Are Pentium 4 Boards with ISA slots worth it?

[@mtunayucer]

The agp slots on these non-agp chipsets are usually only capable of pci speeds. Check it on the nvidia control panel.

[@philscomputerlab]

See! I knew I would learn from the comments ❤️ That would explain the low 3D score...

[@mtunayucer]

@@philscomputerlab also, because they are pci based, the voltage on the slot is 3.3v, even though its keyed for 1.5v, so NEVER use agp1.5v only cards on these boards such as radeon 9600 and geforce 6600-6800 lineup, it may damage them.

[@argoneum]

At a glance it looks that AGP is just another PCI slot (shared traces), so AGP with no acceleration :)

[@TSteffi]

​@@argoneumif I remember correctly, AGP is basically just PCI with some extra bits and the option for higher clocks. The main benefit was that it was a separate bus, so it wouldn't have to share bandwidth with all the other components in the system

[@MadMac5]

That would make it ideal for a Voodoo 3, since it doesn't take advantage of AGP features anyway!

[@DropDeadFrederick]

Besides games, boards like that are great for industrial purposes. You'd be shocked at how many vintage systems are still in use daily on manufacturing floors. I have a few systems where I work that still use ISA cards (I'm 100% serious about this). One of the systems uses ISA cards for a vision system that controls a precision adhesive applicator. Besides the ISA slots that parallel port is very useful too. I have another AOI (automated optical inspection) system that communicates with the vision and motion control system. You can't try to use something like a parallel to USB adapter since the software does some strange things like try to control specific data lines on the parallel port so a USB adapter is a complete non-starter.

[@viscountalpha]

usb adds a ton of latency. I still sell serial and parallel cables to this day.

[@unimportant5122]

AGP is a superset of PCI, so even if the chipset does not support AGP they can still place a AGP slot and connect it to the PCI bus. It'll work fine but without the AGP specific features.

[@pc-sound-legacy]

Is it 33mHz then, or is 66mhz supported anyway?

[@matthewday7565]

@@pc-sound-legacy Just 33, found on another 845GL "AGP" in retroweb

[@unimportant5122]

@pc-sound-legacy 33. And the bandwith has to be shared with the other regular PCI slots.

[@elektronischermeister]

PCI slots are wired in parallel with each other? Can I just wire two PCI slots together and connect a industrial SBC with a PCI video card?

[@roflmagister5]

PCI is wired parallel for cost/simplicity. You *could* manufacture a mainboard with so-many PCI buses times one slot each, which would give you so-many "AGPs", but that would drive up cost surely. Also, note how AGP is connected to the North Bridge, and the (usually single) PCI bus is connected to South Bridge, itself connected to North Bridge, so, in fact, AGP and PCI would *still* share some bandwidth, namely on the NorthBridgeCPU wires.

[@casualretrocollector]

I had excellent luck with one. Found one in a charity shop for about 15 euro. The end result was a 2.4 ghz p4 with an ati Radeon 9000 along with an Isa sound blaster 64 gold. Simply in heaven I was :)

[@warre1]

I used to had ASRock motherboard with both agp and pci- express ( worked only in 4x mode) slots . It also supported both DDR and DDR2 ( not the same time)

[@appwraith]

The AWE64 is an absolutely legendary card in my book. I wanted one so badly back in the day :)

[@blakegriplingph]

An LGA 1151 motherboard with ISA slots is even more cursed.

[@p_mouse8676]

That does exist, the MSI MS-98L9 V2.0 😊

[@Monarchias]

I have also a weird board, x470 with 2 PCI port. Biostar x470GTA! Lovely, massive board.

[@tyler6602]

​@@Monarchias idk if it's weird at all but I have a matx b360 motherboard with a PCI slot

[@cal2127]

you could put a voodoo 2 on that. theres windows 10 drivers out there​@@Monarchias

[@proyasin1504]

Well those boards are the absolute match for industrial purposes

[@Crazy_Borg]

Pentium 4 S478 boards were a real heap of weirdness. I remember ASRock boards with both AGP and PCI express slots on them. P4Dual series, they worked great! PCIe slots in those days were quite rare.

