Welcome 😀

There were actually 100MBit ISA NICs, but those were never easy to find (even like 10 years ago these were virtually non-existent in the wild here).

If you want to fill up all 4 memory slots, I tend to prefer single sided modules if I need many of them as these presented less work for the chipset iirc (this may be different for each chipset and sometimes even differs between different motherboards using the same chipset).

Your board looks to be a good base for a 98SE rig, especially when using an ISA sound card. But you may want to consider using a PCI sound card instead. You can go both ways if you wish 😜

Personally I hardly ever use NICs for retro rigs, unless I actually intend to use them as multiplayer rigs.

The 1GHz Coppermine is kinda like a classic 😀
Btw, if you want a free multiplier, you may want to have a loom at VIA C3 or find a Coppermine ES (dunno if these are still easy to find).

And please do clean your ATX case, it's not nice to work alongside dustbunnies (especially if you cut yourself while working inside of it 😜).

And feel free to show us some hardware pr0n 😜

There are also 10 / 100 Mbps ISA 16 bit network cards..

Definitely use a PCI NIC when you can. For file transferts you will see a huge improvements and most of them still have drivers for DOS. From what have read, to this day some of these PCI nics are still manufactured and some of them still have DOS drivers available (and win9x btw). Though for me 3c905b-tx are the best cards. I never made a comparison between a 3com card and an el-cheapo nic, but I feel better to put a period correct high quality nic than the el-cheapo card.

@Robin4

Really ?! I never heared of them. Do you have a name ?

Michadeon wrote:

(r.i.p, p.s.u, soundcard, cdrom, and a more than dusty/rusty atx tower 😵 ).

Were they stored incorrectly, or something? A PSU and CDROM I might understand, but a soundcard spontaneously dying seems strange.

@ Jorpho
Unfortunately yes. After I moved out for college, this computer was stored away, not exactly in a proper manner. It was intended to be recycled, and that's what I thought happened, until we emptied our storage space due to a moisture problem. The case rusted on several spots on the outside surface, and at first glance I didn't expect anything to have survived. Interestingly enough, there were no signs of damage on the inside, the cdrom seems to be working (reading), but the tray mechanism gets stuck. As for the psu, I have no idea. I opened it, checked it visually for maybe burst caps or something, but since I couldn't turn it on with a simple atx-switch, I dare not connect it to the mainboard. I already found an Enermax replacement from that era that works properly, so, no big loss there.

As for the soundcard, having been in the lowest slot (and "exposed"), the outputs have signs of rust 😢 ... Maybe I could replace them, but for the moment, with the Audigy ready and waiting, I shall work towards getting that 1 GHz Coppermine 😈 .

@ everybody
Regarding the ISA NICs with 100Mbps, the ones I found are:
the Intel Ether Express Pro 100 ISA, (fellow Vogons member vetz posted it here, hence my inspiration, I hope linking vetz's post is allowed),
and a 3Com Fast EtherLink 10/100 Network Interface Card 3C515-TX, both supporting 10BaseT & 100BaseTX (eBay link for picture reference)

I think I will go for a pci one, strictly for transferring files (thank you, Deksor, for the advice). In order to make use of that ISA slot, would there be a point in using a AWE64 together with the Audigy? I intend to "invest" in DOS-Games, but the Audigy should have good DOS support (standard desktop speakers for the moment, nothing fancy). Or could there any other use for ISA?

The CD drive probably have a belt problem. Many many CD drives have problems to open when they get old. Usually it's just a belt inside the CD drive that needs to be changed. Not sure if it's worth it as CD drives are really easy to come by

Welcome to the forums, Michadeon! 😀
I agree with the others, get a PCI NIC if you can. For DOS and Win3.x, I'm using the Etherlink III (ISA) right now.
Dunno if that's a 100MBit card, though.

The AWE64 is not bad, but for serious soundfont usage, it is TERRIBLE. You can't fit large soundfonts onto most ISA cards, while PCI cards have DMA and can use soundfonts from memory. This may not be a dealbreaker for you, and you may like on onboard MIDI, but for a MIDI lover like me, I hate the AWE lineup for anything that doesn't have PCI.

But if what you're packing is a Sound Blaster 16, then almost anything is better. I suggest a Creative card on PCI if you intend to do any serious MIDI gaming as they are the ones that can load soundfonts. Of course the AWE lineup can, but the memory expansions are tiny and expensive, especially for the AWE64 with it's proprietary format.

