Being in a testing mood, I tried many soundcards... Bugger, I love this mobo... Even my beloved (long-thought dead) Yamaha SW20-PC works (after some fiddling with BIOS settings). Next card I'll try is an Ensoniq VIVO, which did not work at all in the DFI mobo.

Although I like this system, it is not perfect. Somehow USB is not working. Reports ok in Winblows98, same install I had on the DFI socket 7 mobo (it worked then).
Bad thing is that I do not have the connecting scheme for this specific Zida Tomato mainboard. I assumed it is the same as other mainboards from this company. There is a 20 pin header on the mobo which provides 2xUSB, PS/2 mouse and IR connection. Made the PS/2 work, don't give a s*** about IR, and can't figure the USB yet.
Found out some info on the producer's site, connected the wires the way they said and it does not work.
Anyone around here has the manual for Tomato BXv98-CU/V693 mobo?

Try an Intel based board + CPU?

@valnar
Motherboard works ok. It's a baby AT board, no USB connectors on it, and I can't figure out how to connect them properly on the onboard 20 pin header which has USB+PS2+IR connectivity. As I already said, managed to find out the pins for PS2 mouse.
I need a baby AT mobo, and this is the only one I have for socket 370.

AT board? My preference would be an ASUS P2B-B + Powerleap PL-iP3/T v.2.0 + Celeron 1.4Ghz. 😉 It just doesn't get any more stable than that.

@valnar
I use what I have. I have better choices for ATX mobos but no spare ATX case (1 HP microATX Intel 815 and 1 ASUS ATX Intel ZX.
I also have 2 IBM PC300GL desktop systems, Intel chipset (BX or ZX, AFAIR) PII 450 and PIII 600 cpu's. The problem with these last 2 is limited number of expansion slots and limited choices of SFF AGP video cards. The onboard S3 Trio 3D is not good enough for a gaming system and I think I can barely squeeze 2 or 3 PCI cards in there.

I filled the system; actual configuration: same mobo, cpu&ram, 40 Gb Seagate U5 hdd.
HIS Radeon 7500 64 Mb (might swap it with an ASUS GeForce 2 MX though... seems like AGP 2x VIA chipsets do not like much the Radeons)
USB 2.0 PCI adapter, 4 ports
2xVoodoo2
Yamaha SW20-PC ISA soundcard, 2 Mb ROM, OPL4 chipset, GM compatible

... and lots of PCI soundcards: SB Live!, SB PCI 128, Crystal 4280, ForteMedia FM801, Ess Solo, Vortex 1, Yamaha 744;
I change them on a whim, and right now I inserted the 744, want to try the famous Final Fantasy VII with it; the only game with XG Midi.

I have reached the limit of this motherboard... Maybe it's time to split the loads... I wanted to make this system an all-rounder, good for DOS, Glide and Win 9x games. It seemed a bit sluggish in Unreal and Halflife, so I replaced the Slugeron with a socket 370 P III, 600 MHz, 133 FSB. Well, I have to run it underclocked. Mobo recognizes P III, but does not work with 133 FSB; It boots in Win98 at 120, but the sound is distorted. Highest safe FSB I reached is 115.
Have some P III 800/100 cpu, but is dead... damned thing is missing a pin.
It's time to buy a new ATX case&PS, which will be fitted with an ASUS P2-99 mobo; It has Intel ZX chipset, almost as good as a BX, 4 PCI and 3 ISA sluts; and no o/b sound. It will be my Glide system.
In the old case I'll put another mobo, prolly an Intel HX, Pentium MMX 200, fastest PCI video card I have (this should be interesting... I can choose between a Voodoo Banshee, Matrox G200, RIVA TNT).
Or a 486 VESA system.

A friend will send me an almost complete P II 400 system (no fdd or optical drive). I only wanted the ATX case and PS, but he will send me the whole system AS IS; he said the computer is not working, giving him some beeps at boot, but no image on screen. Might be the video card (nVidia Vanta, AFAIR) or the RAM. No matter, I have spares. He will throw in the deal a 2 ports USB bracket and an ISA soundcard, ESS 1788 chipset. All for the very reasonable price of 60 RON, p&p included; about $20.50.
Case is a bit yellowed (again, I don't care). I will build inside it a decent Glide system (P III 600, 256 Mb SDRAM, a Voodoo Banshee or ATI Radeon (7500 or 9250) + 2xVoodoo2

fillosaurus: you can always clean out the yellow with "retro brite" or hot water and soap if you prefer.

those yamaha pci cards do not do the right thing for XG> the defaults are all wrong o the effects.

you need s-y50xg, the db50, or the sw60 to get it right.

WolverineDK wrote:

fillosaurus: you can always clean out the yellow with "retro brite" or hot water and soap if you prefer.

I say keep it yellow... it adds to the "retro'ness" 😁

More woes...Dunno what is wrong with the chipset/motherboard (ASUS P2-99, Intel ZX). I use a 256 Mb PC133 stick.
In pure DOS mode I cannot use my Philips PSC703 soundcard; although the drivers load and report ok, no game can see it. One of my favourite games, Lands of Lore, does not sees extended memory even if HIMEM.SYS is loaded.
When I load Win98, the soundcard's mixer gives me a "stack overflow" error. WTF?

EDIT: Managed to set up the Philips sc (in DOS). With UMBPCI; might work with EMM386 too, had not tried yet. Still locks on several games and has low volume even with main/wave/midi set at max with software mixer. Had not figured out why LoL does not recognize XMS.

fillosaurus wrote:

In pure DOS mode I cannot use my Philips PSC703 soundcard; although the drivers load and report ok, no game can see it.

This could be an IRQ issue... Is the sound cards IRQ higher than 10? I'm pretty sure for pure Dos mode the IRQ needs to be set to 10 or lower to work.

😁 My DB60-XG clone has arrived and now I am testing it with various ISA/PCI soundcards. On the OLD Glide system. For some reason I cannot use SLI on the new build.

EDIT: from all the ISA soundcards with WT connector I have now I can use only 3. The others have the connector positioned in such a way that they cannot be inserted in ISA slot when connected to the DB.
Of the remaining 3, one does not work with DB (Reveal SoundFX, MAD16pro+Crystal 4231), another has DB at 90 degree angle so it is impossible to put the metal case back (Terratec Base1, AD1816).
The only one with a properly situated connector is a no name, Yamaha 719 aka OPL3-SAX. I am not very fond of them, always found them noisy.
At least I could test the DB60-XG clone, and I am impressed by its quality.
Time to retire old Yamaha SW-20PC and to search some nice ESS or ALS cards with properly situated WT connector.

Won a bid on my local clone of eBay, 0kazii.r0 (substitute 0 with o). 3 ISA soundcards, 2 Crystal 4235 with WT connector placed ok for DB60-XG, 1 CMI 8330 w/o. All for the enormous sum of 20 RON (about $6.70), p&p included. In my experience, Crystal based cards sound cleaner than OPL3-SaX and have comparable compatibility.
And the CMI 8330 claims to be SB16 compatible. Encountered a lot of them on mainboards, re-marked as SoundPro 1869+. All 3 are also WSS compatible.