[code]This is what is shown on my board:
±----------------+
| o o o o o o o o | ← 1
| o o o o o o o o |
±----------------+
I believe this would be the pinout: (Is it correct?)
±--------------------+
| 15 13 11 9 7 5 3 1 |
| 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 |
±--------------------+[/code]
