Review of Slot 1 Motherboards with Intel 440BX Chipset - Spring 1998

Card Compatibility Test 1 - The Results

The comments in RED reflect a successful pass of the test.

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Row 0 - Cell 0 Compatibility 5 Card what had to be done to run themIRQ Table (video-network-SCSI-sound)
Abit BX6making IRQ 5 ISA Legacy, manual IRQ table is very difficult to access in the BIOS setup9-10-11-5
AOpen AX6Bmaking IRQ 5 ISA Legacy9-10-11-5
Asus P2Bmaking IRQ 5 ISA Legacy11-9-10-5
Chaintech 6BTMmaking IRQ 5 ISA Legacy11-9-10-5
DFI P2XBL (Yakumo Y686BX)making IRQ 5 ISA Legacy11-9-10-5
DFI P2XBL/Sif 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 SE440BXUSB 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 DBS100making IRQ 5 ISA Legacy11-9-10-5
Microstar MS-6119making IRQ 5 ISA Legacy11-9-10-5
QDI Brilliant I / P6144BXmaking IRQ 5 ISA Legacy11-9-10-5
Siemens D1064-Eno problems11-10-9-5
Soyo SY-6BAmaking IRQ 5 ISA Legacy10-9-11-5
Supermicro P6DBSboard 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 P6SBAboard 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-A4Xmaking IRQ 5 ISA Legacy11-10-9-5
Tyan Tiger 100 S1832DLboard 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 S1846board 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 S1836DLUANno problems, everything is already onboard11-9-10-5
Zida Tomato Board 6ABXalthough 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