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8-bit Multi-IO card - can anyone ID it?

D

Divad

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Oct 20, 2014
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Scotland
I got this card in an Turbo XT clone (Microway badge) and it seems to be working fine despite some slight battery corrosion. Considering the date stickers are from November 1988 I'm surprised it wasn't in worse shape, but I digress.

It's an 8-bit multi IO card with serial x2, parallel, game, floppy, and RTC built in. Has "VIP" and "MIO-II REV:C" printed on the card and a small sticker with "Multi/O-2". 8x DIP switches and 3x jumpers.

Thought it was maybe an AST IO+ or Mini-IO, but there doesn't seem to be an AST card with all of the features this card has.

Googling the FCC ID led me to an old post on here (http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?42942-Help-IDing-8-bit-Multi-IO-card) but sadly the card in that post (http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/io-cards/A-B/AUVA-COMPUTER-INC-Multi-I-O-MULTIFUNCTION-I-O-CARD.html) was similar but quite different from this one.

I've gone through the "unidentified" cards on https://th99.bl4ckb0x.de/ but although some look close, none match exactly! Still looking on there and on stason.org, but thought I'd ask on here too on the off chance that someone has come across this particular card before.

Any help/advice much appreciated. Here's a couple of pictures:





Thanks

David
 
It looks like a generic multi-I/O board. What do you expect
to find out about is? There were many, many, of these from
different manufactures.
Dwight
 
Fortunately, it's missing the RTC battery--one thing less to leak. The FDC looks to be the normal PC/PC XT double-density model. There have been a number of drivers for the RTC posted on this site.

The empty sockets are for an 8250 UART and the MC1488 and MC1489 EIA interface chips. All commodity items. CN2 looks to be a game port header and CM3 the header for the second serial port.

DIP switches probably control the I/O port and IRQ for the serial ports--and probably the parallel port address.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Fortunately, it's missing the RTC battery--one thing less to leak. The FDC looks to be the normal PC/PC XT double-density model. There have been a number of drivers for the RTC posted on this site.

The empty sockets are for an 8250 UART and the MC1488 and MC1489 EIA interface chips. All commodity items. CN2 looks to be a game port header and CM3 the header for the second serial port.

DIP switches probably control the I/O port and IRQ for the serial ports--and probably the parallel port address.
Click to expand...

It actually looks like there's some corrosion damage around BAT1, which has either sheared(fallen) off or been removed earlier.
 
The battery was still fitted when I got the system, I removed it when I saw it was leaking. The board still seems to work, so the corrosion is hopefully just cosmetic.

I was hoping it might be a distinctive enough card that the DIP/jumper settings would be available, but it was always a long shot. Would setting any of the switches "incorrectly" be likely to cause any damage?

I wanted to use this with a 286 board, so I suppose I have two other questions (excuse my ignorance here) - would it support HD floppies (from what ChuckG says, it looks doubtful), and would the RTC on the 286 motherboard conflict with the one on this card?

Thanks

David
 
The RTC chipused on the 286 (5170 compatible) system is very different from the one on the multi-I/O board. The fact that the board has only a single 8 MHz crystal for the FDC says it doesn't handle high-density floppies. The FDC chip itself, while partially obscured by labels is clearly a Zilog clone of the NEC uPD765.

Your best bet is to check through the multi-I/O cards on TH99 employing an 8-position DIP switch. These Taiwanese designs were shared among manufacturers back in the day. You won't hurt anything by playing with the switches--at worst, you'll temporarily interfere with something's operation.
 
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