I'm looking for the smallest LX or BX chipset motherboard made. I have an ASUS P2B-B which is Baby-AT, but I don't know if there is anything smaller. I believe Baby-AT was the smallest "standard", but there might be a proprietary PC worth buying too.
'Trying to save space with my retro habit. I laptop would be another possibility, but I'd love something with an ISA slot.
There are micro ATX boards. I have an Intel SR440BX which has a Riva TNT 16MB and Ensoniq AudioPCI onboard. 😀 At some point they figured out that i740 sucked and outsourced! There's also one with Riva 128 ZX.
I don't know of any offhand but I'm sure there are narrower boards without video.
Well, if you don't mind an ATi Rage video chip, the Dell Optiplex GX1 would be worth a look. There are several different form factors... the SFF is probably the smallest BX system you'll find, but only has two PCI slots, no ISA. The slightly larger 'slim desktop' model is still pretty compact, but it has two PCI and two ISA (three slots available total, the middle one is shared).
I got a REALLY small BX ATX board in my attic! I'll post some pics later after I get my camera working again.
It's so small, I love it 🤣!
These are the 2 very small BX boards I have:
35-8929-00-01
and
MS06147 ver 1.1 BX7 (link points to an ebay page as it has the most clear pic I could find)
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … eName=WDVW&rd=1
Both are only a little larger then the size of a cdrom drive
Wow, that would be perfect! But a Packard Bell huh? 😢
Do you have the case or know which PB it came from?
No, all I remember it was a mATX case. Kinda like a more modern looking AT-sized case with only 2 cdrom slots.
I think one of these 2 only has support for Katmai though, no coppermine. Can't remember which one it was though.
So a good guess would be a PB with a P3 of <= 600Mhz and mATX
Edit:But looking at the pc partner site it appears they made many small sized slot1 boards. Also pc partner =/ pc chips!
Well, probably not the smallest, but I think it's too cool not to post it. Asus P2B-N NLX board for teh win! 😎 http://ultraexp.w1.siotex.com/computer/p2bn.htm
the loyal slave learns to love the lash
Yah, I remember those slim NLX designs with the riserboard.
I decided to go a different route. I already have a couple full sized ASUS P2B boards and built PC's out of them, and it doesn't look like there was never any mini-itx or equivalent designs. So I decided to go with a laptop instead. New post coming....
That NLX stuff reminds me of a friend's Packard Bell 486 without any L2 cache, ISA Cirrus Logic onboard video and only ISA slots. 😵 This was a 486 born in the local bus era too. He put a Pentium Overdrive in but what was the point.
BX was a high end performance chipset, and high end chipsets shouldn't make mini boards, they have to be large to show off their honorable status. only cheap chipsets goes to mini boards! 😁
Doesn't get much smaller than a notebook. Many have on board audio, but you would have to do a bit of research and testing to find one that has decent compatibility.
Looking forward to hearing about your notebook project!
There is a huge lack of Retro notebook projects on VOGONS...
wrote:BX was a high end performance chipset, and high end chipsets shouldn't make mini boards, they have to be large to show off their honorable status. only cheap chipsets goes to mini boards! 😁
Not Necessarily, sometimes mobomakers would use a high end chipset (applies more to old hardware, back when chipset makers usually had just 1 of 2 different chipsets in their offering, ofetn the older and newer chipsets) on a micro-atx board with few features in the bios as a budget-performance board. I've got a s754 mobo with VIA KM800 which is micro-atx but based on a performance chipset of that time. Making the mobo smaller (thus less PCB area) makes the mobo smaller but generally just as good. it usually only goes at the expense of a couple PCI slots which is less of a problem nowdays as everything is onboard, so to say 😉
@ noshutdown
Witness the little spitfire Intel SR440BX. With an integrated NV RIVA TNT 16MB and Sound Blaster PCI 64, it's not exactly a bad little mobo to build a pretty awesome 1998 gaming PC.
It even has an ISA slot for your retro audio needs.
I guess they realized that building a board with their 740 chip wasn't going to make sales. 😁 Apparently there was also an older board with a RIVA 128. i740 just never got any love.
Anyone who has this intel board set-up, and flashed the latest BIOS?, I would like to know more about the multiplier options in that BIOS.
--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul
i740 just never got any love.
Well, it did in a way... the IGP in the i810 chipset was based around the i740, with a couple updates.
wrote:Anyone who has this intel board set-up, and flashed the latest BIOS?, I would like to know more about the multiplier options in that BIOS.
I have not actually used the board yet. 🤣
wrote:wrote:Well, it did in a way... the IGP in the i810 chipset was based around the i740, with a couple updates.
810 is about as fast as a TNT so it is definitely improved.[/quote
810 is comparable to TNT? are you joking or something?
i have a 815eb mainboard and a TNT SGRAM. 815eb scores ~900 in 3dmark2000, and TNT scores ~2200. resolution is 1024*768*16, and cpu is p3-s 1.4ghz.
but anyway, the i810/815e is undoubtly a lot faster than i740.
wrote:Witness the little spitfire Intel SR440BX. With an integrated NV RIVA TNT 16MB and Sound Blaster PCI 64, it's not exactly a bad little mobo to build a pretty awesome 1998 gaming PC.
Wow I really like this board! Sound Blaster PCI 64 = Ensoniq chip which should work awesome for all the later SB16 / General Midi DOS VGA/SVGA games...
wrote:810 is comparable to TNT? are you joking or something?
i have a 815eb mainboard and a TNT SGRAM. 815eb scores ~900 in 3dmark2000, and TNT scores ~2200. resolution is 1024*768*16, and cpu is p3-s 1.4ghz.
but anyway, the i810/815e is undoubtly a lot faster than i740.
Some of the 810 boards have a dedicated bit of video RAM to speed them up a little more too. I remember benching one years ago and thinking it was similar to a TNT. Not a big enough difference to matter.
But if you want higher resolutions the 810/815 will probably implode because they have less than half of the memory bandwidth of a TNT.
wrote:Wow I really like this board! Sound Blaster PCI 64 = Ensoniq chip which should work awesome for all the later SB16 / General Midi DOS VGA/SVGA games...
It's certainly better than plain Intel AC97. 440BX doesn't have that feature though so undoubtedly that's why they outsourced for audio too. They had a history of using Creative chips on their mobos before AC97.
