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three working Socket 7 motherboards
Monday, December 29 2025
I was playing around with some old Socket 7 motherboards today, including one that I have had screwed to a wooden plank so that I can plug various things into it as needed for testing purposes. That motherboard has been this way for over 20 years now, with the idea that I could rig up some digital circuit to it and control it with low-level commands issued from the command line (or perhaps brief machine-language programs). I haven't really had a use for such a rig since I began working with Arduino, which makes such projects much easier and controllable from just about any computer, so it's been decades since I used it for anything other than an easy way to produce five or twelve volts from its power supply (which doesn't require the motherboard at all). Though I don't have much practical use for them, I like Socket 7 motherboards because they are relatively small, do not have soft power-up capabilities, and are among the last generation of motherboards with ISA slots. I have a lot of ISA cards, and without Socket 7 motherboards, I would have nothing to plug them into. Some day I'd like to have a USB gizmo that can communicate with an ISA slot, but until I do, I will keep Socket 7 motherboards around. Today I tested all three of the ones I have and found they all still work fine despite their age (they date to around 1998). They all have at least 64 megabytes of RAM and even some of their CMOS batteries seemed to be functional. I have a variety of ISA backplanes I can plug into the boards to test classic ISA cards, the kind that won't fit into an AT-style ISA slot because that second section gets in the way. Using one of these, I confirmed that I still have two working CGA video cards, which is great. I love CGA cards because they are generally huge, covered mostly with TTL or LSTTL integrated circuits whose functionality I completely understand, and produce video you can see on a television from the 1950s. But I don't really think that I need to keep a Socket 7 motherboard hooked up and ready to go at all times like I have since I was in my 30s.
This afternoon when I took Charlotte for a walk, Neville surprised me by coming along too. There was a bit of a thaw happening at the time, so the snow had crunched down a bit and was easier to walk in. So I was able to walk the dogs to the abandoned go cart track and then home through the scrubby upland forest.
This evening our friends Ken and Laura from off Lorenz Road picked me up and drove me to Woodstock so we could meet Gretchen for a double date at the Garden Café. Nothing great was on the menu, so I got exactly what I'd had last time: the mushroom appetizer and the Beyond Burger with potato wedges. But I opted for an Abbey Ale instead of wine. I don't always relate well to the conversations that happen in this particular grouping of people, though Ken told a great story about the time his dog Rosie slipped out of his hands and ran into traffic at their place in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Poor Rosie was hit, and Ken was sure she was killed. But all she had was some broken ribs. Interestingly, there are still active drug dealers on the corner where it happened, and they all witness Rosie being hit. They were very concerned about it and kept asking about how Rosie was doing every time they saw Ken for awhile afterwards.
Then Laura told us about something else that had happened at that corner. There had been a fire hydrant set in rectangle of concrete that was decidedly lower than the terrain, and
at some point someone decided to line that depression so it would hold water leaking from the hydrant. And then he stocked it with fish. The little aquarium became something of an Instagram sensation, and eventually a little free library appeared as well as a bench. Eventually the City decided the aquarium had to go and filled it in with concrete (killing the fish for the fourth or fifth time). But then someone excavated a new pond nearby.
Later in the conversation, Laura and Ken told the story of how they met, which was at a play where they were both actors in New Haven. Ken was in his late 30s at the time and had given up on romance completely, but Laura, who was in her mid-20s, took a shine to him and eventually it happened. Ken and Laura hadn't heard our love story, so Gretchen proceeded to tell it to them, with me chiming in as needed.
There was a cold, brutal wind blowing outside on the walk back to our car. Gretchen had impulsively invited Ken & Laura back to our place after dinner for leftover pie, but then she realized our woodstove was cold and our house was a mess, so we had to do a bunch of a little tasks before they arrived.
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