[@saxxonpike]

I have both the 3-port ATX and 1-port mATX variants, used them for a couple years. The AGP slot is a trap! The integrated GPU is actually surprisingly capable for games through 1999 and looks great in DOS, so I don't bother with adding graphics cards to these. With onboard LAN and sound card disabled, this is actually a quite good (if not odd) platform for retro gaming. But definitely not suitable as a Pentium 4 "retro rocket" platform. Also, I never did get the USB 2.0 drivers working, for some reason.

[@dennisp.2147]

The AGP slot is likely running as a PCI slot, as AGP is a subset of PCI. I'd be careful of the voltages on it too!

[@jirikajzar3247]

Even more cursed is AT format board with socket 478. I found two models existed but are really rare.

[@lucaspam]

I do own an industrial-grade pentium 4 motherboard with ISA slots. Sadly there's no AGP slot - there's an exquisite slot on place of it that I don't know nothing about. It has an CF card slot embedded instead of one of the IDE slots, for a change! So, about using it, it works like a charm. It's unbelievable. I have tested a sound blaster 16, an AWE 32, two AWE 64 and they all worked well with Win98 and DOS. There's a catch: the Pentium 4 of the era have high TDP. Coolers for the socket are noisy and obnoxious. I was able ro get a 1.4 GHz Tualatin kit and the pentium 4 board now is my backup. But it works well, with surprising high ISA compatibility. I am not into 286 and 386-era games, so I don't need a slow CPU. I do recommend it to anyone that wants to build a retro PC but is afraid of the old motherboards.

[@thej3799]

you have the coolest hobby. I wish I could afford to play around with old hardware from when i was younger. this is the next best thing, I guess.

[@rjazz1]

Love your videos mate, no one else does what you do!!!

[@philscomputerlab]

@@rjazz1 Thank you ☺️

[@lexatwo]

Be sure to press Ctrl+F1 at the initial BIOS setup screen for Phoenix/Award - it will unlock a lot of additional options in most cases.

[@philscomputerlab]

Afaik that's a Gigabyte only thing? At least it hadn't worked for me on non GB boards...

[@pjcnet]

My first PC after finally moving on from the Amiga had an AMD K6-2/500 in the late 1990s, at first I used AOL dial up and then I was one of the first to get an amazing ASDL that at first was 0.5 megabits, it felt so amazingly fast and you could even stream a very grainy video that I'd think was incredible, my second PC was a Pentium 4 running at 2400Mhz with an Ati Radeon 9550 GPU, I remember playing GTA3 on it and being amazed. Oh how far we've come.

[@realcyphox5919]

always a pleasure to watch a new video from my favourite mr clean doppelganger

[@lordwiadro83]

It was Mr Proper, no?

[@Vanessaira-Retro]

Great review video Phil.

[@MisterLettuce]

Oh dang, I wish I had that board in my P4 system back in the day. I had to give up using my AWE32 when I upgraded to it, and that almost broke my heart.

[@ctrlaltrees]

Fantastic video as always. What a strange and lovely little thing - but why put an AGP slot on a motherboard with a chipset that doesn't support AGP!? (I know about PCI fallback mode, but it still seems like a very strange design choice!)

[@philscomputerlab]

I didn't know about this fallback mode, you learn something new every day. I can think of two scenarios. One is to trick people and the other one it's to support AGP cards because PCI cards are scarce, basically a feature haha

[@CaptainDangeax]

Out of subject from this vidéo, thank you for the ess solo1 driver I found on your website, it allowed me to revive a Piii PC dos + win98se to a playable machine for dos games

[@philscomputerlab]

You're welcome 😁

[@RetroPcCupboard]

Nice! It's great that all of the ISA soundcards worked in it. You are right that it would be great for an all-in-one machine. Though, in reality I think you would be better off with a Pentium MMX machine for DOS, a Pentium 4 for Windows 98 and a Core 2 or early i5/i7 system for XP. Of course that would take triple the space and cost more overall.

[@wolfgangkrebl3056]

i agree! this is also my strategy. i use pcs from an aera with games from thus aera. fortunately i have fitting closet for my 30 PCs

[@Elios0000]

P2 era an early Celeron A imo would be perfect DOS 98/95

[@RetroPcCupboard]

@wolfgangkrebl3056 30 PCs!? Wow. That must take up some space! But, yeah, there are some games that are very picky on hardware so it's handy to have different configurations of PC.

