P4SCA motherboard shows the ISA bus is not dead

"Intel/Microsoft are finally doing their best to actively kill ISA" - a poster on comp.arch.embedded, Jan '99

"Frankly, all this sounds like rationalization to fit a desire to kill off the ISA bus" -poster on comp.sys.ibm.soundcard.tech, January 2000

"I prefer a good old ISA slot, and I'm sure a lot of you out there still using an old ISA NIC or modem will too." - a reviewer on a pci-only motherboard, February 2001.

IF YOU'RE LOOKING these days for a new motherboard, it's common knowledge that you can kiss your good old ISA cards good-bye. Yes, you can find a few boards with ONE "legacy" ISA slot. Maybe a few with TWO. But these are the minority in a sea of PCI-only motherboards.

The upgrade problem
My Windows desktop PC was still in below-gigahertz super-socket7, AMD K6-III land (Soyo 5EH motherboard, 3 ISA, 2 PCI, 1 AGP) until a few weeks ago not because I'm cheap, but due to my dependency on 3 ISA cards on that system, and since I'm a stubborn type of person I didn't want to lose _any_ of them.

The culprits
SCM Swapbox PCMCIA card reader -My loved AWE64 Gold sound card Darim M-Filter mpeg pre-processor, TBC and video filtering board (still selling for around ~ $450!)

No way I was going to throw away these pieces of great technology. You know, computer geeks become emotionally attached to old pieces of great technology. (A friend of a friend once told me, not that I'm one ;).

And sometimes ISA boards can't be replaced even if you want to (manufacturer went bankrupt or dropped that product line. Sometimes an ISA device had unique capabilities, or replacing them costs an awful lot of money). Industrial control, Dialogic or other telephony ISA boards, multi-port RS232 controllers, and the like comes to mind.

So what is one expected to do? Keep the system running on ancient CPUs and missing the latest greatest features because all motherboard vendors conspired with Wintel to fulfill the Vole's desire to kill ISA?

Here comes Super Micro to the rescue
Well, I have good news for you, you ISA bus diehard! Super Micro came to rescue us all with its P4SCA motherboard. You don't hear much about Super Micro on the "home user" sector, it focuses on high-end motherboards and server systems.

But the San Jose, CA based company, which describes itself as the "fastest growing server manufacturer in the world today" seems to be aiming at the desktop and power users too with this product. I was shocked when I looked at the specs... it was a dream come true, and it would simply allow me to transfer all my cards (ISA and PCI) from my old system to the new one, install the new CPU, reconnect the hard disk and keep running at a nice P4 speed.

What's inside
An Intel i875P ("Canterwood") Dual-DDR400 marchitecture based board, with the usual goodies, and then some. Legacy and buzzword-of-the-month live together nicely on this one. Two Ultra-ATA ports, two RS232 ports, one parallel, along with up to eight USB 2.0 ports (two in the I/O panel in the back, and 6 spread on usb headers across the board (a 4-port USB bracket is included).

Surprisingly, video is included onboard in the form of an ATI Rage 128 XL chipset, with 8MB of video memory onboard. This matches the AGP card that I had on my previous system. I didn't even had to change drivers!!. The built-in video can be disabled via a jumper, if you want to add another pci video card. No, AGP slots are not included, even while SiSoft Sandra says the chipset supports AGP. Maybe there was no room. I certainly won't miss one, as the performance of the Rage 128 XL is pretty good.

Finally, it includes a pair of Serial ATA ports, that you can configure on the Bios in "legacy" mode, where you map each of the S-ATA ports to either the primary or secondary IDE controller, or in "enhanced" mode, which allows you to have a maximum of six hard drives on the system (four parallel ATA, two S-ATA).

The recipe

The Super Micro P4SCA mobo socket-478 Intel P4 CPU has an 800 Mhz bus. I used a P4 "2.4c" with hyper threading. A pair of DIMMs of brand name quality, DDR-400 memory. I used two Kingston HyperX 256mb sticks with heat spreader. SSI-compliant, "EPS12V" power supply. I choose the expensive but praised Antec True550 since I wanted the quietest possible system. Your "legacy" ISA cards :)

Let the games begin
I tested this board with three different operating systems. First, I just simply swapped the 40GB, 5400 RPM Maxtor drive from the old system to the new one and rebooted Win98SE, after a few "new PCI device found" messages and automagic driver fiddling, the system was up and running. Win98SE booted so fast, that I forgot to clock it. Even with hyper threading disabled, win98se was a screamer.

To S-ATA or not to S-ATA? I realized that doing a review of the P4SCA board without testing the serial-ata ports would have been an incomplete story. Given my previous great experience with Samsung hard disks, I set my aim on their SP1614C model, a 160-gigabyte drive, of the Spinpoint P80 marchitecture series with the usual buzzwords like ImpacGuard(TM), NoiseGuard(TM), SilentSeek(TM) and the like.

