It is quite expensive though. It looks like manufacturer is a Chinese company for Chinese market. I hope Bios isn't in Chinese. Without AGP no GeForce FX5xxx.

AlexZ wrote on 2021-07-02, 16:10:

It is quite expensive though. It looks like manufacturer is a Chinese company for Chinese market. I hope Bios isn't in Chinese. Without AGP no GeForce FX5xxx.

They are pricey - not too bad for a newly manufactured motherboard if they actually are though.

I’d not spotted the lack of AGP - this one would rectify that:
￡62.83 | Free shipping Industrial Computer Embroidery CYSMBD-694X 694 motherboard with 1 ISA + 5PCI slots,2 COM,2 IDE,socket 370,AGP
https://a.aliexpress.com/_vcazyx

They’re also listed as Tualatin compatible which is a nice bonus

Wouldn't think it was too bad a price especially it used to keep industrial equipment running. I would think it's primary use was not intended to play DOOM. And you don't need an APG card to keep control of industrial equipment.

It's cool you can get 370 mobos new though if you have a business based around that era hardware and software. Keep it as a backup spare. nd for a business that sort of money is pittance if it keeps everthing in the business running smoothly.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32891885408.h … 8%2315612%23314
^here's one with AGP. I would have been interested if the board used the Apollo Pro 266 chipset and DDR + Tualatin support.

wow, thanks for that. This seller has some insane motherboard designs, eg socket 775 G41 + ISA.

Yeah - Tualatin but no DDR. It’s just kind of cool they actually still make new ones (unless they’re NOS).

They do have some quite cool ISA boards on there, wonder what compatibility is like.

Does it say what the chip sets are or did I miss them on the listings?

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-07-02, 21:18:

Does it say what the chip sets are or did I miss them on the listings?

One lists chipset at VIA 686B (which is just the SB) other says VIA 694X which is Apollo Pro 133A

Thank you. Not sure how I missed that on both of them. I wish I had some spare money cause I'd get one if the AGP boards

britain4 wrote on 2021-07-02, 15:59:

Was browsing AliExpress today and stumbled across these:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32895091971.h … -242d5eec3570-2

Cheap it ain't - but it is apparently brand new. Anyone tried these or have any idea whether they're actually newly manufactured, NOS or just rebadged old boards?

Not new - it's actually NOS, but if the better photo I found tells me anything the manufacturing date was back in...2011 (so 10 years ago instead of 20 years ago...look at the silkscreen date stamp and the sticker on the BIOS)
https://sc04.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1shFXa7L0gK0jSZFxq6xWHVXam.jpg
I think the 694 board has a silkscreened date from 2007.

Heres a little clue, the seller is definitely not the original manufacturer...they run a booth at the infamous Golconda Electronics market in Shenzhen, and according to a listing on some Chinese B2B site:

http://www.beook.com/qiye/biz2337667484.html

"深圳市福田區創益速電子，是深圳市公司，我們以商業服務的方式主要經營SMT舊板卡;維修SMT板卡;二手貼片機;工業電腦;羅技產品代理;組裝電腦;網絡工程;電腦維修;電腦配件銷售..."

Which translate roughly to:
CYS Electronics is a company based in the Futian District of Shenzhen. Our commercial operations revolves around the sales and repair of old SMT motherboards, pre-owned SMT pick-and-place machines, industrial computers, computer assembly/repair and network engineering. We also retail computer components and is a Logitech products distributor"
Eh, you can do much better than dealing with these small fry.

So, who manufactured the boards?
If I have to guess...ITZR - they assemble boards and sell them on AliExpress...
Here's their own B2B portal with the small board on their list. Oh look, Intel 845 (ICH4) and 945 (ICH7) boards with an ITE ISA-to-PCI bridge chip).
https://itzr2010.en.made-in-china.com/product … HERBOARD-1.html

And here's the PLE133 board -
https://itzr2010.en.made-in-china.com/product … h-Isa-Slot.html

Here's one that can do a sample for 55 USD/piece (plus shipping and whatever tariffs are applicable) - pretty sure if you poke around more you can get a better listed price:
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/IMV860 … .6398c7caFibd9F
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/VIA-69 … .220b4534h7vaOA
(that board also looks very similar to the DFI CA63/64 series industrial boards)

IIT seems to be a fairly large reseller - related to ITZR, perhaps?

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-07-03, 04:21:

Not new - it's actually NOS, but if the better photo I found tells me anything the manufacturing date was back in...2011 (so 10 […]
Show full quote

britain4 wrote on 2021-07-02, 15:59:

Was browsing AliExpress today and stumbled across these:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32895091971.h … -242d5eec3570-2

Cheap it ain't - but it is apparently brand new. Anyone tried these or have any idea whether they're actually newly manufactured, NOS or just rebadged old boards?

