There's a couple swollen caps on your board. You really ought to look at a possible swapout or repair of your board.

As this board is kinda limited, this might be a good opportunity to swap it out with a board that can offer your build more flexibility?

I do have an old Gateway Tabor III laying around, but it's an OEM board, and I also don't want the poor mobo in a case like.. that. I don't hate that case, but I really dislike the cooling design, or, lack thereof. I'm going to assume those swollen caps are the reason why zero sound cards will work. Ouch. Here's that thread:

Biostar M6TWL Refuses to Work With any Sound Card

I knew that the bad caps might have been the case, but I really was hoping that the caps weren't the cause. I can't solder at all. I was sort of denying it up until this point, but I figure what's done is done. I guess the caps there have to do with how the PCI bus communicates with the system or something, because neither the integrated audio, nor the external sound card I tried, worked. I never got the chance to try out the 3COM card I had installed, but I think it's safe to say that this thing's not going to be running until I can solder.

As for it being limited, that was sort of the point. I have the system on the right in the last picture, a PIII Katmai build that uses an Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard. It's got two ISA slots (one of them being a combo ISA/PCI slot where only one can be used in that slot at a time), an AGP slot, and four PCI slots, and possibly an AMR(?) slot, at least, I think that's what it's called. It's the slot right above the first PCI slot in the second picture.

Anyways, I had wanted a system based around being sort of a lower end/home PC, but a Pentium III really doesn't fit that bill at the end of the day. A K6 or K6-2 build would fare much better in that aspect. I'll probably swap that mobo out for the Tabor III, that's if I can find more screws for the brass standoffs, as I'm very low on standard case screws, let alone the weird tiny-threaded ones that the brass standoffs often use. I might even get a new Super Socket 7 motherboard off of eBay at some point, and install something like a K6-2 in it, sort of as a build to oppose the PIII 500 machine I have. That case did have an Intel Pentium III sticker, but I removed it because it was warped beyond repair. So really, I can install any processor I want in it, unlike the case on the left. I certainly am not going to remove that Intel Inside sticker, so it's gotta stick with 'Intel Inside'. Though, that case originally held a Pentium 200MMX system, but oh well.

I'll see about what I can do. I also really need to retrobrite that case. It needs it bad, compared to my PIII Katmai rig, though it probably needs some retrobrite treatment too. That CD drive on the bottom seriously needs it; not sure how the CD drive got that badly yellowed while the rest of the case didn't get it that bad.

athlon-power wrote:

Anyways, I had wanted a system based around being sort of a lower end/home PC, but a Pentium III really doesn't fit that bill at the end of the day. A K6 or K6-2 build would fare much better in that aspect. ...

I would suggest a Mendocino Celeron in Slot 1 or Socket 370 form for the existing MB as an alternative... but those caps definitely should be replaced first.

SW-SSG wrote:

I would suggest a Mendocino Celeron in Slot 1 or Socket 370 form for the existing MB as an alternative... but those caps definitely should be replaced first.

I can't solder, at all, and not only that, but I don't own any equipment to do anything like that whatsoever. I am, however, saving the motherboard; I've put it in a mobo-sized anti-static bag, and put it into an old empty motherboard box I had laying around. I'll keep it there until the time comes to where I can try and replace those. I'll just have to look at the sides and search for what specific voltage, rating, or whatever capacitors use online.

Curiously, this is also the first motherboard I have ever seen with both Socket 370 and Slot 1 processor sockets on the same board. They can't both be used at once, there's a little jumper where pins 1-2 direct the PC to use the Slot 1 socket and pins 2-3 switch it to the more traditional socket.

I think I'll throw the Tabor III in there, and put the old i740 AGP card I have laying around in there, too. The motherboard doesn't come with integrated video, so that's better than nothing. I'll also ironically end up using the same Crystal 4281 PCI card I had tried with the Biostar mobo to get some semblance of functioning audio out of it.

If you made it a glide gaming either voodoo 1/2 paired with a 2d card or single PCI voodoo 3 or above you wouldn't miss the lack of AGP.
(once its repaired that is)

I had thought of getting a VooDoo 2 or something to that atone, but it really wouldn't make much sense to get such an expensive (at the time) card for such a low-end motherboard. Granted, it's not the worst motherboard in the world, but it just doesn't seem to cut something like that. Maybe you do have a point though, if a VooDoo 3 PCI was available for somewhat cheap at the time.

I'm not going to be resuming this project for a very, very long time most likely. Until I can get soldering equipment, let alone the specific capacitors it needs, it'll have to remain in the box I put it in.

athlon-power wrote:

I had thought of getting a VooDoo 2 or something to that atone, but it really wouldn't make much sense to get such an expensive (at the time) card for such a low-end motherboard. Granted, it's not the worst motherboard in the world, but it just doesn't seem to cut something like that. Maybe you do have a point though, if a VooDoo 3 PCI was available for somewhat cheap at the time.

I'm not going to be resuming this project for a very, very long time most likely. Until I can get soldering equipment, let alone the specific capacitors it needs, it'll have to remain in the box I put it in.

There are relatively less expensive PCI 3D accelerator options you can use in a system like this; OEM TNT and TNT2/M64 PCI cards like the ones from Compaq and Dell computers are one such option. There are also a lot of PCI Savage4 LT PCI OEM cards floating around that I see regularly. A Matrox G450 PCI would be rarer than the lot above but a much better choice overall. If you find PCI versions of full Savage4, TNT2 (Pro), Rage 128 (Pro), GeForce 2 MX400 for a decent price, get one. Those are much rarer in my experience.