I never had a problem with a SATA2/3 drive on a SATA1 board. No jumpers were needed. I think only some stupid drives like WD need jumpers. Might also be some specific stupid boards.

dr_st wrote:

I never had a problem with a SATA2/3 drive on a SATA1 board. No jumpers were needed. I think only some stupid drives like WD need jumpers. Might also be some specific stupid boards.

I have run into this issue with VIA chipset boards from the Socket A era. They will not detect newer SATA drives. But when you set the compatibility jumper, it works. They also don't boot from SATA optical drives.

So newer boards, I guess they fixed that 😀

I don't really understand the rage about Win98 compatibility. Back in the day, I went from 98SE to Win2000 and never really looked back. I could play most, if not all Win98 titles so no problem there!

Half-Saint, you're very unfussy. OK, it's your choice. If you think so - it's true for you!

Half-Saint wrote:

I don't really understand the rage about Win98 compatibility. Back in the day, I went from 98SE to Win2000 and never really looked back. I could play most, if not all Win98 titles so no problem there!

- While last Win98SE titles are pure Win32 apps which can run correctly under a NT system like Win2k, first Win98 titles and almost all Win95 and older titles fall in the categories of Win32 app with Win16 bit modules, Win32 apps with DOS modules, Win16 apps, Hybrid DOS apps who can be run in Windows DOS box to use Windows stuff, and pure DOS apps. These things run better/faster in a Win9x environment, and many of them will not even run in Win2K.

- DirectX7/Apps which rely heavily in DDraw will run better in Win98SE, specially if paired with a proper video card/VxD video drivers.

- Many apps programmed for the old MME API, or stuff which hook intro sound system VxDs don't like how WDM handles sound. These apps will run better under Win98. Also generally VxD drivers for the soudcards of the era were a lot more featured than their WDM driver counterparts.

- Win9x bundles with a full DOS system, so even the apps which don't like Windows DosBoxes can be run with a simple reboot intro DOS. No need to maintain a separated DOS install.

- Etc, etc, etc...

Nobody mentioned Northwood?
It was the early VIA chipsetted boards that had these issues with the onboard SATA controller and the newer SATA2 drives, it seemed to work fine after I jumpered my SATA2 drives correctly, but in the end could never get the same HDD working on my KT600 board (I ended up using a SATA2IDE adapter and later 'upgraded' to a large 2.5in IDE drive, which seemed to run a lot faster).

Half-Saint wrote:

I don't really understand the rage about Win98 compatibility. Back in the day, I went from 98SE to Win2000 and never really looked back. I could play most, if not all Win98 titles so no problem there!

I'll eat my hat if you can get Terracide or MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries version 1.1 to run on Win2000 or later, and those are just the first two examples I can think of!

Then there are instances where Win9x isn't strictly necessary to run the game itself, but they support Aureal A3D, which only works properly with an actual Vortex2 card and Win9x at the moment. Normally, most of those games also support DS3D + EAX so you could just wrap 'em with ALchemy, but then you get weird cases like B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty 8th that are A3D-only, not to mention A3D just sounds better most of the time.

Oh, and let's not forget how utterly terrible current virtual machine software is for running Win9x. No hardware graphics acceleration, no hardware sound acceleration, no point in it at all.

There's plenty of reason to build a system specifically for Win9x gaming.

Strangely the P4 era especially Socket 423 and Socket 478 are a dead generation to me, Athlon XP covered that era just fine.
Sure those Socket 775 Dual Core P4 were beasts, but they were also power hungry.
I would use Athlon XP for a fast 98SE machine all the way.

PS. I played Doom 3 on a fast Athlon XP system, and it was smooth, even Quake 4, but that lowered frames, if lot of action was present.

Half-Saint wrote:

I don't really understand the rage about Win98 compatibility. Back in the day, I went from 98SE to Win2000 and never really looked back. I could play most, if not all Win98 titles so no problem there!

Maybe "if not all" is the basic reason 🤣

Half-Saint wrote:

I don't really understand the rage about Win98 compatibility. Back in the day, I went from 98SE to Win2000 and never really looked back. I could play most, if not all Win98 titles so no problem there!