[@Romerco77]

IMHO, the best for DOS+Win98 is the usual Super Socket 7 Voodoo build, and for Windows XP is the AMD A10-7890K APU in a Mini-ITX build. Everything covered taking the space of 1'25 machine.

[@wolfgangkrebl3056]

@@RetroPcCupboard yes, it was very hard work to make my wife agree to sacrifice the clothing closet for my hobby 😁 but it works.👍 and i really enjoy starting up my 286-16 to play maniac mansions or leisure suit larry. ❤ Anyhow, i think using a fitting PC from the most important eras of PC gaming is not that space consuming and mostly not so expensive. when i compare to my brother who is a enthuastic model railroader... oh my god.🤣

[@doleod6340]

Who else thinks that Realtek crab icon is adorable. Claws up.🦀

[@mrgtmodernretrogamingtech6891]

Nice, something I can relate, got that stuff in 2007 from a Korean Computer Surplus Shop here in the Philippines (student me can't afford latest brand new tech back then), as far as I can remember it's an amber colored motherboard with VIA Chipset, Celeron Processor and Diamond S3 Trio 3D (don't have budget for P4 and FX Card back then), I used my ISA Cards like Sound Blaster and TV Capture Card ripped from my Sold Pentium 3 Rig... Simple good old tech days...

[@AshtonCoolman]

I have a Portwell LGA775 motherboard with an ISA slot that has a DOS Compatible bridge chip. It's pretty neat💪

[@Elios0000]

thing is the SB Live! if you can find it was great in DOS by the late 90's and was amazing in 95/98 with its support of sound font banks for stuff that supported that.

[@TheRetarp]

SBLive is the way to go. I've been running one for years with my Athlon XP system. Fantastic General Midi and SB16 emulation in DOS mode! Plus the EAX for win98 and early XP era games.

[@alfiehicks1]

The only problem with the Sound Blaster Live! is that the SB16 emulation is a bit buggy. I've found that it can be very fickle with certain emulators running in real DOS 6.22. ZSNES, for example, causes it to crash when doing certain things like opening the menu, requiring you to restart the PC for the sound to work again. I recognise that this is a niche issue, however. Something that's not so niche, though, is that the SB16 emulation can cause a lot of lag in certain demanding DOS games. Doom runs slowly unless you use General Midi for the music, and Wolfenstein 3D lags terribly whenever you bump against a wall or press the use key. The only fix is to set the sound effects to the PC Speaker or disable sound effects entirely. Luckily, both of those options only affect the more minor sounds in the game, so the enemy and gun sounds play normally and don't seem to cause any lag. Additionally, I've had it drop completely silent a couple of times in Jill of the Jungle, although on both occasions, it was fixed by quitting the game and then running it again.

[@TheRetarp]

@@alfiehicks1 Interesting I learned something new today. I did not know that the SBLive would slow down games in some instances. I just checked on my Athlon XP machine and indeed in DOS mode doom will slow down even when using General Midi and awful when using soundblaster music. However when running the game within windows 98se there is zero slowdown when using either General Midi or Soundblaster! I guess I hadn't noticed before because I tend to run all my games within windows rather than rebooting to dos mode. The ZNES issues though that is a whole other thing I have no idea about because I use modern emulators on my Steam Deck. Cheers mate!

[@shponglefan]

I've spent this past year exploring building an all-in-one retro PC with an industrial LGA775 P4 motherboard w/ ISA slots. It's fantastic having DOS, Win98, and WinXP all on one system. And disabling cache turns it into the performance equivalent of a mid-range 486. It even runs Ultima VII at a playable speed with no issues. It's honestly the most versatile retro PC I have. I really think the P4 w/ ISA is an underrated platform for retro gaming.

[@Romerco77]

The graphics card would be the limiting factor for such a Dos+98+Xp system. It would be either a good Dos+win98 machine or a good WinXP machine depending on the graphics card you use, but not both. What graphics card did you use?

[@shponglefan]

@@Romerco77 You're correct that the GPU is the biggest limiting factor. I'm currently using a GeForce 4 4200 Ti + Voodoo 2 PCI. It can cover DOS, Win9X, and into early XP era (up to about 2003). I'm also experimenting with a setup using a Radeon HD 3850 AGP and GeForce FX PCI. This has better performance for XP gaming and DOS + early 98, but a bit of a performance and compatibility hole for late 90s.

