They gave me an old computer with unknown motherboard, but I discovered that it mounts the SIS735 chipset with 256Mb of RAM and a Duron 1000, is it a computer that can be used in some way for DOS games or is it to be thrown away? I mean use of real DOS, without emulations or anything else, especially the PCI sound card in DOS, I have an ESS SOLO-1 available...
Tnks
For Ess Solo 1, ms-dos in TDMA mode, you need a VIA chipset motherboard (any socket) with a vt8233-vt8237 southbridge (that means socket A,s754 s939, sAM2, s478 and lga775). You need to find the 'right' slot, pci slots tend to share resources with other integrated devices (usb, onboard lan/sound) so that's why the card tends to not work in 'any' pci slot of the motherboard. Also you need to use, for best results, irq5/irq7 allocated on that slot (watch out for parallel/printer port conflicts, it can be set to use the same irqs). Solo will work on ddma mode also, any board with a i440BX or a vt8231/vt82c686 southbridge, but those are found on even older VIA and Intel boards (i440BX/VIA P3 / AMD slot A and early AMD kt133 socket A boards, which can have ISA slots). Solo 1 will work in dos on a motherboard with a SB-link header https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/qdi-p6 … 5-p2-platinix-2 no mater the chipset of the board, but those are hard to find.
For the SIS735 chipset you can try a Yamaha 724/744.
More info read this thread Recommend a PCI Sound Card for DOS, and this user ruthan has a great compatibility list with things i knew and some i didn't, so many thanks for his effort.
SiS 735 supports DDMA, so shouldn't that work with the Solo too?
1GHz Duron is pretty fast so you might need to employ some slowdown methods for many older games.
"Unknown" board with that chipset sounds suspiciously like an ECS K7S5A / PC Chips M830. The former has a black/brown PCB, the latter a red one, but they are technically the same board.
Two things to watch out for with that board:
- early BIOS revisions were badly buggy (as in: data corruption issues). I would hope all boards would have been upgraded (or thrown out) by now, but double-check once you are sure about which board it is.
- the 2002-era was peak capacitor plague time and these boards were by no means exempt. Assume all caps to be suspect unless proved otherwise (i.e. already replaced with good quality ones). In case of stability issues, check caps first of all.
dionb wrote on 2023-05-30, 15:07:SiS 735 supports DDMA, so shouldn't that work with the Solo too? […]
SiS 735 supports DDMA, so shouldn't that work with the Solo too?
1GHz Duron is pretty fast so you might need to employ some slowdown methods for many older games.
"Unknown" board with that chipset sounds suspiciously like an ECS K7S5A / PC Chips M830. The former has a black/brown PCB, the latter a red one, but they are technically the same board.
Two things to watch out for with that board:
- early BIOS revisions were badly buggy (as in: data corruption issues). I would hope all boards would have been upgraded (or thrown out) by now, but double-check once you are sure about which board it is.
- the 2002-era was peak capacitor plague time and these boards were by no means exempt. Assume all caps to be suspect unless proved otherwise (i.e. already replaced with good quality ones). In case of stability issues, check caps first of all.
I did try a Solo on a SIS 735 board, but didn't work at all (ECS K7S5A, black pcb) and also because of this '- early BIOS revisions were badly buggy (as in: data corruption issues)'. I like more their 486/pentium chipsets. From the 'newer' ones i stayed away.
So, i see it very complicated and need a discrete amount of time (that i not have now), i’m store this for fiture use, or if anyone want this board for test (considering his rarity)…
AlessandroB wrote on 2023-05-30, 16:12:So, i see it very complicated and need a discrete amount of time (that i not have now), i’m store this for fiture use, or if anyone want this board for test (considering his rarity)…
Is it the K7S5A? If so it's anything but rare, it was for over a year the cheapest Socket A motherboard you could buy - and for the first six months of that is was also arguably the fastest (it ran rings around ALi Magic 1 and Via KT266 boards). Sure, it had crappy build quality and those early BIOS were buggy, but the latter could be fixed with a simple upgrade. And it was CHEAP, less than EUR 50. For less than the price of a P3 (let alone a P4) you could have motherboard, GHz CPU and RAM. So round here (NL) it sold extremely well. I was a poor student at the time and this was my first Socket A board with my first GHz CPU on it. For that price I wouldn't have been able to afford a Mendocino + BX system (which was what I was upgrading from and had cost me twice as much). It served me reliably until I fished a "dead" nForce2-400 Ultra board out of a bin and I flashed it back to life.
So if it's a K7S5A it's anything but rare, but very interesting milestone.
*If* it's a K7S5A. Is it? Anything else with SiS735 is a rarity...
i will post a pics soon sonwe can judge
dionb wrote on 2023-05-30, 18:52:Is it the K7S5A? If so it's anything but rare, it was for over a year the cheapest Socket A motherboard you could buy - and for […]
AlessandroB wrote on 2023-05-30, 16:12:So, i see it very complicated and need a discrete amount of time (that i not have now), i’m store this for fiture use, or if anyone want this board for test (considering his rarity)…
Is it the K7S5A? If so it's anything but rare, it was for over a year the cheapest Socket A motherboard you could buy - and for the first six months of that is was also arguably the fastest (it ran rings around ALi Magic 1 and Via KT266 boards). Sure, it had crappy build quality and those early BIOS were buggy, but the latter could be fixed with a simple upgrade. And it was CHEAP, less than EUR 50. For less than the price of a P3 (let alone a P4) you could have motherboard, GHz CPU and RAM. So round here (NL) it sold extremely well. I was a poor student at the time and this was my first Socket A board with my first GHz CPU on it. For that price I wouldn't have been able to afford a Mendocino + BX system (which was what I was upgrading from and had cost me twice as much). It served me reliably until I fished a "dead" nForce2-400 Ultra board out of a bin and I flashed it back to life.
So if it's a K7S5A it's anything but rare, but very interesting milestone.
*If* it's a K7S5A. Is it? Anything else with SiS735 is a rarity...
The quality was generally bad on all of their boards, around that era, for me it was the https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/ecs-k7vza-3.0 , the black pcb variant from Mercury (Kobian/Mercury KT133a FSX), caps were terrible and it eventually died (due to my fault also, improper storage/heavy corrosion) but still have it in my 'parts' bin. The nice 'quirks' of the board were decent fsb266 support (stable) and the presence of the sound blaster emulation option in the bios (it has a vt1611a sound codec and the vt82c686B southbridge) other then that, the bios was 'poor' in OC/Speed related options as their boards usually are.
