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Best P5 motherboard, iconic P5 desktop?

C

chemdream

Experienced Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2013
Messages
73
Location
Detroit, MI
Lately I've been thinking about adding a P5 system to my collection. I never really thought about it before, because I still rememeber when pentium 90 was the fastest thing I've ever seen.

Question 1:
I figured I'd start a conversation about it. I thought about trying to find a Gateway 2000, because those were what I remember most my friends having. What would you guys consider THE desktop of that generation?

Question 2:
When I finally saved enough to leap away from 486, I built my own machine. So I went all own. dual processor 166mhz Tyan. I'm not going to build a dual processor machine this time, because that really wasn't what was popular then.
But what do you guys think was the best motherboard of the P5 era? I remember building people a lot of supermicro. But I think it was because they were cheap.
 
Gateway had some good Pentium era systems that used Intel and Micronics motherboards. Another company that used Micronics motherboards was Micron. Not the fastest systems of the time but nice and stable. I liked them. Put a speedy video card in a server and have a system that handles everything.

The problem is caching is limited with a lot of chipsets. It is easy to find memory to get a motherboard to install 512MB of RAM but only 64MB of that will be cached. 430HX and the much older 430NX will cache larger memory but 430TX is the best Intel had if you can survive with only 64MB. Non-Intel chipsets are interesting and better choices for the late era Pentiums but there were so many and came with the flexible Socket 7 boards with so many jumpers that are almost impossible to get working without a manual.

Have a link: http://www.anandtech.com/show/72
 
I still have some M-tech HX chipset motherboards in use purchased new back in that era, very reliable. Also have a dual P1 motherboard (Tyan 1562) I need to configure someday (going to try out NT 3.5.1 on it). SS7 are a completely different era to me.

The original Pentium 60/66 OEM systems are interesting since there are not many 3rd party socket 4 motherboards made (IBM PS/2 model 95, Gateway 2000, Packard Bell, Compaq). Some decent P90 socket 5 OEMS as well with EISA (Zenith Data Systems for one).
 
Great info! I totally forgot about Micron! I used to drool at them in Computer Shopper.

I just bought a Matrox Mystique 220 and a SB Live in anticipation that I'll buy or build a P5 machine.

I have mixed feelings about NT 3.5.1 ... I loved NT 4. When I installed 3.5.1, I was at my first programming job. Any apps I needed just didn't seem to work right. I was running it on an Austin 486 laptop.

It was actually frustrations with NT 3.5.1 that made me try out Linux for the first time. Love at first sight.
 
Go for 430HX Triton chipset on MSI MS-5128 or the very similar and famous ASUS P/I-P55T2P4. Both are very good up to Pentium MMX 200 MHz and similar processors.
 
Best OS for gaming and installing older hardware is Win 98SE. NT4 is a great OS but best suited for business applications. On the hardware side, NT4 hid the floppy controller from direct access so only conventional disk formats can be used. NT4 also prevented many removable drives (SyQuest, Zip, etc.) from swapping disks without a reboot.
 
krebizfan said:
Gateway had some good Pentium era systems that used Intel and Micronics motherboards. Another company that used Micronics motherboards was Micron.
Click to expand...

I've had good luck with the Micronics boards. I have 3 or 4 D5CUB boards here previous used in industrial hardware that still work fine. Interestingly the manuals and such are easily available online, unlike most boards of the era.
 
My preference for P5 motherboards are the Intel-branded ones. They tend to be better documented and constructed. For example, the TC430HX is good option.

That being said, an SS7 board might be a good option as well, which would allow use of an AMD K6-III CPU should you become tired of the P5. I tend to like the ASUS P5 motherboards for that.

For years, my workhorse motherboards were Amptron 8600 units (yes, a PCChips design). AT form factor, cheap, and pretty stable.
 
I started my first "real" job in mid 1996 working for a small local computer repair/consulting type shop. At the time, their primary motherboard for building machines was the Intel Zappa...I believe more technically, the Advanced/ZP. For fancier builds, they used the Endeavour/Atlantis boards...the Atlantis (Advanced/AS) had built in audio and I think video too...fancy thing. The Endeavour as far as I know was the same as the Atlantis, but without all the added features. Care to guess it's model? Yep, Advanced/EV. They were nice, solid boards.

