What type of RAM does it take, RAMBUS or SDRAM?
The SDRAM model was affected by the faulty MTH and later recalled, and the RAMBUS model was affected by the low popularity of RAMBUS.
If you have plenty RAMBUS around you can go for the RAMBUS version.
Comparing to BX it supports AGP4x and FSB133, but both features can be achieved by the more common 815 chipset. BX has the advantage of supporting ISA slots.

The board is the RAMBUS model, and the seller even has some modules for sale as well.
He is asking 150 dkr for the board, wich is the same as 25 us dollars.
That is excluding shipping. Shipping costs as low as 8 to 9 dollars here.
Should I go for it then, considered that it is the RAMBUS model?

You can't go wrong for 25$! I'd snatch it in an instant, these boards should be great performers with RDRAM. If you do get it, post your experiences once you have a system ready 😀.

I think swaaye may have some more input on this, he's certainly done his research on the Intel i820 😉.

F2bnp wrote:

I think swaaye may have some more input on this, he's certainly done his research on the Intel i820 😉.

And he sadly has not personally owned a VC820, but does keep eyeing them on eBay. 🤣

The Intel VC820 was a popular board used in the high-end P3 RDRAM systems of '99-'00. It should be very solid and run any OS you like. The publicized problematic boards were the ones with the flawed chip used to translate the RDRAM interface to SDRAM.

You want to get PC800 RDRAM for best performance.

swaaye wrote:

And he sadly has not personally owned a VC820, but does keep eyeing them on eBay. 🤣

The Intel VC820 was a popular board used in the high-end P3 RDRAM systems of '99-'00. It should be very solid and run any OS you like. The publicized problematic boards were the ones with the flawed chip used to translate the RDRAM interface to SDRAM.

You want to get PC800 RDRAM for best performance.

How well does the 820 chipset and SB-Live or other creative PCI cards work in pure DOS (MS Dos 6.22), using the correct drivers?
Or can they only work, when launching games like Syndicate, Doom or Duke3D, through Win98SE?
Would be nice to have some sort of multi-os-platform kind of thing, that can do MT32 emulation and doing general midi in games....

I am rambling, and yeah... You know what I mean 😁

I have 2 such boards (one is an ES with 3 RAM slots instead of 2 and is quite unstable when I tried installing an OS on it. I was lucky to have gotten it) and I like that board 😀
I'm always somewhat looking for a spare, I'd snatch it if I had any spare money in my budget 😀

Well.... Just bought the board.
I had to pay a tiny bit more, because I had to get 2x128mb RAMBUS modules as well.
Including shipping, I payed 242 kroner's wich is the same as 40 US Dollars.
I really hope, I did not screw up and payed too much.

No, this is still a pretty good deal! Have fun messing around with it! 😀

F2bnp wrote:

No, this is still a pretty good deal! Have fun messing around with it! 😀

Thanks.... Looking forward to see what the fuzz regarding the 820 chipset is all about.
Some say, it's worse than 810/815 (can never remember wich or what it's called)
This board is from 1999 as far as I can read up on, around the net.
Then.... I have this SB-Live card. And a lot of other stuff, like ATA-100 drives.
What I need now, is to get the GF2-GTS or GF2-ULTRA, to finish up a true 99' build.
The SB-Live is from circa 1997 or 98. Wich I believe is the last 90's creative card.

The big complaint in its time was the expensive RDRAM requirement. That's not much of a concern anymore.

Otherwise it's certainly more interesting than i810. And the chipset supports more RAM than i815. Compared to 440BX it supports a lot of new tech like 266MB/s chipset interconnect, AGP 4x and UDMA 66.

swaaye wrote:

The big complaint in its time was the expensive RDRAM requirement. That's not much of a concern anymore.

Otherwise it's certainly more interesting than i810. And the chipset supports more RAM than i815. Compared to 440BX it supports a lot of new tech like 266MB/s chipset interconnect, AGP 4x and UDMA 66.

