egr wrote:
Success! My tired eyeballs thank you!
Glad I could help! :]
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Can someone recommend some readily available motherboards with ISA that let you use mobile CPUs or let you massively underclock the CPU so you don't need a fan? I'll use an IDE to CF adapter for the HD so I don't have to worry about heat or vibration for that.
I have a compaq 1700 and it's fine as far as system noise goes, but the actual sound has so much hiss in it.
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Planet Zaxxon
Define "readily available." heh. What I have done was just lurk ebay for days, weeks and months, and kept buying p2/p3 boards that have an ISA slot. I made sure they gave a warranty as well, and has been tested. I have good luck with that, maybe only 1 of them had a problem out of the 10 or so I have bought off of ebay. I'm not at home right now, but one of the best brands I found was ABIT. ABIT makes a P2 board with 3 or 4 ISA slots on it. If you want better, and are patient.... TYAN makes a P3 board with an ISA slot on it.. I have built machine with those wtih dos and win98, and they run very very well.
Oh man just checked ebay real quick.. this is the P3 TYAN board I have.. $75 is kinda high for it.. but that does come with box and manual.. Id offer $40, heh Check it:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/BRAND-NEW-TYAN- … 3380193ded
Its a real nice board, and if you build a windows 98 machine.. you can pretty much run any type of software that came came out from 99 and older.
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Planet Zaxxon
ok totally just skipped the part where you mentioned wanting a "mobile CPU" but ill just leave that info there, in case its helpful to someone else!
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O2star wrote:
ok totally just skipped the part where you mentioned wanting a "mobile CPU" but ill just leave that info there, in case its helpful to someone else!
No, no, that's totally helpful! Thanks!
I just don't want to use a CPU that needs a loud fan to keep cool. On another forum I was told a pentium 2 or 3 with a big heat sink could work without a fan. Have you found this to be true?
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Planet Zaxxon
Yup, thats right. A couple of the P2 machines I have, I think even the ones with that ABIT board, just have a heatsink on the CPU. No fan So the only slight noise you hear is from the psu fan and the ball bearing case fan.. The computer is not loud at all.
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Planet Zaxxon
This is the ABIT boards I have been using:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ABIT-Computer-B … 35c3aafd62
and then you just run a low MHZ P2, like this with just a heatsink:
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Jelly Stone park, MD USA
Really good info, here! Glad I found this thread; been rolling over an idea that occurred to me a few days ago. I've got a Netappliance I-Opener that I hacked years ago. It was a fun project but I never used it much. So any way, I started thinking that it might be fun to use it as a dedicated tracker or sequencer.
It's running Win98SE, on a AMD K6 (][ or ]i[) if I recall @300MHz. Don't recall the version I have, but they used a Yamaha audio chipset (I think YMF715 OPL ) on the first versions and a AD1881 on the later ones. But this hardware is all on the Mobo so no option to change.
There is Serial, parallel and USB ports. I was thinking about getting like a Portman PC/S midi interface, just not too sure if it would be better with the serial then with a USB to Midi, driver-wise?
The nice thing about it is the compact 'all-in-one', 7" LCD design, the bad thing is the compact "all-in-one, 7" LCD screen 
So is there much I can do with it? I'm not looking for a 'main' work station, more of a piece of kit Either FM tracker, synced to a DAW or a sequencer front end for a hardware synth, something dedicated and useful?
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Planet Zaxxon
I have a Portman PC/S device as well, but Im pretty it needs external power from a power adapter which I do not have.. 
I just bought a Portman PC/P, which uses the parallel port and doesn't need any external power source.. so im hoping to get that to work when it arrives. The easiest method is through a gameport obviously.
Is this a desktop or laptop you are running? The all-in-one is what you are trying to do DOS tracking on and midi?
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Planet Zaxxon
And thanks for reminding me about the midi stuff.. I've been trying things out with various devices... so when the parallel port device arrives.. I'll update the main info page about which midi devices work and which don't/or are a mega hassle.
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Jelly Stone park, MD USA
O2star wrote:
I have a Portman PC/S device as well, but Im pretty it needs external power from a power adapter which I do not have..
Last night I DLed the manual and it said the interface can be port powered, IF your serial port CAN supply enough. some or the older Laptops didn't I guess. I can send you the manual&drivers I found if you need them
O2star wrote:
Is this a desktop or laptop you are running? The all-in-one is what you are trying to do DOS tracking on and midi?
It's an all in one PC, (kind'a like a LCD pix frame) that was marketed as a 'Network only Appliance'. Sold at a loss with a contract for their dial up service in the late '90s. It was discovered that the mobo was a basic PC design, and soon there were a dozen how-to-hack sites. Not sure how to imbed a pix, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Opener
will tell you more then you ever wanted to know.
Very interested in how the Portman PC/P works out; seems like the way to go, Parallel ver Serial, with this hardware I have. Thinking that a USB midi would be a problem with DOS based softs, but the driver package I found for the Portman was in three flavors '95, '98 & ME, if i recall, so not even sure how well they would work under DOS?!?!
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Planet Zaxxon
Ok messed around with the PC/P device in dos.. The light does get activity from the MIDI signals in, so I know its getting power correctly... but no go in Impulse Tracker, as far as "plug n play" is concerned. There is driver support for Windows 98/98 however which I have the disk.. But that doesn't help me out! I did some searching on their site as well, and it does say "No longer supported in DOS" But that sounds like it was supported in DOS at one point, and just needs it to be configured properly.. Hmmmmmmm
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Jelly Stone park, MD USA
This may be of use to someone, nice little DOS Midi handler/converter program.
http://www.urr.ca/software/software.htm
There is a section on the web page, "dos hardware drivers" that has some really interesting driver support links