6 slots? should be 8. Perhaps this was an OEM custom case.

mR_Slug wrote on 2022-03-21, 19:55:

6 slots? should be 8. Perhaps this was an OEM custom case.

I think I’m going to try and find a proper AT backplane and swap it out. This is a brand new case so kinda want to stick with it

Some boards with onboard vid and sound had only 5 or 6 slots. Maybe intended for one of those.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-03-21, 20:47:

Some boards with onboard vid and sound had only 5 or 6 slots. Maybe intended for one of those.

Looks likely with those 4 DE-9 openings as well as a DB-25. Thats a whole lot of serial ports if you're not using two for something else.

That said, how problematic is "only" 6 slots? With this board, 2 or 3 PCI slots are available and 3 or 4 ISA slots and basic I/O is already on the motherboard. 6 slots left gives you a lot of options.

Also: why do you have two different PCI VGA cards in there?

dionb wrote on 2022-03-21, 21:44:

Looks likely with those 4 DE-9 openings as well as a DB-25. Thats a whole lot of serial ports if you're not using two for someth […]
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BitWrangler wrote on 2022-03-21, 20:47:

Some boards with onboard vid and sound had only 5 or 6 slots. Maybe intended for one of those.

Looks likely with those 4 DE-9 openings as well as a DB-25. Thats a whole lot of serial ports if you're not using two for something else.

That said, how problematic is "only" 6 slots? With this board, 2 or 3 PCI slots are available and 3 or 4 ISA slots and basic I/O is already on the motherboard. 6 slots left gives you a lot of options.

Also: why do you have two different PCI VGA cards in there?

Was just dry fitting with what I had in reach at the time.

The plan for this system is vga + voodoo, 10/100 nic, audigy2 zs (fav pci sound card for windows) and awe64 gold for dos gaming.

I might just try and find a board with onboard vga to avoid needing the top pci slot. That said looking closer, there is room to cut a 7th slot opening but that’s a last resort option imo

There's room to Dremel in a new top slot if you really want to. That's how I got a hole for my motherboard's PS/2 port in an AT case.

gn0me wrote on 2022-03-21, 22:21:

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Was just dry fitting with what I had in reach at the time.

The plan for this system is vga + voodoo, 10/100 nic, audigy2 zs (fav pci sound card for windows) and awe64 gold for dos gaming.

I might just try and find a board with onboard vga to avoid needing the top pci slot. That said looking closer, there is room to cut a 7th slot opening but that’s a last resort option imo

In that case (pun intended) it might not be the best case for this build; to get 4x PCI with this case you'd need a board that offered 5x, which is unusual. As for onboard VGA on AT boards... there are a few decent ones, but most are pretty bottom-scraping low-end offerings, mainly by PC Chips & co. One thing to avoid is integrated VGA or UMA, as that means sharing memory bandwidth between VGA and CPU, which seriously limits performance whenever both are being used (i.e. gaming).

Of course, drop the 10/100 NIC (or at least: 10/100 PCI NIC) as a requirement and you can get everything you want with this board in this case.

I’m not a snob on much but OP, your picture raises my blood pressure and is the reason I stopped buying AT boards lately. It’s just too frustrating.

Your case is problematic, but if you really want to keep it, you could swap the motherboard instead.

It seems your ISA slot requirements is looser than your PCI requirements.

Using ultimateretro you can look for boards with 3 ISA and 4 PCI

https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards … 5D%5Bcount%5D=3

Many boards have three isa + four PCI with a rom in between that separates the two (and makes the issue the same as the first PCI slot is still too high), but some (such as the atrend atc-5000 or the atc-5050) look to be just right for this job !

gn0me wrote on 2022-03-21, 20:23:

This is a brand new case so kinda want to stick with it

Agree with others on Dremel suggestion. Use the cutter disk (wear protective goggles while doing this) then file the edges.

Another possible option is ISA Network card,
Yeh most likely you'll be stuck at 10Mb but how often do you really need to transfer large files once your up and running.
Much cheaper/easier then finding a replacement case, and people are always calling me easy 😉