Back to the Past!

[comda]

Greetings Retro world!

Bear with me as i explain my idea and what i wish to achieve after my term is over!
I recently acquired a Quicksilver Power Macintosh. PC FANS DONT BE ALARMED! its dead. It overheated. All i care about is the case i want to throw in a Pentium 2 or 3 motherboard in there and make a speedy windows 98 gaming machine!

I have currently 2 motherboards from that era. A Asus P2-99 and a ABIT BX-6 and i have a few slow CPUs. I think the biggest being a 550Mhz a 350 and a 266.

Sadly none of the following boards have USB headers to put front usbs in... I was wondering was there motherboards of this era with that? or am i searching for something that doesnt even exist?

I have a Few Pentium 4 boards as well.... but i think thats a bit too much power for classic dos and windows games... I have a Asus P4P800-SE, 2 Hp Dc533SFF boards and even a Asus p4p i want to say MX? its the smaller version of the SE....

The P4s have usb headers but i think thats overkill and not retro really... So are there P2 P3 boards with USb headers out there or am i just being fussy and killing time searching for something that does not exist?

[Calum]

You're potentially looking for something not very common due to the fact that USB2 was released as the Pentium III was starting to die out.  I've checked a few different socket 370 boards, some from as late in its lifespan as I could find, and can't find any with USB headers.  That's not to say they don't exist, just that they're at the least not very common.

Are you sure the standard boards will fit in that case?  I'm not familiar with older Mac hardware at all but unless you're planning on some cutting anyway, you may want to double check whether the current board is a standard size or not and whether the standoffs will line up, etc, before you commit to anything.

[comda]

Thanks for the reply.. being only 19 i was young during that time period so only familiar with what i see.. I would like some headers just to make it easier to copy games from USB onto the system..

My backup plan would be taking the USB PCI card that i have un soldering the USB facing inside and then making an extension to the front or just buying a USB extension cable but its not going to be good when it comes to power consumption.
And im not looking for USB 2.. just a header on the mobo for USb to the front.. I was once given a little HP that had that.. it had one USB out back and a header for the second one on the front.. sadly i threw it out last year ;(

As for the case mod.. i know im going to have to do some work to the case as you are correct, the stand offs are completely different. Ive looked inside the case and it shouldn't be hard to drill small holes and screw in standoffs where i need them. The more difficult task will be the I/O shield on the back side of the mac. I know i have to cut the current one out and fabricate a new one.. I want to use the Zip drive opening for the USB and solder the connections to make the power and reset buttons work without replacing them..

As for PowerPC mac Fan boys.. ITS A DEAD MACHINE. I bought it dead tried to revive it as its a nice Dual Processor at 1GHz 2mb cache, 1.5GB ram.. but sadly no dice. its either the CPU or motherboard.. So i figured a Pentium 2,3 wont make too much heat and i love the design of the case and i want a retro ish gamer so why not?

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[soybean]

This might be a solution for you: Rosewill RC-103 - 4 + 1 USB 2.0 PCI Adapter (Four External + One Internal Ports)

[BC_Programmer]

Super Socket 7 motherboards sometimes had 1.1 Headers. It's notable that even though the motherboards supported them, typically the components weren't actually placed. I had a Super Socket 7 Motherboard which supported it but no header was actually installed to hook up the circuitry.

[comda]

This might be a solution for you: Rosewill RC-103 - 4 + 1 USB 2.0 PCI Adapter (Four External + One Internal Ports)

That's what i meant with my back-up plan. Remove the internal one and solder on an extension or just plainly use a usb Male to female extension cable. Would be nice to have a header though..