Photo ID this SS7 SiS 530 / 5595 MoBo

[kopfjaeger]

Hello Gents,

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to identify this Socket 7 motherboard. Possibly an AT or Mini AT form factor. Because I do not have the power switch pinouts, I have not booted this MB, thus I do not have any BIOS Init strings for you. A photo is attached.

I have examined this board, front and back, and no brand name jumps out at me, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it may be a PC Chips or derivative. It came with an AMD K6-2/300 MHz processor in the socket.

AT Form factor, with power connectors to both AT and ATX form factor power supplies

3 PCI
2 ISA
3 DIMMs

board to rear slot connectors to:

- P/S 2 Mouse/2 x USB/ Video (?) connector
- COM 1 / COM 2 DB9 / DB25 connectors
- LPT1 Printer port connector

No on-board video that is immediately apparent,
requires PCI video card

Stickers / silkscreening with the following:

AMIBIOS American Megatrends
(Y2K OK) 24 hr Burn-in
586 (c) EQ 69847

S/N FT 99110168
China 1999

AGP8M

[box for "7" is checked]

Rev. 5.1A

SiS 530

SiS 5595

An initial search of the web pulled up no boards.

Any intelligence you can provide is greatly appreciated.

K.J.

Out

[John Prophet]

Next Question?

lol.

This is a great motherboard site

Check out "mobot" and "mobocop" under "mobo tools

JP

[elroy]

I have had some experience with PC Chips boards and this does look like one or very similar to one. Kind of strange though, you say it indicates an 8mb AGP but it has no video connector. It must use a dongle that connects to the board. Also the 8mb AGP [obviously onboard] would tend to indicate that it is a "super socket 7" board, 100mhz bus speed. Likely runs K6-2's up to 550mhz. Looks like maybe it is an early version of the 598. Maybe a version 5.0 or 7.0. Go to the following site and you should be able to identify it.
PC Chips Lottery http://www.stud.fernuni-hagen.de/q3998142/pcchips/

[John Prophet]

Be VERY careful if you try to update the bios...there is an issue with write protection on that model..and evidently its possible to wipe out the bios altogether.

The manual etc is on www.amptron.com under "support"


quote-----> "This BIOS update may disable your computer is the BIOS chip on the motherboard has been write protected. It is not recommended that you attempt to update this BIOS code."

[John Prophet]

Onboard 64-bit 3D VGA graphics accelerator.
AGP v1.0 compliant
Supports 66/100/133MHz operation.
64-bit GUI accelerator with excellent video playback.
Up to 8MB frame buffer. The video system shares a specified amount of main memory to work as video RAM.

[Peter M]

That's an M598. Non-MR. No LAN. Integrated VGA.

[kopfjaeger]

Hello John Prophet, Elroy, Peter M,

Thanks for responding. Re: the image link. Close, but I don't think that's the one. The link image shows a board with 2 PCI and 1 ISA, true? The one that's landed in my lap shows a strong familial resemblence, but has 3 PCI and 2 ISA slots.

Silkscreening has logos for FCC (very stylized), "CE" (Euro approval I guess) and a logo of a circle with a checkmark in the middle.

I found that the dongle that had 2 USBs and 1 P/S 2 connector also had an IR connector.

Because it is an AT form factor, the video connector does not come right off the board, but as you've suggested must have a dongle linking the onboard AGP to the backplane. No such dongle was included.

I won't flash the BIOS unless I absolutely have to.

We'll narrow this case down. Thanks for the help guys.

KJ

[John Prophet]

I think the pic you posted has part of the pic cut off.

The one I linked to should have 2 isa slots.

[Peter M]

http://www.stud.fernuni-hagen.de/q3998142/pcchips/

to verify what I said. Go to "I KNOW ...", and choose the M598.

Note that the boards came with one or two onboard cache chips, depending on what size the cache is.

[kopfjaeger]

Peter,

Thanks for the useful link. It led me here:
http://www.pcchips.com.tw/M598.html

While I think the case has been resolved, the sad revalation is that the board can get up to 400 MHz maximum.

Perhaps some PC Chips/Amptron fan will snap it up if I put it on eBay.

Thanks all,

KJ


OUT