This board needs its own riser, plugging this one in will make the blue smoke escape from multiple locations.

I might actually have a suitable riser, from a slightly different Compaq ProLinea 486. Only problem is that I don't quite know where it is (because I moved to Norway a little while ago), but if I can find it and you pay for shipping you can have it.

Thanks Tiido for saving me and this board from disaster.

I'd be interested in the riser if you can find it!

You are in luck, I found the riser, it was luckily not deep in a box but quite near the top 🤣
I expect it to be compatible but I cannot give any guarantees, it did come out of a ProLinea 486/33 with a bit different/older motherboard.

Looks very likely - but to be safe, even if it fits physically, measure continuity between voltage and ground pins on one of the ISA slots and somewhere on the motherboard (eg on the P8+P9 power connectors). If they're OK you know you won't get magic smoke in any event.

I have couple of those prolinea and they are otherwise good but they dont have any L2 cache which makes them bit slow and I have not been able to find the compatible compaq cache modules anywhere. Other than that they are pretty good with ps/2 mouse and keyboard ports and the ET4000AX chip on them is in vlb. I was running one with 133Mhz 486 cpu for a while, but there are faster options because of lack of cache.

Yeah, lack of cache really hurts these machines. I had few in past too but the boards were old enough that they had no kind of provisions for cache. The one on the photo here looks like it can take something, assuming the slot is for a cache addon.

Tiido wrote on 2023-06-09, 19:43:

Yeah, lack of cache really hurts these machines. I had few in past too but the boards were old enough that they had no kind of provisions for cache. The one on the photo here looks like it can take something, assuming the slot is for a cache addon.

I have been looking for the cache addon since I own 2 of these compaq prolinea motherboards. As far as I know the correct cache module would be compaq par number 197005-001
No luck finding one so far.

Well, even without cache and putting 133Mhz 486 cpu there it can run doom fine even without L2 cache.

That's really great Tiido, thanks for searching! I'll PM you to follow up.

For sure a much better fit than the one I have and I'll try Dionb's suggestion to measure continuity as an additional sanity check.

Btw, if any of you have a manual for this board, I'd be interested as well. My searches didn't come up with anything better than this data sheet which has some information for multiple configurations of the Prolinea Desktop Family from that era. My assembly number 003760 is listed there as : "486DX2/66 assembly: 003760-002 Serial#: HKD,HNE".

https://web.archive.org/web/20220807191144/ht … paqProlinea.pdf

My board now has an SX-33, so maybe a previous owner downgraded it for some reason. But that's fine, I'm just looking to restore this Pack-mate to working condition, performance is not a major concern. That said, I can only image how satisfying it must be for someone to finally find and install that one missing rare cache or onboard video memory module 😀

Thanks so much Tiido for helping out with the riser!

Unfortunately I didn't consider the placement of the Compaq board in the Pack-mate case: the original board had the memory slots all the way on the other side, but now 2 out of 3 memory slots sit just below the metal bracket that holds the floppy drive. Even the lowest profile memory I have (18mm) is too high to fit under. I wouldn't mind just using the one free slot, but it just so happens the slots have to be filled in the other direction for the system to recognize any memory at all.

Now I'm thinking to cut off part of the floppy drive bracket and then I can just run it without floppy drive (even without the bracket I don't think memory and floppy drive will fit at the same time). Please let me know if any of you have a better suggestion 😀

The riser card fits just fine b.t.w., although that may not be apparent from the photo.

Cutting the bracket or bending it is what I would be doing if that case is going to be used for this board. Unfortunately it seems to be riveted on so it will be pain in the rear in every way 🤣

Good to hear the riser works nicely ~