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How to identify a front panel connectors header on a Pentium motherboard?


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Hi all!

 

I need some help with this dilemma.

I am resurrecting an original Pentium I motherboard from 1997. It is in excellent condition and everything works, but I am not sure where to plug all my front panel gear (like HDD LED, RESET button, etc).

The board in question does not have a brand name on it, all it says in big letters that it is "P20" then under it "EP40206R100" then "REV 1.0" under it. Nothing else.

I spent ages on Google trying to find any mention of it, or any pic of it, to no avail.

I found the double row header in question (P1) where everything plugs on the front of the board, but for once, there is no indication where anything goes, just numbers from 1 to 22 and that's all no other legend.

Does anyone have any idea where to go from here? I am kinda exhausted my options.

 

Thanks!

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Dunno if this helps :unsure. If not, maybe search other youtube vids to find your answer.

Watch at 5:38ish. If you pause it as he says "Grab the wires coming from the front panel of the case..." and press < a few times on your keyboard to move back frame by frame until his hand is out of the way, do your pins look like that, or like what @cwispy shows above?

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/29/2021 at 9:55 PM, Womble said:

Can you post a photo of the board?

OK, Finally I had more time to look into this.

Unfortunately watching the videos I am none the wiser as people there are dealing with clearly marked headers and it's easy.

Once again googling the images of the board trying to find at least another one like this did not yield anything.

I took a couple of photos, they aren't great as half of the board is obscured by power supply and variety of cables - I did not want to disassemble this all, now that I got it all working (apart from front panel).

On the first photo in the left bottom corner you can see the header in question (P1) it is 24 pins and there is no identification on the board on what is what.

If anyone can identify this board, would be a great help to me!

It has 4 PCI slots, 3 ISA slots, and Socket 7 Pentium I processor. Appears to have Intel 82371 AB chipset.

1.thumb.JPG.e25cb92c711fc93fd322cdba1552d6d2.JPG2.thumb.JPG.b67abca340b593e2f36ec39f7d608418.JPG

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Well, if you find nothing else, and want to brute force search your way through a bunch of images, you could check out this page and hit up the various Pentium sections.

https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/index.html

If you have a shitload of time on your hands that is 😄

Also, a photo of the boot screen might assist, when it first boots the BIOS.

Edited by namastepat
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3 hours ago, kadeath said:

OK, Finally I had more time to look into this.

Unfortunately watching the videos I am none the wiser as people there are dealing with clearly marked headers and it's easy.

Once again googling the images of the board trying to find at least another one like this did not yield anything.

I took a couple of photos, they aren't great as half of the board is obscured by power supply and variety of cables - I did not want to disassemble this all, now that I got it all working (apart from front panel).

On the first photo in the left bottom corner you can see the header in question (P1) it is 24 pins and there is no identification on the board on what is what.

If anyone can identify this board, would be a great help to me!

It has 4 PCI slots, 3 ISA slots, and Socket 7 Pentium I processor. Appears to have Intel 82371 AB chipset.

1.thumb.JPG.e25cb92c711fc93fd322cdba1552d6d2.JPG2.thumb.JPG.b67abca340b593e2f36ec39f7d608418.JPG

Are you sure its not an additional parallel port/db25/LTP header?

 

" excellent condition and everything works" 

How did you power it on? Front panel connectors AND the power switch should be connected to the same header.

Edited by Koops
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OK, what I ended up doing is this:

I found a very similar looking board (picture on the internet), with a 24 pin header in the same place. This board is called MSI MS-5158. Downloaded the manual and this is what it said:

image.png.55003e5b834f625ca979c36fdd7b57b0.png

I just tried the HDD LED and it worked! From then on I connected the POWER LED and then Reset Switch. All three of these are working fine.

The only thing which doesn't match up is the PC speaker, it doesn't work. But I am not fuss about it and left it at that!

Thanks all for your suggestions! Never thought it would be so hard to find one picture of a Pentium motherboard, but it appears so! I've no idea where I got the board from, but happy that I got it though!

Just to give myself a treat after all the hard search, I loaded up LOOM CD-ROM on it - works magic!

 

32 minutes ago, Koops said:

Are you sure its not an additional parallel port/db25/LTP header?

 

" excellent condition and everything works" 

How did you power it on? Front panel connectors AND the power switch should be connected to the same header.

The Power supply has it's own power switch independent of the PCB. That's how it powers on.

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