Custom Motherboards?

Druegan asks: "I've been rooting around on the net lately checking out all the latest and greatest in new PC parts, plotting out the design for my next build. I'm finding lots of neat stuff, but I can never seem to find a main board that has just the right combination of features. Therefore, I want to Ask Slashdot: Is there any way your esteemed readership knows as to how a person might get a main board custom made?"

"I don't know how practical this is, BUT I'm looking for a mainboard that supports a dual processor configuration for the AMD64 FX 55 processor, built around the nVidia nForce 4 chipset. I'd like two full x16 PCI-express slots with support for the nVidia SLI, as well as room for at least 2gb of dual channel DDR, and SATA Raid support. I also am looking to be able to overclock the bejeesus out of the whole mess.

This is only a test case, but there currently is no such mainboard available. I'd like to know if there is some way to get one custom built though, even if it is ridiculously expensive.. (yes, this might fall into the 'more-money-than-brains' dept.)

I'd just like to build the system to see how it'd work."

Re:Not a good idea

[forkazoo]

Uhh, This is one of the hundred or so "me too posts." The Asker has no idea what he is doing.

That said... When I glanced at the headline, I assumed it was about somebody doing a custom 8 bit or 16 bit system, and was looking for some resources to make his tricked out Zilog box look more professional.

So, I'd love to hear from some experts about just what level of custom board would be doable for a hobbyist? How about a dual 8080, or maybe (joygasm) a dual 386 custom board? What free/cheap tools are available, and who does cheap low-volume PCB runs? Let's all pretend that a useful question was asked, and answer that!

For the price of a custom mainboard...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

He could easily afford a x8 or x16 cpu machine from a big vendor. One that has been thoroughly tested, rather than an engineer's first prototype. With his pick of actual SMP-capable cpus, no less.

So how about a less dumb motherboard question?

Q) I need as many PCI slots as possible, with at least a few being 64bit. 4-6 slots isn't nearly enough, I'm a guy that could fill 10+ easily. And a few (read:2-3) ISA slots would be nice also.

I'm not so picky on other things, but a wishlist in order of priority is as follows:

#(10+) PCI slots
dual cpus
64bit cpus
amd cpus
dual onboard gigabit
#(1-3) isa slots
dual onboard serial ports

I think that a passive backplane is the answer I'm looking for. Things like the Magma PCI expansion system (where 7 pci slots sit in their own rackmount case) aren't quite what I need. I understand enough about backplanes now, to know that I need a PICMG single board computer. Is it the right answer for what I want?

What price range are we talking, working up through modest configurations, up to the ones that meet all of my wishlist items?

Am I overlooking some other (presumably lesser known) options that would meet most of these needs?

Are there any pitfalls in installing and using linux on such a system?

Re:Doy

[sharkey]

The most pci express channels that I've seen any consumer chipset support yet is 20x, and 2*16 = 32.

Tyan offers a dual-Opeteron board with dual x16 PCI-Express slots. http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we.html [tyan.com]