Review of Slot 1 Motherboards with Intel 440BX Chipset - Spring 1998
Features
By Thomas Pabst
published Card Compatibility Test 1 - The Results
The comments in RED reflect a successful pass of the test.
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Row 0 - Cell 0 | Compatibility 5 Card what had to be done to run them | IRQ Table (video-network-SCSI-sound) |
Abit BX6 | making IRQ 5 ISA Legacy, manual IRQ table is very difficult to access in the BIOS setup | 9-10-11-5 |
AOpen AX6B | making IRQ 5 ISA Legacy | 9-10-11-5 |
Asus P2B | making IRQ 5 ISA Legacy | 11-9-10-5 |
Chaintech 6BTM | making IRQ 5 ISA Legacy | 11-9-10-5 |
DFI P2XBL (Yakumo Y686BX) | making IRQ 5 ISA Legacy | 11-9-10-5 |
DFI P2XBL/S | if PCI network card is plugged into PCI Slot #3, system will not work because onboard SCSI adapter uses the same resources as PCI Slot #3. Using any other PCI Slot only requires IRQ 5 set to ISA Legacy and everything works fine. Thus PCI Slot #3 should only be used for cards that don't require an IRQ, like e.g. a Voodoo2 card.On board SCSI cannot be disabled. | 11-10-9-5 |
Elitegroup P6BX-A+ | making IRQ5 ISA Legacy, USB IRQ cannot be disabled, hence test was only successful after manually disabling USB port in Windows 95 system manager and moving PCI network card from PCI slot 3 to PCI slot 4. Otherwise network and SCSI card get the same IRQ which results in a resource conflict. | 11-10-9-5 |
Intel SE440BX | USB IRQ cannot be disabled, hence test with SB16 soundcard (Crystal sound disabled) was only successful after manually disabling USB port in Windows 95 system manager, for using the onboard Crystal sound PCI network card had to be moved to PCI slot 4 (from PCI slot 3) and SCSI card had to be moved from PCI slot 2 to PCI slot 3, USB had to be disabled in Windows 95 system manager also. | 11-9-10-5 |
Iwill DBS100 | making IRQ 5 ISA Legacy | 11-9-10-5 |
Microstar MS-6119 | making IRQ 5 ISA Legacy | 11-9-10-5 |
QDI Brilliant I / P6144BX | making IRQ 5 ISA Legacy | 11-9-10-5 |
Siemens D1064-E | no problems | 11-10-9-5 |
Soyo SY-6BA | making IRQ 5 ISA Legacy | 10-9-11-5 |
Supermicro P6DBS | board shows interesting phenomenon. WinBIOS would not let you disable USB properly, which grabs IRQ9. To use this IRQ you have to plug the PCI card into PCI Slot 4 (the one next to the AGP Slot), PCI Slots 1 and 2 will only get IRQ11, which is already used by AGP VGA and it leads to crashes with several AGP cards if this IRQ is shared. Hence the network card needs to be plugged into PCI 4 to get the last free IRQ (IRQ9), whilst the onboard SCSI adapter always grabs IRQ10, otherwise the system will not run with e.g. a RIVA card. To make this all work you will have to disable the USB manually in the Windows 95 system manager. This board shows a very inflexible way of distributing IRQs over the 4 PCI slots, which cannot be improved by any BIOS setting. If you are using an AGP card and need the EIDE ports as well as both COM ports and the printer port, you can *only* use PCI Slot 4 for *one* card that needs its own IRQ. | 11-9-10-5 |
Supermicro P6SBA | board shows interesting phenomenon. WinBIOS would not let you disable USB properly, which grabs IRQ9. To use this IRQ you have to plug the PCI card into PCI Slot 4 (the one next to the AGP Slot), PCI Slots 1 and 2 will only get IRQ11, which is already used by AGP VGA and it leads to crashes with several AGP cards if this IRQ is shared. Hence the network and the SCSI card need to be plugged into PCI Slot 3 and 4, otherwise the system will not run with e.g. a RIVA card. To make this all work you will have to disable the USB manually in the windows 95 system manager. This board shows a very inflexible way of distributing IRQs over the 4 PCI slots, which cannot be improved by any BIOS setting. If you are using an AGP card and need the EIDE ports as well as both COM ports and the printer port, you can only use PCI Slot 3 and 4 for cards that need their own IRQ. | 11-9-10-5 |
Tekram P6B40-A4X | making IRQ 5 ISA Legacy | 11-10-9-5 |
Tyan Tiger 100 S1832DL | board shows interesting phenomenon. WinBIOS would not let you disable USB properly, which grabs IRQ9. To use this IRQ you have to plug the PCI card into PCI Slot 4 (Tyan is counting the correct way, so PCI4 is the fourth PCI slot starting from the AGP slot), PCI Slots 1 and 2 will only get IRQ11, which is already used by AGP VGA and it leads to crashes with several AGP cards if this IRQ is shared. Hence the network and the SCSI card need to be plugged into PCI Slot 3 and 4, otherwise the system will not run with e.g. a RIVA card. To make this all work you will have to disable the USB manually in the windows 95 system manager. This board shows a very inflexible way of distributing IRQs over the 4 PCI slots, which cannot be improved by any BIOS setting. If you are using an AGP card and need the EIDE ports as well as both COM ports and the printer port, you can only use PCI Slot 3 and 4 for cards that need their own IRQ. | 11-9-10-5 |
Tyan Tsunami S1846 | board shows interesting phenomenon. WinBIOS would not let you disable USB properly, which grabs IRQ9. To use this IRQ you have to plug the PCI card into PCI Slot 4 (Tyan is counting the correct way, so PCI4 is the fourth PCI slot starting from the AGP slot), PCI Slots 1 and 2 will only get IRQ11, which is already used by AGP VGA and it leads to crashes with several AGP cards if this IRQ is shared. Hence the network and the SCSI card need to be plugged into PCI Slot 3 and 4, otherwise the system will not run with e.g. a RIVA card. To make this all work you will have to disable the USB manually in the windows 95 system manager. This board shows a very inflexible way of distributing IRQs over the 4 PCI slots, which cannot be improved by any BIOS setting. If you are using an AGP card and need the EIDE ports as well as both COM ports and the printer port, you can only use PCI Slot 3 and 4 for cards that need their own IRQ. | 11-9-10-5 |
Tyan Thunder 100 Pro S1836DLUAN | no problems, everything is already onboard | 11-9-10-5 |
Zida Tomato Board 6ABX | although USB is disabled in BIOS, it still tries grabbing an IRQ. Since IRQs 9-11 are taken by network, SCSI and AGP VGA card, it grabs IRQ3, disabling COM2. To avoid this, both COM ports and the printer port need to get actual port number assignment rather than the 'auto' default setting. Then USB uses IRQ11, the same as AGP VGA card. VGA card doesn't care about this if USB is disabled in Windows 95 system manager. This BIOS would be a lot better than the WinBIOS if USB would be disabled properly, since it distributes the IRQs correctly and avoids the disastrous IRQ-sharing between VGA and another card. | 11-9-10-5 |
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