sledge wrote on 2020-01-25, 22:40:

Went through this thought exercise many times :) […]
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Went through this thought exercise many times 😀

- faster 486DX CPU, maybe Pentium 1
- 8-16MB RAM
- S3 Virge / Trio based GPU
- SB compatible sound card with real OPL3
- flash based storage, 2x2GB
- not too big, not too small, 11"-13"
- USB flash support, CF card slot
- internal Gotek
- relatively high DPI display for pixel perfect (or near perfect) scaling, lets say 4:3 1600x1200 (320x200 -> 1600x1200) + some hardware scalers
- buttons for brightness and volume
- paralel port, LAN

Im pretty close to this - I suggest starting with something like the 430hx agate MB, with built in wifi/ethernet and maybe 3-4 usb ports, so usb mouse/kb/thumb drives could all be used concurrently if desired. USB 2.p please. I'd prefer more like 32-48mb ram to keep the disk swapping low in win9x. And more bios options to take a 200mhz p1 and throttle the CPU down to 486 or 386 speeds even, for dos support. Built in SB16 support. 120gb hdd support.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2020-01-26, 01:11:

The unfortunate thing about all of this is that the Mini ITX standard had already shed standards like ISA/AGP, so there aren't really any small motherboards that have ISA, beyond the PC partner MVP3 board 😁
Maybe that with some risers and a 3d printed case??

There are other small form factors that have/had ISA and/or PCI support.

I have a parts on the way and should be able to make 4 different test setups (or rather.. 4 different base configurations). I will have to probably end up designing or adapting a PCI and an ISA riser. In the end, I will probably design risers and either have the full plans available or produce and sell them IF I have the time and the price ends up not being super high.

So far the CPU speeds I will have available for testing are:
Cyrix MediaGX 266Mhz
Vortex86 500Mhz
Pentium III 850Mhz
Celeron 1.2Ghz

Hoping to be able to have 3 ISA and 3 PCI slots if everything can be crammed together like I think it can.