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Need help with a “PC” I bought on eBay - Pentium 3 Socket 370

Mr Fahrenheit

Mr Fahrenheit

Experienced Member
Joined
Dec 28, 2020
Messages
116
Location
North America
Always wanting to subject myself to more and more vintage computing torture, I found a “PC” on eBay that was very cheap. Like $40 cheap.

It arrived today and here are the specs:

Intel 815 chipset , socket 370 board, with Pentium 3, 866mhz CPU, ATX power, PC133 memory. Board is silkscreened “RadiSys”. I bought this computer from a medical equipment liquidator.

The case has a Windows NT Workstation 4.0 COA sticker on it, so I assumed it would be useable in some way.

It doesn’t appear to be a regular PC though. Turning it on there is a screen that immediately pops up, and no BIOS. No apparent way to get into any BIOS. There’s no typical “Award” or “AMI” bios POST screen at all. Just this RadiSys screen that halts at about 40%

IMG_7100.jpeg

How do I make this work? Or is it so locked down that it’s pointless to try?

The case is marked “Systium Model 350”

IMG_7099.jpeg
 
Did you try popping out that battery? Is there a reset cmos jumper anywhere on the board?
 
Plug in a PS/2 keyboard and start spamming key combinations. ALT, F1, ESC, F10 etc.
It's probably prompting for entering setup but the splash screen masks it as to look more professional.
 
I was able to find a manual for this motherboard:


On it there is reference to a jumper I missed:

IMG_7101.png

However, no matter the position the jumper is placed in, nothing changes. I still only see the RadiSys screen and “starting” progress that sticks at 40%.

There is mention for the BIOS that there is a super cap that keeps BIOS settings for hours after battery is depleted or removed. I’m thinking of leaving it out overnight to see if there is any change.

Mashing different keys on boot still has no effect.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Radisys makes a lot of gear for dedicated applications; things such as MRI scanners, ttc. It appears that you have a board with a BIOS configured for a turnkey application. I don't know if this will help any, but it's worth a look:

Click to expand...

Thanks for that link to archive. There are BIOS files there which would help me reset the BIOS to factory defaults, but sadly they weren’t archived.

Specifically, PH815_2.03.07.zip when put on a floppy disk, and the jumper I mentioned above is placed into “recover”, upon boot it would read the BIOS file and reset it.

I can’t find this file anywhere online. Until I can reload BIOS defaults it is stuck as a locked down system I think.
 
Thank you @Chuck(G) for all of your help!

I managed to get it booting into a normal PC environment. BIOS has been reset.

I left the battery out for a few hours and returned to it. Using the pages you pointed me to I found that I could bypass that “Starting” screen by holding down space on power up. And then mashing F2 got me into the BIOS. I then properly reset it and all is good now!
 
Chuck(G) said:
Great--you now have a useful $40 PC! :)
Click to expand...

Thanks! Yeah, it was decently priced enough for me to gamble on it.

Going to have some fun playing the old favorites. I’ve already ordered an IDE 2 SD card adapter, and I’m hoping to get my 1.3GB 3.5” ATAPI Fujitsu magneto optical working under the floppy drive. That would give me some good vintage storage options.
 
On a P3, I would think that the IDE2SD would be a bit sluggish. Of course, that may not matter for your applications. One of my systems here is a P3 running off a PATA-SATA adapter and a SATA SSD.
 
I think it was a video I saw on Phil’s Computer Lab where he tested a bunch of things like real pata SSD, pata to sata adapter with an SSD, CF, IDE2SD, etc, and I think he said that pata to sata adapter, specifically the chipset used on the startech version, gave the best performance.
 
Thanks for the recommendations.

I also purchased a Syba SATA <-> IDE adapter, which purports to work in both directions (IDE drive converted to SATA bus, and SATA drive converted to IDE bus). We’ll see how well they all work.

At about $10 US each, free delivery, it’s worth having one of each.

