mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

ECS is not worth looking into, IMO. Not only do they get absolutely terrible reviews online, but I once had a Socket 478 board made by them that would absolutely refuse to work with Windows 2000 or XP. It kept displaying MUP.sys errors. 🤣 I could install Win98SE just fine, but I'm guessing that's because it has a higher tolerance for flaky hardware.

Also, I once owned a Soyo Socket 370 Tualatin board that I really wanted to build a system with, but the IDE controller on it was toast, and I remember the previous owner complaining about it crashing all the time. 🤣

When it comes to older hardware, i'd personally stay away from ECS, PC Chips, Asrock, Biostar and most certainly Commate (not even sure they exist anymore?). Thankfully ECS, Asrock and Biostar are actually pretty good these days 😉.

One of my i5 PCs is using a Biostar TH67XE board and it's been brilliant so far! It's one of the few H67 based boards with USB 3.0, PCI-E 3.0 and SATA 600 support along with CPU and Memory overclocking (that's right... Overclocking with an old H67 chipset!)... It's running an Ivy Bridge i5 3570k 😀. I didn't feel the need to update my mobo as it has everything i need and still supports the latest CPU's etc. It's completely solid and i intend on keeping it for a while 😀.

Yeah, they've improved much. I've used ECS and Asrock for s939 and s775 builds respectively, and they did the job just fine. Fast fwd today and they've got some really good stuff like the Asrock Fatality and Extreme series and ECS Gold Z77. Biostar has been busy producing some good stuff too since the s939/ AM2 days.

I actually have fond memories of using an ASRock P4i45GV in my first Pentium 4 system. Aside from the lack of an actual AGP slot (it used an "AGI" slot 😜) and the fact that it would absolutely refuse to work with any CPU other than the 2.4GHz Prescott it came with, it was actually a pretty decent board.

I had an ASrock ALiveNF7G-HDready from 2007 to 2011; now is more ADead. It died slowly, first to fail was the PCI Express slot, then the IDE controller. And I have 2 more ASrock boards around, one Socket A and one Socket 478.
Both have bulged capacitors.

fillosaurus wrote:

I had an ASrock ALiveNF7G-HDready from 2007 to 2011; now is more ADead. It died slowly, first to fail was the PCI Express slot, then the IDE controller. And I have 2 more ASrock boards around, one Socket A and one Socket 478.
Both have bulged capacitors.

I remember my old P4 board having bulged capacitors too. 🤣 I think that's part of the reason why it would only work with the one CPU. Every other CPU I tried in it (including a 3.0GHz Northwood) wouldn't bother to work. 😜

Motherboards, PSUs and video cards from 1999 onward frequently have bad capacitors.

One thing I've noticed about ASUS is they at least sometimes used Rubycon caps and I don't believe I've seen those leaking/bulging. I've also seen boards with Rubycon only for VRM and cheaper stuff everywhere else.

PowerPie5000 wrote:

i'd personally stay away from ***, PC Chips, Asrock,...

AFAIK, older ASRocks were made of components which failed to be the parts of an Asus board - hence the low quality. But I agree, that ASRock is pretty good nowadays.

On the contrary, I have good experiences with PC Chips; while not being a true "brand" manufacturer, their products standed the test of time - especially Intel 440 BX boards are what I'm referring to.

Too bad you're so far away. I have a P3TDEi with dual 1.2GHz Tualatin-S's and 2GB of 133MHz ECC DIMMs just sitting around doing nothing.

I have a Jetway J993AN which supports 133MHz but I sadly don't know if the board supports ECC RAM.Also I have to reflash it since the original BIOS EEPROM (flash chip)died,and I got three chips for it:
1.Winbond W29C020-90 (I didn't label the chip)
2.(probably MX) unknown F29C51002T-90PA (came from an Acorp BX motherboard,I have to reflash it)
3.ATMEL 49C002 or 49C020(i don't remember the number) which came from a baby AT Acorp Slot 1 motherboard (again,i440BX)
The first one is unlabeled,but the other two were labeled by me as 993AN/LN11 BACKUP ROM1 and 993AN/LN11 BACKUP ROM2 (ROM 1 is the ATMEL chip and the F29C51002T-90PA is the ROM2)

As far as I know, 29 and 49 are not interchangeable. I tried that, did not work. If the original mobo used a 29xxxx, I suggest using another 29xxxx. A 39 or 49 would not work.

Actually they ARE interchangable.Especially the 49xx chips from a K7S5A.(which is what I used to reflash the Jetway)

I managed to grab a QDI Advance 10T. I fried it clumsily updating the BIOS, however, but I'm going to flash the chip in a programmer to try to resurrect it. Leaving my silly move aside, it is a great 370 motherboard and if I recall correctly, it's Tualatin capable.

I read the manual for my Jetway and it supports any kind of Pentium 3 processors,even Tualatin!

PcBytes wrote:

I read the manual for my Jetway and it supports any kind of Pentium 3 processors,even Tualatin!

Bof, sadly, it's very rare to find any Jetway product here in Spain 🙁

I'm in the same boat at the ATX Socket 7 chapter here in Bacau 🙁