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My stealth DOS Machine build

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First post, by SBB

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I just finished building my first DOS machine!

Specs are as follows:

Pentium 200Mhz MMX
Biostar M5SAA Socket 7 motherboard
Coolermaster Socket 370 cooler
64MB Samsung SDRAM
RIVA TNT PCI 16MB video card
Sound Blaster Vibra16 (CT2900) sound card
10GB Western Digital IDE hard drive
Hitachi-LG IDE DVD-ROM Drive
GOTEK USB Floppy emulator
Generic 350W PSU
and of course MS-DOS 6.22!

Aywd3vP.jpg
BBP4K6d.jpg

I decided to go with a late Socket 7 board as it means that I can use a modern case, PSU, and have a PS2 mouse and keyboard which are easier to get hold of. The coolermaster CPU cooler I purchased was extremely loud at stock speed (6000rpm!) but I quietened this down by using a 7v fan resistor cable.

The build was fairly straightforward apart from the motherboard is very strange with hard disks. Originally I tried a 40GB hard disk with a 32GB capacity limit jumper set, but the system would not boot up. I tried without the capacity jumper and the system booted, but MSDOS was detecting it as a 504MB hard disk! I then found a modded BIOS (https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-Biostar-M5SAA-128GB) but it did not seem to help at all, still 504MB disk in DOS. I swapped to a 10GB hard disk I found in an old machine and this detects as 8GB ... but for DOS 6.22 this is fine.

I had a problem getting the creative "DIAGNOSE.EXE" utility running on the sound card but this was down to an old version of the software (Problem with MPU-401 on SB Vibra (CT2900)).

This machine runs late DOS game great! I ran PCPlayerBench in VGA mode and got a score of 49.8FPS which is right where it should be for this hardware. I have the ability to disable the caches in the BIOS to slow the system down for speed sensitive games.

Reply 1 of 5, by Errius

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Interesting, I've been working on a similar system but based on a 180 MHz Pentium Pro. We even have the same audio card. My video card is a Matrox Millennium 4 MB. I just ran PCP Bench and got 55 fps. I'd be interested to see some other benchmarks for this system.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 2 of 5, by clueless1

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SBB wrote:

I have the ability to disable the caches in the BIOS to slow the system down for speed sensitive games.

Awesome build. Looks great and the specs are sweet! Are you familiar with SETMUL? It is a utility that will disable caches without having to go into the BIOS. You can do it from the command prompt. I actually make batch files for games that need slowing down, so it disables cache when I launch the game, and re-enables it when I quit.

I'd be very interested in seeing benchmark results on your system for my Cachebench project. If you're interested in contributing, the link to the thread is in my signature. I'm interested because I have a Pentium Overdrive 200MMX which seems to be unique in supporting all of the Test Registers that only older Pentiums have support for. I'm curious if yours supports them too. If you have time to test, let me know and I'll give you more details.

Cheers!

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 3 of 5, by SBB

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Errius wrote:

Interesting, I've been working on a similar system but based on a 180 MHz Pentium Pro. We even have the same audio card. My video card is a Matrox Millennium 4 MB. I just ran PCP Bench and got 55 fps. I'd be interested to see some other benchmarks for this system.

Sure, always fun to compare benchmarks with others.. what benchmarks do you have in mind?

Reply 4 of 5, by SBB

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clueless1 wrote:
Awesome build. Looks great and the specs are sweet! Are you familiar with SETMUL? It is a utility that will disable caches wi […]
Show full quote
SBB wrote:

I have the ability to disable the caches in the BIOS to slow the system down for speed sensitive games.

Awesome build. Looks great and the specs are sweet! Are you familiar with SETMUL? It is a utility that will disable caches without having to go into the BIOS. You can do it from the command prompt. I actually make batch files for games that need slowing down, so it disables cache when I launch the game, and re-enables it when I quit.

I'd be very interested in seeing benchmark results on your system for my Cachebench project. If you're interested in contributing, the link to the thread is in my signature. I'm interested because I have a Pentium Overdrive 200MMX which seems to be unique in supporting all of the Test Registers that only older Pentiums have support for. I'm curious if yours supports them too. If you have time to test, let me know and I'll give you more details.

Cheers!

I've not heard of SETMUL before but it sounds useful, thanks, certainly nicer than rebooting or forgetting to turn the cache back on afterwards and wondering why doom is running at 2.3fps 🤣 I will have to investigate further when I get chance

Definitely can run some benchmarks to contribute to your project ... I will have a look later on when im in front of the machine again 😀

Reply 5 of 5, by nforce4max

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Good choice of board plus those sort of SS7 are much more common and often a lot more affordable vs the P5A ect. Get a K6-3+ and use that utility then you will be golden 😉

Love that you used a proper TNT 😀

On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.

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