Current motherboard compatible with DOS games (yes DOS)

Hi,

My Biostar M7MIA motherboard finally gave up the ghost this week. It
was one of the final boards to come with an ISA slot (for my
SoundBlaster 64 card). It also had Socket A and DDR memory slots. I'd
use Windows for regular work, and boot into DOS to play old games
natively, no emulation necessary.

I'd like to keep my DOS partition rather than use DOSbox, or similar
software. I know its a bit of a longshot, but I'm looking for any help
I can get. I'm wondering if there's a modern motherboard with one of
the following:

1) An ISA slot (yeah, right!)

2) On-board sound known to work in native DOS, with downloadable DOS
drivers.

I don't really have room for a separate PC just for DOS games. And if
I use an old motherboard I'll just run into the replacement problem
again sooner than later. To save money, I'd like to keep as much of my
current PC as possible (case, PSU, hard drives, etc.) I probably could
afford a new entry CPU, and DDR2 memory, if needed.

If you've heard of any ATX board with DDR/DDR2 RAM that meets one of
the sound criteria I'd love to know. Thanks!

danielc56

http://www.nextag.com/pci-to-isa-adapter/search-html





wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,

My Biostar M7MIA motherboard finally gave up the ghost this week. It
was one of the final boards to come with an ISA slot (for my
SoundBlaster 64 card). It also had Socket A and DDR memory slots. I'd
use Windows for regular work, and boot into DOS to play old games
natively, no emulation necessary.

I'd like to keep my DOS partition rather than use DOSbox, or similar
software. I know its a bit of a longshot, but I'm looking for any help
I can get. I'm wondering if there's a modern motherboard with one of
the following:

1) An ISA slot (yeah, right!)

2) On-board sound known to work in native DOS, with downloadable DOS
drivers.

I don't really have room for a separate PC just for DOS games. And if
I use an old motherboard I'll just run into the replacement problem
again sooner than later. To save money, I'd like to keep as much of my
current PC as possible (case, PSU, hard drives, etc.) I probably could
afford a new entry CPU, and DDR2 memory, if needed.

If you've heard of any ATX board with DDR/DDR2 RAM that meets one of
the sound criteria I'd love to know. Thanks!

danielc56

On Aug 3, 10:37 am, "JAD" john
wrote:
http://www.nextag.com/pci-to-isa-adapter/search-html

wrote in message

oups.com...

Hi,

My Biostar M7MIA motherboard finally gave up the ghost this week. It
was one of the final boards to come with an ISA slot (for my
SoundBlaster 64 card). It also had Socket A and DDR memory slots. I'd
use Windows for regular work, and boot into DOS to play old games
natively, no emulation necessary.

I'd like to keep my DOS partition rather than use DOSbox, or similar
software. I know its a bit of a longshot, but I'm looking for any help
I can get. I'm wondering if there's a modern motherboard with one of
the following:

1) An ISA slot (yeah, right!)

2) On-board sound known to work in native DOS, with downloadable DOS
drivers.

I don't really have room for a separate PC just for DOS games. And if
I use an old motherboard I'll just run into the replacement problem
again sooner than later. To save money, I'd like to keep as much of my
current PC as possible (case, PSU, hard drives, etc.) I probably could
afford a new entry CPU, and DDR2 memory, if needed.

If you've heard of any ATX board with DDR/DDR2 RAM that meets one of
the sound criteria I'd love to know. Thanks!

danielc56

JAD,

Thank you for the reply. But I don't understand how a PCI/ISA
converter would work in this case. Using my SB64 card over the PCI bus
would introduce all sorts of recognition issues with DOS, drivers, and
game config issues, wouldn't it? Would the card appear (and behave) as
an ISA soundblaster card, even though it's connecting to the
motherboard through the PCI bus? Would it only work with a plug-n-play
OS? So many questions, I know...

danielc56

http://www.mameworld.net/dosmame/other.php

PCI dos drivers
--
Mac Cool

Sorry, but no such luck.

