socket A had agp8x with Nforce 2 and I assume KT400/600 (and newer SiS chipsets like the 748)

but AGP8X + ISA I'm not aware of
ISA socket A boards are probably the ones with older chipsets like KT266

not sure about the best at everything, but the abit nf7-s rev 2.0 was my favorite back then, nforce 2 is going to give you the most performance.

Would AGP 4x and ISA be possible? I'm a big fan of ISA sound cards, but I could switch over to PCI to get AGP 8x.

Both yes and no. It all depends. Most "A" systems have died this horrible death of failing caps.
In other word's, they have been thrown out. Some of the good ones have survived.

Socket-A is more or less uncharted territory from my point of view.
What I do know, is that you need to stick with premium brands on this.
Another thing that are an issue here, are the PSU question.
As I understand it. SocketA are one of the hardest platforms to track down PSU's for.

I can't really give you the best advice on a good PSU. Other members can do it better
than I can, when we are talking about this topic. Wich are really funny, as I used to
build 12/14 computers each day, from late 2003 to early 2006.

Socket A isn't too difficult to work with but it does take some skill to not kill it the first time around as there is no thermal protection and this was the era where even macs had the shittiest chinese caps ever so you will need to know that recapping boards is common. The real problem isn't so much finding power supplies it is getting them with good caps I know a few good units off hand but they are old enough to be dangerous due to the caps rotting.

Socket A, procs are dirt cheap as no one hardly ever buys them, ram is chicken feed except for the best kits, coolers are a little hard to find unless you know exactly what to look for, and the boards while cheap people have forgotten how to work with but it is not hard.

You can do a socket A build under a $100 easily if you already have a case and drives on hand. Just look for bundles and when it comes to the power supplies from the period stick to the name brands and units with a strong 5V rail (like 35 amps ect) just avoid the cheap generic looking units and do a lot of research.

Wow! Good to know!

nforce4max wrote:

Socket A isn't too difficult to work with but it does take some skill to not kill it the first time around as there is no thermal protection and this was the era where even macs had the shittiest chinese caps ever so you will need to know that recapping boards is common. The real problem isn't so much finding power supplies it is getting them with good caps I know a few good units off hand but they are old enough to be dangerous due to the caps rotting.

Socket A, procs are dirt cheap as no one hardly ever buys them, ram is chicken feed except for the best kits, coolers are a little hard to find unless you know exactly what to look for, and the boards while cheap people have forgotten how to work with but it is not hard.

You can do a socket A build under a $100 easily if you already have a case and drives on hand. Just look for bundles and when it comes to the power supplies from the period stick to the name brands and units with a strong 5V rail (like 35 amps ect) just avoid the cheap generic looking units and do a lot of research.

About the psu, if using a board with the P4 12v plug the CPU will be powered by that instead if its plugged in. With a Nforce2/KT600 board a modern psu will be fine, and the best gpu's use the 12v as well like 6800/x800/7800/x1950

I picked Gigabyte GA-7n400s for Athlon XP, an average late S462 board. There might be better performers out there, but this one has SATA, which is great!

nForce2 Ultra 400's were pretty badass. My choice for circa 2003, if I ever wanted a system in between 98SE and Core 2 WinXP.

So I should look for a newer Socket A board? Will that eliminate some of the common PSU issues?

Looked at some Gigabyte Motherboards, really like the GA-7VT880 Pro. It uses the Via KT880 Chipset, has AGP 8x, Firewire, up to 4Gb of DDR400 RAM, GIGABIT LAN (!), and SATA. Looks like the one for me!!

Best Socket A board I ever owned was a Abit NF7-S with a 3000+ XP , it was rock solid, but I would presume by now you will have to replace the caps to get it stable.

Just bare in mind Socket 462 ran hot, even the nforce-2 NB ran extremely hot, so there are a lot of boards out there with a failed NB , make sure if you get one from ebay that it has a picture of it posting.

If you absolutely want ISA you have to stick to an older board, Abit KT7(-RAID) and KT7A(-RAID) are the only ones I know of.

Those are excellent mainboards, but they HAVE to be recapped, and are limited in which CPUs they support.

Mine is still sitting in a box, waiting for the day I get the motivation to recap it...

Abit NF7-S v2.0 - best AGP8X (used to run mobile Athlon at 2500MHz). Still have it boxed 😉
Abit KT7A v1.3 - best ISA (SDRAM PC133, supports newer AGP4X/8X cards and Athlon XP cpus but you are limited to 133MHz FSB + some OC. I run mine with mobile Athlon 2600+ with multi 15X = 2GHz). But you are severely limited by the SDRAM low memory throughput.

Well.... This is my AthlonXP build. I have gone with a Voodoo3 and a slow AthlonXP CPU.
The reason is, that I really don't like too fast a machine for Win98. They feel too "new".
Anyway... Here goes.

The machine have an Asus A7V266-E, 512mb Ram, Voodoo3-3500, YMF-724, and the
harddrives are two 40gb drives, set up as mirror on the raid controller.
It has an North-Q all cobber cooler, turned down in order to have lesser noise.

Not fast, just right for me.

oerk wrote:

If you absolutely want ISA you have to stick to an older board, Abit KT7(-RAID) and KT7A(-RAID) are the only ones I know of.

Those are excellent mainboards, but they HAVE to be recapped, and are limited in which CPUs they support.

Mine is still sitting in a box, waiting for the day I get the motivation to recap it...

Second that. ISA for DOS sound card support goes up to KT133A. I have an Abit KT7A and a Chaintech 7AJA2, both do a decent job and are in intermittent use. Neither needed to be recapped so far either.

brostenen wrote:

Well.... This is my AthlonXP build. I have gone with a Voodoo3 and a slow AthlonXP CPU. The reason is, that I really don't like […]
Show full quote

Well.... This is my AthlonXP build. I have gone with a Voodoo3 and a slow AthlonXP CPU.
The reason is, that I really don't like too fast a machine for Win98. They feel too "new".
Anyway... Here goes.

The machine have an Asus A7V266-E, 512mb Ram, Voodoo3-3500, YMF-724, and the
harddrives are two 40gb drives, set up as mirror on the raid controller.
It has an North-Q all cobber cooler, turned down in order to have lesser noise.

Not fast, just right for me.

take my advice, put a case fan in that thing, you don't want to run anything from this era XP or P4 without a case fan, preferably 2 of them.

Those are old pictures from back when I did the build. I have fitted a casefan in the back and on the sidepanel since then. 😀

if you are ever going to look for a NF7-S Rev 2.0
keep in mind the NF7-S2 is not the same board I think it's an easy mistake,

I think I will go with a later board, likely the Gigabyte GA-7VT880 Pro. I want a modern board for it. Do you think I'll be able to run XP on a build with that board and an Athlon XP 3200?