Agp is SS7/Slot 1 territory. So think K6-2 and Pentium 2. For 486 you are limited to motherboards with ISA only, VLB (32bit extended ISA) or pci and ISA. Also some other more obscure and rare slots like eisa and mca. I'd suggest checking out the Vogon's wiki 😀

ODwilly wrote:

Agp is SS7/Slot 1 territory. So think K6-2 and Pentium 2. For 486 you are limited to motherboards with ISA only, VLB (32bit extended ISA) or pci and ISA. Also some other more obscure and rare slots like eisa and mca. I'd suggest checking out the Vogon's wiki 😀

Hey, thank you very much for your fast reply 😊 What would you suggest then for AGP+PCI motherboard for MIDI playback? I would really love to get something close to Roland SC-55, maybe something software emulated?

EDIT: From what I could read on internet, SB Live supports soundfonts, do these work well in DOS games via Windows 98? If so, which model would you suggest to buy?

Honestly, if you want something that sounds like an SC-55, buy an SC-55 or 155 and connect it to the sound card via a joystick port to MIDI cable. I wouldn't recommend an SB Live for DOS gaming either. Its Soundblaster compatibility requires software drivers, which introduces compatibility problems, memory overhead, etc. An SB-16 (ISA) or AWE32/64 would serve you much better.

The motherboard has next to no bearing on MIDI playing, but if you're looking for an older setup than the one you've already got (486, Pentium, K6, etc) you might want to forget about AGP and use a PCI graphics card. You'll probably have an easier time finding a board.

Colek wrote:

ODwilly wrote:

Agp is SS7/Slot 1 territory. So think K6-2 and Pentium 2. For 486 you are limited to motherboards with ISA only, VLB (32bit extended ISA) or pci and ISA. Also some other more obscure and rare slots like eisa and mca. I'd suggest checking out the Vogon's wiki 😀

Hey, thank you very much for your fast reply 😊 What would you suggest then for AGP+PCI motherboard for MIDI playback? I would really love to get something close to Roland SC-55, maybe something software emulated?

EDIT: From what I could read on internet, SB Live supports soundfonts, do these work well in DOS games via Windows 98? If so, which model would you suggest to buy?

You can have AGP+PCI+ISA

Slot 1, Slot A, and SS7 are the types of boards you can get with that configuration.

There are some industrial boards that have newer sockets and ISA, but they generally will not work with ISA sound cards.

cyclone3d wrote:

There are some industrial boards that have newer sockets and ISA, but they generally will not work with ISA sound cards.

Yup, some are based around an ISA-derivative named PC104, I believe. Or use some sort of a modified LPC bus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC/104
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Pin_Count

ODwilly wrote:

Agp is SS7/Slot 1 territory. So think K6-2 and Pentium 2. For 486 you are limited to motherboards with ISA only, VLB (32bit extended ISA) or pci and ISA. Also some other more obscure and rare slots like eisa and mca.

Actually EISA was the 32-bit extension to ISA, not VLB. People might get confused because VLB adds extra pins to ISA, but those are actually a separate bus. Because of this the two are compatible - a single slot could accept either EISA or VLB, if it has all the pins.

Also I think VLB (one slot) and PCI could be found together. VLB on a 33 mhz bus was the same theoretical speed as PCI (again for one slot), which is 4x that of EISA (MCA was about the same in practice), which is 4x that of ISA.

VLB was supposed to support the 386DX but I don't know if that was ever done - the 386 is the one generation I have no firsthand familiarity with. I suspect 386s were stuck with ISA video cards, certainly a significant contributor to their poor performance in Doom.

Finally AGP would be quite impossible for 486s and I suppose the OP was just confused. It required at least a Pentium but was only really common in Pentium 2/3/4.

Some rare 386 motherboards had VLB like this one : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NudEusAMzr0 (okay that's a 386 and 486 combo motherboard but it's a 386-like CPU that's in there so this proves that it can work). Some other 386 motherboards had EISA and again, IBM did some 386s with MCA bus

Some 486 motherboards also had the combination of VLB + ISA + PCI (they are sometimes called "VIP"). I guess that the EISA + VLB + ISA also existed but it's probably more rare

koverhbarc wrote:

Also I think VLB (one slot) and PCI could be found together. VLB on a 33 mhz bus was the same theoretical speed as PCI (again for one slot), which is 4x that of EISA (MCA was about the same in practice), which is 4x that of ISA.

