What are the goals for the system? OS you're going to run? Other hardware you plan on installing? High end Win9x gaming?

There are tons of choices for Socket A boards that support the Athlon XP 3000+. I would recommend a nForce2 board that has a P4 power connector to alleviate 5V rail load.

Do you need and ISA slot? If so, that limits you to a KT133A based board (Abit KT7a series has modified BIOS for Barton) or a Biostar M7MIA (incredibly hard to find).

If no ISA slot is needed AND you don't need DOS sound, then an nForce 2 Ultra based board is your best best.

If you need DOS sound with a PCI sound card then you will most likely want to get something else besides an nVidia chipset based board.

Sorry about my lack of information. This is an already built Windows 98SE machine (plus unofficial SP) with a 1.3ghz Athlon, 768mb ram, a Geforce 4 440 MX 64mb AGP card. I wanted to upgrade the processor to the new one but my board doesn't support it. Don't need ISA, have a Sound Blaster Live! value card installed. However, the sound card was put in before I built my DOS machine, so I don't necessarily need DOS sound.

tomexplodes wrote on 2020-10-24, 17:38:

Sorry about my lack of information. This is an already built Windows 98SE machine (plus unofficial SP) with a 1.3ghz Athlon, 768mb ram, a Geforce 4 440 MX 64mb AGP card. I wanted to upgrade the processor to the new one but my board doesn't support it. Don't need ISA, have a Sound Blaster Live! value card installed. However, the sound card was put in before I built my DOS machine, so I don't necessarily need DOS sound.

I recently ran into the DOS sound issue as I wasn't aware of it. I built a socket 754 running an Athlon64 3000+ and originally purchase an NForce 3 board. It was rock solid and ran Windows 98 beautifully, but then I tried a DOS game from within Windows and pure DOS with an SB Live, even though the DOS driver was loaded the games wouldn't detect the sound card. I switched to an SIS KT800 and everything runs fine.

Maybe you don't need to run DOS games, but they were still common in 1997 and 1998. Some even came out after 2000. So be aware the sound issue isn't just with DOS mode but also affects the DOS Prompt within Windows 98.

SScorpio wrote on 2020-10-24, 22:58:

tomexplodes wrote on 2020-10-24, 17:38:

Sorry about my lack of information. This is an already built Windows 98SE machine (plus unofficial SP) with a 1.3ghz Athlon, 768mb ram, a Geforce 4 440 MX 64mb AGP card. I wanted to upgrade the processor to the new one but my board doesn't support it. Don't need ISA, have a Sound Blaster Live! value card installed. However, the sound card was put in before I built my DOS machine, so I don't necessarily need DOS sound.

I recently ran into the DOS sound issue as I wasn't aware of it. I built a socket 754 running an Athlon64 3000+ and originally purchase an NForce 3 board. It was rock solid and ran Windows 98 beautifully, but then I tried a DOS game from within Windows and pure DOS with an SB Live, even though the DOS driver was loaded the games wouldn't detect the sound card. I switched to an SIS KT800 and everything runs fine.

Maybe you don't need to run DOS games, but they were still common in 1997 and 1998. Some even came out after 2000. So be aware the sound issue isn't just with DOS mode but also affects the DOS Prompt within Windows 98.

That is because the nForce chipsets have 0 compatibility for DOS sound as far as I am aware. Has anybody gotten DOS sound working on a nForce board?

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-24, 23:44:

That is because the nForce chipsets have 0 compatibility for DOS sound as far as I am aware. Has anybody gotten DOS sound working on a nForce board?

I'm not sure if they can. The issue is they are missing backwards compatibility that allows mapping of the IO ports (ie 220, 338, etc) to the PCI slots. It looks like the mapping request succeeds so the drivers report they loaded, but they don't work when something tries to use them.

So in the event that I may need DOS sound for something at some point, what's a better choice?

My recommendation would be for a board with the VIA KT600 / VT8237 chipset, more specifically the Asus A7V600-X. I own two of these myself, and besides having rock solid stability, it also has many useful features (such as the ability to disable the CPU L1/L2 cache and downclock the CPU to 500MHz - if the CPU has an unlocked multiplier, of course)
Pair it with a GeForce 4 TI 4200/4400/4600 and a Yamaha YMF7x4 sound card (which has a real OPL3 FM), and you can basically play 98% of all games released between the 1980s and 2001 (some even newer than that).
I’m a big fan of “time machine” PCs, and this combination is BY FAR my favorite.

The only downside with this board is the lack of a CPU power connector (but I think this will be the case for most VIA KT600 motherboards). So you would need a PSU with beefy 3.3/5v rails (especially if you are planning on using that Athlon XP 3000+ CPU).