Ever tried to play Starfleet Academy on 2k or XP? It works as long as you like keyboard controls, but you can't use a joystick as something is broken in the game code and it won't detect a joystick properly making the ship always pull hard to the upper left of the screen, issue does not exist in 9x, of course the GOG release fixed the issue, but these kinds of issue can be common on older 9x games.

Cyberdyne wrote:

Strangely the P4 era especially Socket 423 and Socket 478 are a dead generation to me, Athlon XP covered that era just fine. Sur […]
Show full quote

Strangely the P4 era especially Socket 423 and Socket 478 are a dead generation to me, Athlon XP covered that era just fine.
Sure those Socket 775 Dual Core P4 were beasts, but they were also power hungry.
I would use Athlon XP for a fast 98SE machine all the way.

PS. I played Doom 3 on a fast Athlon XP system, and it was smooth, even Quake 4, but that lowered frames, if lot of action was present.

I do kinda have a weak spot for s423, s423 is to s478 like s4 is to s5 (or s7).

s478 is in a way quite good I think, 12v CPU and some of these boards could work with AGP 2x cards.

To me, Socket A is kinda like a super Pentium 3.

What a dead end. It will be a great board to test PCI cards in 😀. Might have to put up with a crappier MSI board 😉

The boards I was thinking of were some damn fine Netvista 8313-61Gs. It's a large batch I'll take a look at the other ones but I guess they have the same limitation.
But IBM messed them up pretty badly.

1. COM and front USB headers have some extra pins. Yeey.
2. The AGP is 1.5V only. That's a chipset limitation I could live with. But take a look at this picture (attached).

Quote from: https://support.lenovo.com/ro/en/documents/migr-53714
"Q: Looking at the system board, you will find an Accelerated Graphics Port slot. Inserted within the slot is a port block adapter, which will not allow for any AGP video adapter to be installed into the slot without being removed. When this blocking adapter is removed, and any AGP video adapter installed, the adapter will not function and the BIOS may not see the adapter.
A: The system is working as designed. This is a limitation of the system board as these are listed as Economy or Value systems with the functionality of the Intel 845GL chipset."

Well it is not revelation. GL and GV versions have only internal AGP bus with integrated Intel video adapter. "AGP" slot is really only for Intel DVI out boards.

I thought that everyone knows it.

Cyberdyne wrote:

Strangely the P4 era especially Socket 423 and Socket 478 are a dead generation to me, Athlon XP covered that era just fine. Sur […]
Show full quote

Strangely the P4 era especially Socket 423 and Socket 478 are a dead generation to me, Athlon XP covered that era just fine.
Sure those Socket 775 Dual Core P4 were beasts, but they were also power hungry.
I would use Athlon XP for a fast 98SE machine all the way.

PS. I played Doom 3 on a fast Athlon XP system, and it was smooth, even Quake 4, but that lowered frames, if lot of action was present.

Same here, but I have a thing for socket 423 systems since I've never seen one back in the day. They also had sort of a mythical status in local PC magazines - they used to tease about the upcoming new pentium 4, RDRAM and stuff like that 😀. Of course things changed for me some time later when I had to choose between socket A and socket 478 - the latter being much more expensive. The firm I worked at part time had me build up a 2.2 GHz P4 and an athlon XP 2400+ for different customers. Needless to say, the athlon XP was a bit faster even if it ran 200Mhz slower. It was also quite a bit cheaper then the P4, so picking between the two platforms was very easy.

Regardless, I went trough some lengths to acquire a socket 423 system for my collection, and it's been great fun to mess around with.

Tetrium wrote:

s478 is in a way quite good I think, 12v CPU and some of these boards could work with AGP 2x cards.

To me, Socket A is kinda like a super Pentium 3.

Socket A is to socket 370 what socket 370 is to super 7. Much better memory performance, better CPU to PCI / AGP speeds, better I/O, - you name it. Also, it's very easy to find socket A boards that will run 3.3v AGP cards, while it's quite hard to find 478 boards with 3.3v agp pots - and most of the ones I did come across are either really slow or rather unstable.