[@SireSquish]

This would be on around the same par as my old Athlon XP 1333 system, which I still have and is therefore full period accurate :). I never tried disabling caches in the bios for old speed sensitive games though, so that would be interesting. I'll still have to see if the board works given the passage of time and the capacitor plague of the era.

[@djpirtu2]

I have one all-arounder too, Abit KT7A with Athlon XP-M (Barton), so there's one ISA slot and CPU multiplier can be altered quite freely. On top of that I can change FSB and turn off caches so it runs everything between old dos games and Far Cry.

[@Lurch-Bot]

When you have 4 PIII machines, a 486, 386, two PMMX laptops running 98, a Sun Ultra 60 with a PMMX PC card, a Vaio laptop with a Northwood 2.8 desktop CPU running XP (works but mainly just a collectible), a 3rd gen i7 Vaio laptop running 7 and more Socket 478 and LGA775 hardware than you can shake a stick at, it is just a way to spend money on a Frankenstein's monster for no good reason. Also, the idea of actually spending money on a LGA775 MB seems wrong (at least spending any more than the $25 I spent for a fancy, unlocked LGA775 SLI MB or the $30 I spent on the C2X6800 I got to go with it). Maybe if you are very space limited, it might make sense but I have more space to set up PCs than I have money. And if you gotta go into BIOS and disable cache to run DOS games, at that point, you might as well just shift your chair over and boot up a different machine. I like having my own personal little PC gaming living history museum. Also, there is no way you're ever getting Wing Commander running simply by disabling cache. All I have to do is boot up my 386 SX-20 and it runs perfectly. If I want to play '80s PC games, I just press a button and it runs like an 8086. So, no, you don't really have an all in one retro gaming machine, nor will such a thing ever really exist in hardware form without using emulation and/or applications to limit clockspeed and cache. And since TheRasteri demonstrated last year that ISA hardware can be run on a modern system via the LPC bus, an LGA775 board with ISA slots really isn't impressive. I also wouldn't run most XP games on a P4 these days. There is no reason to and they mostly support modern resolutions and look good on modern displays. Except for playing the Brothers in Arms games and a few others, I don't even use XP for retro gaming. I have a special XP machine for StarForce and SecuROM games and it has a 3rd gen i5 because I want the overhead from those crappy DRM protocols to have negligible CPU utilization. On a P4 it really sucks performance. Otherwise, a C2Q is more than enough for playing any other XP game in Windows 7. In fact, Windows 7 supports most 9x games. I generally loathe XP because I used it for nearly a decade as a frontline OS. I don't find it quaint or nostalgic, just annoying. To me it is almost as useless as Vista. Should have called it 'Antevista' = 'preview', as in a preview of Windows 7. Ever play COD2 at 1440P? Once you do, you'll never go back to playing it on a CRT.

[@starydrwal]

I built my multi os system on a8v motherboard with radeon 4670 agp voodoo 3 pci ess solo and audigy 2 and each of the three operating systems works perfectly, no speed issues and almost full compatibility.

[@erikmerchant567]

I've seen these no-name brands on Ebay before and see they also make a socket 775 version with ISA. Any thoughts on trying that out too? I am not sure Win98 or earlier will be supported with the chipset, but you do seem to figure out ways to make it work. Great video sir!

[@dualpapayas]

Phil's site has the Intel chipset driver version 6.3.0.1007 for Windows 98 (the last one ever released). It has a list of compatible chipsets beneath it.

[@mesterak]

Happy Friday Phil!

[@philscomputerlab]

Thank you

[@TexasAgg2003]

ISA is a pain... but good audio is worth it. Great video. P3 systems and earlier seem to have fewer ISA problems. It was nice the BIOS had the legacy options. I really want to see the dISApointment project take off. I would love to have an AM4 (x370) board with ISA.

[@mirific87]

there are modern motherboards with ISA but they lack DMA

[@christopherbaar4498]

This is very interesting! I didn't even know that such motherboards exist. Right now, I have 2 separate retro machines. I have a Slot I Pentium III 550 Mhz (I think) using a 440BX with every ISA slot filled with sound cards, using an AWE64, a Gravis Ultrasound, and a MPU-401 clone. It is running Win98SE. The second is a socket 478 Pentium 4 at I think 3 GHz dual booting Win98SE and WinXP using an Audigy 2 ZS for the sound card. Using a USB4VC, I can connect my modern controllers to either machine, which is great!

