Malik wrote:archsan wrote:"industrial" motherboards with ISA. They've got P4 mobos with ISA
I once thought of that too, but changed my mind when there are few things to consider, mainly regarding with compatibility of some ISA cards and possibility of DOS or Win3.x based applications (read : games 😀) not working.
Well, i don't know which model exactly you referred to, and i haven't checked any of DFI P4/ISA model either, but up until ICH4/5 southbridge, there should be DMA support for ISA which is required for DOS sound. While the Intel Express chipset family (ICH6 and afterwards) have limitations on this matter. I remember reading a forum thread where a member decided to buy an expensive COMMEL P4LA industrial mobo (supports Core 2 Duo IIRC) with ISA slots, then reported back that there was no sound in DOS...
On the other hand, the ICH4 on this interesting Pentium-M mobo with ISA supports DMA via LPC (which is "similar to ISA DMA", the manual says). PC/PCI DMA is also present. If this proved to work well with ISA soundcards on DOS, this could almost be a winner for late DOS games/Win9x combo (Pentium M 2GHz!). "Almost", because the AGP slot is "cut out" 🙁 Wondering if there's a similar mobo with an AGP slot (maybe with 855PM northbridge instead of the integrated 855GME)...
_____
Back to topic--because so far i've got no bad feedback on DFI mobos in general (i know finding someone who uses the 586ITOX on a daily basis--today--might be difficult), i decide to order a couple. Depending on communication and actual shipping, it might take longer before i can report back--besides, i have not yet collected that many classic ISA soundcards 😀
Thanks again for your feedbacks!
--------
edit: It's a long time ago, but I forgot to update it-- the seller didn't communicate back and the listing is long gone... 🙁 On the other hand, I think I can make do with just 4 ISA slots.