News Spectra's New LGA1151 Motherboard Takes Us Back to 1992 With PCI Slots

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This article is just ignorant. Boards like these are nothing new. PCI is apparently still used in a variety of industrial scenarios, and I count about 60 SKUs, over on ark.intel.com, from Skylake and Kaby Lake generations that have a FCLGA1151 socket and are not discontinued.

When Intel discontinues processors in a certain family, it doesn't discontinue all models of them. Some will continue to be available for use in products (e.g. such as industrial equipment) for an extended period of time, so that its OEM customers don't have to update and retest their designs every couple years, which could be cost-prohibitive for them.
 
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This would be pretty neat for some actual old-school builds with a touch of modern tech to it. A shame they didn't include an AGP slot though.

It does remind me of those bizarre Chinese mobos that also recycle old hardware elements that Linus and others have reviewed in the past. I recall some builders were also using similar such boards to revive old Windows rigs that ran 95, 98, 2000, and XP, just with slightly newer internal elements (like running DDR3 instead of DDR2 or DDR1). Moreso since most newer processors and mobos don't officially support legacy software.
 
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I found a PCI 100base-tx ethernet card in a dusty cardboard box labelled "Do not burn indoors!" for a project earlier this week, enthusiastically plugged it into the sole PCI slot on my Sandy Bridge mobo, and actually said "hardcore old school!" out loud. Then I read this article and I suddenly feel very small, much like when looking at a starry night while thinking too hard.

Pinhedd said:
TPM = Trusted Platform Module...
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I love how I learned Total Productive Maintenance in my process management class. Which was in business school... We weren't even allowed to use calculators in that course so I loved that little typo they made up there xD
 
Pretty much everything in this article is wrong, and/or lazily researched. Spectra's a reseller/integrator for industrial equipment, and this board wasn't made by them, it was made by MSI, and is part of their industrial lineup ( https://ipc.msi.com/products_list/Industrial-Motherboard ). There are quite a few industrial machines which use older i/o interfaces, where the cost of replacing existing interface cards, including PCB design, certifying functionality, etc, are prohibitively expensive. So, companies like MSI build these low-run motherboards for the purpose of being as drop-in as possible. These aren't for weird retro gaming stuff, these are for big beefy cnc machines which use serial ports and isa cards to talk to the controller software.
 
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ravewulf said:
The PCI slots don't surprise me but the ISA slot certainly did
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EXACTLY! I read the headline and was like wait, what? It's just another industrial-focused board. But then I looked at the picture of the board and I thought "Wait, is that a @*%$ing ISA SLOT??"

I can't recall having an ISA slot since my 486.
 
Legacy slots/ports are nothing new. There are many industrial equipment that relies on them. Unlike PCs, industrial equipment could cost hundreds of thousands to millions. So they are not replaced often, many are in user for over 20yrs. Some older ones are still using floppy disks.

Not just slots/ports. Even OS too. Some software used for these equipment will only work on Windows 7 or older OS. No windows 10. Even older ones are still on MSDOS!!
 
alextheblue said:
EXACTLY! I read the headline and was like wait, what? It's just another industrial-focused board. But then I looked at the picture of the board and I thought "Wait, is that a @*%$ing ISA SLOT??"

I can't recall having an ISA slot since my 486.
Click to expand...

You sure?? PCI don't even exist till pentium days. Prior to PCI, all PCs are using VESA and ISA (EISA is rare).
 
TechLurker said:
This would be pretty neat for some actual old-school builds with a touch of modern tech to it. A shame they didn't include an AGP slot though.
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Out of curiosity, does anyone know what's the latest-socket board that had an AGP slot? I had an earlier Pentium 4 board with it (it had like 468 pins, not the 775 socket that spanned the P4 and Core 2 generations). My rationale for getting the older type of board was that PCIe was just coming out at the time, and it felt a bit bleeding edge to jump on the bandwagon at that time. Also, I already had a decent AGP graphics card. However, it seriously affected my upgrade options, further down the road.

I guess the only reason to care would be if you had a game that only worked with a certain type & generation of GPU that was AGP-only.
 
escksu said:
You sure?? PCI don't even exist till pentium days. Prior to PCI, all PCs are using VESA and ISA (EISA is rare).
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@alextheblue was implying his 486 did have ISA.

I once had an AMD 486 DX4 100 that actually had PCI slots (I'm sure it must've also had ISA, but I don't specifically recall). Unfortunately, they were clocked at 25 MHz. However, I didn't have it too long before I moved up to a Pentium Pro. I bought my first ATI graphics card for that machine.

I remember thinking that when I moved up to a PCI sound card, I'd be rid of problems with it cutting out during heavy graphics or disk activity... oops, think again! IIRC, it eventually got ironed out, but there were some years of suffering.
 
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bit_user said:
@alextheblue was implying his 486 did have ISA.
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Bingo, I was saying that was the last PC I personally owned that I recall having ISA. I was a kid so I only got hand-me-downs... as a result I went straight from a 486 with some upgrades to a Socket 7 board with a Pentium 166 MMX, which I then slapped a K6-2 into, with the help of a BIOS update and an upgrade kit which had a shim that dealt with the multiplier issue. Ran at 400Mhz even on the 66Mhz bus. This was pre-AGP which really hurt the GPU situation a lot, though.
 
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Zizo007 said:
I don't see why this was released. I bought a 5$ PCI to PCIE adapter for my expensive PCI sound card. Reviewers posted screenshots of it working on win 10. I will install it soon.
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Got a pic or link? I just wonder how well such a thing a standard ATX case.

Anyway, reasons not to use adapters... off the top of my head:

  • Reliability (more connectors & converters introduce more points of failure)
  • Form-factor issues
  • Having enough PCIe slots
  • Vibration tolerance (especially during shipping)
  • Cost
 
bit_user said:
Got a pic or link? I just wonder how well such a thing a standard ATX case.

Anyway, reasons not to use adapters... off the top of my head:

  • Reliability (more connectors & converters introduce more points of failure)
  • Form-factor issues
  • Having enough PCIe slots
  • Vibration tolerance (especially during shipping)
  • Cost
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Its cheap, under 10$CA:

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/392554808628

You can see ppl using it here with pictures and working 139 reviews:

#Aliexpress C$ 13.21 29%OFF | PCI-Express PCI-E To PCI Riser Bus Card High Efficiency Adapter Converter
https://a.aliexpress.com/_dVoAtsD
 
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