Each platform has distinct advantages and disadvantages:

Socket A PROs:
- flexible - supports CPU's ranging from 500Mhz up to 2400Mhz.
- some boards have ISA slots - usually KT133 and some KT266 boards
- lots of socket A boards support 3.3v AGP cards - this is needed for running 3dfx cards like the V3, V4 and V5. KT133, KT266 and KT333 boads as well as some SiS boards support 3.3v agp cards. KT333A also supports fast Barton CPUs. This extra compatibility with older hardware is what makes socket A special. ISA? possible. AGP 3dfx cards? no problem.
- use less power and make less heat / noise then socket 478 platforms* - this is only true for later socket A boards paired with athlon XP processors. Early athlon CPUs made quite a bit of heat, and they were usually paired with crappy / noisy coolers.

Socket A Cons:
- quite a few crappy low cost boards were made - failing capacitors and even VRMs are not uncommon. These also tend to be unstable when they do run.
- while most skt A machines will usually run with any cheap ATX PSU, high-end builds (3000+, 3200+) need decent power and cooling. A 350W 80+ PSU is preferred, and one with a strong 5V rail at that. This is a problem since most modern PSUs have weak 5v rails and strong 12V rails to comply with the needs of modern hardware.

Socket 478 PROs:
- you can find faster CPUs for the 478 socket then you can for socket A - namely 3.4 and 3.6 GHz pentium 4's. There's also 64 bit compatible 478 CPUs. As such, the faster socket 478 PC money can buy is faster then the fastest socket A machine. This is sort of a mute point, since you could comfortably (and cheaply) move to LGA775 or 754/939 and get much better performance.
- the intel i865 and 875 chipsets are some of the most stable platforms form that time frame. Perfect drivers and compatibility with old and new operating systems
- sk 478 boards make heavy use of the 12v aux CPU connector. This lets you use modern PSUs w/o any issues - unlike socket A builds where you need a strong 5v rail even if you're using a motherboard with an aux cpu power connector. For some reason even nf2 boards draw cpu power from the 5v rail, despide the 12v aux. The only sk A board I've seen witch truly draws CPU power from the 12v rail is the Abit AN7, but it also taxes the 5v rail for some reason.

Socket 478 Cons:
- heat and power - lots of it. While most low to mid end sk478 machines ran OK, top end machines equipped with 2.8+ GHz prescott CPUs ran very hot and used loads of power. If you want to build one of these get a fancy PSU - preferably 450w 80+ or more.
- unlike socket A boards, skt478 comes with 1.5v AGP 4x or 8x. You could only run PCI 3dfx cards in these. There is the occasional VIA/SiS socket 478 board with 3.3v agp, but these are usually either slow or unstable.

As a side-note, my socket 478 boards seem to keep committing suicide. My GA-8IPE1000-G blew a mosfet and warped the CPU cooler bracket. My P4P800 Deluxe just up and died (NB failed), and my P4P800-X also blew a mosfet. This wile using a 3.2GHz P4 (witch also died with the P4P800-X), a 450w FSP 80+ PSU and a Tuniq Tower 120 cooler + aditional fan to blow on the mosfets (lesson learned from the 8IPE1000). In contrast my HP vecta VL with a P4P800-M / 250w PSU and a 2.66GHz northwood and HP cooler is still happily chugging along.

PARUS wrote:

Well it is not revelation. GL and GV versions have only internal AGP bus with integrated Intel video adapter. "AGP" slot is really only for Intel DVI out boards.

I thought that everyone knows it.

