Some of mine from the past;
Acer Open AP5C - my first Pentium board - still have it with the original P-90. It had lots of bios updates when first it came out.
Asus A7V133-Raid - still have it with the Thunderbird 1.4 CPU
Tyan S1590 - K6III 450 - loved this board - never should have sold it
Asus P65UP5/C-P55T2D motherboard combo - dual Pentium 233MX - still have it
Abit BF6 - I miss it - never should have sold it
Abit BH6 - same thing ...
Abit BE6 - I never learn ...
Asus Crosshair IV - nice solid reliable board with a good feature set - still using it now

ASUS P2B-VM
- SLOT 1, works well with coppermines with slotket
- mATX
- ESS Solo-1 sound
- AGP (when no integrated graphics)
- PCI
- ISA

There isn't much it doesn't have, if you want a decent P2/P3 platform for testing AGP, PCI and ISA cards.

I like the "Aopen AP5T" mainboard.

This is an older AT (not ATX) style board, it has both ISA and PCI
slots...

But the reason I like it ... when developing ImageDisk, I tried several
different systems and of the ones I had, the AP5T worked best!

It's floppy controller could handle more non-standard formats than many
mainboards. Single density, 250/300/500kbps, full range of possible sector
sizes and number of sectors/track etc.

Of all the boards I tried, it could read/write more non-PC formats that
most of the others. It quickly became my official ImageDisk system!

I liked it so much I bought a second AP5T and put it away - just to have
a spare.

A few years ago, as part of downsizing, I sold the original ImageDisk system
- but so many people have asked to be continue to support ImageDisk that I
dug out the other board (still in box), mounted it with a power-supply and
a few other parts (switches, speaker, a bar to hold cards etc.) on a piece
of wood (no chance finding an AT case + I wanted to keep it small)
- and now I have a second ImageDisk system!

One of my favorites is the Asus CUBX-E.

440BX with a Promise ATA100 controller makes for a great combo.

I use a P3 1.4 almost daily with that motherboard to play old games, lately I've been playing through the Heroes 3 expansions and UT99 for the millionth time.

I use a powerleap adaptor to run the CPU and it's rock solid, the TI4200 video card has no issue with the out of spec AGP speed. I also have modded bios that identifies Tualatin processors are "Tualerons" for some reason.

Full system specs:
Asus CUBX-E
Pentium 3-s 1.4ghz
512MB PC133 CL2
Asus TI4200 128MB
Soundblaster Audigy
Startech Gigabit NIC
Kingston 128GB CF card
2 x DVD-ROM

PcBytes wrote on 2025-03-30, 09:51:

Aladim wrote on 2025-03-30, 04:09:

Nice collection! Question: which is "right BIOS" for this board that you mentioned? Digging some ancient discussions from 2003 […]
Show full quote

PcBytes wrote on 2024-08-05, 13:31:

Let's see. None listed in order. […]
Show full quote

Let's see. None listed in order.

- ABIT BE6-II HPT366 - best Slot 1 I could ever ask for. Proper 133FSB operation, lotsa IDE to work with, overclock options galore.
- Soyo 6BA +IV - sort of an indirect sibling to the BE6. It can't really overclock due to the PLL chip used, but has almost never crashed.
- Luckystar 6BX2 - small AT board that has a lot of potential with a BIOS mod. VRM is totally Coppermine compatible, but BIOS never had a chance to get the support. Patched my BIOS and it runs great.
- Gateway Tabor 3 - built upon the WS440BX, this thing is literally A TITAN. I mean it - only the ABIT and Soyo have come as close as being that rock solid.
- ECS K7VZA - neat, cheap and stable KT133A mobo, as long as you were using Shuttle's version of the BIOS (ECS' BIOS was just crap, period.). Have ran Windows ME on it with zero crashes... on an IBM Deskstar 20GB (60GXP) no less. (although I assume the 60GXP is one of the metal platter Deskstars, similar to the 34GXP I own)
- ECS K7S5A - neat small OC gremlin once recapped and flashed with the right BIOS. Mine sports Rubycons and polymer caps as of speaking.
- ABIT NF7 and NF7-S v2.0 - great boards (one is without SATA), Taipan BIOS does wonders with a mobile chip
- Soltek SL-75FRN2-RL - almost the holy grail of nForce 2. Forget the mess that is A7N8X, this is one of the kings, along with the NF7 and DFI's Lanparty NF2 Ultra B. Took me almost a decade to find a working one, it now paid off.
- ASRock P4Dual-915GL - microATX monster that can expand your GPU horizon greatly. Did I mention that thanks to the 915 chipset, it runs HD7800/7900 cards?
- ASUS CUSL2 - one of the few great ASUS boards, long before their quality took a plummet into the ground worse than Mayday. Like seriously, their later 775 boards (945 onwards) quality were worse than ECS.
- ASUS P5P800 and ASRock 775i65PE - neat 865 based 775 boards. Unfortunately both are limited to P4 and Pentium D as far as I remember, at least in ASRock's case.
- FIC P4M-RS350 - very interesting microATX mobo, with an onboard Radeon 9100. Found one OEM'd by Medion (which I fortunately managed to flash back to FIC). Depending on what CPU you have, different splash screens appear - I currently replaced the one for Celeron but might have to work something up for P4/P4HT as well.