[@olegsaiko4270]

Hi Phil, nice to see U in this video again!!! This PC will work long time with another OS, like Linux or (Free)BSD, Long Live for Old PSs

[@rodhester2166]

Thanks for the review, cheers.

[@pc-sound-legacy]

If they weren't so d.. expensive, P4 with ISA Slots are great boards to cover a wide range of retro-games!

[@RetroTinkerer]

Hi Phil, thanks for the review a bit on the expensive side, I think I have my bases covered on the ISA front, 386, 486, Socket 5/7, Slot-1/A, a few S370 and Socket A... but I would jump on the opportunity of getting a S423/478/775B with ISA if the price was right for me. 😅

[@wolfgangkrebl3056]

hm - i mainly use the ISA slot for general midi soundcards under MS DOS. but a pentium 4 running with DOS only would be odd. But it would be a good possibility if you run a DOS/win95 or win 98 combi. And if you have a AGP board that runs with a voodoo 4/5 you can use a broad wide of games. therefore -yes, a useful piece of electronic

[@micahottaway8455]

You could put in the config.sys file "DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE 15360 RAM ". Using M5 or M6 instead of M4 might also work. That may improve compatibility with more games in DOS.

[@philscomputerlab]

I tried the M options, but no dice...

[@someguy3186]

The price is steep, but it seems optimal for someone who wants an all-in-one DOS/98/XP machine. I already have a separate machine for each, so it's not something I'd buy myself, but it's nonetheless interesting. I didn't even know that P4 machines with ISA slots existed.

[@FOIL_FRESH]

yo phil! another great video. whats the scaler you're using for capturing the 400p DOS feed??

[@philscomputerlab]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/f6mYi5drlK-NhcU

[@FOIL_FRESH]

@@philscomputerlab legend

[@arlandi]

I have one of these industrial motherboard installed within a heavy steel industrial casing. It was also a Pentium 4 IIRC with ISA, PCI and AGP. that thing is too heavy to move around, probably because of the case.

[@АндрейМилованов-у9у]

many industrial Pentium 4 have ISA. For example Nexcom PEAK-715-HT is 845G chipset with ITE IT8888F PCI ISA bridge.

[@g412bb]

Interesting solution. Once I heard you mentioning PCI to ISA bridge I was thinking that meant compatibility was thrown out of the window. But looks like it works quite well, where did this board come from ? China board ?

[@saxxonpike]

All research on these boards seems to point back to designs from Aimmer. Boards with this WinBond ISA bridge seem to work well from my testing.

[@hkszerlahdgshezraj5219]

For those late, 3D, software render only DOS games, it seems like a really good option.

[@coisademerd.a4079]

amazing motherboard, thanks 4 video

[@cain9211]

I'm using the MS-6571 MB with 1 ISA slot now. It works very fine with P4 2.8B CPU, DDR 2GB ram, Geforce 7800GS AGP, ESS 1878 ISA soundcard and dreamblaster X2 wavetable daughterboard at DOS, Win 98 and XP system environment. The only downside to this system in my opinion is that it only has an AGP 4x slot, so I can't get the full performance of the geforce 7800 card.

[@cain9211]

Like many people, I have spent a lot of time and money building systems that can run wide ranges of environments from DOS to Windows XP or Windows 7. In addition to the system listed above, I have also used an Athlon XP system with an ISA slot, and an Athlon 64 X2 or Core2 CPU with an ESS solo-1 card via motherboards with a VIA P4M900 chipset. All of them worked well enough.

[@cain9211]

But anyway, what I felt is that unless you absolutely have to use only one retro PC, it's better to separate the system that covers DOS to Win 98 environment and the system that applies to Win XP and later environments. Pentium 3 and Geforce FX work great for DOS and Windows 98, and for the XP era, you can use the beastly Intel Sandybridge CPUs and the legendary Geforce 750ti.

[@philscomputerlab]

@@cain9211 Very nice overview of your systems!

[@mirific87]

@cain9211 MS-6571 ver1 or ver2 do you have? have you tested any other isa soundcard on it?

[@cain9211]

@@mirific87 I tested ess1868f (The '1878f' listed above is a typo.sorry), soundblaster AWE64 (CT4520) on my MS-6571 ver2 board. All worked fine.