The majority of GV/GV mobos didn't even have AGP/PCI-E slot at all

Here a list of all Intel chipsets without graphic interfaces:

i810: first chipset without AGP support for low end and business
i810E/i810E2: updated version of i810 with FSB 133, PC133 support and the ICH2 southbridge. B-Step supports Tualatin
i815G: basically an i815 wihtout AGP slot
i815EG: basically an i815E without AGP slot, B-Step supports Tualatin
i845GL: was the sucessor to the i810 series and i815G/EG, basically an i845G without FSB533 and AGP support.
i845GV: replaces i845GL, basically an i845GE without AGP support.
i865GV: replaces both i845GV and i845GL, basically an i865G without AGP support.
i915GV: replaces i865GV, basically an i915G without PCI-E x16 support, some board manufactuers managed to implement x16 slots, but only x4 electrically.
i915GL: practically a 915PL with the GMA900 from i915G and missing PCI-E x16 support again.
i910GL: probably the most limited one, basically an i915GL without FSB 800 and DDR400 support as well, resulting in a FSB 533 and DDR 333 chipset, only supported Celeron D and FSB 533 Prescotts.
i945GZ: bassically an i945PL with the GMA950 and missing PCI-E x16 support, like i945PL it loses FSB 1066 and DDR2 667 support as well, some board manufactuers managed to implement x16 slots, but only x4 electrically.
Q963: basically a Q965 without PCI-E x16 support, also loses ADD2 card support. Is the last Intel chipset to come without video interface support.

kanecvr wrote:

you can find faster CPUs for the 478 socket then you can for socket A - namely 3.4 and 3.6 GHz pentium 4's. There's also 64 bit compatible 478 CPUs. As such, the faster socket 478 PC money can buy is faster then the fastest socket A machine. This is sort of a mute point, since you could comfortably (and cheaply) move to LGA775 or 754/939 and get much better performance.

This is true. I have similar feelings comparing Socket 370 / P-III to Super 7 / K6. Sure it is much better, but then I can just move to the even better socket, right?

In the retro HW screne a lot depends on what you happened to have when these systems were new. That's what you'll probably be fond of long-term as well. 😀 If you had a P-III system you will not feel much love for a K6-II/III, and if you had a high-end Socket478 P4 system, you will not see the point in an Athlon XP.

kanecvr wrote:

As a side-note, my socket 478 boards seem to keep committing suicide. My GA-8IPE1000-G blew a mosfet and warped the CPU cooler bracket. My P4P800 Deluxe just up and died (NB failed), and my P4P800-X also blew a mosfet.

That's not bad for systems so old. I went through two P4P800-Es on my Socket 478 build, and now it has a P4C800-E, with another backup P4P800-E in case this board dies. 🤣

dr_st wrote:

This is true. I have similar feelings comparing Socket 370 / P-III to Super 7 / K6. Sure it is much better, but then I can just […]
Show full quote

kanecvr wrote:

you can find faster CPUs for the 478 socket then you can for socket A - namely 3.4 and 3.6 GHz pentium 4's. There's also 64 bit compatible 478 CPUs. As such, the faster socket 478 PC money can buy is faster then the fastest socket A machine. This is sort of a mute point, since you could comfortably (and cheaply) move to LGA775 or 754/939 and get much better performance.

This is true. I have similar feelings comparing Socket 370 / P-III to Super 7 / K6. Sure it is much better, but then I can just move to the even better socket, right?

In the retro HW screne a lot depends on what you happened to have when these systems were new. That's what you'll probably be fond of long-term as well. 😀 If you had a P-III system you will not feel much love for a K6-II/III, and if you had a high-end Socket478 P4 system, you will not see the point in an Athlon XP.

kanecvr wrote:

As a side-note, my socket 478 boards seem to keep committing suicide. My GA-8IPE1000-G blew a mosfet and warped the CPU cooler bracket. My P4P800 Deluxe just up and died (NB failed), and my P4P800-X also blew a mosfet.

