VOGONS


First post, by SETBLASTER

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Anyone here has an msi K7t Turbo 2 Motherboard ?
i have one of these on a box and i always wondered if the ISA slot is usable or not.
I read the manual long time ago and the manual says the isa slot is "optional" The motherboard also has drivers for practically everyhing since win98.

Im wondering if this motherboard, which can be very cheap and easy find, can be upgraded soldering an ISA slot into it and make it work.
The last bios also supports up to Athlon XP 2600+

My board also has 2 missing capacitors, probably i took them out and never replaced them, now i dont know what uF and voltage they are, if any of you know the ratings of the capacitors i would really appreciate it.

msi.jpg

Reply 1 of 40, by PcBytes

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Judging by their size, they seem to be 1500uF 6.3v. Use 10 or 16v parts if you don't have 6.3v caps.

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Reply 3 of 40, by SETBLASTER

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im not sure about the Uf rating of those 2 caps
i think i see a "2" on one photo taken from google. i would really want to know if someone else in vogons has the same board.

I will try to desolder the slot and solder an isa slot taken from another motherboard

Reply 4 of 40, by PC Hoarder Patrol

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Maybe you could figure it out by elimination from the list below

(2)G-Luxon 2700uf 6.3v 10mm dia.
(2)G-Luxon 2200uf 6.3v 10mm dia.
(2)G-Luxon 470uf 16v 8mm dia.
(7)Teapo 1000uf 6.3v 8mm dia.
(4)kzg ? 1500uf 16v 10mm dia. brown colored wrapping
(4)kze ? 4700uf 6.3v 12.5mm dia. green colored wrapping
The last ones (kzg & kze) is the only other markings.

from where someone is trying to recap the board - https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5724

Reply 5 of 40, by Xplo

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I have this board. I should be able to dig it out and help you with the caps. Its in storage and i am not home for a few days, but i will try and get back to you

Reply 6 of 40, by SETBLASTER

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Xplo wrote:

I have this board. I should be able to dig it out and help you with the caps. Its in storage and i am not home for a few days, but i will try and get back to you

yes please if you can. im not sure if those two are 2200uf or 2700uf

Reply 7 of 40, by Xplo

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Hey

Im pleased to be able to help you and confirm they are both g-luxon 2700uf 6.3v

Mine are slightly bulgy too, so must be a problem with these 2 in particular on this board

Good luck 😀

Reply 8 of 40, by pojo

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I have this board too and I'm going to try installing the ISA slot.

Anyone have a good source for cheap connectors?

Reply 9 of 40, by SETBLASTER

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Thank you xplo!!!!!

i spent about two hours yesterday with soldering braid. about one hour to take an isa slot out of a dead motherboard and another hour to desolder the holes on the msi board

tonight i need to test it with a cheap soundcard i got at home. i hope it works because it was a pain in the ass to do this

IMG-20181015-011211.jpg

Reply 10 of 40, by SETBLASTER

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IMG-20181015-011022.jpg

Reply 11 of 40, by SETBLASTER

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No luck at all guys 🙁
so sad, after playig a couple hours with different soundcards, no go. I did get a SB vibra working on the ISA slot but vibra is a shit card with bad sound quality. The mod was done to have a good card on it.

tested a bunch of cards, audioexcel, ALS007, awe32...i did not have a SB16 with jumpers at hand.
I practically changed so many things in the bios but there was no change, setups refused to install. DIssabled practically everything, onboard sound, serial, lpt, changed IRQs to PCI-ISA, then to legay ISA and no luck. I had the setblaster on autoexec and nothing worked.

I think the bios is capped somehow, maybe there is a way to mod it?. Because when i try the audioexel card on a super socket 7 motherboard , i do get the ISA PNP listing on boot...like this picture below: and the card works without installing anything , just with the setblaster line and you are good to go.
IMG-20181016-012610.jpg

whith the MSI motherboard i only get the "PCI device listing" and not the "isa device listing",
on pci listing it shows an audio device but i think it might be the internal one since if i disable the onboard chip sound on bios it dissapears.

