Other Super Socket 7 boards have SB-Link headers and work (VIA MVP3), and ALi chipsets should support it (being from the same era). Not all manufacturers implemented the header. Full functionality may differ on PC/PCI (DMA) and S-IRQ (Serialised IRQ) support though. Try soldering a header and see?

Solder?? 😳 No-no. Not on vintage hardware. 😁 Was only qurious about this. 🤣

There are more than just the header missing.
It has pads for resistors or something else, that are unpopulated.

Well, it seems like a feature on the updated version - P5A v1.04 doesn't have the header pads when I did a quick search.

I found a pic of an ASUS P5A rev 1.04, but it doesn't have the SB-Link header nor pads for it

http://mail.lipsia.de/~enigma/neu/pics/mainbo … rd_asus_p5a.jpg

ASUS P5A-B (Baby AT version) seems to no have SB-Link nor pads for it

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/image … 8L._SL1500_.jpg

Is it perhaps a buggy feature in later Ali-V chipsets we are talking about here?
Something that was promised as a working feature, and turned out to be a broken one.

brostenen wrote:

Is it perhaps a buggy feature in later Ali-V chipsets we are talking about here?
Something that was promised as a working feature, and turned out to be a broken one.

That's possible. Iirc there may have been some newer ss7 chipsets being planned, but ss7 was perhaps kinda left out when Athlon got released and because the K6 design didn't scale very well beyond 600MHz (even with a die shrink like the one the +'s received).

brostenen wrote:

Solder?? 😳 No-no. Not on vintage hardware. 😁 Was only qurious about this. 🤣

There are more than just the header missing.
It has pads for resistors or something else, that are unpopulated.

I have done it on other boards, and it works. Any missing SMD components (resistors, caps etc) are probably not related to the SB-link at all; the signals on the header come directly from the southbridge chip with no other components needed.

Lol what's the issue with soldering? 😁 If you know what and how to do, I personally see absolutely no reason why one couldn't have fun with modding things. IMO one of the best things with retro stuff is that you can try stuff and feel se great sense of accomplishment when succeed. Of course leave mods reversible if you might feel to remove it or something.

It's fun!

This seems like a very worthwhile endeavour 😀

Does anyone know a good way to test for functionality after the header is installed? And also, which sound card do you recommend testing this with?

mockingbird wrote:

This seems like a very worthwhile endeavour 😀

Does anyone know a good way to test for functionality after the header is installed? And also, which sound card do you recommend testing this with?

Get a Yamaha PCI (YM724 or 744 based) that has the PC/PCI connector; get a 2x3-pin cable and connect the two (like this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-54mm-Pitch-2x3Pin-6 … T4AAOSw5cNYTeiH or this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/181656711487?_trksid= … K%3AMEBIDX%3AIT )

Run the card's SETUPDS.EXE program; if all goes well it should allow you to select serial IRQ as method of assigning an IRQ to the card, and both 8-bit and 16-bit sounds will test well in the setup program.
If it doesn't work you may need to edit the setupds.exe program to add the PCI ID of your southbridge; read about it in my other thread YMF744, DOS, no DMA? (PC/PCI, SB-link tests) (edit YES DMA, read further down)

You used to be able to download the drivers and utilities directly from Yamaha, but it looks like they removed it in the past few months. It's still available on vogonsdrivers here: https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid=39

stamasd wrote:

Get a Yamaha PCI (YM724 or 744 based) that has the PC/PCI connector; get a 2x3-pin cable and connect the two (like this one http […]
Show full quote

mockingbird wrote:

This seems like a very worthwhile endeavour 😀

Does anyone know a good way to test for functionality after the header is installed? And also, which sound card do you recommend testing this with?

Get a Yamaha PCI (YM724 or 744 based) that has the PC/PCI connector; get a 2x3-pin cable and connect the two (like this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-54mm-Pitch-2x3Pin-6 … T4AAOSw5cNYTeiH or this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/181656711487?_trksid= … K%3AMEBIDX%3AIT )

Run the card's SETUPDS.EXE program; if all goes well it should allow you to select serial IRQ as method of assigning an IRQ to the card, and both 8-bit and 16-bit sounds will test well in the setup program.
If it doesn't work you may need to edit the setupds.exe program to add the PCI ID of your southbridge; read about it in my other thread YMF744, DOS, no DMA? (PC/PCI, SB-link tests) (edit YES DMA, read further down)

You used to be able to download the drivers and utilities directly from Yamaha, but it looks like they removed it in the past few months. It's still available on vogonsdrivers here: https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid=39

Thank you. I've already got both those cards, so I might be able to rig together a cable myself for this and give it a shot today or tommorow and then report back.

