Lylat1an wrote on 2022-01-03, 17:57:

It would be 'easier' to have two old PCs, but I'd prefer to have just one due to space constraints.

Heaving two very compact PCs not necessarily take up more space than having one full ATX. Given you have a KVM switch so you can use the same monitor/keyboard/mouse for both.
One uATX Slot1 or Socket 370 PC and one uATX Athlon XP in small cases like these: Re: Help me find the perfect case

I'm considering building something like that too. I have a board, it's like the uATX version of the Chaintech 6BTM0.

To support this: Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today in earlier titles if necessary. Though if the Athlon XP covers Windows 98 and late DOS, a 486DX2 or DX4 might be better for the earlier parts.

Lylat1an wrote on 2022-01-03, 17:57:

It would be 'easier' to have two old PCs, but I'd prefer to have just one due to space constraints. […]
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MN_Moody wrote on 2022-01-03, 14:48:

You're also in prime capacitor plague territory ... I've had very mixed luck sourcing industrial PC components from Aliexpress / […]
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You're also in prime capacitor plague territory ... I've had very mixed luck sourcing industrial PC components from Aliexpress / eBay sellers, the last go-round took a few months and 3 exchanges to get a working board.

For the money, time, and risk required to buy a bare mainboard you can buy an entire "premium" late Windows 98 Pentium 4 based computer (this one has RDRAM for a particularly interesting bit of period correct nostalgia): https://www.ebay.com/itm/304268855967

I understand the appeal of a single computer doing it all, but the SB16 was not an objectively great sound card outside of it's period correct golden age (and many would argue, not even then). The effort and cost to drag it forward into a more modern Windows 98 compatible machine while missing out on the 3D positional effects and other features of more modern PCI sound cards that may have slightly poorer DOS support but vastly superior Windows features seems impractical, from an objective standpoint.

By the time you source a CPU and cooler to go with that mainboard you'll be at close to $200, plus you still need to find an AGP graphics card. You also don't know if that Diebold ATM motherboard supports the sorts of features you're going to want as an enthusiast, the BIOS may be heavily stripped down or limited unlike a consumer/commercial mainboard.

If you want faster storage what about a simple PATA-SATA adapter and a small SSD hard drive in your current machine?

It would be 'easier' to have two old PCs, but I'd prefer to have just one due to space constraints.

My current motherboard only supports PCI 2.1 and 66Mhz IDE speeds. That industrial board has PCI 2.2, which may be enough to use a faster native SATA card which my current board won't recognize.

I could do some digging into the chipset specs to see if the ISA slots will work with an audio card, but I don't exactly know what I should look for...

The board you linked to on eBay has the ITE 8888 PCI-ISA bridge so I can, with almost 100% certainty, say that is has full ISA support.

That is also a really good price for that board. The industrial boards like that usually go for $200 or more plus shipping.
The only downside I see is that it is the 845 chipset which will limit you to the 533 fsb.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-01-03, 06:14:

Yes, that's an industrial board. That's why I wrote, if you go industrial, you can get much newer boards with ISA slot. […]
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Lylat1an wrote on 2022-01-02, 23:03:

I found a Socket 478 board with AGP 1.5v, four PCI v2.2, and 3 ISA slots. […]
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I found a Socket 478 board with AGP 1.5v, four PCI v2.2, and 3 ISA slots.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/264115189029

That should allow me to run my Sound Blaster 16, mouse controller, and a Voltage Blaster with a better video card.

I haven't thought much about which Windows games I want to play: I'm currently using the system to re-live my childhood memories in DOS.

Yes, that's an industrial board. That's why I wrote, if you go industrial, you can get much newer boards with ISA slot.

You could even get an IBASE MB865-R. It's built with the Intel 865G + ICH5 chipsets so Windows 98 is theoretically not a problem, has AGP and 2 ISA slots, but it's LGA775, so if it has BIOS with Core2 support, you can triple-boot DOS and Windows 98 with XP.

Thing is, with industrial boards, I don't know what you get for gaming/home use and for myself, I wouldn't pay $120 to find it out.

Looks like the iBASE MB865 boards do support ISA DMA through the Winbond 83628 and 83629 chips. However, according to the manual, it only supports Pentium 4 and Celeron D CPUs.

-----------------------------------
Motherboard manual

-----------------------------------
Winbond PCI-ISA bridge datasheet

-----------------------------------

That is good to know about the Winbond chips.

