I thought there were some P4 motherboards that had an ISA slot, or maybe those were for industrial systems and not entirely suitable for general computing.

sliderider wrote:

I thought there were some P4 motherboards that had an ISA slot, or maybe those were for industrial systems and not entirely suitable for general computing.

Yes, they're from SuperMicro, like this one: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboar … E7210/P4SCA.cfm

I'm told that the ISA slots are provided for compatibility primarily with older measurement equipment (scopes and analyzers from places like HP or Agilent) that would be prohibitively expensive to replace simply because your new computer is "too new" - I don't see why you couldn't put more mainstream ISA devices in though. I think the bigger catch would be driver support - the board above only supports Windows 2000, XP, and 2003; so if your hardware only has drivers for Windows 3.1 or 95, it probably won't be workable with that system.

I have no idea how easy one of those boards would be to find either. You'd probably be better off looking for a Pentium 3 board with ISA slots - like the Tyan S1854 or Abit BH6. You won't have the processing power of a Pentium 4, but you get AGP, and they should work with older versions of Windows.

A Slot 1 board with a S370 adapter and a ~ 1 GHz CPU (Remember that 133 FSB means overclocking, there are 100 MHz FSB parts) is the easiest option.

Tualatin boards with ISA slots are harder to find and I believe most have a VIA chipset. To be honest the difference between a 1 GHz and 1.4 GHz system might not be worth the trouble.

To give you an idea how fast a 1.4 GHz Tualatin is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lozF7Nx97j8

There are late DOS games that will have issues with CPUs that fast. So the question is: What games do you want to run?

Many late DOS games also support 3DFX voodoo, which means a CPU of that calibre isn't really necessary.

There are pretty fast athlon boards with an isa slot or two [but I'm not an expert - is it kt266? 333? 133?].

There are socket 775 and socket 478 boards with ISA slots. I've tried a few 478 boards for dos gaming as have a few others on here, but the boards don't come up all that often [and due to industrial target audience] often are pricey.

Don't know if the 775s are any good.

An alternative would be a backplane-based industrial pc board - "single board computer" - though again fastest is going to be 775/478 I think if you want them compatible with a pci/isa backplane. But they are far more common on ebay than atx boards.

Well - I have three Tyan 1854 pentium III boards - I went with those because they still have one ISA slot, allowing me to keep my AWE64 cards in use

At the time I thought pentium III was about as high as you could go and keep ISA

There are lots of industrial motherboards with ISA slots. I myself have an i845GL iBASE MB800H hosting P4 Northwood 3066 with three ISA slots and AGP. There are faster solutions even. Some people report working i865 ITOX and Soltek mobos. I even recall someone reporting a Q965 Commell P4BWA (Core 2 Duo) working.

Modern industrial solutions offer up to Core i7 mobos with ISA slots and PCI-E graphics, but whether those mobos work with ISA sound cards is yet an unanswered question. They are expensive and no one wishes to endure the risks.

Also, newer systems sometimes show compatibility issues. Known to me are:
- Voodoo 2 cards won't work on an iBASE MB800H
- AV310 sound card refuses to work with i865 ITOX board

Thanks for all those "industrial solution" but those boads cost a fortune! Actually my project changed a bit when I realised I could run the sblive into "real" dos 7 and that live players by Lada Kopecky could drive the emu10000. Took me ages to find APSLIVE driver, got an old version, but that's something (Anyone know where to find the latest ones?). So I got a p4 2.53ghz running win98se with that sblive, can run some stuff like : Played a bit of Kyrandia on windows sb16 emulation, and Duke3d Manathan project with the amd 6600fanless and sblive, was a hell of a ride, babe! I still have no really any clue on how to use the sblive on dos 7.. it kind of work ...

