i try to find out which motherboards routeros can run on. i have seen the wiki and the “Supported Hardware” but that does not really help since it only has information about specific boards. is there a list of compatible chipsets and ethernet controllers somewhere ? i am basically looking for an ATX motherboard with at least 4 PCI slots for a P4 and 512 mb RAM and IDE controller which can boot from a IDE/Compact Flash adapter. the board should not be a discontinued product since those boards are hard to come by.
you can check what hardware (specific chipsets) has one or another mentioned motherboard and choose accordingly, if you can you can take cf-IDE adapter antr try to boot RouterOS in place and see does it work or not
If you want the onboard ethernet chip to work, avoid desktop motherboards. Especially ones with Nvidia chipsets as those ethernet ports are generaly not supported. I have had success with server motherboards from Tyan or Supermicro. The boards with Intel chipsets have good support as most Intel ethernet ports are supported. I have been running a Tyan Tomcat i7230A (S5160) board for since last summer with no issues.
If you happen to get a motherboard that has no IDE or the IDE isn’t supported, you can use SATA instead if you are running RouterOS 3.0. I know of at least 2 vendors selling SATA to CF adapters, ADDonics Technologies & ACS .