I want to make a all in ome modernish DOS machine, and i thing a Socket 479 Pentium M board wolud be perfect for that, because those Pentium 4 boards are power hungry and Core 2 is bit overkill. Maybe someone have some experience, and maybe there are models with built in speed throttling.
I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.
PS. If I upload RAR, it is a 16-bit DOS RAR Version 2.50.
Socket 479 Pentium M is a great way to go.
I've horded a number of those boards. (And a few Toughbooks that use them.)
They bypassed most of the NetBurst core and were essentially the next generation of Tualatin, with higher clocks and more cache.
For the same CPU clock they have about 2x the performance of a NetBurst P4 and use about 1/2 the power.
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The later Core Solo-Core2 and Sossaman socket 479 aren't bad either, those tend to have better chipset options. (i9xx vs i8xx)
The crappier chipsets are crappier because of the chipset based video which presumably you won't be using anyway, so...
Desktop 479 boards are sometimes called MoDT (Mobile on Desktop). Might help to add the term to your searches.
Itox/DFI and AOpen made a variety of them. MSI and Tyan a few. Asus made some OEM for HP but I avoid those.
There are also several lesser known companies that specialize in industrial boards that made them.
Some would be great for it but my interest wasn't games it was low power use in HTPC and NAS.
One of the Itox models (I have 3) has a PCI-X slot. It works great with a 3Ware 9550 for a low power hardware RAIDed NAS.
My HTPC has been using an AOpen based MoDT board (+nVidia video) for about 8 years with no issues at all.
They don't show up very often and tend to get snapped right up (or are extortionately priced) so you have to check about every day or you'll miss the good ones.
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Last edited by PCBONEZ on 2019-12-18, 00:55. Edited 1 time in total.
GRUMPY OLD FART - On Hiatus, sort'a
Mann-Made Global Warming. - We should be more concerned about the Intellectual Climate.
You can teach a man to fish and feed him for life, but if he can't handle sushi you must also teach him to cook.
IF there is one it will be industrial, or it has to be a SBC on a ISA back plane. I searched long and hard for such a motherboard and came up with basically 2 options.
1st option was to obtain an AOPEN board who were famous for Pentium M. There is only 1 AOPEN board that has AGP and Pentium M. Which is what you would want to run Geforce 4. All the other AOPEN boards are PCI express and is a no go since there are no good PCI Express Replacements for a geforce 4.
2nd Option was to obtain the mystical unicorn Asus CT-479 adapter that I searched for about 2 years for and finally got one then put that in one of the asus compatible boards with AGP. So I could run geforce 4 and pentium M. This is a work in progress.
Neither one of those have ISA or SBLINK. So the best solution would be to run a A3D MX200 or MX300 card which has pretty good dos compatibility, or one of those Yamaha PCI cards.
I have heard of PCI Riser cards that have a ISA Bridge on the riser like those from costronic and should theorectically do ISA DMA if the intel chipset is lower than 855 But I have never seen one for sale. Only seen pictures but Id love to get my hads on one.
The Serpent Rider wrote:PCX 5900. […] Show full quote
there are no good PCI Express Replacements for a geforce 4.
PCX 5900.
My focus wasn't ISA but there are at least some industrial boards with the 855GME chipset that have ISA.
Lack of AGP kinda kills it.
Made a thread about it during my quest. It was found out that it's not supported by drivers later than 6x series and it is very unstable on those and crashes. The 70 series were the earliest ones without problems, and the 80s series had bugs as well. So since you can't run 40x series drivers on those cards they are deemed not good replacements for geforce 4 and lower GPUs.
So while theoretically because those PEG cards are based on FX chips they should be highly compatible but becasue the way they were implemented with the AGP to PCI-E bridge, there is nothing but bugs and crashes on those cards with earlyer drivers, and you cannot force 50x or lower drivers to run on those cards at all. And becasue yes maybe the 70x drivers are almost stable enough to run the cards, that introduces a whole other level of problems becasue these drivers have their own issues with games.
TLDR you will never get the full retro compatibility and stability as AGP geforce 2-3-4 on 40x series drivers.
