Yes it appears it runs only at 400 Mhz so your 533mhz cpu will run underclocked IF it is recognized by the BIOS at all. Well from what I read there are a few things that I would not like. How much did you pay for this board ? Not my business but there are better 478 boards but they are probably more expensive. The manual has errors which bother me if it were mine:
1. image 3.1 shows back panel. Is not same as 3.6.6. (one has two com, other is one com and a vga)
2. It does not state which 845 chipset is used (845G/845GL/845GE/845GV) the GL is the only one with 400Mhz only bus, the other do 400 and 533.
3. manual states 2x/4x AGP but requires 1.5v AGP card. Most 2x AGP were 3.3 so it is not a very AGP compatible board.

pricewise was a lot cheaper than other p4 industrial boards.

What other boards would you recommend?

I think 1.5v 4xAGP will be ok. I have several 8x 1.5v AGP cards which should work at 4x AGP, they may just run little bit slower.

I'm hoping this combo will give me a reasonably priced and fast win98/XP PC with ISA sound for dos games that are not cpu speed sensitive - i'll build something from pre Pentium era for that.

Btw, I also picked up 2.8GHz P4 with 400FSB for $6 just in case my 2.8/512/533 doesn't work at 400FSB.

Last couple of bios updates

I'd say it does say the chipset - the original 845 (without additional letters), hence only supporting PC2100 DDR.

I wouldn't worry about AGP 8x cards running at 4x - the AGP bus speed was rarely a real-world bottleneck, certainly not with the slow RAM and FSB of this old board, and as for no 3.3V AGP - that's just par for the course with P4 chipsets. Some truly universal AGP board were made, but they weren't common.

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote:

Last couple of bios updates

10092105.zip

10092106.zip

I'm curious, where did you find the 1.06 BIOS, the manufacturer only lists 1.05 on their web? Do you have any firsthand experience with this board?

p6889k wrote:

Do you have any firsthand experience with this board?

With that specific board no, but with BCM yes. I've had several of them since 486.
As industrial boards they usually aren't upgradable much beyond the original specs.
(That is typical for industrial boards, so to be expected.)
Those I've had were well built and solid/reliable.
Some were more difficult to initially configure than average but once you work it out you don't have to worry about them.
I quite like the brand.
.

p6889k wrote:

I'm curious, where did you find the 1.06 BIOS, the manufacturer only lists 1.05 on their web? Do you have any firsthand experience with this board?

It's listed as the latest bios on the BCM Wayback archive for the board between Oct 2004 & Oct 2006, but by Nov 2007 only v1.05 is listed (maybe a board revision made v1.06 obsolete?)

https://web.archive.org/web/2008*/http://www. … vel2=&asd=%5E54

All the bios archive links seem dead, but I found the v1.06 one here, https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php … driverid=237377

Also, no experience with this board - sorry!

So I played around this weekend with the BC845DL and didn't have much success with DOS sound. The board looked brand new, Win98 installed easily, all devices and drivers loaded properly. I plugged in AWE64Value, sound under Windows worked, but not under DOS. I setup Autoexec.bat with CTCM and AweUtil, CTCM reports that only 2 of 3 creative devices were successfully configured. Running Creative Diagnose detected the card and played sounds successfully, but DOS games don't detect the card. I spent way too much time messing around with BIOS settings and eventually gave up. I swapped ISA slots, disabled all devices in BIOS that are not needed, reserved IRQs, DMAs, etc. I'll have to try again one day.

One weird thing is that according the the board's specs sheet and manual, it's supposed to have WhizPro Bios, but my board has a Phoenix bios chip with Award bios loaded, which means i couldn't upgrade BIOS to a newer version as BCM only lists WhizPro bios not Award. I didn't find any references on the internet where this board would be supplied with Phoenix/Award bios. Also, there is no marking on the board that actually says it's BCM BC845DL board, visually it looks exactly the same, specs match, the only exception is the bios discrepancy. Is this normal with BCM manufacturer to not clearly label their boards or to switch BIOS chips?

As an alternative I also have MB820 P4 industrial board with 875P chipset. AWE64 in DOS worked right out of box in it with no need for any Autoexec.bat configuration. The MB820 board has newer features (USB2, AGP8, 4xDDR slots, 533/800FSB), but I would still like to get the BC845DL working eventually.

I can confirm that Whizpro BIOS v1.06 enables LBA48 support (just flashed it on a board).
It's very strange that they removed it from the website, I wonder why.

I wonder what the case is with p6889k's Award BIOS board. Is there a date stamp on the BIOS? Does it support LBA48?

balrog wrote on 2020-03-05, 17:27:

I wonder what the case is with p6889k's Award BIOS board. Is there a date stamp on the BIOS? Does it support LBA48?

Unfortunately I no longer have the board. I ended up moving to Ibase MB820 P4 board with ISA, that is working great.

Recently I bought this board and did quite extensive testing. I have "original" version of this board with WhizPro Bios (there's also BCM sticker on it) updated with v1.06 from this thread.

After the allocation of DMAs and IRQs, ISA slot is fully functional - that is it works with sound cards in DOS and Windows 98. I tested 3 cards:

ESS AudioDrive ES1869F: plays sound and music in every tested game both in DOS and W98, every setup detects sound HW properly, with VxD drivers DOS games are fully functional even from Windows.
Yamaha YMF719E-S: again without any problems.
Sound Blaster 16 MCD CSP (CT2230): generally functional, although there is some crackling during sound playback (might be a speed issue).

For the testing purposes I used P4 2 GHz (SL66R) and Mobile Pentium 4 2.3 GHz (SL789). Mobile P4 is not recognized and defaults to 16x multiplier and 1.2V. Sadly this motherboard doesn't offer much in terms of OC (there's only memory divider setting in BIOS) but SETFSB is supported. So far I have tested that FSB can be upped to 166 MHz and Mobile P4 is then running at 2656 MHz and it's stable even with this low voltage (that also cannot be adjusted in BIOS). I only had to set memory divider on 1:1 because board sets 2-2-2-6 for my Kingston module and it's unstable with higher frequency.

In the end I got exactly what I wanted - more modern and faster alternative to some high-end BX platform. In terms of compatibility, stability and trouble-free experience it's certainly on par. It has also some nice features like USB flash-drive booting and AGP4x.

That's great news "elcrys". Seem you had more luck getting ISA audio working than I did. Nice!