wait what's the difference between the sy-5ema+ and the sy-5emapro?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SY-5EMAT-Motherboard- … =item2ebc5a5f7c this guy claims to ship to many other countries

Not sure, barely can find anything about the pro. Maybe it is an older version that does not support + k6's?

well the + is just the mobile cpu, lower voltage and on board cache

Ah makes sense. Hope you can find a good board! Iv exhausted my search skills.

adslh8yp wrote:

Because I'm going to mainly be using this for dos games, don't want too fast of a cpu.
With the k6-2 I can just disable the L1/2 as needed.

For one thing, isn't 533 MHz already way too fast? What exactly did you have in mind? Don't tell me you're dead set on playing ancient CGA games, as I suspect you will find those interesting for five minutes and then go back to playing Win9x games.

Secondly, isn't disabling the L1/2 exactly what you would do with a PII/PIII ? The K6-2+ allows for dynamic changes to the clock speed.

You can slow the k6-2 down to that of a mid range 386 or mid range 486 by disabling caches.
I'm simply looking for the best compatibility.

I already have a p4 I could setup and use, but I don't think that would be the most compatible.
Getting sound to work in dos via an onboard sound with a p4 sounds painful.

p4 is great for 98 games in combination with a SB live! but DOS it is a no-go from what i have heard. Although I will say at this point a good quality p2/3 and board would be a good choice. You could reuse everything but the CPU from your k6 system. Or just be patient and the perfect SS7 board will come along

Well I wanted to use windows 98 as dos under 98 isn't limited to 2gb partitions.
And I already have 2x32GB CF cards and 1x64GB IDE SSD

well i'd need a new video card...a voodoo 3 would bottleneck a p3/4 too much.

I'd probably need a better psu aswell.

I don't see any issues with win98 on a p4.
Provided that HT is disabled, don't use RDRAM, also some issues when you have more than 512mb ram...but there are some work around for that one.

I'm actually a little tempted to try it now...hmmm

For a p4 the problem is lack of ISA and some other problems that prevent proper audio in DOS games. But 9x games run fine! 😀 Just have to make sure that your specific board has good 9x drivers. A 450mhz+ p2 or p3 a Voodoo 3 is perfect and the psu would be fine.

Don't some of the creative pci sound cards work fine in dos?

adslh8yp wrote:

...a voodoo 3 would bottleneck a p3/4 too much.

It doesn't make much sense to talk about "bottlenecking" on a machine you're going to use for older software anyway.

adslh8yp wrote:

Don't some of the creative pci sound cards work fine in dos?

They require the motherboard to have specific functionality that is rather poorly-defined. A Pentium 4 or later system probably can't do it (though apparently some Pentium 4 motherboards can). Also, the MIDI quality leaves something to be desired.

Soundblaster Live! is a nice common Soundblaster (DOS) compatible audio card. Most likely early Audigy cards as well. Id say if you have the parts, and most games you want to play are 9x based games a p4 is a cheap and easy solution. The Northwood core chips dont even run very hot.

I gotta agree with Jorpho there, it is all relevant to what games you intend to play. If you were going to play them with a k6-2 533 than the p4 w/ voodoo3 would run those games perfectly! 😀

When I mentioned bottlenecking I ment a waste of the resources at hand.
I have an Asus p4s800-mx (I think it has a p4 2.4ghz) and a 7300GT agp.

Most of the games I really want to play are from Apogee (such as secret agent). - and a ton of RPGs from 9x/XP.

your p4 is a better XP system I think 😀

It's a crappy board and only 3 pci though.

Hah, that is true. I can not remember if the Geforce 7 series has 9x drivers, but you could give it a go and try out an impromptu retro rig with the p4

IIRC 6 series was the last officially supported.

--And it just so happens that P4 boards with ISA do exist.