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Help me Locate Ideal Motherboard?

Raven

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 7, 2009
Messages
2,752
Location
DE, USA..
I want to replace my motherboard sometime in the near future, but am unable to locate one that meets my unique needs. Here they are:

- ATX (not mini or micro, etc.) Form Factor
- Socket 775 supporting C2Q 9650.
- 1333FSB support
- DDR2 800mhz support
- Three or more RAM slots
- Floppy Header
- IDE Header
- 4 or more SATA Headers
- Parallel port or header
- Serial port or header (not absolutely required, but good)
- PS/2 ports (mention the board even if it doesn't have these)
- PCIe x16 electromechanical slot
- Two PCI slots or more
- Less than or around $100
- Not ASUS (I have had many bad experiences with ASUS)
- From a reputable manufacturer

If it costs more, still post it. If you find one with ISA slots, bonus points, but it will likely cost a fortune (they're about $300 last I checked). If the only option left is to save up and buy an industrial board than I shall, because that'll net me ISA slots anyway, but I'd prefer to spend about $100 and have that board tide me over for a few more years.
 
I grabbed one of these last summer:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6346530&CatId=1572

Nice boards, and if you want reliability, Intel-made boards are definitely the way to go. I haven't had a single problem out of it. I'm running mine with a quad-core Xeon processor, since I was able to find them for a really low price. Intel's product guide says it's compatible with the Q9650:

http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboards/DP43BF/DP43BF-overview.htm
 
You're not going to find a floppy header on most modern motherboards. There are plenty of options to get around that though: parallel/USB floppy drives, SCSI drives, or my current solution: a LS-120 drive.
 
- ATX (not mini or micro, etc.) Form Factor

Is there some particular reasoning for this? Because you're limiting your options quite a bit with that... there are actually quite a few mATX boards that meet all the other requirements.

However, there's also this one... the floppy connector is in kind of a PITA location, but it at least has all the necessary ports and plenty of PCI slots.
 
Look at Intel's "Classic" and "Executive" series motherboards. The DG33BU meets most of your specs. C2Q-9650, 1333 FSB, DDR2-800, 4 DIMMs, floppy, PATA, serial, parallel, PS/2, PCIex16, PCIex1, 2xPCI; as low as $70 ($90 from reputable sellers.) It's MicroATX, but honestly, if it has all your specs, does that really matter? mATX boards fit in full-size ATX chassis just fine. (I have the only-slightly-lesser DG31PR in a full ATX chassis. The only thing the much-cheaper DG31PR is missing is that it only has 2 DIMM slots.)

You are *NOT* going to find all of those specs plus an ISA slot in anything other than an industrial board.
 
Yeah I know i won't. As for Intel themselves I haven't located a board yet that meets the requirements, and the DG33BU specifically would bottleneck my CPU because it does C2Q at max 1066mhz FSB - the 1333mhz is relegated to C2D for some reason on that board.

I currently have a DG41RQ in my machine, and the microATX form factor has pissed me off to no end - a lack of expansion slots, and lack of room to work in. Since the board is so small a large GPU always covers a slot, making the expansion slots even fewer (I have two PCI on my board, but can only use one due to this).

It's more important that it support my CPU at it's max potential and has a floppy controller and supports my RAM (DDR2@800) than that it have 4 RAM slots. I have two RAM slots in the board I'm using now, and run 6GB from that. I have a spare 2GB stick that I'd like to throw in, but if I have to wait and eventually upgrade to 2x4GB instead of 2x2GB+1x4GB then that's acceptable.

The linked Gigabyte board looks promising. It's a shame that the FDC only supports one drive, but that's all that's absolutely necessary, since I can do 1.44/720K read/write from a USB drive. I am going to research this board a bit, see if I can find reviews..

Edit: I found several short reviews with heavy use of Google-cache and the like, and the board seems to hold up well in almost all cases. One guy complained about sleep mode not working in Win7, but even if that's a fundamental problem with the board I don't really need that anyway. The only other complaint is it seems to max out at 410mhz (quad pumped, if u recall) FSB, but I don't think I'll need to push my system that far anyway, as I'm happy at the stock 3ghz I have here, having come from dual 2.4 and only recently getting quad 3. I may well purchase this board today, thanks Thrashbarg.
 
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I haven't found a modern motherboard (where modern = since 2004) that supports two floppies, outside REALLY specialized ones.

The DG33BU only supporting 1066 bus for C2Q is wrong. It's a typo on the main page, see the Processor support link. I'll email my friend at Intel, he'll get that fixed. (He is the guy who handles, among other things, the website for Intel Desktop Boards.)
 