Not new - it's actually NOS, but if the better photo I found tells me anything the manufacturing date was back in...2011 (so 10 years ago instead of 20 years ago...look at the silkscreen date stamp and the sticker on the BIOS)
https://sc04.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1shFXa7L0gK0jSZFxq6xWHVXam.jpg
I think the 694 board has a silkscreened date from 2007.

Heres a little clue, the seller is definitely not the original manufacturer...they run a booth at the infamous Golconda Electronics market in Shenzhen, and according to a listing on some Chinese B2B site:

http://www.beook.com/qiye/biz2337667484.html

"深圳市福田區創益速電子，是深圳市公司，我們以商業服務的方式主要經營SMT舊板卡;維修SMT板卡;二手貼片機;工業電腦;羅技產品代理;組裝電腦;網絡工程;電腦維修;電腦配件銷售..."

Which translate roughly to:
CYS Electronics is a company based in the Futian District of Shenzhen. Our commercial operations revolves around the sales and repair of old SMT motherboards, pre-owned SMT pick-and-place machines, industrial computers, computer assembly/repair and network engineering. We also retail computer components and is a Logitech products distributor"
Eh, you can do much better than dealing with these small fry.

So, who manufactured the boards?
If I have to guess...ITZR - they assemble boards and sell them on AliExpress...
Here's their own B2B portal with the small board on their list. Oh look, Intel 845 (ICH4) and 945 (ICH7) boards with an ITE ISA-to-PCI bridge chip).
https://itzr2010.en.made-in-china.com/product … HERBOARD-1.html

And here's the PLE133 board -
https://itzr2010.en.made-in-china.com/product … h-Isa-Slot.html

Here's one that can do a sample for 55 USD/piece (plus shipping and whatever tariffs are applicable) - pretty sure if you poke around more you can get a better listed price:
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/IMV860 … .6398c7caFibd9F
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/VIA-69 … .220b4534h7vaOA
(that board also looks very similar to the DFI CA63/64 series industrial boards)

IIT seems to be a fairly large reseller - related to ITZR, perhaps?

This is REALLY illuminating - thanks for doing the digging. I may price up a sample board from your link later on to see if the price is a bit more reasonable after shipping and VAT etc. AliE seller claims the boards are newly manufactured (most likely untrue unless the picture you found is just really old) and that the BIOS is English.

I guess it could be an easy source of (hopefully reliable) Tualatin boards if it works out but mainly I just think it’s cool you can still find “new” ones

I'd rather buy 5 used boards for that price than a new one from China.

Miphee wrote on 2021-07-03, 08:57:

I'd rather buy 5 used boards for that price than a new one from China.

Agreed, that's what I did. Got a few boards for the rigs I want to keep. Very cheap and in case there are random issues I can swap the board.

britain4 wrote on 2021-07-02, 21:03:

Yeah - Tualatin but no DDR. It’s just kind of cool they actually still make new ones (unless they’re NOS).

They do have some quite cool ISA boards on there, wonder what compatibility is like.

does it really have tualatin support? The Apollo 133A chipset doesn't officially support Tualatin chips... I mean the seller lists it supports tualatin processors but I have my doubts since only the Apollo 133T (694T) officially supports these chips.

It could work with Tualatin processors if the socket is modified out of the box and it has BIOS support for it... I mean you can pin-mod a tualatin chip to run in any socket 370 board provided it can supply the correct voltage - it will be detected as a Pentium III-S. I've had success doing this with Tualatin Celerons up to 1400MHz, but not so much with the Pentium III 1400 witch has 512kb of L2 cache.

AlexZ wrote on 2021-07-02, 16:10:

It is quite expensive though. It looks like manufacturer is a Chinese company for Chinese market. I hope Bios isn't in Chinese. Without AGP no GeForce FX5xxx.

But enough room for your Voodoo5 5500 PCI 😉

I think this is great if a little expensive. Wonder why on earth they bothered making them....are there really that many old industrial plants in China that have ISA based equipment? Hope they are compatible with Via C3 CPUs...do you reckon they have a modernish BIOS?

Socket3 wrote on 2021-07-03, 18:18:

britain4 wrote on 2021-07-02, 21:03:

Yeah - Tualatin but no DDR. It’s just kind of cool they actually still make new ones (unless they’re NOS).

They do have some quite cool ISA boards on there, wonder what compatibility is like.

does it really have tualatin support? The Apollo 133A chipset doesn't officially support Tualatin chips... I mean the seller lists it supports tualatin processors but I have my doubts since only the Apollo 133T (694T) officially supports these chips.

It could work with Tualatin processors if the socket is modified out of the box and it has BIOS support for it... I mean you can pin-mod a tualatin chip to run in any socket 370 board provided it can supply the correct voltage - it will be detected as a Pentium III-S. I've had success doing this with Tualatin Celerons up to 1400MHz, but not so much with the Pentium III 1400 witch has 512kb of L2 cache.

