I had one but I threw it away. I used an A1333 with it. I thought the combo was slow and hardly an upgrade from a dual-P3/866/SCSI/RAMBUS workstation I had before that.

Also the impression I got was that motherboards at this stage had started to implement chipsets that used a lot of resources themselves, making it harder to install resource-hungry ISA cards. But maybe I was expecting too much or doing something wrong back then.

If I may ask.. what exactly are you needing 2 ISA slots for?

prophase_j wrote:

If I may ask.. what exactly are you needing 2 ISA slots for?

I'd like one ISA slot for my sound effects card, such as any of the Creative range; 8-bit or 16-bit cards, eg SB Pro 2, SB16, AWE32, AWE64 etc, and I'd also like another ISA slot for something like a Roland MPU-401 card, so I can mount a MIDI wavetable daughterboard to it. I'm a bit worried about the number of defective SoundBlaster cards I have, that have the "hanging/stuck notes" midi problem.

Also, with a 2nd ISA slot, I can mess about with other General Midi type music cards, like a maxi sound, or yamaha sw20pc, or terratec maestro, and also a GUS perhaps! 😀

2 ISA slots gives me lots of music options, as I like messing about with music in games! 😀

Edit: I forgot to mention - I also want to build a faster rig that only has 1 ISA slot, just like prophase_j's super-quick "rocket" mobo. I've noticed that there's quite a handful of DOS games that do not offer a midi music option, but instead, rely on an audio CD for music instead. A 1 ISA slot mobo would be ideal for these games, I think. (I also want to throw together a stupid-fast system with no ISA slots, just to test out win9x games.)

(I also want to throw together a stupid-fast system with no ISA slots, just to test out win9x games.)

Well, if I understand you correctly, then the fastest Win9x setup would probably have to include this little thingie:
http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/636852/art/as … html?srcid=1911

It does supposedly support win98, if you pick the correct chipset drivers etc. (download directly from VIA)

More info:
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=8425efc … ic=97588&st=140

Granted, I haven't tested it myself yet, and there is some mentioning of soundcard problems on that page/link, so....
But sounds(heh) promising even so - Core2Duo 1066FSB, + AGP.... 😳

.

I can't comment to the quality of the AMD chipset but overall Gigabyte makes a good board. They only thing I would do different is go with an Athlon XP instead of a "normal", even if you run it underclocked/volted. It makes a lot of sense why your looking for 2 ISA slots, I faced the same issues when I put my rig together. I eventually reached the decision that only 1 ISA would be okay because I could run a vintage SB there, and if I wanted improved MIDI I could use the Diamond Monster Sound for its wavetable header or external MPU. I figured that would be all I need.. really. I wasn't around for the GUS stuff (isn't this stuff too fast for those games anyway?), I could have the SB (or a quality clone) for digital audio and FM, and use the Diamond card for MIDI and windows.

retro games 100 wrote:

My aim here is to outperform my current 440BX slot 1 mobo (with Intel 800mhz CPU, 100FSB), and also rival the performance of a P3 1000-1400mhz based mobo.

Yes, this will be interesting. I'm using a P3 1GHz Coppermine S370 processor with PC133 256MB RAM on a DFI CA61 mobo in this setup. Please compare your proposed system with the speedtest result I got with this setup when finished.

@bestemor & @prophase_j,

Good comments, thank you.

@Malik,

I will be happy to do this test, when I am up and running with it.

😀

ratfink wrote:

I had one but I threw it away. I used an A1333 with it. I thought the combo was slow and hardly an upgrade from a dual-P3/866/SCSI/RAMBUS workstation I had before that.

Was it a bit faster than your dual-P3/866 machine? If it was, personally speaking, I would be satisfied with that. Although, if it was only a bit faster, I can understand your disappointment, if you had gone to all that trouble to upgrade from a previous system.

I daresay it must have been a bit faster, it just never caught my imagination. No zing - I never turned it on and thought "wow I LOVE this machine!". It was more "pfft, this is so slow... damn processor looks like it's going to catch fire... chipset uses all the resources my ISA cards want....meh....".

retro games 100 wrote:

My aim here is to outperform my current 440BX slot 1 mobo (with Intel 800mhz CPU, 100FSB), and also rival the performance of a P3 1000-1400mhz based mobo.

