Won this for £10 last week. Should be fun to mess with..

Cool, run a 32bit PCI card in it just to see everyone lose their shit. 🤣

Looks like a great motherboard for a Matrox Millennium!

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-05, 17:29:

Cool, run a 32bit PCI card in it just to see everyone lose their shit. 🤣

I have a PCI TNT2 which should be a great fit 😁

LewisRaz wrote on 2023-02-05, 17:42:

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-05, 17:29:

Cool, run a 32bit PCI card in it just to see everyone lose their shit. 🤣

I have a PCI TNT2 which should be a great fit 😁

I like these PCIe + AGP + PCI boards
I'm thinking about using a Linux hypervisor to run retro OSes with PCI / (AGP ?) Passthrough.
Not sure if it's possible.
Maybe on late board like 4coreDual-sata2 (I just got one last week, but no time to play with it ATM)

Duuuuuuuude, I got a Dell.

These might be my last purchases for a little while. I've come across too many good deals lately and I've blown my budget. 😀

ATI 9800 Pro - This one was super important to me. One of those cards I desperately wanted but couldn't afford at the time. I recall it being associated with Half Life 2(one of my all time favs) in some sort of marketing relationship back before it came out, so I've always fondly paired them up in my mind. As you might imagine, one of the first things I did with it was put it in my A7N8X-E / Athlon XP-M 2500+ system from back in the day and start up HL2. It was glorious. 😁

Creative Sound Blaster Pro 2 - I'm not sure how it's possible, but this is the 3rd one I've come across in the past month or so. It was freaking out when I tried testing it, but then I remembered they don't like faster systems. After a quick speed adjustment with SetMul it's working like a champ.

Goldstar IODE-3290U Multi I/O Card - This is now the oldest thing I have. All the mobos I own are new enough that they've got integrated controllers, so I haven't tested it yet. I guess it's a great excuse to start searching for older parts.

AOpen AW744 - My first PCI OPL3 card. Should be fun to tinker with. I might do the mod to add the SB-Link connector to it just for the fun of it. 😀

(File attachment limit - continued in next post)

FIC VA-503+ - Bought it as an untested item on eBay for a little over $20. At first I thought it wasn't working, but it turns out the sheer number of jumpers was my downfall and it's actually working great. 😀 A quick test makes it seem quite a bit faster than my GA-5AX, much more than I expected. Something I'll need to dive into a little more. Anyway, quite the relief that this board seems to be a winner from an untested listing.

ASUS P4P800 w/ 2.8GHz P4 HT - I gotta say I don't think I've ever seen a cooler like this. Looks pretty neat IMO. Also happy that I'm not seeing any bulging caps on the board. The same can't be said for the FX 5600 that came with it. Contemplating recapping the video card, but it's an FX 5600, so is it really worth it? 😉

danieljm wrote on 2023-02-06, 05:19:

AOpen AW744 - My first PCI OPL3 card. Should be fun to tinker with. I might do the mod to add the SB-Link connector to it just for the fun of it. 😀

Just so you know, there are various compatibility and driver quirks with these PCI cards, in general, and among chipsets. I have a few of these Yamaha XG PCI cards, and there are even some compatibility variations between them, even with the same chip.

For example, some cards or cards combined we th some systems will blue screen with VxD drivers. AOpen, I believe, provided their own driver packages. So if you find that you're having any issues, using their drivers may fix it for you.

Some heavily customized XG implementations won't work at all with anything other than the manufacturer supplied drivers, such as on some laptops.

I also experienced some kind of filesystem corruption with the DOS utility. I did not investigate this thoroughly, but it happened at least twice, is it wasn't a fluke. It might have been a result of using FAT32 or something that was triggered by Windows 3.1; I'm not exactly sure. Just beware, if you use the DOS tool on a system with data that you care about.

I found this card is most stable in Windows 9x with the WDM drivers. However, you will lose Yamaha OPL support in Windows. In this case, pair it with a second card for OPL and use the Yamaha for Windows sound acceleration, Roland MIDI emulation, and XG synthesis.

It's really a great card, if you can get it working.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-02-06, 05:59:

Just so you know, there are various compatibility and driver quirks with these PCI cards, in general, and among chipsets. I have […]
Show full quote

danieljm wrote on 2023-02-06, 05:19:

AOpen AW744 - My first PCI OPL3 card. Should be fun to tinker with. I might do the mod to add the SB-Link connector to it just for the fun of it. 😀

Just so you know, there are various compatibility and driver quirks with these PCI cards, in general, and among chipsets. I have a few of these Yamaha XG PCI cards, and there are even some compatibility variations between them, even with the same chip.

For example, some cards or cards combined we th some systems will blue screen with VxD drivers. AOpen, I believe, provided their own driver packages. So if you find that you're having any issues, using their drivers may fix it for you.

Some heavily customized XG implementations won't work at all with anything other than the manufacturer supplied drivers, such as on some laptops.

I also experienced some kind of filesystem corruption with the DOS utility. I did not investigate this thoroughly, but it happened at least twice, is it wasn't a fluke. It might have been a result of using FAT32 or something that was triggered by Windows 3.1; I'm not exactly sure. Just beware, if you use the DOS tool on a system with data that you care about.

I found this card is most stable in Windows 9x with the WDM drivers. However, you will lose Yamaha OPL support in Windows. In this case, pair it with a second card for OPL and use the Yamaha for Windows sound acceleration, Roland MIDI emulation, and XG synthesis.

It's really a great card, if you can get it working.

Thanks for all that info. This will definitely be helpful.