That I know. 😀 What I fail to find anything about using google, is wether there is full dos-support for SB-Live (I know xms is impossible due TSR's)
I mean... Can I run games such as Doom-II using MS-Dos-6.22 ? Or is it only possible or impossible through Win98SE?
There is some vauge suggestions regarding this, that it is not possible. Yet no real "evidence" out there. As far as I can search...

Thanks in advance... 😀

i820 systems were sold with SBLive cards so I'm thinking it'll work fine. Live/Audigy cards work in DOS with even newer chipsets.

Don't remember what chipset my P4 (asrock P4V88) or Athlon (Asrock K7S41) has....
Yet I can with confidence say that only the K7S41 will do midi only (no SB emulation) and P4V88 does not take the Live at all.
That is running Dos games. In Win98SE and Os/2, the Live is working (only K7s41 can do Os/2, not the P4V88)

Well in Intel land you can do DOS games in DOS with Live/Audigy up to at least the i845 chipset. This may also be dependent on motherboard design and BIOS however. There have been some investigations on here of DOS and PCI sound cards. Could dig through those old threads.

brostenen wrote:

Don't remember what chipset my P4 (asrock P4V88) or Athlon (Asrock K7S41) has....
Yet I can with confidence say that only the K7S41 will do midi only (no SB emulation) and P4V88 does not take the Live at all.
That is running Dos games. In Win98SE and Os/2, the Live is working (only K7s41 can do Os/2, not the P4V88)

The P4 is a PT880, the Athlon is a SiS 741. 😊 I've never had a SiS 741, but I remember PT880 being fantastic back around '05 as an XP box, and it gave me no grief with Audigy 2 ZS either (it actually gave me no grief with anything, including a >50% overclock on the CPU). Never tried it with 9x/DOS though.

obobskivich wrote:

The P4 is a PT880, the Athlon is a SiS 741. 😊 I've never had a SiS 741, but I remember PT880 being fantastic back around '05 as an XP box, and it gave me no grief with Audigy 2 ZS either (it actually gave me no grief with anything, including a >50% overclock on the CPU). Never tried it with 9x/DOS though.

True...
With 1 gigabyte of memory, a 2.6 ghz 400mhz fsb Celeron, Radeon 9600 and SB-Live.
You get a great Win98SE setup using the P4V88 from Asrock. Rock solid Win98SE rig.
I even have a North-Q 60mm all-copper CPU cooler on this baby. 300watt psu.

The minus regarding this machine, is that it has absolutely no native support for sound
in Dos applications or Games. Well... Too fast for Dos games anyway.

Okay....
This is going to be a real retro rig. I just found an A-Open HX 45 case.
A real late 90's case. And I have a P3 500 cpu and an TNT2 ultra AGP 32mb.
Finaly I have a SB-Live and the system is going to have 256 mb ram.
It actually by chance, that I am going to make a period correct build. 😜

swaaye wrote:

Well in Intel land you can do DOS games in DOS with Live/Audigy up to at least the i845 chipset. This may also be dependent on motherboard design and BIOS however. There have been some investigations on here of DOS and PCI sound cards. Could dig through those old threads.

Actually Yes. 865 and ICH5 is the limit..... 😉

Just recieved the board. Waiting for my A-Open case from 1999....

The mainboard:
It came with two sticks of Samsung PC-800 RD-RAM with blue heatsinks, and no CPU.
Now my P3-500 from 1999 can have a new home too. 😀
What strikes me about this board, is that it has Creative ES-1373 sound chip onboard.
It was develloped by Ensonic, yet it is one of those that are labeled "Creative".
I think it is just some PCI-128 chip, wich can do wavetable and if I am lucky, the onboard is hooked up to the PCI port, using ISA dma.
The same technology as SB-LINK, wich indeed is present as a full header is found on the board.

For the GFX, the system is going to recieve some TNT2 Ultra, and I am even going to install a SB-Live.
For the storage, I am going to use a SATA/PATA converter and use my 4 gigabyte Seagate HDD.
I need to resize it to 32 gig, using seatools, in such a way that drive overlays are not needed.
The psu for this system, need to be bought new. As I do not trust old ones.

That's it for now... I think.
I am going to make a new post regarding this system, when it's finished.
For now. It is stored in antistatic bags, and put in my "Box O' hardware".