First post, by badmojo
- Rank
- l33t
I was mucking about with my P166 machine recently and decided to make a thread about it - I built this machine a couple of years ago but didn’t do a thread on it at the time, and I like to have a place to record the changes I make over the years. It's fun (for me) to look back on.
The specs are:
ASUS VX97 motherboard
Pentium 166MMX
32MB RAM
NEC CDR Quad spin CD-ROM
Matrox Millennium 2MB
Sound Blaster 16 (CT2230) + NEC XR385
Roland SCC1
Creative 3D Blaster (Voodoo 2)
Windows 95 with a boot menu to pure DOS
I use this machine for late DOS games like DOOM, Duke3D, etc, and early 3D games like Tomb Raider, Quake, + early Windows 95 games. I’m planning a play through of ‘Comanche: Maximum Overkill’ on it soon too, which runs perfectly at this speed with the Pentium patch installed. The lovely, period correct AT MIDI case I found at the recycle center in the "to be scrapped pile" - I couldn’t believe my eyeballs when I saw it sitting there, it looked virtually brand new. The MHz display was burned out due to an incorrectly wired 4-pin molex on the PSU; it took me months to track down another display of the correct type but it was worth the effort.
The CT2230 is a great sounding card which doesn’t have the hanging note bug, and paired with the XR385 it's a force to be reckoned with. But like all Creative cards it still has its issues with MIDI in some games; Duke3D and Tie Fighter are some examples of games which stutter when FX and MIDI is played simultaneously, and that’s where the Roland SCC1 comes in. It handles most of the MIDI, but I do like to have the XR385 in there for easy comparisons and for those few games which sound better with the Yamaha sound. Along with the XR385 – which I bought cheaply from that dude in China before he ran out – the SCC1 is the only part of this machine I payed for. And wow, did I pay for it! I think it ran me close to 200AUD including postage from the UK, but it came boxed and complete, so I don’t regret it. I have an SC-55 too, but I like the convenience of the internal card. As you can see in the pics below I simply run the SCC1’s output directly into the CT2230’s input and mix it via software accordingly. Based on some reading I’ve been doing lately the SC-55 was significantly more expensive than the SCC1 back in the day, but of course that’s no longer the case. I bought my SC-55 locally for 70 bucks – I guess the SCC1 is simply less common.
The reason I have this bad-boy out of the cupboard at the moment is to both benchmark it for Mau1wurf1977’s project, and to change the VGA card from a Matrox Mystique 220 to a Matrox Millennium. This is a downgrade I know but I was mad for my Millennium as a kid – I bought one circa ’97 when the price had dropped - and wanted one again for nostalgia purposes. As a kid I read about the Millennium's magical ‘WRAM’ which – in my teenage mind – would be the answer to all my frame rate problems. It wasn’t of course, but it was still a nice card, and comparing this one which I picked up recently for $5 - if only I could time travel it back to my teen self - it’s on par with the Mystique in most DOS benchmarks, and actually slightly faster in DOOM. They share the same VGA core I guess.
Here are some random pics of the machine, and of course the lovely SCC1:
Here’s the Mystique:
Which was replaced by the Millennium with its awesome WRAM!
Life? Don't talk to me about life.
