Nice! For some reason, I really like this a lot. The beige desktop case and the Model M certainly help, though 😀

jheronimus wrote:

So I decided that I would still like to have an ISA slot which pretty much means Slot 1/440BX.

Not necessarily. I have a Gigabyte Socket A motherboard with two (!) ISA slots in my possession. Still deciding on what to do with it, though, and if I really need a >1 GHz Thunderbird for DOS games :p

Slot A and Socket A motherboards alike do sometimes have ISA slots, so Slot 1 isn't the latest!

harddrivespin wrote:

Slot A and Socket A motherboards alike do sometimes have ISA slots, so Slot 1 isn't the latest!

What is a good Socket A board with ISA that will run Athlon XP CPUs? Never came across one.

They're not super common, but one like this (aware of the lack of AGP) https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F … 0296386.jpg&f=1 might do. Either way they're uncommon and you'd have to be quite patient to find one.

oerk wrote:

Nice! For some reason, I really like this a lot. The beige desktop case and the Model M certainly help, though 😀

Yes, the case is pretty awesome. For some reason I thought it would be bigger, but even as it is it's a lot easier to work with compared to a baby AT desktop cases. There is just a lot of space inside.

Not necessarily. I have a Gigabyte Socket A motherboard with two (!) ISA slots in my possession. Still deciding on what to do with it, though, and if I really need a >1 GHz Thunderbird for DOS games :p

Of course. There are also faster Intel options with ISA. So my phrasing is probably wrong — I was more refering to the fact that 440BX seems to be the "default" choice because it's cheap, reliable and easy to find.

harddrivespin wrote:

They're not super common, but one like this (aware of the lack of AGP) https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F … 0296386.jpg&f=1 might do. Either way they're uncommon and you'd have to be quite patient to find one.

No AGP is OK, I have a Radeon 9250 for just this kind of thing. But I wonder if the ISA slot is a real master and can do real DOS on a board like this.

InWin cases are the best ATX cases ever made.. I love the case OP.

appiah4 wrote:

harddrivespin wrote:

Slot A and Socket A motherboards alike do sometimes have ISA slots, so Slot 1 isn't the latest!

What is a good Socket A board with ISA that will run Athlon XP CPUs? Never came across one.

Abit KT7A will run an Athlon XP and has a ISA Slot.

Nice system but then its no secret I like Slot 1 based systems! Never did like the sideways floppy though, Sideways Gotek I probably wouldn't mind. (Not that I use disks much anyway now)
ISA sound and the Voodoo 3 make a awesome fast DOS PC, and pretty decent Win9x Glide PC as well.

I'm not sure I would bother with the 133FSB overclock, I have a 600Mhz running 100 FSB and it plays pretty much all my games up to GTA3, (Which is ok to run on my XP PC by my rules)

chinny22 wrote:

I'm not sure I would bother with the 133FSB overclock, I have a 600Mhz running 100 FSB and it plays pretty much all my games up to GTA3, (Which is ok to run on my XP PC by my rules)

That is true, actually. I've been playing Quake 3 Arena at 800x600@max settings, Diablo 2 and Sacrifice. So far the performance has been great and I don't really have any need for additional horsepower

As Bancho already mentioned, Abit KT7/KT7 Raid/KT7A have an ISA slot. Main issue with those boards are the caps, I have a KT7R with literally every single cap leaking.

Regarding that ATX case, is it from the same InWin as these: https://uae.microless.com/cdn/products/30120-hi.jpg ?

martin939 wrote:

Regarding that ATX case, is it from the same InWin as these: https://uae.microless.com/cdn/products/30120-hi.jpg ?

Yes. I think, the 500 series is roughly from early Pentium 4 era and was quite popular at the time. Haven't been able to find an exact release announcement, though.

A bit off-topic here, but I just realised that some ATX Socket 7 boards actually don't use jumpers as well. Namely, ABIT AB-AX5 allows configuring frequencies through software. I wonder if there is a Super Socket 7 board that can do this as well — that would kind of be a dream board for me.

This P3B-F is my first ATX "retro" board, and I must say I am thoroughly impressed by the whole jumperless thing.

Great build! Lots of fun to be had there but it’s worth having a PIII for Sanitarium alone - what a great game.

I have a very similar machine but am running a 1GHz socket 370 chip @ 133FSB - could you expand on why this means my Voodoo3 3500 is being overclocked? I’m a child in such matters.

Thanks!

@badmojo

i440BX chipset doesn't have a 1/2 divider for AGP, only 1/1 or 2/3. At 66MHz or 100MHz FSB it's fine, but at 133MHz FSB, the AGP runs at 83-something MHz instead of 66MHz. In fact, i440BX was never rated for 133MHz even though it's perfectly ok at that speed (except for the AGP)

badmojo wrote:

Great build! Lots of fun to be had there but it’s worth having a PIII for Sanitarium alone - what a great game.

Unfortunately I can't run Sanitarium for some reason — it just crashes after the starting scene with no error message. Maybe I'm using too modern DirectX (it 8.0, I think). I'll have to investigate this further.

I have a very similar machine but am running a 1GHz socket 370 chip @ 133FSB - could you expand on why this means my Voodoo3 3500 is being overclocked? I’m a child in such matters.

From what I've read, the issue is the following: running FSB at 133MHz means that both AGP and PCI have to run at 133 MHz. PCI can run at FSB/4 (133/4=33 which is normal for it). AGP can only run at FSB/1 and FSB/(2/3). AGP is supposed to run at 66 MHz, and so these settings are okay for 100MHz FSB (100/(2/3)=66) but not for 133 (133/(2/3)=89). So you have AGP running at 89 MHz which can lead at least to stability issues. I'm not exactly sure if it constitutes "overclocking", but I fear that it can put additional stress on the Voodoo.

Hence, I was thinking of switching to NVIDIA TNT2 or GeForce 2 in the AGP slot (since they are cheap and common) and Voodoo 2 in SLI (since PCI functions at normal frequency at 133MHz FSB). I have two V2 cards, I just need to make/buy an SLI bridge.

I believe there were tests done back in the day to see what cards can handle the 89 MHz AGP result from the dividers available for 133 MHz FSB. I think the conclusion was that the Voodoo series of cards were fine. There may have been an assumption made at the time (for reasons that are either nebulous guessing or legitimate analysis - I can't remember) that the fact the Voodoo cards never fully latched on to AGP and instead kinda "slid over" from PCI allowed for a bit more wiggle room on that spec.

What is a good Socket A board with ISA that will run Athlon XP CPUs

Chaintech 7AJA2/100. Thoroughbred-B support, usually comes with C-Media 8738 chipset (SB compatible). Not 100% sure, but I think Barton is supported too.

jheronimus wrote:

Unfortunately I can't run Sanitarium for some reason — it just crashes after the starting scene with no error message. Maybe I'm using too modern DirectX (it 8.0, I think). I'll have to investigate this further.

Have you tried the patch? I think I had that issue too initially - I've attached the copy I have.

And yes regarding the Voodoo3 and the 133FSB - I've been running that machine for a couple of years now and have had no issues; the Voodoo3 is more stable and compatible than the Geforce2 Ultra I had in there previously I think. It gets hot tho so I've added a fan to its passive cooler.

Voodoo 3 can't go beyond 133mhz FSB on 440BX motherboard and GeForce 2 usually can handle 150mhz with sideband adressing disabled.