Asus 486 System

I bought the motherboard in the late 2000's to use as a DOS gaming setup, but since moved most of that activity to Dosbox, and for hardware based Windows retro gaming, a suped-up Pentium IV.

Instead I kept the board around to host my various INMOS Transputer host cards, which really only work properly within DOS (there are various Linux drivers, but none [including my own] are really kept up to date).

In late 2020 I decided to rehouse the board in an old AT desktop case that I had stored for quite some time.

• AT desktop case
• 400W Corsair ATX power supply
• ATX to AT power cable adapter
• Repainted black from faded beige :)

• Asus PVI-486-SP3
  • 3x PCI
  • 1x ISA/VESA Local Bus
  • 3x ISA
  • 2x 72pin SIMM
  • 2x IDE, 1x FDD, 2x Serial, 1x Parallel, 1x AT keyboard, 1x PS/2 mouse (header only)
• AMD 5×86 133MHz
• 64MB 50ns SIMM
• 512KB secondary cache

The keyboard controller chip (AMIKEY-2) was dead the last time I tried, so I had to desolder it and source a replacement.

• Onboard PCI IDE controller
• Front panel mounted CF reader
• 3.5“ 1.44MB floppy drive

• Voodoo 3 3000 PCI (16MB SGRAM)

• Intel EtherExpress Pro 100
  • DOS Packet drivers e100b11b.zip e100b11c.zip

• Transtech TMB04 transputer TRAM carrier
  • 1x INMOS T805 Transputer with FPU
  • 16x 30pin SIMM slots (maximum capacity 16MB)
  • 4x TRAM slots
  • 37-way external D connector
  • TMB04 Specifications
  • Combined Transtech motherboards user manual

• Transtech TMB08 transputer TRAM carrier
  • 1x INMOS T225 Transputer
  • 1x INMOS C004 programmable crossbar switch
  • 10x TRAM slots
  • 37-way external D connector
  • TMB08 Specifications
  • TMB08 User Manual
  • Combined Transtech motherboards user manual

With those two TRAM carriers installed, that a maximum possible 15 Transputer processors (though I don't, as of November 2020, have enough Transputer TRAM modules to fit in all slots). With the other two ISA slots free, if I source another two TMB08 or INMOS B008 carriers, that's possibly another 20 Transputers, for a total of 35.

The case has an old-fashioned LCD 'speed' display. It reacts to the turbo button being pushed and displays one speed (or set of letters) in turbo mode, and another set in non-turbo mode.

The LCD display board is labelled as a SK-188, fortunately this is a relatively common board and a connection guide is available: