Help identifying this socket 478 motherboard

[Metalloid]

Hello,

I’m trying to repair a system for a friend’s restaurant. It’s an old custom built system running windows 2k with 2.x Celeron on a micro-atx socket 478 motherboard with no apparent markings to indicate make or model. The mobo is mini-atx, the traditional yellow color that most Asus boards have. 1x AGP, 3x PCI, 2x DIMM. VT8235 southbridge and the northbridge is covered by an orange heatsink with a grid of spikes instead of rails if you know what I mean. To the right of the DIMM slots are two blue IDE ports with the ATX power connector just above them. “Rev A” near the DIMM slots is about the only marking worth noting.

Basically they claim a power surge/outage fried something. It was giving bad beep codes intermittently which I eventually decided were due to a bad connection between the board and the onboard ethernet/onboard video cluster. When i inserted the ethernet cord the screen would go haywire and upon a reset I would get beep codes again.

I had an old system that I was prepared to give them. Problem is, they have age old positouch software setup on all of their computers that they inherited when they bought the building and are too cheap to buy a new license, so they MUST use this windows install. Also they have an old epson receipt printer that no longer has drivers available for download, even from epson’s website. I took an image of their hard drive and moved it over to the new system, did a repair through the recovery console, and got the system functional after installing new new mobo drivers. Thankfully, the positouch software is still installed, but I’m not sure if it’s connecting to the server correctly, and the drivers for the epson printer are no where to be found. Even if I were able to locate the printer drivers and missing positouch config files on the backup image, it would be a nightmare trying to put everything back into place properly on the now tainted windows install.

My only option is to replace the hard drive and revert back to their old hard drive image, but I have no idea what kind of motherboard to buy. If I were to rip the heatsink off the northbridge and at least figure out what kind of chipset it is, would I be able to just buy any brand of motherboard with the same northbridge/southbridge and then just install new video drivers? Or do the BIOS supplier/version and another of other things also need to be the same, basically meaning I would need an IDENTICAL replacement motherboard?

Sorry about the book, I’ll post pics when I get someone with a camera over here

 

[Blain]

They are living on borrowed time, and have been for quite a while.
Unless you can find some type of part number on the board we can't do a whole lot to help.

There are a couple of things you can do to identify the MB or maybe bring it back to life.
* Run SIW - System Information for Windows (bottom download is free home version)
* Possibly install known working NIC and AGP cards, to bypass the onboard options (disabling the onboard in the BIOS).

 

[mechBgon]

It might be worth trying Disk2vhd from Microsoft's Sysinternals suite: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415 You can make a VHD image of the system as it stands, then try booting it in a virtual machine. If that flies, you're home free... you can install Microsoft Virtual PC (free) on another system, and run their old system in a virtual machine. Worth a shot.

 

[Iron Woode]

that sounds like it might be a DFI board or possibly ECS/PCchips.

when in doubt look at the top of the printer port. There should be a tag and it may have the motherboard model on it.

or run cpu-z on it and find out what you can.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

that sounds like it might be a DFI board or possibly ECS/PCchips.

when in doubt look at the top of the printer port. There should be a tag and it may have the motherboard model on it.

or run cpu-z on it and find out what you can.

Yeah, I thought of DFI, because of the colors he describes. The only way to know for sure -- hopefully -- is to read the identifying information with something like Everest or Aida.

 

[piasabird]

Will it boot without drive to the bios? Maybe you can tell from the BIOS Screen.

Should be plenty of extra junky vga video cards or maybe an old junky PCI Card.

Could have fried the ram or whatever.

You said on all their computers maybe you can look at one that works.

 

[Gs dewd]

It sounds like it has a Via chipset by the numbers you quoted from the southbridge.

 

[Metalloid]

My savior has arrived! PM12-TL was on top of the printer port, which turns out to be a board by.... you guessed it, DFI.

In response to plasabird:
I did consider finding a vga and nic to use on the semi-roasted motherboard, but they need to be half height because of the case, and to be honest I just don’t trust the board at this point anyway.

Thanks everyone. Hopefully the replacement board I end up buying has compatible BIOS versions and all that crap, because these people are not at all tech savvy and are far from understanding.

that sounds like it might be a DFI board or possibly ECS/PCchips.

when in doubt look at the top of the printer port. There should be a tag and it may have the motherboard model on it.

or run cpu-z on it and find out what you can.

 

[Blain]

I hope you are getting paid for all the effort you're pouring into this job.
I think cash is the only appreciation you'd be getting at this point.

 

[Iron Woode]

My savior has arrived! PM12-TL was on top of the printer port, which turns out to be a board by.... you guessed it, DFI.

In response to plasabird:
I did consider finding a vga and nic to use on the semi-roasted motherboard, but they need to be half height because of the case, and to be honest I just don’t trust the board at this point anyway.

Thanks everyone. Hopefully the replacement board I end up buying has compatible BIOS versions and all that crap, because these people are not at all tech savvy and are far from understanding.

you're welcome.

I have dealt with a lot of old boards, including DFI, for a long time.

That board only supports 533 bus or less cpus. A good used 478 board should be easy to find on craig's list.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

There is a company Cuetech who is fairly good at getting those old discontinued boards. If you can't get something good from Craigslist you can try them. I don't know if they can get something that old but they might be your best option. As far the Intel® chipset if it is a socket 478 CPU with a 533 or 800 FSB you are going be looking for a 845 (400 or 533) or an 865 (533 or 800) chipsets.

 

[Iron Woode]

There is a company Cuetech who is fairly good at getting those old discontinued boards. If you can't get something good from Craigslist you can try them. I don't know if they can get something that old but they might be your best option. As far the Intel® chipset if it is a socket 478 CPU with a 533 or 800 FSB you are going be looking for a 845 (400 or 533) or an 865 (533 or 800) chipsets.

or he could luck into one of the final 478 boards with the 945GC chipset, which would give him DDR2 ram, PCIe 16x and SATA II.