[@ahabwolf7580]

Very nice. It does seem like WinXP era games might not run as well as you could get them if you did a much faster cpu with a more modern pci-e gpu and a sata ssd. But as a solid Win98 board with a super easy toggle for older speed sensitive games, this is really awesome.

[@VShuricK]

6:11 its a common issue with ac'97 codecs under win9x. Those codecs works much better under NT-based (2k/XP) 14:45 IMO KT133A based with unlocked barton/torton may be better

[@viscountalpha]

depends on your application. some legacy cards need those isa slots and it makes more sense to keep current machines going instead of spending $crazy$ If it still does the job.

[@sonyericssoner]

I would test the Tseng4000 if it gegts any boost from P4 comared to period correct cpus.

[@philscomputerlab]

Not a bad idea, not a bad idea at all!

[@bauerns5er]

Well with the not so real AGP Port it is not really an Multi Platform solution, but it is a real nice DOS alternative today. Even the working PSUs get rare, so you might be able to build a ATX-based DOS-Machine that lasts a few decades more. And for the prices we have to pay in Germany for Retro Hardware it isn't too expensive. I wonder how it runs Quake 1 on higher resolutions?

[@middle_pickup]

The documented lack of sound card support might have been due to the possibility that Intel just didn't test sound cards in order to validate them. Interesting motherboard. I thought it was a Gigabyte at first from the look of it. Love the old blue boards like that.

[@alexbinder]

From the looks I would have guessed these boards where used in the day for industrial system/devices where OS and old parts where required to run.

[@Davidpaddy2001]

In India, back in the day, I remember them calling it an "industrial motherboard"

[@cain9211]

Most industrial motherboards with ISA slots from aliexpress come from retired Chinese ATM machines.

[@budiisnadi]

OMG the GeForce4 MX was my first graphics card.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Wait that's a thing? Now I really want a ISA slot Sound Blaster card

[@izarate]

I'd guess the AGP works in PCI mode? Either that or the documentation is wrong.

[@tankermottind]

I think with powerful systems like these, modern Doom and Quake mods should be included in the testing. Sure, it can run Duke 3D, but can it run Honey? What about Knee Deep in KDIZD or Ancient Aliens? Or the severely unoptimized Q2DOS source port for Quake II?

[@magruberis]

Damn that prince of persia brings a lot of memories :D

[@retroanderson]

The issue I find with 478 or 370 boards is they were right in the capacitor plague era. I have started going for 775 instead.

[@marnixvansintaldegonde1934]

How many motherboards do you have Phil? Estimate?

[@elalemanpaisa]

is there even a reason to install ms dos if you have win98 which comes with a full blown dos install anyway?

[@xenoxaos1]

I remember someone coming in to dispose a computer that had a pentium and Isa... I borrowed it temporarily to backup a mfm HDD

[@christopheoberrauch784]

Thanks for your tireless and constant work. XP on such a PC just doesn't make much sense to me although I had a similar system with XP back then. A 486 with Win95 is similarly assessed by me. XP games simply reach their limits too quickly with an AGP port. Games that work on such a system are better off with Windows 98.

[@ihsan_lol]

Wow those are some very nice features, and for someone like me who doesn't have a lot of space for different computers from different eras, this could be a great motherboard. But the price is definitely prohibitive. Would you mind sharing where you've purchased it from?

[@philscomputerlab]

These can be found online by searching Pentium 4 ISA. AliExpress, eBay are all possible places.

[@luismagallanes2371]

Kinda expensive but also pretty neat for people that want an all-in-one DOS/Win98 PC. Tho from what im reading in the comments, the AGP slot seems like is spec out to about the pci level so might limit your options there. Should be ok to pair with Geforce4 as shown here.

[@mordecaiepsilon]

Is the infrared for networking? Is it for remote devices and peripherals?

[@philscomputerlab]

It's an old technology, before Bluetooth. Some printers and phones used it AFAIK.

[@anonytuser711]

I built a P4 computer to max out the specs for Windows 98/XP. I wish I had gotten a board with ISA slots!

[@stamasd8500]

Did you try Jemmex for memory management instead of EMM386/Himem?

[@philscomputerlab]

I haven't! I'll keep it mind for a possible revisit video.