I know my s939 mobo supports a 2.88M floppy drive. Never bothered to try out 2 at once though. My newest motherboard (AM3 with a quad core) has a floppy connector but I haven't tried it out yet.
It better not not work lol!
 
I know it's been a while but I did get that motherboard, and have been using it for a while now. It's exactly what I wanted, performs fine, and any problems posted online don't apply to me. I hooked up a 1.2MB floppy drive to the internal header, and purchased a card reader/3.5"FDD combo, ripped the 3.5" off, and put a USB version in. I then put a USB PCI card in w/ internal port, and plugged it in there so I have both floppy types.

It's been working great.
 
Let me chime in on this Raven . . .
Glad you got what you were looking for. Talk about retro compatiblity - I kind of went a little off the deep end. Well, real deep. My trustworthy Thermaltake 600W PS smoked my Gigabyte GA-790FX-UDP5. So, I said what the heck and did what needed to be done. The UDP5 wouldn't POST, but the upside was that it was still in warranty and Giga has it now. The CPU was a 940 quad and it was okay as was the 1x4 OCZ PC2 6400's, and the XFX 9800GTX+. I went with a Giga GA-890FXA-UD5, 2x2 1600 OCZ DDR3, 1055 hex, and a XFX 5850. The UD5 mobo has 2 PCI-E 2.0 x 16 slots, 3 PCI slots and 2 PCI mini risers. Giga still gives you an internal printer riser as well as IDE and floppy. I have a 80 GB Intel X-18 SSD running 64-bit W7 Ultimate for the OS, and everything else is on a 750 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA, along with a WD 350 GB for the DOS. The monitor is a 22 inch Viewsonic w/HDMI and all that stuff. I have a 3.5 inch floppy attached as well, a SATA CD and a IDE CD. THe IDE HD runs DOS 7.1, and as you might expect, runs real fast and doesn't miss a step. I'm currently working on a SB16 PCI for the DOS side, which is simply 'uninstalled' in the W7 Device Manager, and presents no problems when Windows is up and running. I'm going to have to work out the mouse configuration for the DOS side - I think a PCI serial card will work or maybe it'll still function properly through the PS/2 port -don't know as I haven't got there yet. BTW, a lot of the high end mobo's have dumped IDE and PS/2 altogether. This is almost as much fun as fool'n with the HO trains!.

You guys take care!
 
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It sounds like we both went after this about the same, but your system is a tad higher end. I couldn't afford a DDR3 setup or a new GPU, otherwise Id've probably ended up closer to your system. My budget was about $100 and that was just enough for a mobo, and then the fdd/cardreader I got.

The IDE and PS/2 can both be added through adapters and add-in cards, the real kicker is the FDD header, because there's nothing newer than ISA with a FDD controller on it (believe me, I've looked) unless you go with a specialized solution like the Catweasel, etc., but those don't act as a drive-letter-creating sort of device afaik.

You won't manage a PCI SB card for DOS, unfortunately.

I did part of this research, and ended up finding this guy's which was much more thorough on the topic..
http://www.computing.net/answers/dos/digitized-sound-problems-on-modern-systems/17024.html

Basically there are technologies used in SB16 emulating PCI cards that don't exist in modern motherboards, so you can't get digitized sound. You can manage Adlib music, though, and if your game supports Adlib sound overall you're ok. Games that use the SB DSP like Monster Bash, etc., won't work 100% tho.

Basically you just can't get a modern system to run DOS games natively unless new software is written to wrap SB calls and emulate it in software and output to AC'97 and/or Intel HDA. There are a few bits of code here and there where people provided primitive support for AC'97 and Intel HDA, but nothing usable. There's one guy who wrote a pretty solid driver for both under DOS, but it's not SB compatible. I contacted him and if we could produce some proper code that would do the SB emulation side of things he'd consider releasing his code.
 
SB on a modern system running DOS is a nice challege. I don't think it would fly (as a project) on this forum as the only part of it that can be considered 'Vintage' is the SB card itself. Some have claimed success using various combinations of files that I don't think exist anymore, like SBINT.COM and SBPCI.ZIP. If they are in fact around, they must be in private collections, as I've been everywhere on the web and can't seem to find them. You read a lot about a SB DOS driver. I believe that's a myth. Most of that stems from the SB setup going back to WIN95 where you could shell out to DOS and your SB would work. My own feeling is that if you are running DOS 7.1 on a modern system, you are going to have to work it out through the CONFIG & AUTOEXEC. I'll keep plugging away until I convince myself that its usless. I don't think DOSBox is the way I want to go - too easy.
 
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