Hi all, first post, I hear good things about this forum.

Im posting because I need a bit of advice, its a bit of a story so here goes...

Having already started to mass parts for an XP Gaming build, I was researching YouTube and stumbled across Phil's Computer Lab (Now subscribed) which has inspired me to build a retro gaming PC to play DOS games on and maybe some 98 games, joined PC gaming more around Battlefield 2 era.

I knew I had my Dads old Gigabyte motherboard in my loft which was populated with a Pentium 3 750Mhz and 512 sdram and I knew I had a few boxes of various old hardware so I took no time in which to get them out the loft and see what I had.

Amongst other things, items of interest for such a build were an Opti 16 ISA (cant see a brand) sound card, a DSAC-300 (HP Digitan systems) ISA sound card, sweex 5.1 PCI sound card, Aureon Fun 5.1 PCI a Rage 128 pro, a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI, various SDRAM, another Socket 370 motherboard with a Celeron installed, some IDE DVD roms, Some IDE HDDS from 2GB to 250GB, IDE cables, Floppys drives. oh and a ATI AllinWonder 7200 AGP, various old nics.

I also knew I had a SoundBlaster Audigy at my mum and dads and an Audigy 2 in a computer my niece was using to sing karaoke a while ago somewhere, will need tracking down.

Obviously I couldn't use ISA sound cards but it looked promising!

The following night I was dropping my niece's birthday card off at my brothers and motioned to him what I was doing and said if he knows anyone with old PCs they don't want let me know, he told me he might still have his old PC that I my cousin gave him ages ago in his loft and I could have it if it was, I persuaded him to see and after 20 minutes of tense waiting and sticking my head in his loft to nosey he suddenly found it.

Yes! I thought.. I knew I wasn't the oldest thing in the world but at least I had a case and PSU now, we brought it down and grabbed a screw driver to see what was inside. I unscrewed and pulled off the side, the first thing that hit me was a shiny heat sink on an AGP card, what the!.. is that... could it be... omg it was! Staring me in the face was my old XFX Geforce 6600GT AGP. A bit off topic but it always bugged me what I did with that card and it turned out years earlier I had revamped this PC so he could play FarCry! The rest of the system was a P4 3.0 Ghz an Intel motherboard but umm I could see bubbled caps! Haven't test these parts yet but will replace the caps and have a go.

Anyway I took the system home and took no time in stripping and cleaning everything, I then replaced the coin cell in the Gigabyte motherboard installed along with the Rage 128 pro (after Phil's review), and went for a test boot.... Nothing, Nooo.. I thought crap its knackered. I replaced the ram with a single 128 stick and tried again, still nothing. I then re-seated the processor and put the ram in a different dim.... and

Yes!!! we have post! then next thing I thought was crap I don't actually have Windows 98 or indeed DOS, time to do some internet digging and asking around at work.

Having come up with nothing for download, the next day in work I asked if anyone new a site to download windows 98, the young helpdesk lad said he would try his dirty P2P sites he probably downloads Brazzer vids off of, but best of all the other developer I sit next to said he still has an original copy and key I could have! this was getting easy!

I say it was getting easy but having gone round my mum and dads on the way home from work and spending nearly 2 hours to find the Audigy card I saw only a week earlier and coming to the conclusion he has thrown it in the bin maybe not so much! Absolutely gutted.

So the story so far... I have a working Pentium system, I have windows 98 SE installed, I have a sweex 5.1 sound card... What I don't have is a system that DOS games will work on.... After more research I realised that (please correct me if im wrong) that you need to have an ISA sound card for DOS as they use FM and only a few motherboards have a pass through to the a PCI sound card for games to even talk to it and then your sound card needs to support this feature. 🙁

I actually dreamed of a 486 system in the first place for DOS, the Pentium 3 was ok but not the 1994 era so I then started to look on ebay for suitable motherboards and processors and unless I was looking for the wrong thing I can tell you in the UK there are slim pickings! And what is on there is over priced, I even visited a few charity shops with no luck. It seems with out paying through teeth my dreams of a DOS system were over.

Step in the Girl Friend... "I want things putting in the loft" she told me, so back up there I was. I was moving boxes around to make space, my loft is only partially boarded where the old Water tank was so I was concentrating moving everything to this area, having moved a large cardboard board off two joists I noticed an antistatic bag in the midst of insulation between the two joists, I thought what's that.. brushing the loose insulation off the bag I realised it was a motherboard... Looking closer, OMG it has ISA slots... Gees what is this!!! I don't even remember having this board and cant remember where it has come from!

I put it to one side trying to control my excitement and got everything up in the loft as quickly as I could, so I could get it down for further inspection, once down an pulled it out the antistatic bag to see what I had un earthed. The first thing I noticed was that the fan from the heat sink was missing but it had a heat sink and it had a processor installed, Brill! It was a dark reddish colour like the AMD Duron form one of the other old motherboards up there so AMD then, but what?

Looking at the ZIF socket it read socket 7, yes... Fecking Socket Phils Computer Lab Sodding Seven!(Could it be Super???) I took the heat sink off.. oh I thought a heat spreader on the processor what can you be? I cleaned the stale compound off and read K6-2 400???

At this point it was getting late and I actually got in bed but had to tell my Girl Friend I wouldn't be able to sleep not knowing if the board worked or not, so I got up and striped the Pentium board out the case, installed the newly found board with a stick of 128 ram, the Rage 128 Pro and coin cell out of the Pentium board.

Crossing my fingers I pressed the power button, my monitor changed resolution and then the magic moment POST! I turned it all off not wanting to tempt fate (Remember no heat Sink fan) and got in bed with a nice smile on my face wondering how the hell I now had this motherboard and what a K6-2 400 was.

Since finding the board I have found a fan that fits the heat Sink and soldered a 3 pin plug on, cleaned and installed . The 2 GB drive must of been from the system as when I tried it with this board it booted to Windows 98 SE with a desktop background of one of my first cars and Alien vs Predator installed but not much else (ok a couple of pic of naked ladies from dial up days), I just don't remember ever using it 🤣 and when I did it must of only been for a brief period.

OK so nice story you thinking but why post it of this Forum? Well there's is not much in the way of branding on the board so im thinking its OEM, im really hoping someone might know more about this MYSTERY MOTHERBOARD... and also give me some advice on the sound cards I have, I've tried the Opti and have got sound out of it but its very noisy in term of electrical noise.

The other ISA sound card the DSAC-300 detects and installs but I cant get audio out of the speakers under 98, there is what looks like an onboard opamp on board and a aux_pwr floppy connector so Im wonder if if have to supply power to the card?

Anyway any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Iain