Stiletto wrote:

Back to the original question: what about using one of those AGP2PCI/AGP2PCIE adapters? http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp […]
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Back to the original question: what about using one of those AGP2PCI/AGP2PCIE adapters?
http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=18419

or PCI2PCIE?
http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16658

Sure, you start running into expensive prices for limited production run riser card PCBs and _strange_ mounting inside a case, but compatibility with faster boards increase phenomenally.

You'll never find an original AGP2PCI adapter. They were only produced for a short time in Japan and have been out of production longer they were in production. So in other words, very few were ever made and only a very small percentage of those exist outside Japan. Unless someone starts making them again, your odds of finding one are slim.

There are places that still sell PCI2PCIe adapters, though.

sliderider wrote:

You'll never find an original AGP2PCI adapter. They were only produced for a short time in Japan and have been out of production longer they were in production. So in other words, very few were ever made and only a very small percentage of those exist outside Japan. Unless someone starts making them again, your odds of finding one are slim.

That's what I meant by "you start running into expensive prices for limited production run riser card PCBs"

They're pretty much all in the hands of Voodoo5 collectors and exchange for hundreds of dollars...

sliderider wrote:

There are places that still sell PCI2PCIe adapters, though.

Yes, and my link shows that performance of Voodoo5 AGP2PCIe versus Voodoo5 PCI2PCIe (running at 66 MHz) offers similar performance 😀

So to the original poster: find a Voodoo5 PCI and you can run on modern PCI-less boards with the right bridge adapter. And _that_ would be the fastest motherboard you could use. 😀

elfuego wrote:

luckybob wrote:

SURVEY SAYS...
"- Supports AGP 8x/4x."

I'd say NO.

...and this one?
http://www.tyan.com/archive/products/html/thunderi860.html

I got this board and no it doesn't even fit 3.3v era cards. It only works with 1.5v era cards but the 64bit pci slots can make it a mean v2 sli box.

Stiletto wrote:

Back to the original question: what about using one of those AGP2PCI/AGP2PCIE adapters? http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp […]
Show full quote

Back to the original question: what about using one of those AGP2PCI/AGP2PCIE adapters?
http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=18419

or PCI2PCIE?
http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16658

Sure, you start running into expensive prices for limited production run riser card PCBs and _strange_ mounting inside a case, but compatibility with faster boards increase phenomenally.

The easiest way to track one down is to look for certain models of geforce4 or 5 but forget what brand exactly but some were made as half height then used this adapter to mount into pci slots. There might have been agp to pci-e but I haven't seen any in a good three to four years on ebay. A lot of the rare stuff back during 2002 through till 2004 is very hard to come by now days.

Asus might have made something like an AGP2PCIe, but I don't think it was designed to work with any motherboard, only ones made by Asus. They need special BIOS support, I think, or else they don't work.

Then you have the Asrock motherboards that have shared AGP/PCIe slots, but you can only use one at a time and they aren't compatible with every AGP card since the "AGP" slot is really an extension of the PCIe x16 slot keyed to accept AGP cards.

sliderider wrote:

Asus might have made something like an AGP2PCIe, but I don't think it was designed to work with any motherboard, only ones made by Asus. They need special BIOS support, I think, or else they don't work.

The only AGP2PCIe I've ever heard of was the Albatron ATOP which was simply an Nvidia HSI on a small riser card (HSI being Nvidia's AGP-PCIe bridge chip at the time). Normally this chip was built into AGP-native graphics cards of the time to convert them to PCI-e so having it on a standalone board was weird.
Example: http://hwbot.org/forum/showthread.php?t=37937

It only worked with a few GeForce 4 series, all of the GeForce 5 and 6 series, and supposedly a few GeForce 7 series. No one ever got any ATI to work.

Testing of the time also tested ATI Radeon 9x00, S3 DeltaChrome S8 and XGI Volari V8 and Nvidia GeForce2, of these only the XGI displayed 16-color graphics. 😀
http://web.archive.org/web/20050825144437/htt … hwdb/atop-6.htm

I'm not sure anyone in the modern era of video card collecting has done a thorough review, but signs point to it only being compatible with Nvidia chipsets of the time. Furthermore, the card has jumpers to set compatibility, further complicating compatibility testing.

---

Surprised no company ever experimented with the ATI Rialto in this way, but as I recall it was (almost) late to ship.

I'd be curious to hear more about the Asus board (assuming you're not confusing it with the Albatron ATOP) if you can dig up more info.

Anyhow, we're starting to get off-topic.

I think the Albatron may have been the one I was thinking of. Asus is easier to remember than Albatron and they both start with A, so I probably got confused.

And of course since it uses an nVidia bridge chip, one would expect that it would only work with nVidia cards.

Pics here

http://hwbot.org/forum/showthread.php?t=37937

sliderider wrote:

I think the Albatron may have been the one I was thinking of. Asus is easier to remember than Albatron and they both start with […]
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I think the Albatron may have been the one I was thinking of. Asus is easier to remember than Albatron and they both start with A, so I probably got confused.

And of course since it uses an nVidia bridge chip, one would expect that it would only work with nVidia cards.

Pics here

http://hwbot.org/forum/showthread.php?t=37937

I still am:
1. amazed someone got it to work with 7000-series cards
2. REALLY amazed someone got any video at all from a non-NVidia card (XGI Volari V8 ), even if it was broken.

