Old motherboards still doing you proud :)

[sandorski]

Old mb is better in its industry & materials than the current generation !!!

Well, considering that only Old Mobos can possibly make this list, it's kind of Rose Coloured Glasses to make such statements. There were plenty of crap Mobos back in the day. Like PC Chips boards that had a 10% failure rate and many other Boards that were just bad, like when MSI had a few Socket A models that consistently blew Caps within 12 months.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Mobos back in the '80's were consistently able of lasting a long time, but that's likely because their complexity was very low unlike Modern Mobos. Back then the only things a Mobo did was to house the CPU, RAM, and some Busses. Everything else was separate from the Mobo, Drive Controllers, Video, Audio(except very simple Beeps through the PC Speaker), Serial ports, Parallel Ports, etc etc were all on separate Cards that plugged into ISA slots. These days all of those things(except Video, but even that is becoming pretty much a standard feature) are on the Mobo. Plus, more Busses, USB Controllers/Ports, Firewire Controllers/Ports, 2 or 3 different Drive Controllers/Ports. Things like the CPU, Busses, and RAM are also far more complex, making much more intensive demands on the Mobo.

In short, today's Mobos are light years ahead of those from the past. Now as Then though, there will always be duds and those that stand apart from their Peers. I just disagree that they were somehow "Better" in the Old Days.

 

[nemesismk2]

The Socket 939 motherboard which lasted me the longest is the Asrock 939 dual sata2 (bought early 2005). I would not of bought another motherboard but it died end of last year.

 

[spdfreak]

Soltek boards are awesome. Cheap, no frills, problem free. (In my experience)

Yeah, Soltek boards were awesome- to bad they are gone from the US market.

 

[ClockerXP]

Just retired this guy as my brother-in-law wanted something faster and wanted Win7. Was working fine. Put it together in 2003.

Upgraded the MX440 to a 6600GT and the RAM to 1.5GB. Fan ended up dieing on the 6600GT. Still worked but the system seemed to bog down when the card got hot. Built a lot of systems with the Aopen AK79D-400VN. Great board!

Processor: Athlon XP 2300+ (mildly overclocked 1800+, IIRC)

RAM: 1 x 512MB Kingston PC3200 DDR

Video Card: Geforce4 MX440 64MB AGP 8x

Motherboard: AOpen AK79D-400VN
• nForce2 Ultra/400 Chipset
• 3-DDR400 memory slots (2 available)
• 5-PCI Slots for expansion (5 available)
• 4x USB 2.0 Ports on Rear
• 2x USB 2.0 Ports on Front
• 1-Parallel Port
• 1-Serial Port
• Integrated nForce2 CMI Audio onboard
• Integrated nForce2 LAN onboard

 

[darkamulets]

Still got a BP6 with 2 celeron 366 humming along at 550 running my home file server.

 

[MagickMan]

Abit BM6 w/ Celeron 300a@464MHz, still runs as a print server.

 

[DietDrThunder]

I'm still running my EPOX 8k7A that I bought in 2001. It initially had a AMD Athlon 1.2Ghz processor, 512K of ram, 30GB WD and a 3DFX VooDoo3 PCI graphics card. some point I updated the Bios and installed a AMD XP 2400 (overclocked and running at 2.4GHz), 2 gigs of ram, 2 WD 250 GB HDs, and a ATI All-in-Wonder 7500 agp video card and it has been running Windows XP for a long time. It still is my primary PC. I'm finally thinking about building a new system, but I haven't decided what I want to build yet. What happend to EPOX since I've been gone? Seems like they used to have good solid MBs but I don't see anyone selling them now.

It is amazing that Newegg keeps this in their database for so long. Original Newegg Invoice:

Order #:361707
Invoice #:260301
Submitted:5/17/2001 12:12:12 AM Close Window
Print friendly Ship To Mr Thomas A Cepak

Invoice Summary
Qty Product Description Price

1 CPU AMD|T-BIRD 1.2GHZ/266 PGA RTL - Retail
Item #: N82E16819103155
For Retail AMD processor, please call 408 749-3060 for service after first 30 days. For OEM AMD processor, we will service for 30 days only. Please verify the Processor matches your order Prior To installation. IMPORTANT: Always pack your CPU well for return. We will refuse your RMA if we received it as DAMAGED! $173.00

1 MB AMD761|6P2D EP-8K7A W/S EPOX - Retail
Item #: N82E16813123141
Epox Tech Support 714-680-0695 (M-F 9-5pm PST) $129.00
Subtotal $302.00
Tax $0.00
FedEx 2Day $25.80
Order Total $327.80

 

[evident]

I've all but sold off all my non C2D motherboards. It's difficult maintaining so many different motherboards and RAM configurations, but i'm gonna have to start all over once i upgrade to i7 and DDR3.