Later on, I built up a server around a Tyan S1562 Tomcat dual, which made me a Tyan fan, I ultimately ended up with a single-CPU Tomcat IV. Sweet boards...8x 32pin simm slots, 5x ISA slots, 4x PCI. The thing I really remember about the S1562 was the on-board USB header. At that time, USB was something you really only heard rumors about...I remember reading Alice & Bill's Hard Edge column talking about USB. I worked the Christmas season prior for Software Etc. and they had a USB hub for sale...why? Who knows.

Tyan had some really cool boards. The S1590 Trinity 100 was a nice high-end later model Socket 7 board. We sold a bunch of their slot 1 or socket 370 boards...can't remember which one off-hand now. One of the coolest was the S1830 Tsunami AT - a slot 1 AT form factor motherboard. 4x ISA, 4x PCI, and AGP. I still have my Tomcat IV and Tsunami AT.

Wesley
 
Wesley, we have a similar history. I got my first PC job in 96 as well. A guitar store I frequented back then told me "We are thinking about starting a computer company, want a job?" ... And the only reason they asked me is because they new I would be cheap (because I was like 18 years old) and because I used to lend one of them my 2600 magazines.

I had the dual tyan back then as well. That was a hell of a motherboard for the time! I keep wondering if the SIMMS were noticably slower than DIMMS that single processor boards were using around the same time...

wesleyfurr said:
I started my first "real" job in mid 1996 working for a small local computer repair/consulting type shop. At the time, their primary motherboard for building machines was the Intel Zappa...I believe more technically, the Advanced/ZP. For fancier builds, they used the Endeavour/Atlantis boards...the Atlantis (Advanced/AS) had built in audio and I think video too...fancy thing. The Endeavour as far as I know was the same as the Atlantis, but without all the added features. Care to guess it's model? Yep, Advanced/EV. They were nice, solid boards.

Later on, I built up a server around a Tyan S1562 Tomcat dual, which made me a Tyan fan, I ultimately ended up with a single-CPU Tomcat IV. Sweet boards...8x 32pin simm slots, 5x ISA slots, 4x PCI. The thing I really remember about the S1562 was the on-board USB header. At that time, USB was something you really only heard rumors about...I remember reading Alice & Bill's Hard Edge column talking about USB. I worked the Christmas season prior for Software Etc. and they had a USB hub for sale...why? Who knows.

Tyan had some really cool boards. The S1590 Trinity 100 was a nice high-end later model Socket 7 board. We sold a bunch of their slot 1 or socket 370 boards...can't remember which one off-hand now. One of the coolest was the S1830 Tsunami AT - a slot 1 AT form factor motherboard. 4x ISA, 4x PCI, and AGP. I still have my Tomcat IV and Tsunami AT.

Wesley
Click to expand...
 
That's certainly a great way to get into the business. Working for a small company doing support for companies and individuals provided such a great range of experiences. I certainly started out a minimum wage (or a quarter above)... :)

I don't think the memory was all the different...not enough to really notice it anyway. The biggest problem back in those days was an OS and software that would take advantage of the 2nd CPU. The craziest was a dual Pentium Pro system we built for a local government agency...and they installed Windows 95 (or maybe 98)...not capable of taking advantage of the 2nd CPU! I think they planned to upgrade it down the road or something...who knows. Fun times!

Wesley
 
chemdream said:
I had the dual tyan back then as well. That was a hell of a motherboard for the time! I keep wondering if the SIMMS were noticably slower than DIMMS that single processor boards were using around the same time...
Click to expand...

It's really hard to quantify the difference between SIMMs and DIMMs at the transition point between technologies for a variety of reasons.

Towards the end of the lifespan of SIMMs, they were using 60, 50 and sometimes even 40 ns memory chips, which is what the first DIMMs used speed wise.

There was the penalty of having to install SIMMs in pairs (unless you had a board that could multiplex the memory bus) but this often worked out as an advantage on some memory controllers that had bank interleaving for increased performance.

I think there were also a few very rare dual socket 5/7 boards that had separate memory channels for both CPUs which further increased performance in situations where one processor didn't have to snoop the memory of another processor.
 
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