Nice collection!
Question: which is "right BIOS" for this board that you mentioned?
Digging some ancient discussions from 2003 around the web I saw people mentioning HoneyX 0811 modded bios - is this the "right" one?

I'll have to check, I think it's one of the other between HoneyX or the Oerg866 modified version of CheepoBIOS

EDIT: I think it's Cheepo, didn't quite like HoneyX and I recall using Cheepo quite a lot even before Oerg's mods.

I tried both yesterday. With HoneyX, the system would not detect the sound card (YMF724) both in pure DOS and WIN98SE fresh install. It worked out when I used the last CheepoBIOS (CheepoBIOS 1.21 beta, AGP FastWrites off + Better IRQ routing table & unlocked IRQ/DMA options by Oerg866).

The motherboard seems to get very hot (still OK to touch) around the VRM regulator, including the ATX20 connector. I put a fan on this region while testing.
Normal behavior? I didn't notice this using other OEMs boards (SIS and VIA chipset) for Athlon CPUs using the same components and PSU.

Mine didn't exhibit that but in my case I fully recapped the entire board.

Already mentioned the CUBX-E but I also have warm feelings for the 7IXE, BP6, 8RDA+ and DK8EW...

Do any of you have a fav motherboard in your list that you didnt own?

That one AOpen board with a tube mounted for the audio part is just awesome. Never seen or owned one.

I would've never dreamed of owning a MSI MS-6168, and now here I am close to getting my 2nd one 🤣

Well, if I had to choose between the various sockets, I would say for me the S.370 was the one initially longest, just recently, I tried an ABIT SE6 with P3-1000, which I had fixed some time ago, previously I had done the same with an ABIT SA6, which I upgraded to P3S-1400, too bad that the i815 cards do not go beyond 512 MB of RAM, to go beyond I have a couple of VIA chipset cards, one is QDI Advance 10T, the other is an MSI, both support Tualatin, in the QDI I have a P3S-1266, in the MSI a Celeron 1200.

DFI Lanparty Ultra-D Ran DDR 500mhz Winbond chips @ CL 2,2,2,4 1T. It took like 3.5v and the board would let you run the memory off the 3v rail which you then needed to overvolted to get those clocks.

PcBytes wrote on 2025-03-31, 17:16:

Mine didn't exhibit that but in my case I fully recapped the entire board.

The board is in perfect condition, caps are original but looking OK. I will recap this one in the future. It goes into storage until I get the caps - reason below.

Never lost a CPU before in my whole 34 years of PC building and tinkering. However, one CPU died yesterday (Athlon 2400 AXDA2400DKV3C) running 3DMark2001 (no overclock) on the K7S5A.

I got this CPU used some months ago, I don't know if it was abused by a previous owner or the K7S5A had something to do with it. As the whole VRM was hot, I reversed the fan on the CPU to suck air instead of blowing to prevent hot air from the CPU cooler heating up even more the motherboard VRM. Normally the difference in performance should be minimal for the CPU, but old hardware doesn't have all sensors to keep an eye and it might have been just enough to kill it. This board doesn't have temperature warning in BIOS like some had during this period. I was using an Alpha PAL 6035 cooler (easy to install and remove) which should be enough for this CPU under stock conditions, I might consider using other coolers in the future on this specific board to direct the warm air from the CPU elsewhere.

PD2JK wrote on 2025-03-31, 19:35:

That one AOpen board with a tube mounted for the audio part is just awesome. Never seen or owned one.

I remember when they released that one. It was super expensive at the time and the reviews of it said it has some kind of interference problem on the sound.
I always kinda wanted one though... Theres a guy in London trying to sell one but wants over a grand for it and I just aint into it that much.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2025-03-31, 21:05:

PD2JK wrote on 2025-03-31, 19:35:

That one AOpen board with a tube mounted for the audio part is just awesome. Never seen or owned one.

I remember when they released that one. It was super expensive at the time and the reviews of it said it has some kind of interference problem on the sound.
I always kinda wanted one though... Theres a guy in London trying to sell one but wants over a grand for it and I just aint into it that much.

Same... Such a beautiful board. I would love to have one to mess around with. 😀

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/aopen-ax4b-533-tube

Sadly, I don't ever see that happening. They're about as rare as a unicorn these days, and cost even more.

On a side note.... I would LOVE to get my hands on one of the risers for my EPIA-800 boards, the EXT-PCIG specifically, so I could build a second EPIA-800 system, but with a dedicated GPU.

I could try a standard PCI riser, but I've read most standard risers don't work for some reason.

I can find some on eBay, but I'm not paying $21 to ship it to the US from Germany. 😜