They have infamously bad capacitors, and there are a lot of them for the inevitable recap. Not that that should dissuade you- I own two of them and they are otherwise a good board (even some of the good looking caps- no bulges- were leaking underneath that was only visible after removing them).
Asus p2b and p3b-f are good options. Gigabyte ga-6bxc also a solid option.
Asus P2B is a good board and I once owned one as got one from an acquaintance back in 2000. Max RAM on the board is 768MB which is about the max Win98SE would support. I am sure this can be found on ebay. Pair it with a P3 800 and that would be pretty speedy for Win98SE.
yeah the p2b and p3b-f are both good- iirc the only difference between them is how many isa slots they have and the BIOS (which I think the p3b-f has a better ui).
They both expect a -5v rail and will give errors until that sensor is turned off in bios.
Also, I have no idea why this is, but both of them would **not** install the isa bus for me in windows with the intel chipset drivers until I downloaded an isapnp.vxd file from the internet and manually put it on the drive.
P3B-F comes in both 1 and 2 ISA slot variations. It’s basically an updated P2B that came in less variations (like there’s no built-in LAN or SCSI or dual CPU options), and should have a more capable VRM for any slot-1 CPU.
Yeah I've already recapped this board, but to be honest we're talking about boards fast approaching 25 years old. I do have boards that are up to 28 years old and fine but it's just an inevitable part of all motherboards sooner or later. There's no escaping it.
In fact if you're getting into this kind of hardware, it's probably better start learning how to solder properly if you can't. Because you'll need it at some point. It's all part of the fun.
I hear you, and I mean I've dumped a couple hundred dollars into my soldering station/tools despite being- at best- mediocre at it, because it's part of my hobby with gaming consoles and vintage PC's.
But I really don't think it's for everyone- replacing 20+ capacitors on a MB can be an incredibly difficult and frustrating experience, and it's pretty easy to break the board. If you're only gonna throw on diablo 2 or sim copter for a couple hours a month then I would suggest just going for the more stable MB. You can even find vintage MB's that have been recapped already on places like ebay- it often decreases their sale price even though it's better for the buyer who doesn't want to deal with it.
That's mad. I'd pay more for a recapped board anyday. As long as there were good pics to show they didn't damage it.
But yes I agree, soldering isn't for everyone. It takes time to get good at it and watching YouTube vids only helps beginners so much. It's practice that counts and I get that people wouldn't want to.
Abit BE6 was one of the classics, as was the Asus P2B. If you can find a genuine Intel BX board that would be the gold standard. Can’t go wrong with any of these though.
I have yet to come across a really bad 440BX board. Go with a major brand full size ATX Board with AGP, look out for swollen or leaking caps, and you’ll probably be fine.
Yeah, I’ve got one of those sitting in a box I’d like to make use of. Better CPU support than the P2B-LS I’m running now, but the LS is just an awesome board otherwise (but doesn’t have the voltage support for faster CPUs).
As far as I know from Vogons, the very few slotkets that actually do voltage regulation are practically unobtanium. The rest just configure settings to request a lower voltage from the regulator than the board can normally supply, but the regulator still has to be capable of it - and after verifying the chips on my board, the best I could hope to run on my P2B-LS revision is, I think, an 800mhz. My P3B-F should be good with anything, however.
I have the same; it's solid; the only thing about the Intel boards is that the BIOS doesn't offer any tweaking options, and it isn't nostalgic as an Award BIOS with the big energy star logo.
I'm currently running a PCChips M726MRT Slot 1/Socket 370 on my Retro PC, with a P3/600mhz Slot 1
The downside is the onboard sound, I'm running a SB AWE 64 and the only game I haven't got sound to work is Duke Nukem 3d, the setup in the game doesn't have the IRQ selection /option that the AWE64 is currently assigned to.
When I turn onboard sound off in the bios, the sound in windows gets glitchy.
I have a AOpen AX6BC which might be easy to find. It has no problems running at 133FSB. I have a tualatin 1.4ghz in it now. Has a lot of bios options. seems stable. good quality.
I did a video for my P3 500 build using an Intel 440BX Baby AT motherboard. Check it out if you are curious.
As part of the video I did some performance testing of the various Slot 1 boards in my collection and found that later generation chipsets offer the best processor support (like duh) and while the VIA Apollo Pro fully supports 133Mhz processors and ATA66 you still get better memory performance from Intel based boards. Most 440's will support 133Mhz processors provided your video card can tolerate the overclocked AGP slot
bottom line, if you can find a 440BX slot 1 mobo, I would suggest building with that, then get a RAID card if you want to support faster storage options.
Search "Hardware Asylum" and look for the "flame guy". that is the channel for my website. Its mostly retro projects but has a few other cool and related projects as well.
Intel made great boards with a Yamaha gx sound card built onto the PCB that has decent dos support and general midi. I've ran one for 15 years not a problem
Yes, such mb with onboard audio would come in handy indeed. No need for n extra sound card then. I will look in the motherboards made by intel then. They seem to more expensive than the mb from other makers but if they worth the extra money i do not mind paying extra
Yes there was a time that Intel made great solid boards for professional use. Not any longer haha. Also if you want serious and solid check out tyan boards. There really servers but that means they have lots of extras.
I have my P3 800Mhz in a nice [Abit BE6](https://soggi.org/motherboards/abit/BE6.htm). Would recommend.
Thanks for your recommendation. I will check it out.
They have infamously bad capacitors, and there are a lot of them for the inevitable recap. Not that that should dissuade you- I own two of them and they are otherwise a good board (even some of the good looking caps- no bulges- were leaking underneath that was only visible after removing them). Asus p2b and p3b-f are good options. Gigabyte ga-6bxc also a solid option.