--
---------------------
DaveW
wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,

My Biostar M7MIA motherboard finally gave up the ghost this week. It
was one of the final boards to come with an ISA slot (for my
SoundBlaster 64 card). It also had Socket A and DDR memory slots. I'd
use Windows for regular work, and boot into DOS to play old games
natively, no emulation necessary.

I'd like to keep my DOS partition rather than use DOSbox, or similar
software. I know its a bit of a longshot, but I'm looking for any help
I can get. I'm wondering if there's a modern motherboard with one of
the following:

1) An ISA slot (yeah, right!)

2) On-board sound known to work in native DOS, with downloadable DOS
drivers.

I don't really have room for a separate PC just for DOS games. And if
I use an old motherboard I'll just run into the replacement problem
again sooner than later. To save money, I'd like to keep as much of my
current PC as possible (case, PSU, hard drives, etc.) I probably could
afford a new entry CPU, and DDR2 memory, if needed.

If you've heard of any ATX board with DDR/DDR2 RAM that meets one of
the sound criteria I'd love to know. Thanks!

danielc56

wrote:

If you've heard of any ATX board with DDR/DDR2 RAM that meets one of
the sound criteria I'd love to know. Thanks!

danielc56


Guess the ASUS P2B, P3B and CuBX line.

They all have, at least one, some two and three ISA Slots.

You can go up to 1400MHz P3. Soundcard is any working!!! Also the
DMA-beasts, which have caused troubles to older AMD Chipsets. But you
said DOS, well, and that is ISA, of course.

As I mentioned, that Motherboards are compatibility beasts, where mine
drives easily XP, fast as a ~2GHz AMD. Real Hz, I mean.
In DOS you can start 1977 Basic interpreter and then it looks like you
would have turned on an older 8bit Compy with the Basic, when starting
;-), All caches ON!!!

What can I say more, sometimes I have the feeling it's more compatible
to DOS Software than my mighty i486DX4-100 with the excellent Saturn-II
Chipset. And it is.... remembering struggles with my SVGA and the
onboard SCSI, where the Driver (just CD) consumed too much, et cetc etc.

But. The i440BX is not to beat and more than satisfying for XP/Linux,
when having a bit stronger CuP3, or better a Tualatin with the
outstanding 2nd-Level Cache (512KB, XEON like performance).

Just believe me ..... It's a bit fasster than most ~2Ghz AMD's
around. At least with my Matrox Parhelia 512Bit AGP Card, which boosted
XP as I would have built in +1Ghz :-), amazing 2D Windows accelerator
and still so good with DOS as the previous Matrox DOS-beasts, even
S-VGA can be set (Matrox util) to proper Work, VGA is working as never
seen before by me (crisp picture, hence Matrox... Ultra fast, DOS never
seen such a crazy card ;-)), then the Optical! USB!/PS2! Mouse!!! for
DOS.
BRILLIANT, I have never had a better DOS underlay, indeed, and mad
fast, of course due to many MHz.



Best regards,

Daniel Mandic

wrote:
Hi,

My Biostar M7MIA motherboard finally gave up the ghost this week. It
was one of the final boards to come with an ISA slot (for my
SoundBlaster 64 card). It also had Socket A and DDR memory slots. I'd
use Windows for regular work, and boot into DOS to play old games
natively, no emulation necessary.

I'd like to keep my DOS partition rather than use DOSbox, or similar
software. I know its a bit of a longshot, but I'm looking for any help
I can get. I'm wondering if there's a modern motherboard with one of
the following:

1) An ISA slot (yeah, right!)

2) On-board sound known to work in native DOS, with downloadable DOS
drivers.

I don't really have room for a separate PC just for DOS games. And if
I use an old motherboard I'll just run into the replacement problem
again sooner than later. To save money, I'd like to keep as much of my
current PC as possible (case, PSU, hard drives, etc.) I probably could
afford a new entry CPU, and DDR2 memory, if needed.