Paadam wrote:

Lol what's the issue with soldering? 😁 If you know what and how to do, I personally see absolutely no reason why one couldn't have fun with modding things. IMO one of the best things with retro stuff is that you can try stuff and feel se great sense of accomplishment when succeed. Of course leave mods reversible if you might feel to remove it or something.

It's fun!

It's a vintage board, that are in mint condition and is working as it should. I see absolutely no reason to try and mess with it.
Not many of them left, and I can not hope to get a new one, unless I am ready to pay a lot of money.

Then I have this strange feeling, when I am thinking of a motherboard with SB-Link, having ISA slots at the same time.
As SB-Link are for providing the right ISA compatibility to PCI slot's, then having ISA slots, somehow defeats the idea of SB-Link.
Yeah... I brought it up, as I have never seen this mentioned when speaking of P5A.
So I was only qurious as to anyone knew anything about this, or if there are a revision without ISA, with SB-Link instead.

Modding something that are a bit rare, expensive, amoungst one of the top 5 best in it's class.
Makes absolutely no sence to me.

Well, I had no problem soldering 4th FSB jumper on my brand new Asus XG-DLS to enable 133 MHz FSB with 1/4 PCI divider. Easily reversible mod and unleashes the full potential of the large cache Pentium III Xeon.

But to each their own!

brostenen wrote:

It's a vintage board, that are in mint condition and is working as it should. I see absolutely no reason to try and mess with it […]
Show full quote

Paadam wrote:

Lol what's the issue with soldering? 😁 If you know what and how to do, I personally see absolutely no reason why one couldn't have fun with modding things. IMO one of the best things with retro stuff is that you can try stuff and feel se great sense of accomplishment when succeed. Of course leave mods reversible if you might feel to remove it or something.

It's fun!

It's a vintage board, that are in mint condition and is working as it should. I see absolutely no reason to try and mess with it.
Not many of them left, and I can not hope to get a new one, unless I am ready to pay a lot of money.

Then I have this strange feeling, when I am thinking of a motherboard with SB-Link, having ISA slots at the same time.
As SB-Link are for providing the right ISA compatibility to PCI slot's, then having ISA slots, somehow defeats the idea of SB-Link.
Yeah... I brought it up, as I have never seen this mentioned when speaking of P5A.
So I was only qurious as to anyone knew anything about this, or if there are a revision without ISA, with SB-Link instead.

Modding something that are a bit rare, expensive, amoungst one of the top 5 best in it's class.
Makes absolutely no sence to me.

It's one of the few ways to get native OPL3 via SPDIF out.

Ok, as promised:

The Aopen 744 cards don't have an SB-Link header, so the other option was this generic 724 card.

The first step was to remove the old cruddy "BH" brand capacitors that are now over 15 years old.

...and here is the card without the caps

For the replacement caps, we'll use a mix of UCC KZM and KYA series as well as Panasonic FC and FM series

All finished:

and here's the board with the pins soldered in:

and an old USB header cable... Conveniently enough, one side is split, which is helpful since I can't determine the correct orientation of the header on the card since they populated all the pins. Furthermore, since both corner pins of SB-Link are ground, determining which corner is ground with a multimeter won't help, since they'll both show connected to ground. No worries though. We're not dealing with voltages here, just ground and signal pins, so all that's needed is to swap the orientation in case it doesn't work.

But unfortunately, it did not work:

The next step is to play with the device ID as you suggested, but that's it for today. I must say that the quality of the sound output was very very good in the test program. Very crisp and clear.

Don't forget to throw an SPDIF out header on the card! Fully digital OPL3 output!

gdjacobs wrote:

Don't forget to throw an SPDIF out header on the card! Fully digital OPL3 output!

Thanks 😀 that's a good idea...

Do you think the missing circuitry will prevent that from working though?

The large missing component is an impedance matching transformer. For short runs, it's not particularly important. I'd temporarily bypass it with jumpers from the top left to bottom left pad, then top right to bottom right pad. Same with the resistors and caps (R42, R43, C78, C79) as short runs won't be able to pick up too much noise. You can use properly sized zero ohm SMD resistors instead. Last, install the 2.54mm header.

If you need to improve the digital output you can always do so, but this would allow you to start testing.