If you're hell bent on an ISA sound card, try to snatch a good AWE32, because that one you can expand with RAM, and it's about as good as an AWE64, but some even have real OPL3 chips.

My P3 Rig is a 450Mhz S1 deal with 384MB RAM, a SB Live! Value, GeForce 2 MX, 40 GB WD400 (THEY ARE LOUD AF), and a PCI NIC. It will run anything as good as Half-Life on 98SE, which is b0ss.

I honestly suggest for DOS gaming you go with an earlier system. Most of the games you will want to play will work best on an MMX or other P5 (Or even Pentium Pro) machine, and the others either have windows versions/sourceports, or are few and far between. My DOS gaming rig is a 486-DX4-100 (120Mhz) which will run any DOS game, Duke Nukem and down with ease. A Pentium 100 can rip the head off of a horse for those games. P3s in my mind are more for 1998-2000 windows gaming.

You can of course use the SB Live! for gaming, and it would be GREAT if you had the SB-Link header, then you will have almost 100% DOS compatibility.

Of course, it's all a matter of choice. You can DEFINATELY make a powerhouse DOS gaming rig out of even a Socket A machine. Heck, you could use a 64-bit i7 as a DOS rig (But good luck getting drivers)
AWE64 has all the OPL3 (CQM), PCM, and other generic audio you would want, and isn't bad at MIDI in it's stock config either, but for good MIDI support, SB Live! is hard to beat.

For Windows, the SB Live cards are okay, but for DOS the most straightforward way to go is with an ISA card. If you're not overly concerned with your card sounding exactly like a SB Pro for Adlib/FM music, you can go with an ESS 1868 based sound device. It provides good sound quality, excellent SB Pro games compatibility, good sounding FM music (just not 100% accurate), and glitch free MIDI. You can add a Dreamblaster S1 or X2 MIDI card, or you can emulate MIDI synth on another computer using an adapter cable and USB MIDI device. Alternately, if your FM sound has to be 100% accurate to the output of a SB Pro, you can invest in a Yamaha based ISA card, but Duke Nukem 2 will not work correctly with this card due to missing ADPCM decoding functionality.

Ampera is correct regarding the P3 having some issues with DOS gaming. There is a wide performance gap between it's slowest performance with caches enabled and it's fastest performance with caches disabled. What this means is that you may not be able to get some games running at the proper speed (or even close to the proper speed) using this machine. This can be fixed by replacing the P3 with a slocket and a VIA C3 chip. The ideal option is an Ezra-T chip, but a VIA Nehemiah would also work with slightly less flexibility.

Thank you all for the advice, it is impressive what one can learn! I was hoping that the P3 would be at least adequate for DOS games, even though its main purpose would be as a Win98 gaming rig... Given that I am somewhat restricted by the mainboard, it would be interesting to see what a slotket option can allow (though I think this mainboard also supports P2 CPUs... but then again, a P2 machine with a GeForce4 😀 )

As far as the ISA slot is concerned, apparently it will stay empty for the time being. The Audigy will replace my poor SB 16, although I will see if it is salvageable, and when possible I shall get an 100Mbps NIC PCI... Still will be looking for that 1GHz P3 though 😁 .

@ Deksor
You are very correct, sir, about the belt. Given the abundance in cdr-drives, this one shall be kept away & "examined" for science!

Also, a couple of the better pics, as requested:

The beauty that was rescued, cleaned and soon to be thoroughly examined (ASUS P3V4X Mainboard)

...and the patient, sitting on antistatic foil, laying on bubble wrap, also awaiting further examination (SoundBlaster 16 ISA):

Apologies for the cellphone-quality of the pics, once I have free time in my hands I will attempt to take better ones. 😊

Michadeon wrote:

I was hoping that the P3 would be at least adequate for DOS games, even though its main purpose would be as a Win98 gaming rig

Don't we need a machine like this to play Witchaven and Duke Nukem 3D in full glory ?

Beautiful motherboard indeed. Those DIP switches 😀
Have you guys ever used 6 PCI slots ? 😲

AoE will love an Audigy for MIDI. I already can see you playing it.
A little challenge for you: Select ramdom map, difficulty "hard" against 8 computer players and report the outcome.
As for me, I always die a terrible death in some obscure corner of the map! You can't hide.
Dang... 😵 😵