Warlord wrote:IF there is one it will be industrial, or it has to be a SBC on a ISA back plane. I searched long and hard for such a motherboa […] Show full quote
IF there is one it will be industrial, or it has to be a SBC on a ISA back plane. I searched long and hard for such a motherboard and came up with basically 2 options.
1st option was to obtain an AOPEN board who were famous for Pentium M. There is only 1 AOPEN board that has AGP and Pentium M. Which is what you would want to run Geforce 4. All the other AOPEN boards are PCI express and is a no go since there are no good PCI Express Replacements for a geforce 4.
2nd Option was to obtain the mystical unicorn Asus CT-479 adapter that I searched for about 2 years for and finally got one then put that in one of the asus compatible boards with AGP. So I could run geforce 4 and pentium M. This is a work in progress.
Neither one of those have ISA or SBLINK. So the best solution would be to run a A3D MX200 or MX300 card which has pretty good dos compatibility, or one of those Yamaha PCI cards.
I have heard of PCI Riser cards that have a ISA Bridge on the riser like those from costronic and should theorectically do ISA DMA if the intel chipset is lower than 855 But I have never seen one for sale. Only seen pictures but Id love to get my hads on one.
I have a Cyrix branded PCI - ISA riser evaluation board. Haven't had time to mess with it though.
There were never ANY PIAGP/SAGP backplane/SBC setups released that I am aware of that had Pentium-M support. You have:
Socket-A (unobtanium and ISA not supported)
Socket 370 (unobtanium)
Socket 478 (around $280+ for an AGP/PCI/ISA backplane with the required PCI-ISA bridge and an SBC)
LGA775 (unobtanium)
SAGP-815EV PIAGP Socket-370 Based CPU Card,USB 2.0
SAGP-845EV PIAGP Socket-478 Based CPU Card,USB 2.0
SAGP-845MEV PIAGP socket-478 base CPU board supports P4-M CPU, USB2.0
SAGP-648E PIAGP AGP 8X,Socket-478 Based CPU Card,IEEE-1394,USB 2.0,Serial ATA (requires an LPC PCI-ISA bridge module that is different from what all the other SBCs require)
SAGP-4620E PCIAGP Socket-462 AMD based CPU board with LAN, Audio & USB 2.0 (ISA not supported)
SAGP-865EV PCIAGP Socket 478 800MHz FSB CPU board with VGA, LAN, Audio, USB 2.0 & S-ATA
SAGP-865EVG PCIAGP Socket 478 800MHz FSB CPU board with VGA, GbE, LAN, Audio, USB 2.0 & S-ATA
SAGP-8650EV - Socket 478
SAGP-8650EVG - Socket 478
Last edited by cyclone3d on 2019-12-17, 22:20. Edited 2 times in total.
IF there is one it will be industrial, or it has to be a SBC on a ISA back plane. I searched long and hard for such a motherboard and came up with basically 2 options.
No.
There are a lot in mini-ITX and a few in micro-ATX and some full ATX.
The two in the links I posted are micro-ATX and full ATX industrial boards.
There are a few in SBC but not that many. (Or maybe I just skip looking at those.)
Warlord wrote:
mystical unicorn Asus CT-479 adapter that I searched for about 2 years for
I have one of those too. It's NIB.
After all the trouble I went through to find one I don't wanna break it on a lark project.
Warlord wrote:
There is only 1 AOPEN board that has AGP and Pentium M.
There are at least 2.
One on Intel i855 chipset with AGP 4x (I have 2 of those cached away) and one on an SiS 661FX chipset with AGP 8x.
I dunno squat about modern SIS sets so the AOpen s661FXm-FSN never interested me. https://soggi.org/motherboards/aopen/s661FXm-FSN.htm
There may have been some others but I don't have access to that part of my archives right now.
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GRUMPY OLD FART - On Hiatus, sort'a
Mann-Made Global Warming. - We should be more concerned about the Intellectual Climate.
You can teach a man to fish and feed him for life, but if he can't handle sushi you must also teach him to cook.
