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Old Biostar Motherboard Drivers 1

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bosun

Technical User
Feb 14, 2002
20
US
I am looking for drivers for a biostar 8500TUC-A does anyone know where I can find them?

I love deadlines. I especially like the wooshing sound they make as they fly by.
-Douglas Adams
 
Mobos of that generation generally didn't have any drivers as there was no on-board sound, USB, Firewire, LAN, etc. All you need are BIOS updates.
. What exactly do you think you need a driver for? [ponder]
.bh.
 
If you think you may need chipset drivers like AGP, IDE, etc., you can go to the chipset mfr site for them. Intel, SiS, Via (Eteq), ALi, etc.
.bh.
 
Thank you for your help.

I had very incomplete information from the guy I was helping. He needs to know the location of Pin 1 for the usb connector. I have a diagram of the board, but it doesn't locate pin 1. There is no indication visible on the board itself.

I love deadlines. I especially like the wooshing sound they make as they fly by.
-Douglas Adams
 
Does this board have a usb connector? (its a bit old...)
 
Hi Wolluf, yep old Pentium I boards (at least some) have USB connectors... I had one and I hooked it up... wow what a lightshow better than Fourth of July... *g

Ben
 
. I found a diagram of the mobo that shows where the USB connector is, but little else. Definitely no pinout.
You will need to contact Biostar tech support if it isn't obvious from the mobo itself. Usually there will be a little '1' next to pin one of the connector or a heavy white line across the pin-1 end of the header. Looking down the length of the header toward the heavy white line, pin-1 would be on the left. And even once you have pin-1, there is no saying that the rest of the pinout meets any particular standard - so just plugging in one of those USB brackets may not do it.
. However some bad news. This is an Intel HX chipset - one of the first to have USB. Some messages in the newsgroups seem to say that USB on this early chipset is problematic. Perhaps better to just pop for a USB 1.x add-on card. Less hassle and probably better results. Of course you need at least Win95B with the USB update as a minimum to use the USB - Win98SE would be mucho better.
.bh.


He who dares not offend cannot be honest. -- Thomas Paine.
 
I looked at some general USB pinout diagrams and pins 1 and 5 should be +5V I should be able to find it with a volt meter.

Thank you zepper for your help.

I love deadlines. I especially like the wooshing sound they make as they fly by.
-Douglas Adams
 
I had an idea. I went back and looked at some mobos that were contemporary with the Biostar 8500TUC. The DFI 586HX and 586IHX, which were considered HOT mobos at the time. The HX was the first DFI mobo with the Intel HX chipset and in the manual for it, it said, "This chipset contains 2 USB channels which will be supported in a future revision." It did not show any connector on the mobo. The IHX manual shows the connector and pinout and has more info on it within the pages. IAC the connector pinout is thus:
. K G +D -D 5v K=Key= Either pin is missing
j3 = 5 4 3 2 1 or Not Connected. I suppose
j4 = 5 4 3 2 1 the extra ground could be
. G G +D -D 5v connected to a shield drain.

Probably most of the early mobos used the Intel chipset engineering model as a standard so the connectors were probably the same, but as you say a volt/ohm meter can tell the tale. +D I'm assuming is data out and should have a low impedence relative to -D (Data In?) and the Gs of course should have 0 resistance to any other G on the mobo.
..bh.

He who dares not offend cannot be honest. -- Thomas Paine.
 
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