Socket 370/Slot1 board that supports the Via C3. This gives you amazing flexibility, and you can also just use a pentium3. SuperSocket7 is too rare/expensive to bother about if you dont want 3 ISA slots.

And be prepared to replace caps no matter what.

Easy answer, Slot 1 as it predates the capacitor plaque.

Better answer, Some brands were better then others, so if you want to keep a VIA KT133 system no reason not to.

I know Asus were less effected then others but there are others.

But as squiggly mentioned, even the good quality Jap caps are pushing 20 years now and reaching the end of their expected life. Depending on how much use the hardware was used back in its hey day will decide how long till a component fails.

I second a Slot 1 system. An Asus P3B-F or Intel SE440BX-2 with a Pentium III would work perfectly. It will work with a modern ATX case and power supply, has PS/2 ports and USB, has ISA slots for older sound cards, and offers plenty of performance for Windows 95/98 era gaming. The only bad part is that a 700, 750, 800, 850, or 1000 MHz Pentium III slot 1 CPU with 100 FSB can be a bit expensive or hard to find at a good price. A motherboard/CPU combo might be the best bet here. Slower Pentium III's in the 450-600 MHz range are plentiful and cheap, but not quite as fast. You can overclock 440BX boards to 133 FSB, but that will result in the AGP bus running at 89 MHz, which not all cards will tolerate. A VIA Appollo Pro 133A board such as the ASUS P3V4X is a good option if you want 133 FSB.

chinny22 wrote:

Easy answer, Slot 1 as it predates the capacitor plaque.

I have a big pile of Slot 1 boards in my 'soldering to-do' box that falsify this statement 😮

Early slot 1 boards tended to have good caps, but by the time you get to the 700MHz (i.e. Coppermine support) mentioned here, they were as bad as on SoA - everything from PC Chips and Jetway via Compaq OEM to name-brands such as Abit, AOpen, Gigabyte and MSI suffered from them (and that's just what I happen to have lying here! - most definitely not an exhaustive list).

i would recap the full board
i once recapped a SB16 pro
most of the small caps were fine, the bigger caps did fail because i tested them with a cap tester.
so even if they look perfectly fine..its so old that caps will fail

Okay. I checked the prices at badcaps.net, they seem pretty reasonable, so I'll just fix my Epoxes (which I now have two of and both are bad).

Better the devil you know than the one you don't.

.... Additionally, once this repair happens, is there anything I can do which would be good for PC health and prevent future hardware issues? Keep in mind this comp never gets online so I'm safe from viruses and such by default (my old gaming machines don't even have modems).

Not just programs but like, what's the safest way to clean boards and such? Someone told me that you can clean them with rubbing alcohol just like with nintendo game cartridges, but... in my experience comps are infinitely more fragile than Nintendo hardware, so I want a second opinion.

Also if you're concerned about heat is it okay to just leave the case open?

Bad capacitors are the only 'wear item' out there with this era of compter hardware. Socket A boards seemed to suffer a lot worse than others, I have plenty of slot 1/socket 370 boards that are unaffected. Beyond that, make sure you have air flow over the parts that get hot. If you can't keep your finger on a chipset heatsink or voltage regulator (or any other part) then it is probably too hot.
I use compressed air and sometimes a soft brush to clean my computers and i try to avoid using liquids

I'm not that worried about cleaning my PC's . I'll usually give it a good clean when I first get something and quick dust if I have to open the case for any reason, either by a brush or simply blowing it away with my breath is enough. accept airflow I don't know of dust hurting anything and think i'm just as likely to break something with excessive cleaning as I am leaving it alone.

I do like cooling hotter components like an extra exhaust fan in my 486 that ran happily for 10+ years without one or fans blowing directly onto my Voodoo cards.
It's probably not necessary at all but cant see it doing any harm either.

I guess replacing/servicing the Power supply every so often to keep the voltages going to everything within spec isn't a bad idea but I don't do that.