They probably removed components to cheap it down on price.

If you can find another motherboard to check differences, I'm pretty sure you can add the slot.
Some boards have all the related chips removed as well, making it difficult to have a functional i/o port or slot (smd resistances, capacitors...).

Giving for granted that you know how to solder.

My feel is that if it needed that chip for the ISA slot to work, it wasn't quite a fully compatible ISA slot. Unless you know for sure that every piece of hardware you want to use works on the revision 1, then I wouldn't bother pursuing it.

That chip is just a backup BIOS, Gigabyte dubbed it "DualBIOS".

You should be able to add an ISA slot, the resistor packs are there.
Same mod can be done to a 7ZXE.

EDIT: I was looking on the right side of the image, where you have another IC missing (that one is the 2nd BIOS 😜) ; only way to know is to try adding the slot and see if you have DMA and stuff.
EDIT 2: the VT82C686B should be able to do ISA by itself, without additional chips.

I think the big chip is the CT5880 audio option

Layout is very similar to my GA-7VX, and I've successfully added an ISA slot, all that was needed was the slot itself.

Looking at the best pics of the r5.1 board I can find, there seems to be something written in the silksrceen where that chip would go. What does it say?

I find the CT5880 audio option plausible, as that's one of the other differences between the two revisions, and the design with an oscillator nearby looks a perfect fit. The 686B southbridge supports ISA natively, so no PCI-ISA bridge chip needed normally.

I wouldn't be concerned about the chip, I'd rather worry about SMD resistor networks. The pic seems to show some near the empty holes on the r5.1, but are they the same value as the r1.0 board? That's the question...

Then again, soldering an ISA slot is pretty basic and (even with my bad eyes and sloppy hands) risk-free. You could just slap it on and see what happens 😉

I have also added an ISA slot on two Gigabyte Slot A motherboards before. The slot was omitted in an OEM version along with the sound chip and second BIOS EEPROM, just like in OP's board. The south bridge contained the PCI-ISA bridge, all the passives were on the board and just soldering in the slot worked perfectly.
I say OP has a high chance of having the same result.👍 Go for it!😃

BLockOUT wrote on 2021-09-14, 15:36:

or the chip is needed for making isa work?

Hi. This chip you are referring to has nothing to do with ISA slot.

thanks guys, i have to pickup the motherboard tomorrow with a duron 1000 and a hard drive
the guy is giving it to me for free 😁

It's a gigabyte, talk him down... 🤣 just kidding, had my beefs with gigabyte stuff in the past.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-09-14, 15:49:

My feel is that if it needed that chip for the ISA slot to work, it wasn't quite a fully compatible ISA slot. Unless you know for sure that every piece of hardware you want to use works on the revision 1, then I wouldn't bother pursuing it.

That chip could be an ISA to PCI bridge controller. On later boards they removed the normal ISA specs and connecting isa slot to the PCI bus with use of these ISA to PCI bridge controllers.

That was my first thought but others seem to have convincing info that it's the audio controller and the chipset handles ISA native.

just came back with it, the board is beautiful like new, just a bit of dust in it. it came with the original amd cooler, 15gb hard drive and a floppy drive and a no brand video card, memory
it ended up being the revision 1.01 , thats sad because its the one with VIA KT133/686A chipset

I need to clean it up a little, put new thermal paste and i hope it works.

I noticed it has many jumpers, some with unsoldered pins for " onboard audio enable/disable" and about 3 other jumpers for AC97 primary /secondary. I hope it works soldering an isa bracket and with a soundblaster16.

Wondering if anyone at vogons got this motherboard and the same revision, i would like to get a copy of the Drivers CD

and according to cpu-upgrade website this revision does not work with Athlon XP

I will add something to the topic, because I have been looking for 7zx / 7zxr for a long time, and i`m still looking for. Well, not every revision 5.0 does not have isa. In the attachment there is a photo of my mobo. Apart from isa, dualbios and chip creative - rev 5.0 only supports FSB 100. If you want FSB133 u need 1.0 or 5.1, but all of 5.1 rev does not have ISA

To achieve 1400MHz on this board, you need an ams3b processor, not an ams3c. And finding one is almost a miracle. Personally, I managed to get one from scrap metal, but unfortunately I killed it.

And as a curiosity, I will add that finding a SDRAM module with a blue PCB is with an even greater miracle

Looking at Gigabytes website there appears to have been two models of this board with numerous revisions each, a "premium" model (7zx) and a "cost cut" model (7zx-1). The differences seem to be audio (creative ct8550), isa slot and dual bios, all of which were omitted on the cost-cut model. However, at revision v5.1 they seemed to drop the aforementioned features on both models and the only difference seems to be in the chipset (KT133A vs KT133).

Interestingly, Gigabyte's web site faq also talks about a -1 label on the corner of the 7zx-1 motherboards but I haven't seen it in any pictures of boards without the audio chip, isa slot and dual bios.
But since those features are all missing or all present on a given board I'm inclined to believe there was some kind of silkscreen labeling error, or maybe it was purposely omitted and only the sticker on the box said 7zx-1, or it possibly varied by market.

I'm also not sure why the difference in FSB that was mentioned above since all revisions of both models until v5.1 used the same chipset, at least according to Gigabyte's website.

I used one of these boards in my first gaming build with a Duron 800 and would like to make a retro rig based on that build. Mine had an isa slot and given the time period I purchased it, it was most likely a 7zx v1.0.

I have one of these boards that didnt have the sound chip, dual bios or ISA slot.
I soldered in a new ISA slot because I saw that all the passive components where installed and it worked with no problems that I have noticed.
Used this board back in 2000 with a Athlon 1000.

I had wondered the same thing for this board,

Freeway Design FWD-P3C4XD

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-02-07, 07:21:

I had wondered the same thing for this board,

Freeway Design FWD-P3C4XD

Without having seen the board closeup I'm going to assume it'll work fine. Maybe some passvies have to be added but from experience I would wager they're already installed.

I added ISA on this Gigabyte 6VXD7 :