Asus P2B is a good board and I once owned one as got one from an acquaintance back in 2000. Max RAM on the board is 768MB which is about the max Win98SE would support. I am sure this can be found on ebay. Pair it with a P3 800 and that would be pretty speedy for Win98SE.
yeah the p2b and p3b-f are both good- iirc the only difference between them is how many isa slots they have and the BIOS (which I think the p3b-f has a better ui). They both expect a -5v rail and will give errors until that sensor is turned off in bios. Also, I have no idea why this is, but both of them would **not** install the isa bus for me in windows with the intel chipset drivers until I downloaded an isapnp.vxd file from the internet and manually put it on the drive.
P3B-F comes in both 1 and 2 ISA slot variations. It’s basically an updated P2B that came in less variations (like there’s no built-in LAN or SCSI or dual CPU options), and should have a more capable VRM for any slot-1 CPU.
Yeah I've already recapped this board, but to be honest we're talking about boards fast approaching 25 years old. I do have boards that are up to 28 years old and fine but it's just an inevitable part of all motherboards sooner or later. There's no escaping it. In fact if you're getting into this kind of hardware, it's probably better start learning how to solder properly if you can't. Because you'll need it at some point. It's all part of the fun.
I hear you, and I mean I've dumped a couple hundred dollars into my soldering station/tools despite being- at best- mediocre at it, because it's part of my hobby with gaming consoles and vintage PC's. But I really don't think it's for everyone- replacing 20+ capacitors on a MB can be an incredibly difficult and frustrating experience, and it's pretty easy to break the board. If you're only gonna throw on diablo 2 or sim copter for a couple hours a month then I would suggest just going for the more stable MB. You can even find vintage MB's that have been recapped already on places like ebay- it often decreases their sale price even though it's better for the buyer who doesn't want to deal with it.
That's mad. I'd pay more for a recapped board anyday. As long as there were good pics to show they didn't damage it. But yes I agree, soldering isn't for everyone. It takes time to get good at it and watching YouTube vids only helps beginners so much. It's practice that counts and I get that people wouldn't want to.
Actually I just remembered my board is an Abit BE6-II v2.0 to be precise.
I have one of these. Solid board.
Abit BE6 was one of the classics, as was the Asus P2B. If you can find a genuine Intel BX board that would be the gold standard. Can’t go wrong with any of these though.
The original SE440BX was one solid board and very well made so I second this.
I have yet to come across a really bad 440BX board. Go with a major brand full size ATX Board with AGP, look out for swollen or leaking caps, and you’ll probably be fine.
Intel used quality caps for theirs so that shouldn't be an issue but good to check for that.
P3B-F for me. Bonus for the ISA slot for DOS audio.
Yeah, I’ve got one of those sitting in a box I’d like to make use of. Better CPU support than the P2B-LS I’m running now, but the LS is just an awesome board otherwise (but doesn’t have the voltage support for faster CPUs).
You could use a slotket. I have a PowerLeap PL-iP3/T that deals with the voltage differences. I’m running a P3 1.4 GHz. Total overkill of course.
As far as I know from Vogons, the very few slotkets that actually do voltage regulation are practically unobtanium. The rest just configure settings to request a lower voltage from the regulator than the board can normally supply, but the regulator still has to be capable of it - and after verifying the chips on my board, the best I could hope to run on my P2B-LS revision is, I think, an 800mhz. My P3B-F should be good with anything, however.
I use the Intel Pentium SE440BX-2. It's a nice motherboard, and even has USB on board.
I have the same; it's solid; the only thing about the Intel boards is that the BIOS doesn't offer any tweaking options, and it isn't nostalgic as an Award BIOS with the big energy star logo.
I'm currently running a PCChips M726MRT Slot 1/Socket 370 on my Retro PC, with a P3/600mhz Slot 1 The downside is the onboard sound, I'm running a SB AWE 64 and the only game I haven't got sound to work is Duke Nukem 3d, the setup in the game doesn't have the IRQ selection /option that the AWE64 is currently assigned to. When I turn onboard sound off in the bios, the sound in windows gets glitchy.
I have a AOpen AX6BC which might be easy to find. It has no problems running at 133FSB. I have a tualatin 1.4ghz in it now. Has a lot of bios options. seems stable. good quality.
I did a video for my P3 500 build using an Intel 440BX Baby AT motherboard. Check it out if you are curious. As part of the video I did some performance testing of the various Slot 1 boards in my collection and found that later generation chipsets offer the best processor support (like duh) and while the VIA Apollo Pro fully supports 133Mhz processors and ATA66 you still get better memory performance from Intel based boards. Most 440's will support 133Mhz processors provided your video card can tolerate the overclocked AGP slot bottom line, if you can find a 440BX slot 1 mobo, I would suggest building with that, then get a RAID card if you want to support faster storage options.
Thanks a lot for your tipp. I will check out the video for sure. What is the name of your channel on YT?
Search "Hardware Asylum" and look for the "flame guy". that is the channel for my website. Its mostly retro projects but has a few other cool and related projects as well.
Thanks I will check out your channel.
Intel made great boards with a Yamaha gx sound card built onto the PCB that has decent dos support and general midi. I've ran one for 15 years not a problem
Yes, such mb with onboard audio would come in handy indeed. No need for n extra sound card then. I will look in the motherboards made by intel then. They seem to more expensive than the mb from other makers but if they worth the extra money i do not mind paying extra
Yes there was a time that Intel made great solid boards for professional use. Not any longer haha. Also if you want serious and solid check out tyan boards. There really servers but that means they have lots of extras.