I replaced the CD drive with a newer, faster, working model. The original would not open or close. 😀 The floppy drive is original, and works very reliably. I'm not sure what that graphite-looking staining is on the top of it, but it gets hidden when the case is closed.

Original Lite-On power supply still works great!

The system had two hard drives when I got it. A 1GB Seagate, which was sliding around loose in there an disconnected, and a 4GB WD, which had the click of death. I replaced with a 20GB WD which works wonderfully in multiple 2GB partitions.

And lastly, a photo of it all buttoned up and ready to play on!

This thing performs like a champ. It is fast enough to run System Shock smoothly in SVGA, and when disabling L1 with Setmul, it performs like a fast 386. WC1 is a *little* fast but playable. WC2 is perfect.

The TNT2 M64 is about the fastest graphics I could get in this system, and very compatible.

Combined with the great OPL3 of the Audician and General MIDI from Dreamblaster S1, this is about the perfect DOS PC for me. Thanks to everyone on here for their help and advice over the months. It all paid off!

Very nice setup, love how clean everything looks setup on your desk! It looks like you snagged that TNT2 I posted in the Ebay thread a while back 😀 recognized the sellers pic.

Lovely looking machine, have fun with it!

Thanks, guys. ODwilly--you're right! I never saw your post in that thread, I just happened to come across it in searching. I originally wasn't interested because I wanted something fanless, but it was the only one I could find reasonably priced keyed for 5v. I offered $15 and explained it would get a new home in a DOS retro PC and he took my offer. 😀

Very nice system, and nice additions! I love old school Packard Bell builds-they definitely take me back to a simpler time 😀

I love the fact that Packard Bells were the bane of computing back in the day and now embody the whole "retro cool" thing.

Looks like it has no L2 cache, is that correct?

Yep. That's correct.

Very nice machine!

The TNT2 M64 is a great choice, I'm also using one, AGP version, in my 3 in 1 Retro DOS Gaming PC. It has excellent compatibility with DOS games and is very cheap and easy to find.

With the CPU, you could try a standard Pentium 200. That would give you a slower cache-less speed, perfect for Wing Commander, but still enough performance for high resolution games.

The audio solution is very nice too. Great build 😀

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Very nice machine! […]
Show full quote

Very nice machine!

The TNT2 M64 is a great choice, I'm also using one, AGP version, in my 3 in 1 Retro DOS Gaming PC. It has excellent compatibility with DOS games and is very cheap and easy to find.

With the CPU, you could try a standard Pentium 200. That would give you a slower cache-less speed, perfect for Wing Commander, but still enough performance for high resolution games.

The audio solution is very nice too. Great build 😀

Thank you. 😀

Using some other Setmul switches (Branch Prediction Disable mostly), I have been able to slow this down a bit more for a perfect Wing Commander experience. 😎

I appreciate all your advice over the months in selecting the components.

clueless1 wrote:

Yep. That's correct.

Maybe when you're bored you can try soldering the chips in.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

Yep. That's correct.

Maybe when you're bored you can try soldering the chips in.

I remember reading a news article way back then about Packard Bell removing the L2 cache on some models to cut costs. In the article, they said they'd partly compensate for the slowdown by using faster SIMMs (I think 50ns). Did they actually end up doing that?

I haven't checked the SIMMs speeds, but I know they are running in EDO mode. And performance is fine for what I run, so I'm not too worried about the loss of the L2. 😀

Edit: just did a comparison with Phil's P133 in my Let's Disable Cache database, and with a little interpolation, I estimate his MVP3 system with L2 is about 15-20% faster than mine without L2. Also, he's using SDRAM vs edo SIMMS, AGP vs. PCI (we both have TNT2 M64), and a newer chipset. So considering all those improvements combined only nets +15-20%, I'm pretty happy.