You can instead or additionally get these parts for your 440BX:
-Upgradeware Slot-T (E 24,- new) or powerleap adapter.
-Pentium-III-S SL5QL 1266/133MHz; 512kB; 1,45V (abundant, around E 5,-)
Then you will need to get/make a heatsink for this. Run it at 100MHz FSB, or more if possible. Set the voltage even lower then 1,45V. Either way it will run cool and very fast. Leaves me wondering why I waited 7 years before getting this set. 😕

Retro, you've asked this question before. Get an ASUS P2B or variant, then get a Powerleap adapter with a Celeron 1.4Ghz. Links on how to do it are in the other threads you've participated in weeks/months ago. There are always some for sale on eBay.

If I've mentioned something before, and then forgotten about it, then I'm sorry. 🙁 A year ago, I didn't know one end of a retro rig from another. Currently, I'm messing about with dozens of these things (including hundreds of associated components, every one of which is new to me), and so not everything discussed on this website has completely "sunk in". 😊

What happened exactly to cause you to immerse yourself in ye ancient gaming history 'o glory to this level? Did you hit your head one day and have a brain cross-wiring event that brought your computing history curiosity to an insane peak? I want to do it to my friends. What voodoo magic is needed? (voodoo1-5? 🤣)

swaaye wrote:

What happened exactly to cause you to immerse yourself in ye ancient gaming history 'o glory to this level? Did you hit your head one day and have a brain cross-wiring event that brought your computing history curiosity to an insane peak? I want to do it to my friends. What voodoo magic is needed? (voodoo1-5? 🤣)

Hehe! I've had a think about this, and I can't find a sane reason why I've got a bit nuts over this whole retro thing, so I guess I must have banged my head on something! (You might have to hope one of your friends goes a bit mad too.)

PS - voodoo3. My favourite! 😀 Very good image quality (rivals an old Matrox Millennium), fast, great for some dos games not just all of the 'other stuff', compact silent design, very reliable (from my limited experience), choice of PCI or AGP, & plenty left on ebay @ sane prices.

Edit: I've noticed that the image quality on the "slower" voodoo3 2000 models exceeds that of the faster voodoo3 3000 models. For quick identification purposes, the cards with the square shaped chunky dark brown heatsinks seem to provide a clearer sharper image than the cards with the flatter larger silver heatsinks. There's not a great deal in it (and my testing was only done on PCI cards), but I think it's something worth mentioning. I believe that the card's "RAM DAC" has something to do with image quality, but I'm sure this is not the only property attributable to the quality of the card's image.

Whether the socket 462 Gigabyte GA-7IXE4 mobo is good or bad, I've just had the chance to test one - but it won't POST. Flicking through the manual, and looking at the board itself, it seems very straight forward. (So much simpler than some of the older mobos I have tested.)

The only thing I did before switching on power for the first time was to change the onboard dip-switches for the system bus frequency to 100mhz. (It was set to 105mhz - was this done for overclocking purposes?) The mobo has an Athlon 900 on board, with a heatsink and fan. I used one stick of working SDRAM, 3.3v, and tried both a PCI graphics card and an nvidia 5200fx AGP card. But no POST.

Any ideas please people? Thanks a lot for any suggestions! 😀

Tried resetting the CMOS via jumper?

5u3 wrote:

Tried resetting the CMOS via jumper?

I tried that, but no joy. The ebay seller has suggested this test -

"Remove the RAM, remove the CPU, clear the CMOS, and with a speaker attached, boot it up and see what beeps you get back. It should at least POST and indicate no CPU present. Then insert the CPU and it should indicate no RAM present, etc.."

I think I will try this suggestion, although I wonder if I do need a stick of RAM in order to read any POST messages?

@5u3, I gave up with the mobo. I swapped it out with an identical board, put in all the components used from the first failed tests in to this other board, and it works fine. Must be something wrong with the first mobo.

@Malik, I have now been able to do a speedsys test on this board, using an Athlon 1000 CPU. Ram used was 1 stick of PC-100 SDRAM. Graphics card used was a lowly 8mb AGP Rage card. Incidentally, I ran pcpbench and it gave me a score of 56.0 I haven't run fastvid, or anything like that yet.

ratfink wrote:

I had one but I threw it away. I used an A1333 with it. I thought the combo was slow and hardly an upgrade from a dual-P3/866/SCSI/RAMBUS workstation I had before that.

I've just looked through my cupboard of bits 'n' pieces, and I have an A1333. But I looked it up on cpu-world, and it says its bus speed is 266 Mhz. I then checked Gigabyte's website, and it said that this CPU was N/A for this board - in fact, all 266mhz CPUs are, according to Gigabyte's CPU compatibility list for this particular board [GA-7IXE4], N/A. Is this incorrect? Or were you using a different CPU? Or can you use an A1333? Thanks! 😀