Externally, the Samsung SATA drive is identical to its SV1204H (5400 RPM parallel ATA) siblings. The only difference besides the obvious PATA vs SATA connectors is evident when you look at the circuit board: you will realize there is an additional chip which, according to reports, is the Serial ATA bridge. Both a S-ATA and power adaptor cables were included with the OEM packaged drive.

The SP1614C, however, is a much faster drive, spinning faster than your favorite Public Relations company. They say it spins at 7200 rpm, and we believe it, what else. Performance also benefits from its a 8mb cache/buffer (vs 2mb cache for the slower drives). Graph ands benchmark-freaks can see some hd speed test screen shots by clicking on the link below this article.

What impressed me, once again, (and perhaps even more than in the 5400 RPM disk) is the quietness of this drive. You can barely hear it spin, but when the heads are moving like crazy (say, in a defrag) you have to put your ear next to the case to hear a very subtle "whispering". I don't know how it does it, but the fan in my already very silent Antec EPS12V power supply made more noise than the hard disk.<> Given Samsung's three-year warranty, the drives' features, and since the rest of the HD industry seems to have moved to "12-month disposable drives", I don't think I'll go back to other HD brands, unless they come up with something revolutionary.

One caveat: since this was my first experience with S-ATA drives, I found the new Molex sata connector a bit loose on the drive side. It just wouldn't fit "tight". I don't know if all drives and cables are like this, but I could swing the cable left to right, and while it didn't unplug or fell off, the movement on the molex connector, while plugged, was noticeable. At least, when compared to the hard-to-remove nature of parallel ATA cables.

Back to mobo-testing
With the new Samsung SATA drive in place, I then proceeded to install SuSE 8.2 Pro, which took about 14 minutes from the 52x sony cd-rom. But after installation, I had the privilege of seeing OpenOffice 1.0.2 load in about three seconds after double clicking on a .doc file. SuSE Pro really liked the P4SCA.

Win2k took considerably more time and effort to get fully working, mostly because of the usual annoyances in the Vole's software. I installed Win2k at the SP2 level, and couldn't get the USB 2.0 ports recognized until I downloaded Microsoft's USB 2.0 drivers for Win2k, which are very well hidden in Microsoft's windows update service, and apparently can't be redistributed by third parties. Plus, I couldn't get my external USB 2.0 hard disk recognized in win2k until I updated to Service Pack 4. Ahh... the Vole.

Conclusions
The good
This board is a screamer. The 800 MHz bus speed really shows. Onboard ATI Rage 128 video on the PCI bus is great for most desktop and server applications (unless you're a 3D-games freak, that I'm not).

The included CD includes every driver you would possibly need (ATI video drivers and Microsoft's DirectX too), along with Supermicro's system monitoring tool "SuperO Doctor", which monitors and alerts you on the fans operation, case intrusion and different temperature monitors. A Linux version of SuperO Doctor program is included on the CD. Kudos to Super Micro. See the screen shots link at the bottom of this article.

The Intel Gigabit Ethernet chipset used is the same as the one present in the Intel Pro/1000 MT pci cards (82540/41), and this is a great choice for "multi-os freaks" like me, because chipzilla has developed drivers for this chipset for almost every operating system on earth, including all the ones I run: Windows, Linux, Solaris, Netware (well, I don't run this, but I heard that some of you do), and yes, even drivers for IBM OS/2.

I recommend you download the latest PDF manual from the Super Micro site, as the printed one I received had a few small discrepancies about the location of fan power plugs, due to motherboard revisions. Finally, I have to thank Ivan Tay for the initial assistance while I tried to figure out if I had to connect both "extra 12v" connectors to the board (answer: yes).

The bad
I don't have much to complain about this board, it turned out to be a speed demon and letting me continue using my favorite ISA boards along with providing me with the latest functionality (800 MHz bus, USB 2.0, Gigabit onboard, etc.) that one would expect from a Canterwood board.

The PCI-only P4SCE model includes dual Intel Gigabit Ethernet onboard. On the P4SCA you can see the place where the second intel gigabit chip could be soldered, and you can even see the place where the second female RJ45 connector would fit.

If Super Micro managed to deliver as an extra cost option (using a chip socket?) the second gigabit port, or why not, maybe an AGP slot for those that "need" one of those expensive video cards for gaming and the like, it would be the perfect motherboard, scoring 10 points out of 10 on my coolness-o-meter.

The ugly
Nothing. Verdict
You will be hearing about this board from me often, because this will be one of my software testing systems from now on.

I give the Super Micro P4SCA board nine points out of 10. It's a well designed, great performer. My kudos to the Super Micro marketing people for realizing that some people out there (like me) that like (or need) to continue using their ISA cards, despite what Redmondia and Chipzilla would like to dictate to the IT world.

And if you're looking for a S-ATA hard disk for your new mobo, the Samsung Spinpoint series are definitely worth considering.

All that's missing now is a great case to put this beast on. But that, my friends, will be an upcoming story. µ

See Also
Fernando's own site has more pics

L'INQS
All the P4SCA and Samsung S-ATA pics and screen shots you can handle, including benchmarks
Samsung Spinpoint SP1614C product page
Official P4SCA product page at Super Micro