First post, by Jupiter-18
I'm looking into this board as a possible base for another build. Solid quality, seems highly rated, Asus makes good stuff (i have a p5a and i love it), and there are loads on ebay. But therein lies the problem: WHICH ONE??? 😵
It seems there are several main variants: (all retain 4 PCI, 3 ISA, 1 Asus Media Bus extension (why i want it), and a COAST aka cache on a stick slot)
One has 4 72-pin SIMM slots and sockets for cache chips. It also seems to sometimes have a VRM socket for a voltage regulator module for higher power CPUS, though that is not usually populated. Would i need it? Planning on a Cyrix 6x86mx-200.
The next has a single SDRAM DIMM slot added on and the cache chip sockets replaced by four smd chips
Another has the DIMM slot removed (not just depopulated, but totally gone), and the four smd chips remain
Next on the list has only SIMM slots and two of the SMD chips are gone, replaced by a larger Intel chipset-looking chip (smaller than the other chipset-type chips seen on the others), and the other chipset chip is the usual larger one.
Yet another variant has TWO DIMM slots alongside the SIMM slots and those four smd chips are back - appears to be a revisionary difference of number 2
They all have different model numbers too, but i'm hesitant to label any of these due to possible ebay inaccuracy. It breaks down to:
P/I-P55T2P4
P/I-P55TP4XE
P/I-P55TP4N
P/I-P55TVP4
There are countless revisions too and it all just gets overwhelming!
Could someone please explain the differences, what to look out for, and which one would best suit my needs? I'm just looking for a fun DOS build but as always I want the maximum best. If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing!
Thank you so much! If you want or need pictures i will try to provide them [read: rip them from ebay!] 😁