Buy an OEM Pentium desktop. That way it is cheap and easy. Just my opinion of course. Have fun!

Thanks for posting Peter! I forgot to mention one thing that bothers me: why doesn't the Asus board have a battery?

Thanks!

The ASUS board does have a battery. It's the Dallas DS12B887 clock chip.

Also, an OEM machine is nice since you can pretty much set one up and be able to play just about anything. Actually building a retro PC is more fun, though. 😎 But it's your call.

If that's the original Dallas RTC/battery unit, then it may be dead, or may not have much life left in it - you can find them online.
The battery is built in to the module.
Also, there has been some mention on the forum of a replacement for it.

Guys, I appreciate your feedback so far, it's been great to hear from you. I have chosen to build this thing from scratch because I have some parts laying around (an AT case, 2x16md EDO RAM, a Creative infra CD Rom and an old but still working HDD) and I really missed an old rig to play around with.

I had an Intel 486 DX-100 and a Pentium 100 Mhz which I had to give away for good reason. Also, Dosbox is reaaaaaaally awesome and people who created and work on it are really blessed.
But you know, as someone who grew up and learned on MS-DOS, i miss the real thing :=)

The Asus board had me so far but it got me concerned now regarding its battery replacement due to the battery being a chip whereas the Shuttle has a real 2032 battery. In case the replacement on the Asus is no big deal and easy to replace for a new one nowadays, please let me know.

Once again thank you all! =)

The Asus is one of the best s7 boards, i would choose that (actually searching for one but i don't use ebay).

If you could go a little higher on specs i would search for an Asus p5a ss7, I like these boards as they are very stable, can handle agp and are atx.
Rev. 1.04 and lower run great with k6 ''+'' cpu's so you would have a good upgrade path if you want to all the way to 600mhz (overclocked).

The lowest it will go is 60mhz fsb so the minimum is a pentium 90

If you are like me and like atx (easier with psu's, cases, ps/2 mouse, keyboard and usb support) oem's are a good choice too. For example i also have a Dell intel 430vx board that is also very stable and nice to use (p75-233mmx)

I would like to use a voodoo1 in a system like that so a pentium 100 or higher would be a good base for that....

If it is a socketed Dallas chip you can buy a new replacement online. If it is soldered on you would either have to desolder it to replace it or do the mod that a few people around here have posted about.

moved to marvin

I actually found an old thread on google groups about this specific board and... unfortunately the Dallas chip is indeed soldered to the board. I did some more google on Socket 7 boards and found quite a few models from different brands that make use of this chip instead of the actual 2032 battery.

So that leads me to choose another board as I have no soldering skills whatsoever.

My quest continues, if you guys can help me with some other models and links to the boards, as well as some info on where I could find them for sale, I would appreciate it!

Thanks!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-9740-18-MOTHERB … =item4ae357af3d here is a nice simple Intel board. Looks like the same one that my first Pentium 233 machine used! 2032 battery, DIMM and SIMM slots along with plenty of pci and isa slots.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sony-Socket-7-System- … =item339d27034f here is an interesting board. ATX w/onboard video, usb, and SCSI.

ODwilly wrote:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-9740-18-MOTHERB … =item4ae357af3d here is a nice simple Intel board. Looks like the same one that my first Pentium 233 machine used! 2032 battery, DIMM and SIMM slots along with plenty of pci and isa slots.

willy many thanks for taking some time to post the links =)
I found this board quite interesting for my purpose as I already have an AT case. Do you happen to know the exact model so I can try and find the manual? I'll really need it in order to setup the frequency settings and all that stuff.

Thanks!

If I had my old fried board still I could tell you the exact model and find the manual for ya, but you are in luck! The Voltage and cpu clock ratio settings are silk screened onto the motherboard. (I remember this to be true from mine and zooming on the pictures confirmed it) also this board supports up to 2x128mb of pc66-133 (although if is is a TX chipset you only want to use 64mb anyways) EDIT: In the first picture zoomed you can see that between pci slots 2 and 3 you can see the cpu clock settings and to the left of the cpu socket you can see the voltage settings

Oh yeah, I did manage to see the settings between the pci slots, boy ain't that sweet?
Huge thanks for your help and time!
Regarding the RAM, I have 2X16 EDO 72pins Toshiba modules here which I'll be using. I actually want to use only one of them so my system will have 16mb. You know, as I'll be using only DOS and Win3.11 I wanna keep it as close to a 486 as possible.

I guess I'll be placing my bid to that board, let's see how it goes.

Once again, thanks so much willy!

Cool no problem! Hope it works out for ya. Actually 32mb would be a nice sweet spot and for the Pentium machines you have to use a pair of 72 pin SIMMS if I recall correctly.