was going to say a socket 604 setup but you want a isa card.
look into picmg or a dual 1.4gh P3 setup?

Socket 370/Slot1/SlotA? It really depends on the games etc you want to run. Early Socket A like KT133 motherboards are another good option.

Thanks for your input so far, guys. I will take a look into these. In terms of games, I will not be using this computer for anything past Doom/ Chocolate Doom.
Mainly, a speedy windows environment is what I'm looking for. The OPL3 would be used with Adlib Tracker and for midi playback. No networking components required.

Fastest board that supports ISA and fastest board that supports Win2k are two very different things. I've heard of others running Win2k on Core i7. The challenge is locating drivers for newer hardware, but I guess it has been done in some cases. Personally, I've run it on Athlon/Phenom II boards so I know that nForce 4 chipsets have Win2k drivers, and some AMD chipsets. Extended Kernel enables quad core support (although I noticed that single threaded performance drops slightly when all 4 cores enabled, likely because of inefficiency in the Win2k scheduler). There are hacked drivers for newer video cards (GeForce up to 6xx and Radeon up to 6xxx seem to work well)

KT133A Socket A would be my choice for this.

Here is what I've come up with on my search. Opinions would be great.

Supermicro P3TDL3
Supermicro P3TDLE
GigaByte GA-BX2000

bakemono wrote:

Fastest board that supports ISA and fastest board that supports Win2k are two very different things. I've heard of others running Win2k on Core i7. The challenge is locating drivers for newer hardware, but I guess it has been done in some cases. Personally, I've run it on Athlon/Phenom II boards so I know that nForce 4 chipsets have Win2k drivers, and some AMD chipsets. Extended Kernel enables quad core support (although I noticed that single threaded performance drops slightly when all 4 cores enabled, likely because of inefficiency in the Win2k scheduler). There are hacked drivers for newer video cards (GeForce up to 6xx and Radeon up to 6xxx seem to work well)

Speed of the board is secondary to support for both ISA and the OS, but I'd like it go up to 4GB memory if possible. Speaking of memory, how much of a difference in performance would I see between a 4GB 2k system as opposed to one under a gigabyte? I wasn't able to find any information on this.

appiah4 wrote:

KT133A Socket A would be my choice for this.

I have read that Socket A boards require 5v rail power supplies. Any idea where to find them?

D-Generation wrote:

I have read that Socket A boards require 5v rail power supplies. Any idea where to find them?

You need a lot of amp's, like 30 to 35 amps. Though every ATX PSU has 5volt rail's, not all deliver those amp's.
The bad part, is that they are hard to find these days.

EDIT:
Like this one... 5v 40amps.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Xion-ATX-400-Power-S … YwAAOxydlFSwixu

Yes, boards prior to the introduction of the P4 generally require strong output capability on the 5V rail. That Xion PSU, though...

D-Generation wrote:

Here is what I've come up with on my search. Opinions would be great. […]
Show full quote

Here is what I've come up with on my search. Opinions would be great.

Supermicro P3TDL3
Supermicro P3TDLE
GigaByte GA-BX2000

I wouldn't go with either Supermicro board if you want an easy time. They will be stable, but need registered ECC RAM; have no AGP slot; and drivers for the boards, and the Serverworks chipset, are somewhat hard to find in my experience (if someone can prove me wrong, please do!) They are also physically large and may not suit all cases. My experiences are with the non-Tualatin Supermicro boards running the same chipset.
There's some info on them here: http://ixbtlabs.com/articles/tualatinsmp/

According to this thread - Motherboard with 1.4Ghz Tualatin support and 3 ISA slots? - IPOX did a P3 board with more ISA slots, and ITOX and other industrial manufacturers also do P4 boards with ISA.

I would second the idea to go for an Athlon-based build, KT133A as appiah said. Abit KT7A is one option, apparently with the newest BIOS it supports up to Athlon XP 2400+.

D-Generation wrote:

bakemono wrote:

Fastest board that supports ISA and fastest board that supports Win2k are two very different things. I've heard of others running Win2k on Core i7. The challenge is locating drivers for newer hardware, but I guess it has been done in some cases. Personally, I've run it on Athlon/Phenom II boards so I know that nForce 4 chipsets have Win2k drivers, and some AMD chipsets. Extended Kernel enables quad core support (although I noticed that single threaded performance drops slightly when all 4 cores enabled, likely because of inefficiency in the Win2k scheduler). There are hacked drivers for newer video cards (GeForce up to 6xx and Radeon up to 6xxx seem to work well)

Speed of the board is secondary to support for both ISA and the OS, but I'd like it go up to 4GB memory if possible. Speaking of memory, how much of a difference in performance would I see between a 4GB 2k system as opposed to one under a gigabyte? I wasn't able to find any information on this.

I'd wager the difference would be larger between <1GB and maybe 1-2GB, but above that you might not see much performance improvement. It will come down to what you're intending to run. Maybe if you install a bootable PCI SATA card that will improve loading times, and paging file performance.

gdjacobs wrote:

Yes, boards prior to the introduction of the P4 generally require strong output capability on the 5V rail. That Xion PSU, though […]
Show full quote

Yes, boards prior to the introduction of the P4 generally require strong output capability on the 5V rail. That Xion PSU, though...

Ha, very much agreed. Steer clear of Xion power supplies. The ONLY one I had the misfortune of using failed catastrophically on the 5v rail and destroyed a R9 380. Keep in mind this was a supposedly a "800 watt GAMING" supply powering a lowely R9 380, SSD, 1 HDD, and a Fx8350. The PSU had a 2012 manufacturing date and bulging Fuhjyuu's all over it. From what I have gathered my experience is pretty typical for that brand through the years. The only pins burned out on the 380's pcie connector were the 5v power.

gdjacobs wrote:

Yes, boards prior to the introduction of the P4 generally require strong output capability on the 5V rail. That Xion PSU, though […]
Show full quote

Yes, boards prior to the introduction of the P4 generally require strong output capability on the 5V rail. That Xion PSU, though...

Well....
It was only to demonstrate what ratings he need, not the brand of PSU.

Thank you for all the replies! This information is certainly valuable and teaches me a few things. I did notice that the supermicro boards needed registered ECC but totally forgot about the availability of drivers 😀 I will keep looking into your suggestions and hopefully assemble something workable.