You guys are forgetting that there are quite a few socket A motherboards with ISA slots, and these are WAY more common then socket 478 or tualatin compatible boards with ISA slots. Some KT133 and KT266 still retain an ISA slot. With a little modding it's possible to run a fast socket A CPU in one of these boards, even a Barton core.

slot ... I dont know why but I hate slot shit ! I'm a kind of "socket or nothing" guy. Slot ? no ! made me feel like I'm planting an old nintendo video game cardridge into me motherboard, no thanks.

One of my favourites is the DFI CA61 Socket 370 Motherboard. Though, I'm not fond of the VIA Chipset on this board, and had some issues with RAM when FSB is run at 133MHz, but generally, I had good experience with it with all DOS games. Was using Coppermine 1GHz processor at that time.

Great for newer DOS games in pure DOS, and support for ISA slots - including flawless LAPC-I /MPU-401 Intelligent mode operation. Goes well with any Win9x iteration.
With enough RAM and fast processor, will be good enough for WinXP.

The issues with the RAM and FSB can be found here.

Edit : As a general rule when approaching hybrid builds, when it comes to pure DOS, I find it the situation to be most comfortable and most compatible to use 66MHz FSB, if the motherboard supports selecting it.

ElBrunzy wrote:

slot ... I dont know why but I hate slot shit ! I'm a kind of "socket or nothing" guy. Slot ? no ! made me feel like I'm planting an old nintendo video game cardridge into me motherboard, no thanks.

He said socket A with ISA slots. Not slot CPU.

I could be wrong, but hasn't this been brought up before, and it was noted that the ISA slots on some (if not all) of these modern industrial boards are slightly gimped?

Something to do with how the ISA bus is implemented, non-maskable interrupts or something like that.

SquallStrife wrote:

I could be wrong, but hasn't this been brought up before, and it was noted that the ISA slots on some (if not all) of these modern industrial boards are slightly gimped?

Something to do with how the ISA bus is implemented, non-maskable interrupts or something like that.

The post I think you are responding to is dated Jan 2014..
Yes the 'modern' industrial boards use an ISA bridge chip which doesn't work and play well with ISA sound cards.
.

malik: that board seem really great. I've heard of trouble about via chipset but I have some and never experience any problems with them. My win98 computer is a via 133 mhz chip and it's quite stable. It even let me install GTA San Andreas fully to just then tell me it wasnt supported on win9x...

pcbonez : you are right, I'm sorry, I always mismatch slot A and slot 1 and socket A. I always forget some slot A cpu existed... I have yet to see, in a way slot cpu are very close to ppro cpu as the l2 cache is exterior but in a private bus.

ElBrunzy wrote:

pcbonez : you are right, I'm sorry, I always mismatch slot A and slot 1 and socket A. I always forget some slot A cpu existed... I have yet to see, in a way slot cpu are very close to ppro cpu as the l2 cache is exterior but in a private bus.

No need to apologize. There are certain things I brain-fart all the time.
.

pcbonez : yes but it wasnt a brain-fart, it was me being drunk and careless, that's why I feel the need to apologise

ElBrunzy wrote:

pcbonez : yes but it wasnt a brain-fart, it was me being drunk and careless, that's why I feel the need to apologise

Okay. So it was a wet brain fart. No worries.

I dont know why this didnt hit me before, but that text from obobskivich just bother me now. He say, and I quote :
"I'm told that the ISA slots are provided for compatibility primarily with older measurement equipment (scopes and analyzers from places like HP or Agilent) that would be prohibitively expensive to replace simply because your new computer is "too new" - I don't see why you couldn't put more mainstream ISA devices in though. I think the bigger catch would be driver support - the board above only supports Windows 2000, XP, and 2003; so if your hardware only has drivers for Windows 3.1 or 95, it probably won't be workable with that system."
I dont think that drivers was the issue, my guess was that dropping support for old generation stuff here easy to cut on the chipset, at an hardware level, less transistor writings to be done and "old" connectors are always costly to implement to make deal with newer stuff. from editing that paragragh this sentence subsite, instead of to delete, I will just put it here : "why are not the way to do it no more."

Enjoy:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/6/1/ … 3456c/isaw2.doc