I know the industrial boards exist, I have never seen one with AGP. My point was besides the 1-2 AOPEN boards, and 1 ASROCK, 1 DFI/ITOX board. Besides these 4 boards I am not aware of any Dothan AGP boards. I can't remember if MSI made one or not, I think the speedsters were pci-e
You are more likely to find a industrial board without AGP or a AOPEN or DFI express board after months of searching before you will see a AGP board, and you never going to find a CT-479. There was a guy who i messaged on ebay who had like 8 of them and recently was selling them 1 at a time for buy now prices and I am pretty sure they are all gone now. The guy also had no idea what he was doing or what he had.
ALL I can say is good luck. Its 100% pointless build without AGP. Also the CPUs are unlocked but you can only down clock them to 6x or 8x So forget about thinking ISA is necessary when you can't slow it down enough to play speed sensitive games and for such a powerful rig, the couple good PCI cards I mentioned earyler should be more than compatible enough with late 90s dos games.
This isn't the kind of rig you build to be concerned if a game that will only run on a 386 will run on your system. This is the kinda rig you build where the CPU is no longer the bottleneck on your Geforce 4600TI, with voodoo 2 SLI. This is the kinda RIG that can run XP very comfortably, and 98se, faster and more efficient than 99% of the P4 retro solutions. And be that big dick system that very few to people have. Thats what kinda build this is.
Except the OP wants it for DOS, not W9x. That's why the ISA slot matters.
AGP and/or PCIe slots don't really matter. Just use the PCI for video.
Even the lowest 900MHz Banias beats a 2GHz P4. Don't need a Dothan.
YUP, it's going to be a hard find.
And, I wouldn't build one that way either but I'm not building it.
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GRUMPY OLD FART - On Hiatus, sort'a
Mann-Made Global Warming. - We should be more concerned about the Intellectual Climate.
You can teach a man to fish and feed him for life, but if he can't handle sushi you must also teach him to cook.
PCBONEZ wrote:Except the OP wants it for DOS, not W9x. That's why the ISA slot matters.
AGP and/or PCIe slots don't really matter. Just use th […] Show full quote
Except the OP wants it for DOS, not W9x. That's why the ISA slot matters.
AGP and/or PCIe slots don't really matter. Just use the PCI for video.
Even the lowest 900MHz Banias beats a 2GHz P4. Don't need a Dothan.
900.jpg
YUP, it's going to be a hard find.
And, I wouldn't build one that way either but I'm not building it.
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I don't know that he understands though that It can only be down clocked to 600mhz or 800mhz depending on the CPU. It's not the same as K62/3 Plus or VIA C3 or other mobile CPU. It is the same that they can be all be down clocked to their lowest multiplier. But the lowest Multiplier on Dothans is like 6-8-10X depending on speed. This is becasue Pentium M is based on Pentium II and just like the Pentium II it will only downclock so much. It doesn't go down to 1x. Its not like a AMD K6 where the lowest Multiplier will put them at 100mhz and then you can disable Cache and lower the FSB and other kinds of tricks to get it down to 286 speed or somthing where games of this vintage actually care about ISA. 2ndly you cannot disable the cache or do other kind of trickery like you can with K6 Mobiles. Bad at being slow and Bad at being fast.
That makes this a bad CPU if you want it to be a dos machine and it makes ISA DMA cards Irrelevant and pointless in my opinion. Then if you really went down this PCI/ISA 479 rabbit hole, you box yourself into what is a terrible system at any games that could take advantage of the platforms speed and it is just a total waste all around and bad at everything. Those AOPEN Cobra PCI and like A3D cards even SB-live cards will play later DOS games in pure dos, lots of games will work just through environmental Variables or driver trickery of these card.
What I am trying to say is its a pointless Exercise, for this type of build. I am not saying you can't do it. I am just saying I think you will realize that its not what you think it is.
Might as well just go for an unlocked Antlon XP Thoroughbred-B build (or Geode NX). Capable to do 3x multiplier and has tweakable TDP all the way down to 6 watts (maybe even less).