Edit: The iBase MB930 series looks to use the same Winbond chips, is LGA775, supports C2D and C2Q, and the user manual shows the DMA settings in BIOS.... G35 /ICH9 chipset with ISA DMA.... HMMMMM... Not going to try it for $500 though.
1x x16 PCIe, 4x PCI, 1x ISA

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-01-03, 06:29:

darry wrote on 2022-01-03, 06:18:

Not all such boards actually properly support ISA DMA, which is essential for ISA sound cards that have wave (PCM) output .

And that's why I wrote:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-01-03, 06:14:

Thing is, with industrial boards, I don't know what you get for gaming/home use and for myself, I wouldn't pay $120 to find it out.

I wouldn't want to pay $120 (about 153 $CAN) to find out either, but I actually did pay 70 Euros (including shipping from Spain to Canada) in 2017 which was about 100 $CAN, to take a chance on an Ipox 3ETI23 industrial board with Tualatin support and 3 ISA slots . This board actually does have functional DMA and works fine with AWE32/64 , Orpheus (CS4237), Audiotrix 3D/XG (YMF715E) and Gravis Ultrasound rev 3.73 , but has some kind of DMA incompatibility with the Gravis Ultrasound PnP . Also, NMI support does not work for aweutil /EM ( AWE32 and NMI support (or lack of) on motherboard ) and likely not for MegaEM either (haven't tried, don't care). Everything else, including, but not limited to, MPU-401 redirection to EMU8000 synth under Windows 98 SE and SoftMPU under DOS, works fine . I'm a happy camper .

My point is that industrial boards can work great, or at least well enough, and several have already been tested for ISA DMA compatibility by users on Vogons and elsewhere, so it does not need to be a lottery if one doesn''t want it to be .

cyclone3d wrote on 2022-01-03, 23:08:

The board you linked to on eBay has the ITE 8888 PCI-ISA bridge so I can, with almost 100% certainty, say that is has full ISA s […]
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Lylat1an wrote on 2022-01-03, 17:57:

It would be 'easier' to have two old PCs, but I'd prefer to have just one due to space constraints. […]
Show full quote

MN_Moody wrote on 2022-01-03, 14:48:

You're also in prime capacitor plague territory ... I've had very mixed luck sourcing industrial PC components from Aliexpress / […]
Show full quote

You're also in prime capacitor plague territory ... I've had very mixed luck sourcing industrial PC components from Aliexpress / eBay sellers, the last go-round took a few months and 3 exchanges to get a working board.

For the money, time, and risk required to buy a bare mainboard you can buy an entire "premium" late Windows 98 Pentium 4 based computer (this one has RDRAM for a particularly interesting bit of period correct nostalgia): https://www.ebay.com/itm/304268855967

I understand the appeal of a single computer doing it all, but the SB16 was not an objectively great sound card outside of it's period correct golden age (and many would argue, not even then). The effort and cost to drag it forward into a more modern Windows 98 compatible machine while missing out on the 3D positional effects and other features of more modern PCI sound cards that may have slightly poorer DOS support but vastly superior Windows features seems impractical, from an objective standpoint.

By the time you source a CPU and cooler to go with that mainboard you'll be at close to $200, plus you still need to find an AGP graphics card. You also don't know if that Diebold ATM motherboard supports the sorts of features you're going to want as an enthusiast, the BIOS may be heavily stripped down or limited unlike a consumer/commercial mainboard.

If you want faster storage what about a simple PATA-SATA adapter and a small SSD hard drive in your current machine?

It would be 'easier' to have two old PCs, but I'd prefer to have just one due to space constraints.

My current motherboard only supports PCI 2.1 and 66Mhz IDE speeds. That industrial board has PCI 2.2, which may be enough to use a faster native SATA card which my current board won't recognize.

I could do some digging into the chipset specs to see if the ISA slots will work with an audio card, but I don't exactly know what I should look for...

The board you linked to on eBay has the ITE 8888 PCI-ISA bridge so I can, with almost 100% certainty, say that is has full ISA support.

That is also a really good price for that board. The industrial boards like that usually go for $200 or more plus shipping.
The only downside I see is that it is the 845 chipset which will limit you to the 533 fsb.

Thanks!

Can you tell what chips this board uses? The images are a tad fuzzy to me, but this board claims to be new, should arrive within 5 days, and they have a decent return policy.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/202859389812

Looks to me like it has the Winbond chips so maybe it has ISA DMA.