Reply 12 of 40, by pojo

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Hmm, good work SETBLASTER.

Maybe we can enable/add some feature with the Award BIOS Editor? No idea where to start, though.. http://awdbedit.sourceforge.net/

Reply 13 of 40, by SETBLASTER

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thanks, i never modified a bios. So i am lost right now. The updated bios is still on the MSI website .

the strange part is that the bios has the option for PNP PCI ISA and Legacy ISA, but it just doesn't work, when i disable practically everything, the sb setup fails to detect the 220h

Maybe there were some electronic components missing with the non-isa version, but how come i was able to make a vibra work and not the other ones is a mistery.

Reply 14 of 40, by Roman555

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I suppose it would be helpful to check missing components using the service manuals. One manual has ISA slot, another doesn't.
But maybe the BIOS checks some data in DMI area. There are some utils to edit DMI and add necessary information (dmicfg for example).
I've never used them for desktop mainboards so no advice.
Good luck!

[ MS6168/PII-350/YMF754/98SE ]
[ 775i65G/E5500/9800Pro/Vortex2/ME ]

Reply 15 of 40, by SETBLASTER

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thanks for the manuals, unfortunately i have no clue about electronics nor i would be good reading the manuals 🙁

Yesterday i tried to test a little bit more this motherboard before i just put it on the closet for failed attempts.

One thing i noticed was that as i explained, i was able to get PNP sound out of a Vibra soundblaster card.
The strange part was that..

Sometimes when i booted i saw the ISA PNP list on boot below the PCI pnp list (like in my picture above using another motherboard k6-2), saying the IRQ and the name of the card "Vibra 16x..." or something like that.
...
Then i booted another time and the ISA PNP didn´t even show up on boot

---
>Then i booted a third time and the ISA PNP showed the card but not as vibra 16x , it said "audio".

I wonder if proper voltage is going to the card, maybe some component is missing. how come the ISA PNP boot menu appears at random if im not changing anything just pressing alt control delete.

With other cards I never got the ISA PNP list when i booted the pc. and all attempts to install using SB DOS drivers failed 220H

Also just below the bios chip , there is a white connector that is like 3 or 4 pin connector that also says ISA, i wonder what is that connector for

Reply 17 of 40, by Roman555

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SETBLASTER wrote:

Sometimes when i booted i saw the ISA PNP list on boot below the PCI pnp list (like in my picture above using another motherboard k6-2), saying the IRQ and the name of the card "Vibra 16x..." or something like that.
...
Then i booted another time and the ISA PNP didn´t even show up on boot

Could it be oxidations of contacts of the ISA slot?

SETBLASTER wrote:

Also just below the bios chip , there is a white connector that is like 3 or 4 pin connector that also says ISA, i wonder what is that connector for

The user manual should say something about it. But it looks like a WOL (Wake-on-LAN) connector.

[ MS6168/PII-350/YMF754/98SE ]
[ 775i65G/E5500/9800Pro/Vortex2/ME ]

Reply 18 of 40, by Tiido

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It looks like the board has all needed support components for the ISA slot to work. My guess is that the southbridge is just not fully configured to enable all ISA functionality and this is a BIOS shortcoming. It would be possible to write a DOS util that does the init.

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Reply 19 of 40, by Roman555

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Tiido wrote:

My guess is that the southbridge is just not fully configured to enable all ISA functionality and this is a BIOS shortcoming. It would be possible to write a DOS util that does the init.

I saw all K7T on MSI web site. There's no another board that has an ISA slot or ISA footprint.
And there's no special BIOS for ISA slot model on MSI web page for K7T Turbo2.
In the worst case my guess is BIOS could read some DMI data. If it finds an ISA slot feature it turns on ISA support.
So the manufacturer doesn't need different BIOSes for optional features.

Last edited by Roman555 on 2018-10-19, 06:14. Edited 1 time in total.

[ MS6168/PII-350/YMF754/98SE ]
[ 775i65G/E5500/9800Pro/Vortex2/ME ]