I’m just going on what the seller has said, like you say I assumed the board would be “pre-modded” in some way to provide the support.

The BIOS chip is labelled as an Award one copyright 2011 so presumably it’s a “modern” one made for the board?

Hey britain4,

I purchased and tested one of those AGP boards. They will only go to AGP 2x mode with the 5950 Ultra. Other cards go to 4x. It depends. I bought three and gave two Vogons members one each. One member made a video about their build based on that board.

Also, some posts I made about my experience with it as well:

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Re: Windows 98SE not 4X AGP, but 2X AGP
Re: AliExpress AGP cards

britain4 wrote on 2021-07-03, 08:14:

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-07-03, 04:21:

Not new - it's actually NOS, but if the better photo I found tells me anything the manufacturing date was back in...2011 (so 10 […]
Show full quote

britain4 wrote on 2021-07-02, 15:59:

Was browsing AliExpress today and stumbled across these:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32895091971.h … -242d5eec3570-2

Cheap it ain't - but it is apparently brand new. Anyone tried these or have any idea whether they're actually newly manufactured, NOS or just rebadged old boards?

Not new - it's actually NOS, but if the better photo I found tells me anything the manufacturing date was back in...2011 (so 10 years ago instead of 20 years ago...look at the silkscreen date stamp and the sticker on the BIOS)
https://sc04.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1shFXa7L0gK0jSZFxq6xWHVXam.jpg
I think the 694 board has a silkscreened date from 2007.

Heres a little clue, the seller is definitely not the original manufacturer...they run a booth at the infamous Golconda Electronics market in Shenzhen, and according to a listing on some Chinese B2B site:

http://www.beook.com/qiye/biz2337667484.html

"深圳市福田區創益速電子，是深圳市公司，我們以商業服務的方式主要經營SMT舊板卡;維修SMT板卡;二手貼片機;工業電腦;羅技產品代理;組裝電腦;網絡工程;電腦維修;電腦配件銷售..."

Which translate roughly to:
CYS Electronics is a company based in the Futian District of Shenzhen. Our commercial operations revolves around the sales and repair of old SMT motherboards, pre-owned SMT pick-and-place machines, industrial computers, computer assembly/repair and network engineering. We also retail computer components and is a Logitech products distributor"
Eh, you can do much better than dealing with these small fry.

So, who manufactured the boards?
If I have to guess...ITZR - they assemble boards and sell them on AliExpress...
Here's their own B2B portal with the small board on their list. Oh look, Intel 845 (ICH4) and 945 (ICH7) boards with an ITE ISA-to-PCI bridge chip).
https://itzr2010.en.made-in-china.com/product … HERBOARD-1.html

And here's the PLE133 board -
https://itzr2010.en.made-in-china.com/product … h-Isa-Slot.html

Here's one that can do a sample for 55 USD/piece (plus shipping and whatever tariffs are applicable) - pretty sure if you poke around more you can get a better listed price:
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/IMV860 … .6398c7caFibd9F
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/VIA-69 … .220b4534h7vaOA
(that board also looks very similar to the DFI CA63/64 series industrial boards)

IIT seems to be a fairly large reseller - related to ITZR, perhaps?

This is REALLY illuminating - thanks for doing the digging. I may price up a sample board from your link later on to see if the price is a bit more reasonable after shipping and VAT etc. AliE seller claims the boards are newly manufactured (most likely untrue unless the picture you found is just really old) and that the BIOS is English.

I guess it could be an easy source of (hopefully reliable) Tualatin boards if it works out but mainly I just think it’s cool you can still find “new” ones

Oh, the BIOS is most likely in English for something that old-tech…I don’t think there are simplified or traditional Chinese options in BIO menus until UEFI made it easier to implement. As for whether it’s newly manufactured or not….eh, this can be read as “first party manufactured using new parts” versus “remanufactured using harvested components” (which is fairly commonplace in Shenzhen). The trick is to figure out when the manufacturing took place.

Eh, I don’t think it’s “new” (as in, manufactured sometime within the past year or so) per-se, but ITZR still seem to manufacture G41 boards, and those are meant for Merom/Penryn Core 2s from 2008/2009. If that’s the case they probably did the same 10 years ago, and that represent the last batch of Via Apollo boards ever made on a dedicated line.

Depending on how easily they can find NOS components with local chip brokers, they can conceivably spin a pick-and-place up to fab more if the demand is there, but I kinda doubt it.

Interesting ! I bought two NOS refurbed soc 478 i865pe boards from a different China supplier in Shenzhen for 1/2 what these soc 370 are last year and they worked out just fine.
Would buy one of these with AGP but do not need really another soc 370.