VOGONS


First post, by candle_86

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So here is my Pentium 166 Classic
Specs

Matronics D5CUB
Pentium 166
2x16mb 70ns SIMMS (going to buy more SIMMs this week)
6.1gb Western Digital Hard Drive
Sony DVD-RW
Daytona 64T Trident 9680 (my voodoo 3 2000 is dead it turns out so im going to be looking for a new PCI video card)
Promise Ultra133TX
Intel PRoSet100 NIC
Soundblaster 16 PnP
Windows 98SE (Wanted 95 but i can't get networking to work on it, and i need access to my FTP 🤣)

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Last edited by candle_86 on 2017-11-12, 22:54. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 8, by BitWrangler

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I'd keep the 8x CDR in, presuming it works. Optical drive speeds too far out of era lead to a bad experience IMO, with games that load levels continuous off CD or load cutscenes, you end up with the fast drives spinning up, slowing down, seeking, spinning up, slowing down, and this seems to lead to stutter and lag in the game, possibly because slower machines don't empty the drive's buffer fast enough, fills up, drive spins down, then by the time more data needed 1 or 2 second lag to spin up again. Then file copying to hdd seems a good bit faster, but still it'll be spinning up and down and making you worry that this machine is wearing the damn thing out 3x as fast as a faster machine that can keep up with it would.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 2 of 8, by candle_86

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BitWrangler wrote:

I'd keep the 8x CDR in, presuming it works. Optical drive speeds too far out of era lead to a bad experience IMO, with games that load levels continuous off CD or load cutscenes, you end up with the fast drives spinning up, slowing down, seeking, spinning up, slowing down, and this seems to lead to stutter and lag in the game, possibly because slower machines don't empty the drive's buffer fast enough, fills up, drive spins down, then by the time more data needed 1 or 2 second lag to spin up again. Then file copying to hdd seems a good bit faster, but still it'll be spinning up and down and making you worry that this machine is wearing the damn thing out 3x as fast as a faster machine that can keep up with it would.

Well it doesn't work and my only blank media is DVD, i just buy DVD's in bulk 🤣

Reply 4 of 8, by candle_86

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So based on what I know aka

256k L2 Cache I think limiting myself 64mb would work

How to i get network working, i got TCP/IP installed but it couldn't talk to my DHCP server, I tried a static IP but still couldn't connect to anything so I can use 95

Whats a good PCI graphics card, i want 3D and compatability with things like Starfleet Academy, SimCopter and good 2d for Civilzation II, Simcity 2000 SE ect. I don't own many DOS games mainly Doom, Duke 3d, Wolf 3d, Commander Keen

Reply 5 of 8, by chinny22

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Win95 / Win98 pretty much same thing when it comes to networking. And it most definitely should be able to get a IP assigned from a DHCP server even in this day and age. Sharing files over network may be a pain to get going but getting an IP should happen right out of the box! Sounds like network card issue.

Maybe try different driver?
I've also had problems with windows assigning the card wrong IRQ's etc. The driver package should also include some kind of dos exe file for assigning and basic testing, double check what resources the card ahs then manually set in device manager.

Re PCI video card
None of those games are demanding, simcopter works with a card with just 512kb! But to play it safe I would look at 2MB cards or greater.
Good VESA support is what you are after, While aimed at DOS the below link shows the good from the better. TNT or TNT2 would be safe bet.
Or the usual DOS gamming cards like a S3 so your currant card isn't that bad, quick google says it compares to a trio unless your using 24 bit colour in windows.

https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

Reply 6 of 8, by bjwil1991

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Speaking of Windows 95, I installed Windows 95C on my K6-2/300 machine, however, it locked up on me when it was finishing up installing the OS at the second step (probably because of the VooDoo2 card that's installed, or Windows 95 doesn't like the clock speed to be set at 75MHz instead of 66MHz).

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Reply 7 of 8, by candle_86

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bjwil1991 wrote:

Speaking of Windows 95, I installed Windows 95C on my K6-2/300 machine, however, it locked up on me when it was finishing up installing the OS at the second step (probably because of the VooDoo2 card that's installed, or Windows 95 doesn't like the clock speed to be set at 75MHz instead of 66MHz).

No you just got hit with the K6 bug it sounds like

http://thpc.info/dual/xp2knt/95b95cfix.html

do this

Reply 8 of 8, by deleted_Rc

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chinny22 wrote:

Maybe try different driver?
I've also had problems with windows assigning the card wrong IRQ's etc. The driver package should also include some kind of dos exe file for assigning and basic testing, double check what resources the card ahs then manually set in device manager.

usually its plain out driver incompabitility or different OS versions not liking eshoulder. try setting up a IPX in a closed network of a few computers ranging from windows 95 to XP and getting that to work stable 😲 .
Get the latest driver for the network card should usually do the trick, 1 of the chips has the exact name of the card on it. while installing a network I usually throw out everything and install everything manually (including the IP-range)