The 486-DX2 66Mhz tower:
This box i was given since the owner claimed it had "grounded" to the 
motherboard. I.E. the grounding cable inside the computer (the one
connected to the chassi) had been loose and touched the motherboard
causing "a fizz and smoke".

on first inspection it was a minitower
with an alg2228 grafics card
a 130 mb hdd (seagate ST 3144A)
a 3.5" floppy (nec)
all ide and floppy and serial and parallell connectors 
was on a vlb expansion card(isa vlb?)
the motherboard had no manufacturer markings that were plainly visible

I took it home, started looking at it
well first things first, it was dusty, so take it apart and blow it clean.
the battery (cmos backup) was a nimh (nickel metal 3.0 volt 60mah)
that had either been over charged or taken a beating. 
the battery had ventilated (the contents of the battery leaks out a bit)
this is a BAD thing, since the content is corrosive, and can damage 
the motherboard (the copper tracks there).

FYI if your battery looks like it has mould on it, and it's nimh or nicd
then ACT NOW!!!

ok so even if it didn't work, minimize eventual damage:
i removed all the cards and drives
i marked all the connnectors with tape and write on the tape with magic marker
if the connector goes to "hdd led" with the red connector downwards
i'd write "hdd led:red down" on the tape.

i took out all the cards and stored them in boxes
upon inspection the motherboard and interface board had NO signs
of being burned

i unsoldered the old battery from the motherboard
, using a soldering temp around 240C and made sure 
i did it in "batches" and allowed it all (mobo and battery)to cool.

i cleaned up the affected area using a cotton "swab?" or qtip and 
alcohol (check so it really IS clean alcohol)

i waited for it to dry and inspected the motherboard with a loupe
no damage visible :-)

i soldered a red and a black wire to the motherboard connectors for the battery
(assembly wire), this is a trick used with amiga 2000/3000 series too
the wire was measured to be long enough to allow me to place battery
anywhere in the chassi

then i punched with a small needle a pair of holes in the lid of a 35mm
film cannister.

when doing this:

Bare a bit of metal on the wire (opposite end of the one soldered to motherboard)

Remove the lid from the cannister

Make the hole in the lid

Work the metal of the wire through the hole

The insulation of the wire will cause a little problem
use a pair of pliars to carefully pull the wire through the lid a bit
(say 10 cm's (4 inches))

repeat this for the other wire

i now had a "pretty" self sealed "passthrough" of wire into the lid

i checked the wires again then soldered the battery (new)
onto the ends of the wires, put the cannister against the lid
and mounted the cannister below the hdd bays (used cable holder)
(multi-ties?)

advantages?
first of all, if it ventilates, it does so in the cannister

second, if it needs changing again,
there is no need to solder on the motherboard

third, it's easy to inspect


OK battery done so

put motherboard into puter
i connected the other cards (making sure to also connect GROUND to chassi
where it always belongs)

connected a monitor and keyboard and power
turned it on, bios ran fine through POST (Power On Self Test)
but nada hdd, nada floppy
ok....recheck power and cables to floppy and hdd
also check hdd jumpers
try again....
NOTHING..post works but that's that
also cpuchip fan was dead so it(cpu) ran a bit hot
but the bios worked...

ok..rip out hdd, put in an old 430 megger i had
also put in a new floppy drive i keep for diagnostics and emergencies
set the cyl/head/sect in bios manually for the hdd

bingo!

i now had a working
486-dx2-66mhz with 16meg ram (4x4-30pin) and a 430 hdd

no OS on it of course
and it ran hot

i checked for cpu fans..none in the right size available
so i traded for an agp fan
without the heatsink
then i cut the connector, soldered it onto the cpufan connector
and heatshrink-tube-ed it

turn it on again
puter sounds like a jet plane taking off but works and runs nice and cool

the motherboard has 30+ jumpers
8x30 pin memory sockets 
2x72simm memory sockets
ahhh i got some 4 meggers in 72sim kicking about
i figgered i'd put those in

so far i've not managed that, it will not accept them :-(

i did manage to find a great program
ctbios (dos or dos console)(it's on the bbs)
which allows for easy identification of motherboard manufacturer

i also found bioswizard (win9x needed)
which can do bios compatability tests

ctbios said motherboard was m-technology
and gave me the webaddress "www.mtiusa.com"
so i surfed on over
they had one 486 motherboard matching this one
R407
i also found some parts of the manual (the processor settings)
and did a search on google for +"m-tech" +"R407"
and came up with some extra links

it took a 3com 509 tripple combo (tp, bnc, aui) card fine
after i put windows95 on the puter 

it will in the future most likely get linux
but for now i needed a bbs host

i also found the drivers for the grafics card alg2888
which are the same as for alg2301 (google helped here too)
but i do have the drivers so ya can mail me if ya need em

i really want to add another 8 megs (2x4 sim72pin)
so if anyone has the full motherboard manual and a scanner 
or has it in pdf or something
please contact me
i have the 3 pages that are on mtiusa.com's page
and will contact them soon regarding a full jumper 
manual :-))

it didn't take a cd tho :-(

side note..when doing a windows install, if you have another hdd in system
with another OS...DISCONNECT IT!!!
windows has little/no regard for what hdd it smacks a boot block onto

so now the dx2-66mhz stands as bbs host for a while

will post as subject "re:dx2wolf66t updates"
for updates