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
I don't know that he understands though that It can only be down clocked to 600mhz or 800mhz depending on the CPU. It's not the same as K62/3 Plus or VIA C3 or other mobile CPU. It is the same that they can be all be down clocked to their lowest multiplier. But the lowest Multiplier on Dothans is like 6-8-10X depending on speed. This is becasue Pentium M is based on Pentium II and just like the Pentium II it will only downclock so much. It doesn't go down to 1x. Its not like a AMD K6 where the lowest Multiplier will put them at 100mhz and then you can disable Cache and lower the FSB and other kinds of tricks to get it down to 286 speed or somthing where games of this vintage actually care about ISA. 2ndly you cannot disable the cache or do other kind of trickery like you can with K6 Mobiles. Bad at being slow and Bad at being fast.
That makes this a bad CPU if you want it to be a dos machine and it makes ISA DMA cards Irrelevant and pointless in my opinion. Then if you really went down this PCI/ISA 479 rabbit hole, you box yourself into what is a terrible system at any games that could take advantage of the platforms speed and it is just a total waste all around and bad at everything. Those AOPEN Cobra PCI and like A3D cards even SB-live cards will play later DOS games in pure dos, lots of games will work just through environmental Variables or driver trickery of these card.
What I am trying to say is its a pointless Exercise, for this type of build. I am not saying you can't do it. I am just saying I think you will realize that its not what you think it is.
It's only pointless if you assume the OP is doing what you would be doing with it.
He didn't say anything about games or intended use.
He's using the P-M as an alternative to a P4. That part makes sense.
P4 has those same issues and is already in that rabbit hole.
I don't get why DOS+P4+Games is becoming "a thing" either but it seems to be.
Everyone here (vogons) jumps on DOS+P4+Games as *the* reason for the DOS+P4+ISA configuration.
That isn't always the reason. It's not the reason for me.
I've been looking at DOS+P4+ISA+W9x+NT(W2k/XP) solutions to test repaired ISA cards without having multiple systems on the bench.
I downsized a while back and I have 1/3 the work space I used to have.
2k/XP have more powerful diagnostic utilities & P4 is better but ISA cards need to be tested in DOS and W9x as well.
Using multi-boot I need fewer testing systems setup (and taking space) to do the work.
I will probably end up with two:
1: DOS+(P4/P-M)+ISA+NT(W2k/XP) +4GB
2: DOS+(P4/P-M)+ISA+W9x +512MB
It would be ideal if they used the same motherboard and didn't eat power which is why I've been looking for one that does it all.
For my application I could care less about anything beyond basic video and sound.
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GRUMPY OLD FART - On Hiatus, sort'a
Mann-Made Global Warming. - We should be more concerned about the Intellectual Climate.
You can teach a man to fish and feed him for life, but if he can't handle sushi you must also teach him to cook.
Better hurry!
With prices like that they will be sold out in ... 15 years or so..
Please note that what looks like an empty BIOS socket between the slots is for a DiskOnChip.
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The Serpent Rider wrote:
Might as well just go for an unlocked Antlon XP Thoroughbred-B build (or Geode NX). Capable to do 3x multiplier and has tweakable TDP all the way down to 6 watts (maybe even less).
That sounds like a good idea.
I haven't looked at those chips in so long I don't remember anything about them.
Time for a fresh look.
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Last edited by Stiletto on 2020-03-02, 06:35. Edited 1 time in total.
GRUMPY OLD FART - On Hiatus, sort'a
Mann-Made Global Warming. - We should be more concerned about the Intellectual Climate.
You can teach a man to fish and feed him for life, but if he can't handle sushi you must also teach him to cook.
I think maybe the only possible option you have to get ISA with ITE 8888 for s479 is to use a PICMG SBC such as the Commell FS-97A. This SBC also has a Mini-AGP slot, but cards are very few and very rare. ATI Radeon M-10 (Radeon 9600) is one of them. Re: Mini-AGP for PICMG SBCs
Look for something with an ITE 8888 PCI to ISA bridge chip.
Something like this should work: Diebold MBATX 845E G2B REV 3-2 3ISA motherboard TT2
(Apologies for necro-ing)
I have just confirmed the hard way that the BIOS does not support manual DMA configuration, making it incredibly hard to get a sound card working. Auto-configuration doesn't do any good either. The BIOS only gives the ability to manually reserve IRQs, and checking the ROM in Modbin shows that DMA configuration is missing entirely. Unless I can find a compatible BIOS image or somehow add the option back into the BIOS, this board is a no-go for ISA DMA.