That's not bad for systems so old. I went through two P4P800-Es on my Socket 478 build, and now it has a P4C800-E, with another backup P4P800-E in case this board dies. 🤣

It's pretty bad if I compare it to my Abit AN7 and my Asus A7V880. I've had these machines for as long as I've had the socket 478 rig (much longer in the case of the AN7 rig) and they both work fine. The AN7 rig is currently running a 3200+ @ 2400MHz (200x14 - CPU is not multiplier locked) with a GF 5900XT and it's seen much more use then the P4 rig. And it uses a much crappyer PSU and cooler (350W old FSP group PSU and an AC Copper Lite) as opposed to the Enermax NZXT PSU and Tuniq Tower 120 I used in the P4 rig. The case for the P4 is better ventilated too - I housed it in a Thermaltake Shark. The AMD machine is housed in a cheap common blue/white JNC ATX case.

kanecvr wrote:

- some boards have ISA slots - usually KT133 and some KT266 boards
- lots of socket A boards support 3.3v AGP cards - this is needed for running 3dfx cards like the V3, V4 and V5. KT133, KT266 and KT333 boads as well as some SiS boards support 3.3v agp cards. KT333A also supports fast Barton CPUs. This extra compatibility with older hardware is what makes socket A special. ISA? possible. AGP 3dfx cards? no problem.

First, when you go with Via based socket A boards, the ISA compatibility ends with the SD-RAM based board that means KT133(A).
As you can see in the diagrams, the southbridge 686A and 686B have ISA support , but the 8233 not anymore:

KT266
http://www.viatech.com/en/silicon/legacy/chipsets/kt266/

KT133A
http://www.viatech.com/en/silicon/legacy/chipsets/kt133a/

KT133
http://www.viatech.com/en/silicon/legacy/chipsets/kt133/

About your second point: Concerning the VIA based, yes there are board with 3.3V AGP but you have to choose:
whether you have a board with 3.3V AGP, high clocked FSB, DDR1 and no ISA,
or you have a board with 3.3V AGP, low clocked FSB, SD RAM and with ISA.

About Sis boards i cannot say anything cause i had no board with this chipset.

melbar wrote:

First, when you go with Via based socket A boards, the ISA compatibility ends with the SD-RAM based board that means KT133(A). A […]
Show full quote

kanecvr wrote:

- some boards have ISA slots - usually KT133 and some KT266 boards
- lots of socket A boards support 3.3v AGP cards - this is needed for running 3dfx cards like the V3, V4 and V5. KT133, KT266 and KT333 boads as well as some SiS boards support 3.3v agp cards. KT333A also supports fast Barton CPUs. This extra compatibility with older hardware is what makes socket A special. ISA? possible. AGP 3dfx cards? no problem.

First, when you go with Via based socket A boards, the ISA compatibility ends with the SD-RAM based board that means KT133(A).
As you can see in the diagrams, the southbridge 686A and 686B have ISA support , but the 8233 not anymore:

KT266
http://www.viatech.com/en/silicon/legacy/chipsets/kt266/

KT133A
http://www.viatech.com/en/silicon/legacy/chipsets/kt133a/

KT133
http://www.viatech.com/en/silicon/legacy/chipsets/kt133/

About your second point: Concerning the VIA based, yes there are board with 3.3V AGP but you have to choose:
whether you have a board with 3.3V AGP, high clocked FSB, DDR1 and no ISA,
or you have a board with 3.3V AGP, low clocked FSB, SD RAM and with ISA.

About Sis boards i cannot say anything cause i had no board with this chipset.

KT133A supports FSB 266 as well, so the best CPU you can use might be the Athlon 1400 or Palomino based Athlon XPs depending of the mobo CPU support, FSB 266 Thoroughbred/Barton/Thorton support might depend of the board

There no KT266 mobos with ISA slot afiak, also this is ture on VIA chipsets for Intel as well, if you want ISA on a Intel/VIA System, you'll be limited to Socket 370 (ethier P3 Coppermine or Tualatin) with the VIA Apollo133A/T (VIA 694X/T) which also means you have to use PC133 RAM, none of the VIA Pentium 4 chipsets supports ISA

SiS 630, 730 and newer doesn't support ISA at all, so SiS on Socket 370, A and newer is out of question

I've had two KT266 boards with ISA - one made by matsonic, and one made by epox (I think). The thing is I'm not sure it's fully functional ISA - I think it used a PCI to ISA bridge...