Leading Edge 486 with EISA

[vwestlife]

This is a strange one. I was taking apart a Leading Edge 486SX (which has since been upgraded to a 5x86-133) and I discovered what appeared to be one EISA slot on its motherboard. I never knew such a cheap brand would include EISA, which was usually only found in high-end desktops and servers. Another oddity is that the CPU (and the laughable "487SX" socket) is on a plug-in daughterboard, and the clock crystal is mounted on its own little baby ZIF socket! Stason.org does not have information on this board, but lists a later version which replaced the one EISA slot with a VESA Local Bus slot.

 

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a strong possibility that is OPTI local bus, not EISA.

 

[vwestlife]

There's a strong possibility that is OPTI local bus, not EISA.

I've never heard of such a thing before, but the motherboard does indeed use an OPTI chipset.

A little searching turned up this -- note the "LOCAL BUS" silkscreen:

The connector is identical to EISA. I am stumped as to why OPTI would do such a thing. Did they simply not want to pay the EISA licensing fees?