If you've heard of any ATX board with DDR/DDR2 RAM that meets one of
the sound criteria I'd love to know. Thanks!

danielc56


Danielc56:

One of the last motherboards made that included ISA slots was the:
Soyo SY-P4I 845GV ISA.

http://www.soyousa.com/products/proddesc.php?t=d&id=194

You can still find them occasionally or you can purchase a new system
from this site that specializes in systems for industry.

http://www.nixsys.com/products.php?cPath=50

HTH & GL

--
\\\||///
------------------o000----(o)(o)----000o----------------
----------------------------()--------------------------
'' Madness takes its toll - Please have exact change. ''

John Dulak - Gnomeway Services - http://tinyurl.com/2qs6o6

On Fri, 03 Aug 2007 10:06:00 -0700, danielc56 wrote:

I don't really have room for a separate PC just for DOS games.

That's too bad, because I think that would be your best bet. Do you have
room for just the second box and not the monitor etc.? If you do, you
could stack the boxes and toggle between them with a KVM switch. I did
that and it was a very good solution... I only stopped using it because I
now use an old laptop for DOS.

Charlie

On Aug 4, 7:54 am, Ross Ridge
wrote:
wrote:
I'd like to keep my DOS partition rather than use DOSbox, or similar
software.

A lot of MS-DOS games actually run just fine under Windows XP with it's
built-in emulator. You'll need to use VDMSound to get sound to work in
most games, though.

I'm wondering if there's a modern motherboard with one of
the following:

1) An ISA slot (yeah, right!)

Well, if you search around you can find motherboards using modern
chipsets that have ISA slots. They're for instrustrial use though, so
they're going to be expensive and you'll have too look carefully to see
if you can disable the onboard video and stick a real PCI-E video card
in there. You might need to also check to see if ISA DMA is supported,
a crude PCI-ISA bridge, like an add-in card, won't support it.

Hmm... The MB-886 sounds like it will do the trick. It uses LGA775
CPUs (eg.. Core 2 Duo), DDR2 memory, has a 16x PCI-E slot, SATA, IDE,
etc... and a single ISA slot. Apparently, it costs over $300 so you'll
have to ask yourself if an ISA slot is worth $200 to you.

2) On-board sound known to work in native DOS, with downloadable DOS
drivers.

Unfortunately, I don't think you'll be able to find something like that.
The best solution, other than a ISA motherboard, is a PCI SoundBlaster
Live! and a motherboard that generates NMI on SERR# correctly. The SB
Live! backwards compatability is excellent, both under MS-DOS and Windows
9x. Unfortunately, I don't sure how many modern motherboards support NMI.

Ross Ridge

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo]
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rridge/
db //

Ross,

Thanks for the valuable info! I'm glad to know that someone's keeping
the ISA fire going!

The iBase board you mentioned (MB-886) looks pretty good. A real
modern product. That $300+ price is high, but maybe I'll get it with
my tax return next year. I have an AGP card, so I'd have to look at
replacing that as well. Although iBase also makes a couple P4/Celeron
boards with ISA slots.

I looked at the manual, and there are jumpers to disable the onboard
video. The ISA slot is listed as (slave), any idea if that has an
influence on ISA DMA ability?

In the meantime I plunked down for a cheap socket A motherboard from
newegg.com. I lost my ISA card temporarily, but I couldn't pay to
replace so many components right now. But come early 2008, maybe I'll
be playing Duke Nukem and Tie Fighter natively on my Core2Duo, hehe...

danielc56

On Aug 7, 8:44 pm, Ross Ridge
wrote:
wrote:
I looked at the manual, and there are jumpers to disable the onboard
video. The ISA slot is listed as (slave), any idea if that has an
influence on ISA DMA ability?

It probably just means that ISA bus mastering isn't supported, and
soundcards don't use that. You should probably e-mail and ask them
before ordering though.

But come early 2008, maybe I'll be playing Duke Nukem and Tie Fighter
natively on my Core2Duo, hehe...

Well, in the mean time you might want to check out the Win95 of Tie
Fighter, it's graphics have been updated from the MS-DOS version.

Ross Ridge

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo]
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rridge/
db //

I also have the Tie Fighter '95' version. Not as much fun as playing
the original version for DOS, IMO...

I've got one more question. What's the difference between a 'regular'
motherboard and an industrial motherboard? iBase characterizes their
products as industrial motherboards. Other than high price, is there
anything that sets these boards apart from those normally found in PC
cases?

danielc56