Of course, I also have the 3.5” MO drive and disks, which, while not speed demons, are usable enough for large archives and file transfers. Albeit in an officially “vintage” way.
 
jafir said:
I think it was a video I saw on Phil’s Computer Lab where he tested a bunch of things like real pata SSD, pata to sata adapter with an SSD, CF, IDE2SD, etc, and I think he said that pata to sata adapter, specifically the chipset used on the startech version, gave the best performance.
Click to expand...
Startech is my goto for things like this for decades and they haven't disappointed as they are usually the best quality for whatever the device is, and their support is pretty stellar. Even hooking up their usb-dp cable in their lab to test and confirm working an unsupported configuration for me.
 
Mr Fahrenheit said:
Always wanting to subject myself to more and more vintage computing torture, I found a “PC” on eBay that was very cheap. Like $40 cheap.

It arrived today and here are the specs:

Intel 815 chipset , socket 370 board, with Pentium 3, 866mhz CPU, ATX power, PC133 memory. Board is silkscreened “RadiSys”. I bought this computer from a medical equipment liquidator.

The case has a Windows NT Workstation 4.0 COA sticker on it, so I assumed it would be useable in some way.

It doesn’t appear to be a regular PC though. Turning it on there is a screen that immediately pops up, and no BIOS. No apparent way to get into any BIOS. There’s no typical “Award” or “AMI” bios POST screen at all. Just this RadiSys screen that halts at about 40%

View attachment 1257397

How do I make this work? Or is it so locked down that it’s pointless to try?

The case is marked “Systium Model 350”

View attachment 1257398
Click to expand...

I collect this motherboard and learned a lot from it. There are many different vendor customizations floating around and it's not possibe to flash the firmware in-system from the image of a different vendor, which is a huge pain in the butt. Can you tell me more info about the PC that contains it so I can see if I can source it?

SC815E is often falling apart at this age. This board is a FlexATX and the component layouts are dense and the thermals are poorly managed. I've seen they've re-designed the power circuits in different revisions (the one you got is a newer revision). There are tons of aging problems which I'm trying to figure out to see if I can find all the weak spots and develop a recipie to systematically rebuild this motherboard as another factory-original used board is likely to break soon at some point.

This board is quite hard to get, so please don't trash it in the future if you get tired of it. I'm happy to take it off your hands for a reasonable price so I can get a research sample. I just signed up for an account after seeing this post. Since I'm a new user, I cannot DM you until after my 10th post. So please bear with me.
 
humgar said:
I collect this motherboard and learned a lot from it. There are many different vendor customizations floating around and it's not possibe to flash the firmware in-system from the image of a different vendor, which is a huge pain in the butt. Can you tell me more info about the PC that contains it so I can see if I can source it?

SC815E is often falling apart at this age. This board is a FlexATX and the component layouts are dense and the thermals are poorly managed. I've seen they've re-designed the power circuits in different revisions (the one you got is a newer revision). There are tons of aging problems which I'm trying to figure out to see if I can find all the weak spots and develop a recipie to systematically rebuild this motherboard as another factory-original used board is likely to break soon at some point.

This board is quite hard to get, so please don't trash it in the future if you get tired of it. I'm happy to take it off your hands for a reasonable price so I can get a research sample. I just signed up for an account after seeing this post. Since I'm a new user, I cannot DM you until after my 10th post. So please bear with me.
Click to expand...

What do you need to know about it besides the photo of the motherboard? Do you want a picture of the case itself?
 
Mr Fahrenheit said:
What do you need to know about it besides the photo of the motherboard? Do you want a picture of the case itself?
Click to expand...
If the case has a label, a picture of that will be great. I'm mainly looking for brand, product name/number/model of the PC if it's not a custom build. Thanks.
 
IMG_9146.jpeg

It’s a terrible picture but I wanted to get something to you before I hit the road.

There isn’t any real discernible branding or model information on it anywhere.
 
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