Last i've heard, systems that i've sold off w/ the A7N8X and NF7-S v2.0 were running rock solid. also a DFI Lanparty NF3 Socket 754 system running fine as well.

 

[Thor86]

+1 for Asus P4C-Deluxe s478 running my P4 3.2 P4 at 3.6. But this is my second one as the first one's MCH got toasted by the crappy OCZ Memory booster.

 

[Ranulf]

I still have a Abit NF7-S rev. 2.0 that works, and a DFI NF4 Athlon 64 3200+ and 1 Gb ram still running.

I have a NF7 thats still running great. Far better than my asus board w/ c2duo. I have an ECS K7s5a with a Duron 1ghz but I've not fired it up in 2 years or so.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

The oldest board I have laying around is an Asus P4T 533-C, 478 socket, 3.06HT chip, and 2G RDR Rambus

 

[her209]

The oldest board I have laying around is an Asus P4T 533-C, 478 socket, 3.06HT chip, and 2G RDR Rambus

RDRAM... LOL... I remember buying a Intel 820 chipset based motherboard because Rambus was the shiz back then. Expensive little fuckers though.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Anyone had experienced bad capacitors on old boards? I heard most boards before the advent of solid caps dies within 3 years of continuous use, unless you got lucky and got a board with Rubycon caps or such.

 

[adairusmc]

A relative still has my old computer running an Abit IC7-Max III motherboard and my old P4 EE 3.2, and as far as I know they still use it as a basic browsing machine.

The oldest is my old Abit BE6 II 2.0 running an overclocked 800mhz P3 that still runs, but isnt currently being used for anything. Has my old GeForce256 +Voodoo2 8mb SLI setup in it too.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Anyone had experienced bad capacitors on old boards.

These forums were filled with threads stemming from bad caps for the early years of the millennium. I had a crop of MSI boards I bought for client builds that died in days or weeks of purchase. I became a MSI basher for years after that fiasco.

I eventually tried them again, which brings me to my reply to the OP. I have a MSI K8N SLI with X2 3800+ rapidly approaching its 5th year of service. Never a single issue with it, and the system has almost always been overclocked, anywhere between 300 and 600mhz.

 

[Rhoxed]

MSI K8N Neo 4 939 still running great

ASUS P4P800-SE s478 used daily as a web machine

 

[stag3]

abit px5 with a 166mmx o/c to 210mhz still running

 

[radioouman]

I still use an Asus A7V8X and it runs flawlessly. I've taken in enough old parts from other people that it now has an Athlon XP 2500+, 1.5 gig of RAM, and an NVidia 7600GS on it. It runs XP really nicely.

 

[spinejam]

FIC 503+ with AMD K6-3+ 450 @ 600 Mhz. Still in service after 10 years, for occasional duty, thanks to an ISA slot eeprom burner.

Some 6502, 8088, Z80, 8086, NEC V20, and 68000 stuff around here, either working in old arcade games, or languishing in boxes.

that FIC 503+ was the first mb i ever purchased and i ran it w/ an amd k6-2 300.

i still have the amd chip -- it's a freebie to whoever wants it!

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

RDRAM... LOL... I remember buying a Intel 820 chipset based motherboard because Rambus was the shiz back then. Expensive little fuckers though.

Those were great gaming years for me. I had alot of fun running Day of Defeat beta2.0 through its official release

 

[ComputerWizKid]

