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Topic: Old-fashioned motherboards (Read 4384 times) previous topic - next topic
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Old-fashioned motherboards

My old tower machine is beginning to get temperamental about switching on. (Often on power-up, it just dies. If it does manage to get beyond a couple of seconds, it's fine). I suspect something on the motherboard has degraded (capacitors?). So time for a new mobo.

Problem is, I have a traditional PCI soundcard (M-Audio AP2496), an IDE DVDRW drive and a load of IDE disks that it seems pointless to replace, so I'm looking for a ATX (or micro-ATX) motherboard that has onboard IDE controllers and standard PCI slots. Every website I visit can't filter on those kind of requirements, and there are hundreds to go through trying to find what I need.

Does anyone around here know if such antique mobos are still made? If so, can you suggest any model numbers? I don't mind whether it's AMD or Intel.
 

Old-fashioned motherboards

Reply #1 –
You're not going to find a motherboard with built-in IDE.  The best you can hope for is finding one with PCI card slots and getting a PCIe IDE card (which are also going extinct).  Most full ATX mobos still have a couple PCI slots.

Old-fashioned motherboards

Reply #2 –
Quote from: sthayashi on
You're not going to find a motherboard with built-in IDE.  The best you can hope for is finding one with PCI card slots and getting a PCIe IDE card (which are also going extinct).  Most full ATX mobos still have a couple PCI slots.

Thanks. I think on reflection the simplest course of action will be to ditch the IDE devices and replace them with SATA. And if the new mobo doesn't have traditional PCI slots, I will have to replace the AP2496. Seems a shame to have to dump so many still-functioning components just because one (the mobo) has died.

Old-fashioned motherboards

Reply #3 –
Clive I don't know if it is yet relevant but there are some mobos with both IDE & PCI yet:
ASRock P4I65G
ASRock G31M-GS
ASRock 880GM-LE FX
ASRock G41M-VS3
Gigabyte GA-G41M-COMBO Rev. 2.0
ASRock 960GC-GS FX
Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3

And what about eBay?
Also with the switching off problem I would first check if it's not overheating, PSU or RAM.

Old-fashioned motherboards

Reply #4 –
I agree with rutra80, that sounds like a power supply (or power circuitry on the board) issue honestly, so a replacement motherboard may not do it for you.

How many IDE/ATA drives do you have in the tower?
If it's more than two, finding a current motherboard with the controllers to run them may be quite challenging.
Promise or Highpoint sell PCI (and some PCIe) cards with one or two IDE channels, I'm running a Highpoint RocketRAID SATA card at the moment, and it seems fine (although I'd probably boot off of the onboard controllers if possible).

I'd recommend replacing the power supply with a new model (reputable brand!). If that doesn't work, try to do an ebay search for the exact motherboard model you have to see if anyone with a decent reputation is selling them. If it's a mass market Dell/HP/etc. then you're almost guaranteed to find it.

Old-fashioned motherboards

Reply #5 –
Quote from: sthayashi on
You're not going to find a motherboard with built-in IDE.  The best you can hope for is finding one with PCI card slots and getting a PCIe IDE card (which are also going extinct).  Most full ATX mobos still have a couple PCI slots.


I find that PCI and PCIe cards with both IDE and SATA ports are readily available, can have very low cost, are simple to use, and just work.

I agree that the power on problem mentioned in the OP sounds like a weak power supply, which is a fairly common failure mode. A power supply that once could adequately boot a given hardware configuration spontaneously loses that ability with no other changes to the system, and a like-rated or even less-rated replacement restores normal operation.