[@jrherita]

A little funny that ISA here runs at 1/50th the frequency of the 400 mhz FSB

[@krz8888888]

My memory is getting hazy, did the athlon XP get isa slots ?

[@FinicalAmoeba]

Several manufacturers made socket 462 boards with either 1 or 2 ISA slots, though they're getting expensive now as industrial users buy them up for their ISA based CNC controllers and other more exotic cards for their million dollar machines.

[@cain9211]

There are some motherboards like Soltek SL-75kav. Boards with via KT133A Northbridge + 686B Southbridge can use Barton Athlon XP-M CPU.

[@thedustycpu]

@@cain9211 I have that exact setup. PITA to find the right Barton XP-M. Want to compare it to this board with a Pentium 4 EE with a Voodoo 5.

[@chrisrudi7162]

The only 478 board with ISA that I have unfortunately has no DMA support on the ISA bus, so it's useless for most old sound cards. I'll have to get another one at some point.

[@АндрейМилованов-у9у]

ITE IT8888F PCI-ISA bridge supports DMA on ISA. Problem is many ISA DMA cards have software & hardware problems when working via bridge or on systems not assumed for them. Sometimes problems can be solved by BIOS (for example by disabling the L2 cache or changing freq/multiplier/... in BIOS)

[@davkdavk]

Wow, I never knew about these !

[@gentuxable]

There is a Socket 370 board with VIA Apollo 133 chipset that has ISA and is also new. Works fine for me with a 1.13 GHz Tualatin Pentium 3.

[@thedustycpu]

I could of sworn KT133 is AMD

[@gentuxable]

@@thedustycpu it is the VIA VT82C694X which is also called Apollo Pro 133A. I had it wrong as the VT8363 was sometimes also called Apollo. But KT seems really AMD.

[@sparki_]

that looks like some people took (maybe reverse engineered) a micro atx board and just added the isa bridge and the slots down below. Weirdly i am also having the same emm386 error on my pentium 3 pc

[@stephanemignot100]

Find PoP 1.3 and use the MT-32! ^

[@Super123456789Kuba]

Sounds convienent as a DOS+98+XP PC, but at the same time... I feel like there's a limiting factor in terms of AGP Performance, which I think could limit that to DOS and 98 PC at best. As well as - Socket 7 boards is what I would look for more. This board (The P4 Board I mean.) sure does have a lot of BIOS Options, but also I think that would be a hassle to deal with.

[@shponglefan]

An i865 board would be an ideal choice as it supports 8x AGP.

[@mpettengill1981]

Interesting board, probably a good option for some niche use cases. Still for $200-$300 one could find decent late-90s / early 00s machine fully built out and in good shape. Or way less money if your willing to hunt / do some cleanup and minor repairs. And maybe for free if you get lucky 😂

[@itstheweirdguy]

Computer games used to have the most awesome music and sound. WHAT THE HELL happened? Not anymore!

[@reznor2684]

The ESS soundcard right channel fail. Maybe an issue in the board jack?

[@philscomputerlab]

What do you mean?

[@ahayesm]

I think for a P4 system I'd much rather just use VDMSounds or DOSBox depending on the game. For native SB I would just use an older board with native ISA and not this bridged setup.

[@Spazilton1]

What version of AGP? I'm curious if this would work with the Voodoo 5.

[@philscomputerlab]

Someone mentioned below that the slot is keyed for 1.5V but supplies 3.3V. So best to use safe cards that can handle both.

[@Spazilton1]

@@philscomputerlabI have the board now. I’ll test the voltage to see what it’s putting out prior to risking a Voodoo 5.

[@MadMac5]

For those who also want to run Descent on a fast computer like this, try running it with descent -640x400 to force it to run at a higher resolution. It will look much better and won't be running at such a ridiculous speed! No guarantees that you'll be able to dodge homing missiles, though.

[@philscomputerlab]

Great tip!

[@juanaviles5267]

I would like to see a AGP and pciexpress like asrock P4VM890

[@SergiuszRoszczyk]

I spent so many hours trying to get NIC working on my Pentium board just to realize I need to fix PNP settings for IRQ9…

[@lordwiadro83]

300 USD for a Pentium 4 board with a fake AGP slot is a no no no no 😂

[@KainiaKaria]

I have been experimenting with a Azza KT3-AV Socket A Motherboard and managed to get both the ESS AudioDrive ES1869F and a Yamaha ATC-6631 ISA Sound Card.