Stiletto wrote:

Anyhow, we're starting to get off-topic.

Strictly speaking, perhaps. But this is a fascinating disussion touching on the general fate of the 3.3v AGP slot through modern times...

Stiletto wrote:

Surprised no company ever experimented with the ATI Rialto in this way, but as I recall it was (almost) late to ship.

Riato seems even more problematic. ATI has had a lot of trouble keeping drivers working with cards that use it.

sliderider wrote:

You'll never find an original AGP2PCI adapter. ... someone starts making them again

Here's the thing with these: they're mostly electrical in nature and seem to use common parts, versus the PCI2PCIE which require a bridge chip. And there's high-def scans on the forums I linked to, etc.

Someone actually _could_ start making them again. A limited run, just like the AGP.5 prototypes mentioned at 3dfxzone.it, which were a (Euro?) reconstruction of the CHANGE-AGP2PCI. It could happen again.

Of course, the CHANGE-AGP2PCI and the AGP.5 were limited to AGP x1 & x2 cards in 32bit 33Mhz PCI 2.1 / 2.2 & 2.3 slots and 64Bit 33Mhz & 66Mhz PCI-X Slots. So it's not like an AGP8x adapter. Provided the card could work in AGPx1 or x2 slots though...

I'd also love to see if someone could merge the AGP2PCI and PCI2PCIE into a single adapter PCB. (As discussed, there are no generic AGP-PCIE bridge chips.)

Start a limited run on one or both of these and you could probably profit quite a bit.

Stiletto wrote:

Here's the thing with these: they're mostly electrical in nature and seem to use common parts, versus the PCI2PCIE which require […]
Show full quote

sliderider wrote:

You'll never find an original AGP2PCI adapter. ... someone starts making them again

Here's the thing with these: they're mostly electrical in nature and seem to use common parts, versus the PCI2PCIE which require a bridge chip. And there's high-def scans on the forums I linked to, etc.

Someone actually _could_ start making them again. A limited run, just like the AGP.5 prototypes mentioned at 3dfxzone.it, which were a (Euro?) reconstruction of the CHANGE-AGP2PCI. It could happen again.

Of course, the CHANGE-AGP2PCI and the AGP.5 were limited to AGP x1 & x2 cards in 32bit 33Mhz PCI 2.1 / 2.2 & 2.3 slots and 64Bit 33Mhz & 66Mhz PCI-X Slots. So it's not like an AGP8x adapter. Provided the card could work in AGPx1 or x2 slots though...

I'd also love to see if someone could merge the AGP2PCI and PCI2PCIE into a single adapter PCB. (As discussed, there are no generic AGP-PCIE bridge chips.)

Start a limited run on one or both of these and you could probably profit quite a bit.

Assuming you could keep the cost down to where people would actually buy it. Small production runs cost a lot because you have to pay for the research to develop the project into a finished product and then there's the cost of tooling to actually go into production. If you're only going to make lots of 25 or 50 at a time then the cost isn't going to be worth it. It would be cheaper just to buy a Voodoo5 in PCI.

sliderider wrote:

Assuming you could keep the cost down to where people would actually buy it. Small production runs cost a lot because you have to pay for the research to develop the project into a finished product and then there's the cost of tooling to actually go into production. If you're only going to make lots of 25 or 50 at a time then the cost isn't going to be worth it. It would be cheaper just to buy a Voodoo5 in PCI.

Oh, I know. Depends if the goal is to get a Voodoo5 AGP converted to PCI, though, or _any_ 3.3V AGP 1.0 (x1/x2) card converted to PCI...

What i'm surprised by, nobody has made a "retro" motherboard. One that takes a "new" processor and "new" ram, but is designed to work with old ISA hardware.

luckybob wrote:

What i'm surprised by, nobody has made a "retro" motherboard. One that takes a "new" processor and "new" ram, but is designed to work with old ISA hardware.

Soyo was doing an Industrial type Socket 478 with ISA slots for awhile, I had picked up a couple of them cheap when the POS company I worked for discontinued the product line.

I also grabbed some other ISA bus cards from them too 😉

Just to remind you don't have to stick to KT333 , nForce2 chipset is very good.

Unfortunately, nForce chipsets don't support AGP 3.3v.

luckybob wrote:

What i'm surprised by, nobody has made a "retro" motherboard. One that takes a "new" processor and "new" ram, but is designed to work with old ISA hardware.

Yes, the magic phrase you're looking for to Google is "industrial motherboard" with ISA support, you can at the very least find as recent as LGA775/Q965/DDR2 support. Also search VOGONS, it's been mentioned many times.

Most modern is I think LGA1155 Q77-chipset IBASE MB970:
http://www.ibase.com.tw/2009/MB970.html

But I could be wrong.

No AGP 3.3V support though.

But wouldn't the usefulness of the ISA bus(soundcards) diminsh with certain chipsets ?

Not sure which one is the newest chipset usable, but something like in the links below ?:
http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/mix_entry.php?id=2827

http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=8702
(sampled sound) (ICH5)

swaaye wrote:

Unfortunately, nForce chipsets don't support AGP 3.3v.

So that's what happened to my A7N8X-E Deluxe 😢

I spent several minutes looking at this picture before trying some cards 😒 I should have read the note about AGP 1.0 and AGP 2.0 not (being) the same as AGP 1X and AGP 2X 😵 My apologies.