Motherboard suggestions for i810 (or better) PIII Coppermine? Needs either SB-Link header or YMF744 onboard audio. \ VOGONS

Motherboard suggestions for i810 (or better) PIII Coppermine? Needs either SB-Link header or YMF744 onboard audio.

Topic actions

Post a reply

First post, by Autumn Able

Posted on 2022-10-09, 07:56

Autumn Able Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 10
Joined: 2021-07-11, 13:47
Location: Georgia, USA

I have an old HP Pavilion xt953 that uses an ASUS CUW-AM (Tortuga) MicroATX motherboard and a 1Ghz Coppermine Pentium III. The integrated hardware in it is total garbage though as it only has the Intel integrated graphics and a Crystal CS4299 software audio codec with no DOS support whatsoever. What's even worse is that there is no SB-Link header to be found on it, so even if I tried to use a better soundcard (YMF744) for DOS I would run into problems. It also lack an AGP slot, but that's not that big a deal as I have an FX5500 PCI that should cover most things decently well in it. Anyways, what motherboards out there are similar enough for me to replace it with that have either an SB-Link header, or already have a YMF744 (or YMF724) chip onboard so I don't have to worry about upgrading? Would be even better if it had something like Tualatin support, but I'm pushing my luck already.

Reply 1 of 5, by AlexZ

Posted on 2022-10-09, 08:08

AlexZ Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 457
Joined: 2021-05-28, 18:54

Get a 440BX motherboard or Via 694X / 694T with ISA slot at least GeForce FX 5600 AGP and ISA sound card (Sound Blaster, ESS, Yamaha). Avoid crystal sound cards and PCI graphics cards.

Pentium III 900E, ECS P6BXT-A+, 384MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 128MB, Voodoo 2 12MB, 80GB HDD, Yamaha SM718 ISA, 19" AOC 9GlrA
Athlon 64 3400+, MSI K8T Neo V, 1GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7600GT 512MB, 250GB HDD, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

Reply 2 of 5, by Joseph_Joestar

Posted on 2022-10-09, 08:23

Joseph_Joestar Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 4444
Joined: 2019-10-31, 21:14
Location: Europe

This might help: List of motherboards with SB-link (PC/PCI) header

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 3 of 5, by Zeerex

Posted on 2022-10-09, 11:43

Zeerex Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 119
Joined: 2022-02-21, 04:33

I recommend trying with an ESS Solo first. The compatibility is fantastic without needing SB-Link. You can see Phil’s comparison of both at 9:50 here https://youtu.be/e14dFZWi2eI

Reply 4 of 5, by bloodem

Posted on 2022-10-09, 11:50

bloodem Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1617
Joined: 2020-01-17, 08:10
Location: Romania

Zeerex wrote on 2022-10-09, 11:43:

I recommend trying with an ESS Solo first. The compatibility is fantastic without needing SB-Link. You can see Phil’s comparison of both at 9:50 here https://youtu.be/e14dFZWi2eI

It really depends on which games you play. For me personally, ESS Solo-1 compatibility (without SB-Link) is "meh" at best.
I get much better (though not perfect) results with Yamaha YMF7x4 cards.

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 5 of 5, by Autumn Able

Posted on 2022-10-10, 00:00

Autumn Able Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 10
Joined: 2021-07-11, 13:47
Location: Georgia, USA

I did find one that checks most of the boxes: A Gigabyte GA-6WMM7. Some versions have an onboard YMF744, and as an added bonus the later revisions support Tualeron CPUs natively. Now I just have to find one.

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to General Old Hardware

Main menu

Common searches