And now that you mention it... after testing a number of parts including this card, I was getting errors about bad sectors. This would have been on a Win 98 SE system with FAT32. Might just be coincidence, but it's something I'll be wary about for sure.

danieljm wrote on 2023-02-06, 05:29:

IMG_0392.JPEG

FIC VA-503+ - Bought it as an untested item on eBay for a little over $20. At first I thought it wasn't working, but it turns out the sheer number of jumpers was my downfall and it's actually working great. 😀 A quick test makes it seem quite a bit faster than my GA-5AX, much more than I expected. Something I'll need to dive into a little more. Anyway, quite the relief that this board seems to be a winner from an untested listing.

IMG_0393.JPEGIMG_0394.JPEG

See my post for jumper settings.
I have this working with an AMD K6-lll+ @ 550mhz.

Link:
Can you fix my Super Socket 7 ( solved ).

ChrisK wrote on 2023-02-02, 10:06:

Nice little board. I love mATX.
But So754 is a somewhat limited platform imho. I had one when they came out but it didn't last very long performance-wise. So939 would have been the better choice.
For retro activitites that doesn't play any important role, though.

Thanks. I know this board is nice, but if I find a I/O Shield for it, i will turn it into a retro rig sometime, if not, maybe a retro test bench?

danieljm wrote on 2023-02-06, 08:07:

And now that you mention it... after testing a number of parts including this card, I was getting errors about bad sectors. This would have been on a Win 98 SE system with FAT32. Might just be coincidence, but it's something I'll be wary about for sure.

Oh, no. When this happened, the whole filesystem went kaput. I don't recall if it trashed the partition table though.

It occurred after running the DOS drivers, not simply by having the card installed.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-02-06, 05:59:

Just so you know, there are various compatibility and driver quirks with these PCI cards, in general, and among chipsets. I have […]
Show full quote

danieljm wrote on 2023-02-06, 05:19:

AOpen AW744 - My first PCI OPL3 card. Should be fun to tinker with. I might do the mod to add the SB-Link connector to it just for the fun of it. 😀

Just so you know, there are various compatibility and driver quirks with these PCI cards, in general, and among chipsets. I have a few of these Yamaha XG PCI cards, and there are even some compatibility variations between them, even with the same chip.

For example, some cards or cards combined we th some systems will blue screen with VxD drivers. AOpen, I believe, provided their own driver packages. So if you find that you're having any issues, using their drivers may fix it for you.

Some heavily customized XG implementations won't work at all with anything other than the manufacturer supplied drivers, such as on some laptops.

I also experienced some kind of filesystem corruption with the DOS utility. I did not investigate this thoroughly, but it happened at least twice, is it wasn't a fluke. It might have been a result of using FAT32 or something that was triggered by Windows 3.1; I'm not exactly sure. Just beware, if you use the DOS tool on a system with data that you care about.

I found this card is most stable in Windows 9x with the WDM drivers. However, you will lose Yamaha OPL support in Windows. In this case, pair it with a second card for OPL and use the Yamaha for Windows sound acceleration, Roland MIDI emulation, and XG synthesis.

It's really a great card, if you can get it working.

File system corruption? I bet that it is triggered by Windows 3.1 due to possibility of using permanent swap on a FAT32 partition (which isn't recommended) and enabling direct disk access with the LOCK command if running on MS-DOS 7.x with the W3XSTART patch.

Swap would have been enabled, so this is likely the reason. I'm pretty sure that it always occurred while testing Windows 3.1.

Today I received this asus motherboard that I already had in the past, with all its accessories, kt333 chipset

Boca Research SuperVGA with original box and additional 512K RAM sockets filled with Siemens chips made in W. Germany! The date code tells me these chips were made just months after reunification.

eesz34 wrote on 2023-02-06, 15:47:

Boca Research SuperVGA with original box and additional 512K RAM sockets filled with Siemens chips made in W. Germany! The date code tells me these chips were made just months after reunification.

That's really cool! I love it when it's possible to tie a piece of hardware to a historically significant time. Makes a good candidate for a conversation piece for display. 😀

I'm guessing it's an ET3000AX?

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-06, 15:51:

eesz34 wrote on 2023-02-06, 15:47:

Boca Research SuperVGA with original box and additional 512K RAM sockets filled with Siemens chips made in W. Germany! The date code tells me these chips were made just months after reunification.

That's really cool! I love it when it's possible to tie a piece of hardware to a historically significant time. Makes a good candidate for a conversation piece for display. 😀

I'm guessing it's an ET3000AX?

Actually a ET4000AX. Planning to put into a 286. Yes I know that's probably mismatched but it ended up that way 😀

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2023-02-06, 09:34:

See my post for jumper settings. I have this working with an AMD K6-lll+ @ 550mhz. […]
Show full quote

danieljm wrote on 2023-02-06, 05:29:

IMG_0392.JPEG

FIC VA-503+ - Bought it as an untested item on eBay for a little over $20. At first I thought it wasn't working, but it turns out the sheer number of jumpers was my downfall and it's actually working great. 😀 A quick test makes it seem quite a bit faster than my GA-5AX, much more than I expected. Something I'll need to dive into a little more. Anyway, quite the relief that this board seems to be a winner from an untested listing.

IMG_0393.JPEGIMG_0394.JPEG

See my post for jumper settings.
I have this working with an AMD K6-lll+ @ 550mhz.

Link:
Can you fix my Super Socket 7 ( solved ).

Thanks. I actually referenced your thread when I was having issues. 😀

My problem was entirely that I read one block of jumpers flipped somehow, so I was inadvertently trying to run my Pentium MMX 200MHz at 266MHz. Whoops! Clearly my own hubris/excitement got in the way of responsibly double checking all my jumpers before firing it on.

Edit: And to be clear, I've also tested it with a K6-2 500, and it's working fine with that as well. It's just that by that point I was being more careful. 😀