^THIS

You can find socket 3 (486) and even socket 4 and 5(rare) boards with all 3 - PCI, VLB and ISA. A good example is the FIC 486-VIP-IO:

It even has PS/2 mouse support.

Here's a pentium board (socket 4) with all 3:

Colek wrote:

But, I've been wondering if there are 486 mobos with AGP and ISA slots on them? I am looking for good compatibility in DOS games in regards to MIDI music. Or maybe there is another modern approach? I just love how MIDI music sounds on ex. Roland SC-55 or DreamBlaster X2 and would love to implement it in my setup. Could you guys let me know what could I do in regards to that?

Unless you have something that you know you really want to play on a 486, may I suggest considering DOSBox with MT-32 emulation?

I should add that there's also been talk of using a Raspberry Pi connected to a joystick port as a means of providing emulation.
Raspberry Pi + USB MIDI = General MIDI Module

Colek wrote:

EDIT: From what I could read on internet, SB Live supports soundfonts, do these work well in DOS games via Windows 98? If so, which model would you suggest to buy?

If I'm not mistaken, SB Live soundfont support only works for DOS games if you run them from an MS-DOS prompt while Windows is running – but this is actually an entirely adequate configuration for most cases. Even the RAM requirements for the DOS TSR are unlikely to cause problems. (Ultima 7 is a notable exception, but there are other ways to get that running.)

Hmm... after reading this, my first thought was that the OP must have mixed up '478' and '486'.... (?)

I reckon you're right (socket 478 is the CPU he has). I'm sure there's been previous discussion about Pentium 4 motherboards with ISA support, so I don't want to start another thread about it immediately; from what I just found, such necessarily have Intel 8xx chipsets, as none other recent enough for a fast CPU have ISA DMA support.

But I certainly would be interested - I've looked in the past, but I would want to be sure before spending money that I'll get real SB16 compatibility.

AGP card into PCI 486 could be superb overkill 😀

image source: http://bbs.yjfy.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread& … table&tid=12263

peklop wrote:

AGP card into PCI 486 could be superb overkill 😀

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but the AGP-to-PCI bridge chip found in these adapters, specially the chinese cheap ones, require PCI rev 3.0 with MSI-X style interrupts enabled to work. That means it will not work below P4 and Athlon XP chipset systems.

If you have luck, you may find one which requires only PCI rev 2.2 and only MSI style interrupts enabled, so it will work with some Socket 370 and Socket A systems. As far as is know none of these adapters will work with 440BX and below chipsets. This ofc means no 486/P/PMMX/P2/P3(Slot1)/Cyrix/KII/KIII system can support them.

This is not to mention the incredible bottleneck you will face on the PCI bus. AGP is designed to run GPUs with incredibly fast bandwidth to the rest of the machine, while PCI was meant for general purpose tasks, and even though it used to be used for graphics, today it's just a general purpose bus for lower speed cards.

Ampera wrote:

This is not to mention the incredible bottleneck you will face on the PCI bus. AGP is designed to run GPUs with incredibly fast bandwidth to the rest of the machine, while PCI was meant for general purpose tasks, and even though it used to be used for graphics, today it's just a general purpose bus for lower speed cards.

But for a 486 system there would be no point to even have an AGP slot since there would never be enough power to push a card that benefits from being AGP.

Now if you wanted to run it just for the fun of it.. sure, but I really see no market for something like that, especially for retro machines.

I don't think he mean 486, judging by the context of the OP's question it would appear he mean (socket) 478.
The only references I've found to 478 boards with ISA and AGP, are all older 845 chipset boards that wont run an 800mhz FSB CPU.

That's already been said - actually, there were 865/875 boards that would run a full 200/800 MHz FSB, but they appear to have all been bought by industrial legacy suppliers. If only one of us had bought a stock when they were freely available - that person could have made some profit, surely, in time. I'm sure the FSB speed makes a difference - but how big in games? We need a P4 shootout with 1600x1200 performance ... and I probably should start a new thread on P4 ISA after learning all the information available from the web and earlier threads here.

If I may also repeat earlier posts, that AGP adapter doesn't do what you'd hope is its speed will still be limited by the PCI bus; it can't give you an AGP slot you don't have. If you can't get the card you want in PCI, then maybe, but that's unlikely for a 486, which is hardly going to be running XP or the games of that generation.