That all sounds lovely. If I can find one for a reasonable price, I'll probably grab one. Assuming my 750w power supply has the necessary rails.

Well, your 750W PSU is definitely too new, so, at best, it probably has 25 amps for the 3.3/5v rails (and a max combined wattage of 130w or so). Unfortunately that’s not going to cut it. You’d need an old PSU with 32amps or more, and 180w+ combined wattage (just to be on the safe side).

However, if you go with a lower powered Athlon XP 2000+ Thoroughbred CPU, you could get away with a newer high quality PSU. You need to test and see for yourself. If the system boots, that’s a first sign of good news. But be sure to also monitor the voltages on the 3.3/5v rails. If voltages drop below spec, change the PSU.

Well, since I just want to go with mostly what I already have, is there another motherboard option that would work?

EDIT: I do also have a couple 200w PSUs hanging about. I'll check out the specs on them and get back to you here (at some point.)

EDIT AGAIN: Alternatively, a PSU recommendation wouldn't hurt, haha.

one more edit: Here's my 730w PSU that I'm currently using.

The only way in which you could safely use any modern PSU with a Barton 3000+, would be to find a motherboard with the 12V CPU power connector.
Unfortunately, I've never had a VIA KT600/880 motherboard with this connector. Apparently there are some out there, but they're probably rare. Furthermore, for a time machine PC, I would avoid the KT880 motherboards anyway, because their BIOS seems to lack certain features (like disabling both the L1 and L2 cache). KT400 or older are not good, since your CPU needs a 400MHz FSB - so that leaves us with KT600. Good luck finding one with the CPU power connector. 😀

If you give up the idea of building a time machine PC with DOS capabilities, then you can take into account an nForce 2 Ultra board (and many of those do have the CPU connector).

Personally, I can recommend the Thermaltake TR2-470W PSU. It has a combined 3.3V+5V max wattage of 220W and can handle anything up to a Barton 3200+ without any issues.

EDIT: Your PSU has a max combined wattage of 700+W for all rails. The 3.3V and 5V rails are probably DC-DC converted from 12V. Also, the 3.3V and 5V are pretty solid with 25Amps each, so there's a chance it might work OK (if those values are real, I'm not very familiar with Raidmax PSUs). You'll just have to test, but remember to monitor the voltages. If you see the 5V rail drop below 4.8V, that's a good sign that the PSU can't handle the current.

I will parse all this information in my head for a bit. Thank you very much for all your help, it is very much appreciated. I'm obviously still learning about old hardware all the time, but that's half the fun! Thanks again.

Sadly, I can't find an Asus A7V600-X motherboard for less than 80-100 dollars, and that's a lot more than I want to put into this particular build, especially since I may also need a new power supply. Not sure if the RAM I have is compatible either, I'd have to check.

EDIT: Would either of these be good choices?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Leadtek-WinFast-K7NC … 7kAAOSwGbldFRJw
https://www.ebay.com/itm/EPoX-EP-8RDAEI-Socke … A4AAOSwBdRfVjVW

Both those boards support the Athlon XP, so both are suitable for your CPU. Not sure that they will be suitable for the later XP CPUs though as they are an early chipset.

debs3759 wrote on 2020-10-25, 22:51:

Both those boards support the Athlon XP, so both are suitable for your CPU. Not sure that they will be suitable for the later XP CPUs though as they are an early chipset.

Okay, thank you!

Been a while since I looked at chipset specifics. KT600 only supports single channel DDR, while the nForce2 Ultra supports dual channel.

The KT880 chipset supports dual channel DDR but from what I am finding is even more crazy priced than the KT600 boards.

Back in the day, I wasn't such a fan of the newer VIA based boards. The nForce2 Ultra was the chipset to get. Not sure what all I have now as far as Socket A boards with VIA chipsets past KT133A. I know I have a KT333 board though.

I would recommend an Abit motherboard because they come with the 4 pin power connector and you can use the PSU that you already have - specifically Abit KV7 with VIA KT600 chipset. It supports all socket 462 CPUs and every 1.5V AGP video card ever made up to geforce 7800gs! It also fully supports DOS, it is easy to find and relatively cheap!

nd22 wrote on 2020-10-26, 04:38:

I would recommend an Abit motherboard because they come with the 4 pin power connector and you can use the PSU that you already have - specifically Abit KV7 with VIA KT600 chipset. It supports all socket 462 CPUs and every 1.5V AGP video card ever made up to geforce 7800gs! It also fully supports DOS, it is easy to find and relatively cheap!

I'm having trouble finding one for cheap, but thanks for the recommend!