Modern motherboard for original PCI HD Core and Process cards

[David Sandwisch]

Hi Everyone,

About 9 months ago I posted looking for help building a modern computer with all the latest and greatest but still able to support my original PCI HD Core and Process cards built in 2002.

Now it looks like I will be able to do this in the next 3 to 4 months so I wanted to get some current ideas and feedback. I talked to AVID at NAB and they said it should work fine with PT 9 and Windows 7 once I can find a motherboard with two legacy PCI slots next to each other that can accept two full length cards.

If I can find a motherboard that supports the cards and has all the modern stuff like PCIe, current ram / cpu technology, SATA II etc... I can build the computer around that.

Any suggestions on motherboards to look at?

Thanks,
David

[Bob Nagy]

Originally Posted by David Sandwisch

once I can find a motherboard with two legacy PCI slots next to each other that can accept two full length cards.

Adjacent PCI slots are no longer necessary. I have a solution. Contact me directly if interested. My contact info is in my public profile here.

[deafguy]

Hey David,

I'm using this one : GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD3L
Not easily available, found mine on ebay, have seen a few others.
On the plus side, it has 4 PCI slots and 3 PCIe, Sata and supports an Intel I7.
On the minus side, the MB requires a bit of modification to get the PCI cards to fit. (Dremel tool to the rescue) Also, no USB3 and no on-board Firewire.

I've added a FW card to the system, only good for transferring files, can't run a session off it yet. I'll continue to trouble shoot that.

For now, my HD3 Accel lives on, running great PT9 HD on Win 7.
I'll likely add a fourth Accel card.

I do miss my Mac but getting this rig operational has been worthwhile.

good luck

[David Sandwisch]

Thanks for the MB suggestion. Using the Dremel sounds risky and ideally I would like to avoid that.

Aren't there any brand new boards I can buy that will do this?

[Third Eye Studios]

Supermicro X8SAX, our HD3 PCI system runs great with this motherboard.

[David Sandwisch]

Thanks Third Eye, that looks promising. I'm not quite sure how you got 3 PCI cards in there because at least the picture on the manufacturer's website:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/m.../X58/X8SAX.cfm

only shows 2 slots that I believe the cards would fit in. Listed in the specs are 1 32bit PCI slot and 2 64 bit PCI-X slots. I have 2 PCI cards that are not PCI-X although I am hearing from multiple people that my cards will work in a PCI-X slot.

I will do more research to understand the differences between PCI and PCI-X.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts!

[Third Eye Studios]

Originally Posted by David Sandwisch

Thanks Third Eye, that looks promising. I'm not quite sure how you got 3 PCI cards in there because at least the picture on the manufacturer's website:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/m.../X58/X8SAX.cfm

only shows 2 slots that I believe the cards would fit in. Listed in the specs are 1 32bit PCI slot and 2 64 bit PCI-X slots. I have 2 PCI cards that are not PCI-X although I am hearing from multiple people that my cards will work in a PCI-X slot.

I will do more research to understand the differences between PCI and PCI-X.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts!

The HD PCI cards will go into a PCI or PCI-X slot.

[David Sandwisch]

Thanks for the info! Did you have any tips for building a computer with this MB? Things you ran into that you had to solve? Was it fairly straight forward?

Thanks,
David

[Third Eye Studios]

Hi David, The build was very easy. I put it all in a huge case, and it was really a piece of cake. It's been a great, powerful system.

[David Sandwisch]

Which CPU did you decide to go with?