I have a Abit TH7-Raid in my Mom's computer and it still functions just fine a little slow though even with XP It is going to be replaced next month though so It had a useful life of about 10 years it seems to eat ram though:thumbsdown:
I got the computer for free because it would not install an OS so I ran memtest and it had over 15000 errors in 10 seconds and Damn RD-Ram is expensiveD: It started out with 1GB but 4 X 256MB but two went bad and I got another set which was also bad but bought knowing that one stick was bad but two were bad. Maybe I am doing something wrong with the BIOS settings but I don't know
Any way the full specs
Abit TH7 Raid
1.5GHZ PIV Socket 423
256MB Of RD-Ram 2 x 128MB
32MB AGP Card Asus Geforce
Maxtor 30GB Hard drive (Gasp!)
HP CD-Writer 8x4x24
Generic DVD-Rom 12X
Linksys LNE100TX
PCI Hardware modem 3Com (Not used but in there)
PCI SoundCard (Not sure of brand, don't remember)
FSP-ATX350 350 Watt P4 Power supply and this has the weird Aux power connector(Looks like the old AT Power connectors but there is only one of them) which the board actually uses for power

Oh I just got a Compaq Deskpro PIII 600E MHZ (440BX Motherboards just don't die! I can't say that for new boards) from a friend who got it from a closing Business and they did not wipe or remove the HDD and it still had patient information (I did not look through it too much^_^ just enough to know it was there so I DBAN'ed the HDD) and installed XP an donated it to a charity but even the charitable causes are getting harder to please these days (The requirement is Nothing under a PIII 500MHZ with 128MB Ram, I don't know if this a new thing or just in my area)

 

[jiffylube1024]

I've also got a P4P800SE board and another P4P800 in my cousin's machine that I recently serviced (her CPU died). With that said, though these were pretty much top of the line boards for their time, man do Pentium 4 'C' chips chug compared to even today's low end dual cores.

Since it's so cheap to do so, I've gone and upgraded two computers in the house with AMD X2 240's on ASUS M3A78-EM boards (with DVI, VGA, HDMI and Display Port - can't go wrong!). So far, the M3A78-EM seems a lot less tempermental than the old M2A-VM boards that I used to build a lot of. The M2A-VM had insufficient cooling on the northbridge for the onboard GPU when running it in 3d mode.

 

[PsiStar]

Iwill and FIC are two mfrs I have not heard mention of in a while. I had an Iwill MPX-2 dual 462 board that was most excellent. Too bad Iwill is gone.

Wow! Someone else had that m/b. Two months ago I finally retired my *last* one! OC-ed WC-ed dual Athlon MP running nearly non-stop for ... 7 years, maybe more? It was running Windoze 2000 & the HDD finally died. This was the basis for the new i7 build although I only reuesed the beige case & Ehiem pump.

I hate the beige, but the physical layout for the WC system was so-o-o convenient.

Anyway ... kudos to Iwill. I also remember that I bought those m/bs directly from Iwill & at a discount. Perhaps that was the final sell off?!

 

[ebaycj]

My current router is a DFI K6XV3+ / K6-III+ 450 @ 600mhz, with 640MB SDRAM running OpenBSD. It has been my workhorse router for over 10 years. Only thing that made it blink in that time frame was the CPU fan dying. It must have been off for quite a while, because the whole ATX chassis was nearly-burn-your-hand hot. It crashed only on a 97 degree summer day, ambient must have inched too high for it. Replaced the CPU fan and it's back to running like a champ! Unfortunately, it will soon die and be replaced with a VIA Nano / Intel Atom mini-itx board, due to it's lack of gigabit-or-higher bandwidth (1 Gigabit by itself nearly saturates the PCI bus, which is all this thing has).

I also have a Packard Bell Pentium 75 @ 133 with 96MB of EDO RAM, that worked in its original form as a router for 12 years. Even the old Conner 3600rpm 850MB hard drive was still spinning, if you can believe that. It still works to this day, to my knowledge. Also added a 4gb HDD to this bad boy. Was replaced by a d-link router to simplify things for my parents.

I also have a working 386SX-16mhz machine. It has 16mb ram (maxxed out), a 5mbyte/sec MCA SCSI-1 card, a 1GB SCSI hard drive (bigger will not boot correctly, couldn't find anything smaller), a 4x SCSI CD-R (not RW), and a 10mbit MCA ethernet card. It runs a few-years-old version of debian linux (late 2.4 kernel). Best thing about this one, is that the 10mbit ethernet saturates at 600kbyte/sec. Apparently the limiting factor is the CPU calculating TCP checksums (others with faster CPU's in different machines can get better rates with the same ethernet card).

Yes, I'm a nerd and a geek.

 

[PCboy]

I have an ABIT BE6 and an IC7-Max3 still going strong. God I miss ABIT. Why? One word. Softmenu. They were the pioneers of overclocking.