What is this thing?

[Jakub_NF]

So I was just wondering about this old mobo that I have, it has a PCI male connector at the bottom of it (pictures included). I wasn't able to find any info about it as it doesn't even say what motherboard that is, any ideas about what this connector is for?

[manikyath]

my guess is either expansion of sorts (additional ports), or its an interface used at the factory for testing, bios fashing, etc. its not unlikely for them to take a port type they have available already, because it saves part count, and as a result BOM cost.

[Jakub_NF]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

my guess is either expansion of sorts (additional ports), or its an interface used at the factory for testing, bios fashing, etc. its not unlikely for them to take a port type they have available already, because it saves part count, and as a result BOM cost.

I was hoping that this will be something actually cool like being able to plug it into another mobo and make a use out of it in some way

[manikyath]

3 minutes ago, Jakub_NF said:

I was hoping that this will be something actually cool like being able to plug it into another mobo and make a use out of it in some way

no, and no.

[mariushm]

Sticker on BIOS chip says 38L3687

Googling that gave me : IBM FRU 89P8010 P/N 38L3687  - fru is something "replacement unit" I think ... basically IBM's internal code for parts.

Googling 89P8010 gives a reference to IBM NetVista 6648

 

 

So it's a Socket 370 motherboard, pentium 3 133 mhz, sdram (up to 256 MB)

 

The brown slot is AGP 2x if you're too young to remember ... ( and you probably need very old agp 2x cards, the last agp 8x probably won't work in these slots)

The first white slot is a non-standard PCI slot  ... my guess is the added extension is there so that you can plug a riser board with several PCI slots.

The edge connector... my guess is that it's just PCI pins ... so they can extend the board with more PCI slots.

You can have up to 7 PCI slots in a system, if I remember correctly. So, like extending mATX to ATX standard size, maybe they had a circuit board with a PCI socket on the edge and then multiple standard PCI slots.

 

 

 

 

[Jakub_NF]

10 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Sticker on BIOS chip says 38L3687

Googling that gave me : IBM FRU 89P8010 P/N 38L3687  - fru is something "replacement unit" I think ... basically IBM's internal code for parts.

Googling 89P8010 gives a reference to IBM NetVista 6648

 

 

So it's a Socket 370 motherboard, pentium 3 133 mhz, sdram (up to 256 MB)

 

The brown slot is AGP 2x if you're too young to remember ... ( and you probably need very old agp 2x cards, the last agp 8x probably won't work in these slots)

The first white slot is a non-standard PCI slot  ... my guess is the added extension is there so that you can plug a riser board with several PCI slots.

The edge connector... my guess is that it's just PCI pins ... so they can extend the board with more PCI slots.

You can have up to 7 PCI slots in a system, if I remember correctly. So, like extending mATX to ATX standard size, maybe they had a circuit board with a PCI socket on the edge and then multiple standard PCI slots.

 

 

 

 

So I'm guessing this was a good mobo at the time when it came out, interesting stuff actually. Thanks for taking the time to research this.