imoldnow
New Member
I have recently acquired a Socket 3 motherboard which I cannot find a lot of information about. The only identification on the motherboard itself is a sticker that says R407W2. I did find a page on The Retro Web for a similar R407, the picture is the correct board though terrible quality, the jumper documents are for a slightly different revision. There are tables of jumper settings in the silkscreen of the board which is nice. It does support DX4 and has the proper multiplier, I have not verified that 3.3V is present on the board or socket. I do hope to run a DX4-120, I am concerned about heat, I may make a different post on cooling. I never personally built of configured a board of this vintage, I was a teenager in the mid 90's but did not get into building and component level stuff until about 97-98 when I built a K6-2 based system.
So, for those that may know or have more experience, I have some questions.
This board has both 30 pin and 72 pin simm sockets, so 4 banks, according to the limited information I have it can support 128 MB of parity RAM using either 30 or 72 pin memory or a combination of the two. Is there any benefit to using one type of simm over the other? When I look at RAM, I see faster speeds on the 30 pinn memory.
There was a Varta battery on the board when I got it. Amazingly while the battery was a little crusty it had not leaked all over the board and damaged anything. I have removed it from the board. My first thought was to replace it with a 3V coin cell or AAA battery pack, but I believe that battery was rechargeable. There is also an external battery header, would that be for a non-rechargeable battery? And if so, should I even worry about replacing the Varta?
There is nothing on board in terms of I/O other than the keyboard connector. It has an Award Bios chip dated 1995 and says ISA 486. Would a BIOS of this vintage support an ISA IDE controller or am I looking at needing an XT-IDE adapter.
I have not powered it on, I don't have a VGA adapter for it yet. I do have a couple ISA I/O cards with IDE and floppy on them. I want to make sure there are no shorts on any of the voltage lines.
So, for those that may know or have more experience, I have some questions.
This board has both 30 pin and 72 pin simm sockets, so 4 banks, according to the limited information I have it can support 128 MB of parity RAM using either 30 or 72 pin memory or a combination of the two. Is there any benefit to using one type of simm over the other? When I look at RAM, I see faster speeds on the 30 pinn memory.
There was a Varta battery on the board when I got it. Amazingly while the battery was a little crusty it had not leaked all over the board and damaged anything. I have removed it from the board. My first thought was to replace it with a 3V coin cell or AAA battery pack, but I believe that battery was rechargeable. There is also an external battery header, would that be for a non-rechargeable battery? And if so, should I even worry about replacing the Varta?
There is nothing on board in terms of I/O other than the keyboard connector. It has an Award Bios chip dated 1995 and says ISA 486. Would a BIOS of this vintage support an ISA IDE controller or am I looking at needing an XT-IDE adapter.
I have not powered it on, I don't have a VGA adapter for it yet. I do have a couple ISA I/O cards with IDE and floppy on them. I want to make sure there are no shorts on any of the voltage lines.