oerk, nice hijack! I have a similar motherboard, rock solid at 75MHz. There are undocumented jumper settings (http://www.thg.ru/howto/20000725/onepage.html). I like it very much.

Btw, I've never seen better copper coils on motherboards than on these golden oldies from ASUS. They were struggling for their reputation back in the day - a worthy investment!

Yeah, I've read that article, otherwise I'd be ignorant about the TAG RAM issue. Now I'm wondering what's the point in having the HX chipset (only Intel socket 7 chipset that can cache >64MB) if you can't install more RAM without buying a special chip (unless computer stores carried those back in the day).

So, try to get the right SRAM chip or install a K6-2+/K6-3(+)? I kinda want to keep the K6-200 to keep it period correct and because it's fast enough for what I want it to do.

My three working retro computers all have Asus boards from '97-'00, all rock solid, whereas newer Asus boards aren't any better than the competition, IME.

What makes you think you can't find the right SRAM DIP chip? It should specify what the TAG SRAM chip configuration should be in either the motherboard manual or the i430tx datasheet.

Hurrr durrr me r stupid sometimes. Didn't realize Asus had the manual online anymore.

The manual mentions 16K8 or 32K8, 15ns or faster, 28-pin DIP I presume. The only ones I can find online are way slower (60ns and up).

At least I now know better what I need, but still have no idea where to find it.

One of many examples,
http://www.ebay.com/itm/390838004312

oerk wrote:

Yeah, I've read that article, otherwise I'd be ignorant about the TAG RAM issue. Now I'm wondering what's the point in having the HX chipset (only Intel socket 7 chipset that can cache >64MB) if you can't install more RAM without buying a special chip (unless computer stores carried those back in the day).

So, try to get the right SRAM chip or install a K6-2+/K6-3(+)? I kinda want to keep the K6-200 to keep it period correct and because it's fast enough for what I want it to do.

You can find the chip in a 486 board, 15ns is enough. And yes, they were found in stores.

oerk wrote:

My three working retro computers all have Asus boards from '97-'00, all rock solid, whereas newer Asus boards aren't any better than the competition, IME.

I guess the competition is now strong enough... We still have ECS, but most other low-price brands like Super, Lucky Star, PCChips are long gone. My P5B bought new in 2006 and used daily ever since has shown no flaw and is still working well in my wife's computer. P5K my friend gave me after an upgrade (thanks to his wife who hates having "useless" hardware at home) is rock solid as well. My wife's "ex" is P5KPL-AM/VS, also no fault during a long daily run.

I know ASUS had dropped the leadership around P4 era with the "Cap plague", but I now trust them a lot.

feipoa wrote:

One of many examples,
http://www.ebay.com/itm/390838004312

Annnnnd... ordered! Thanks!

I just tested the Miro Media Surround Board. It sounds really good, even on stereo speakers. One thing I forgot to do was to externally hook it up to the AWE64.
I wonder why the manual discourages users to use the internal connection with the 4 pin audio cable.

Second Reality doesn't start. Weird. 😐

Are you referring to internal cables like CD-ROM Audio cable?

What I found is that sometimes, but not always, the internal cable will pick up "Computer thinking" sounds. I therefore always mute the CD input in the mixer when not in use. Same for the PC Speaker as I have a cable connected from the PC Speaker headers of the motherboard to the PS Speaker input on the sound card.

I also have a special lead that goes from the CD Audio output of my DVD-ROM to my external audio mixer. This works great to balance out the levels as often the music is too quiet or too loud.

@philscomputerlab
Thank you for the quick reply 😀
I guess that must be the reason.

Your website is awesome by the way. I wish I would have found it years ago!

Well Dolby sounds great, I had no problem so far.
Does Second Reality has to be run in DOS mode?
It crashes with an error on windows 98

WOW nice case! That is a cool computer you got there. 😁

Arctic wrote:

@philscomputerlab
Your website is awesome by the way. I wish I would have found it years ago!

He only started it last year ...

Arctic wrote:

Does Second Reality has to be run in DOS mode?
It crashes with an error on windows 98

Sounds plausible, demos exploited the hardware even more than games.

There is one empty ISA slot:

Miro Connect 34 Wave 😀 (36/96) http://www.mirosupport.de/commu/online/online.html

I really hope it works. My old one from 1998 seems to be dead.

King_Corduroy wrote:

WOW nice case! That is a cool computer you got there. 😁

Thank you 😀

@idspispopd
whoops 😁 Thx

My SCSI adapter tells me at boot "No BIOS installed".
What does that mean?

I think I'm going to replace the 166MHz CPU with a 200MHz overclocked to 233Mhz.
Maybe that's enough to compensate the performance loss with the 128MB RAM.
I'm going to downgrade it to 64MB anyway.

I have a strange problem with the mwave card.
Sounds only play for one second and then suddenly stop.
I'm using version 3.36 of the mwave pnp drivers for windows 95

Maybe it has to do with the IRQ conflicts it is causing with the AWE64.
Time to choose I guess.

Does anyone here know this card?

Dual Gameport Quickjoy "QJ" SV-209 8 Bit ISA (1992)

This is apparently its successor:
Quickjoy SV-210

- 64MB of Memory

I checked the PC with ZD CPUmark 99 Version 1.0. My Result is: 7.26 Apparently that is too low: […]
Show full quote

I checked the PC with ZD CPUmark 99 Version 1.0. My Result is: 7.26
Apparently that is too low:

Pentium Pro 200 - 17.5
K6 200 - 14.9
Pentium 266 MMX - 12.3
Pentium 200 MMX - 12.2
Pentium 200 (166) - 10.2
Pentium 166 - 9.1
Pentium 133 mobile - 7.8
Pentium 75 - 5.79

My new Result is 10.3 🤣

The SV-209 card is neither plug and play nor was I able to find drivers yet. 🙁

Is it a good idea to switch the graphics to isa and add a DVD accelerator card?
I have a Creative DXR3 lying around and I found out it uses the same cable as the Miro Hiscore and Miro Hiscore 2.
Might be interesting for someone 😀

I would later change the graphics card back to pci and add a 10/100 ISA NIC instead.

What do you guys think?

I wouldn't use an ISA graphics card in a PCI system. Major bottleneck.

The Creative card uses the same connectors, but does it have the same pinout? I would confirm this before connecting it with the wrong cable and possibly damage one or both cards in the process.

An ISA NIC should be ok, it's not like you're transferring huge amounts of data with that system.

Thanks, I will just get a ISA NIC then.
Why shouldn't it be the same pinout? Would be cheaper I guess.

I will check it in a crap pc with a crap vga card and see what will happen 😀

btw, Artcic, your avatar reminds me of Kinet warriors from old Etherlords/Etherlords 2 games. Pretty solid, especially the second one.