[@VShuricK]

kt133a have internal isa support. intel's 8xx - no, PCI/LPC

[@KainiaKaria]

More specifically a A-Trend HARMONY ATC-6631 (YMF719E-S).

[@KainiaKaria]

@@VShuricK KT133A can be a pain in the ass to work with.

[@VShuricK]

@@KainiaKaria you use kt133a mobo 🤣

[@KainiaKaria]

@@VShuricK I know. lol

[@PROSTO4Tabal]

Voice is so muffled, have you tried mic before editing? Hope you find much better solution

[@ENB2002]

What is this board from? I’m very curious since the BIOS chip has a copyright date of 2022. As for whether or not I would buy it, I think I would pass. I purchased a fully functional slot 1 Pentium II 350 retro gaming PC, AND a complete set of parts to build an LGA 775 gaming PC with a Q6600 and Nvidia GeForce 8800gt for the same $200-$300 price range this motherboard alone is in. I’m located in the US, so prices may vary depending on your location, but for me, it is not something I would consider buying.

[@Ensue85A]

Are you going to install this system in a retro beige case?

[@philscomputerlab]

Not likely, I stopped working with cases a very long time ago!

[@ronm6585]

Thanks Phil.

[@AstralPhnx]

Fuck there goes the market for these very specific motherboards my arcade machine uses

[@ryanpaaz]

Phil, how come you never run memmaker? Even if it's just the basic/default settings. With 64mb (Max DOS size, right?) of ram available it'll probably be pretty good.

[@GL1zdA]

Whats the point if he doesn’t need UMBs?

[@philscomputerlab]

I just never have the need for it. The boot menu I use works really well. With this board, something else is not working, I don't think memmaker can help. Also, is memmaker a thing with DOS 7.1?

[@orinokonx01]

I know this might not be the best question to ask, but I really do need to ask it. Phil, what specific version of XP are you running on retro PC's nowadays? Considering its a 20+ year old OS, at this stage... you know... I have this special version called VistaXP which comes bundled with a bunch of Vista theme crud, and I'd rather have a cleaner install on my retro PC's..! Also, I would have loved this P4 board back in 2003 when I built my first P4! First thing I saved for when I finished school, and it was a good machine, but having ISA slots would have been incredible! Before the P4 I was using an AMD K6/2 500 and an AWE32, so I missed not having an ISA slot!

[@philscomputerlab]

SP3 32 Bit.

[@borispetrovic9706]

This motherboard are use in Mashines like a CNC mashines.

[@Spazilton1]

Well, pulled the trigger on one.

[@DankyMankey]

You can probably build the ultimate DOS machine with that board. We need to somehow put a turbo button in there or else the old CGA/EGA era games would run too fast.

[@shponglefan]

Between cache disabling and ACPI / ODCM throttling, it's possible to throttle these processors quite a bit. I've taken a 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 down to speeds equivalent to a 12MHz 286.

[@DankyMankey]

@@shponglefan pretty impressive; have you tried doing it with a modern CPU?

[@philscomputerlab]

@@DankyMankey All LGA 775 CPUs can do that, maybe newer ones also...

[@shponglefan]

@@DankyMankey I haven't tried throttling a modern CPU. The most recent CPU I've tried throttling has been a Core 2 Extreme X6800.

[@pcguy5491-the-modern-retro-man]

About that chipset for Intel saying there was no AGP support for the AGP slot being in PCI modem only...it turned out Intel lied

[@philscomputerlab]

They used PCI over the AGP.

[@pcguy5491-the-modern-retro-man]

@philscomputerlab that's correct though anyway

[@sajberkg]

Where can I buy this? Is there a link somewhere?

[@dualpapayas]

If you search "socket 478 ISA" on some online retailers you'll find some similar boards. Be warry that some won't have an AGP slot or will use non-Intel chipsets.

[@jrherita]

No question - why have a Nvidia GPU when you can have a TSENG 4000 instead?

[@philscomputerlab]

You are right!

[@borlibaer]

In my opinion, Win XP should be seperated from early Windows OS, designed for running on Intel PIII maximum. Of cause it is basically possibile to build an all in one machine, but all peripherical extensions will cause trouble an doesn't really make sense.