Pictures and full specs added to first post.

Did some tweaking today. Removed the Adaptec AVA-1505 SCSI-II card (no need really and I was low on IRQs) and installed a Diamond Monster 3D Voodoo card.

Hah nice job with the cabling

Decided to swap the Pentium-S 133 MHz with a Pentium-MMX 200 MHz. Seems like it did not break any of the old DOS games but gives more headroom for some later Windows games in combination with the Voodoo. Also, it's now more of a proper 1997 build.

PMMX chips also give more granularity when it comes to slowdown options. They generally support more TR12 registers.

gdjacobs wrote:

PMMX chips also give more granularity when it comes to slowdown options. They generally support more TR12 registers.

How can I make use of that?

ps: just noticed that SPEEDSYS no longer works. Was fine before, but now hangs at "ISA PnP RD from 203". The only ISA card is the ALS100+ sound card, but SPEEDSYS had no problem with that before the CPU swap. Not that I care, but it seems odd.

You need to install SETMUL.
SetMul - Multiplier control for VIA C3 / AMD K6+7+8 Mobile / Cyrix 5x86

BPD - Disable Branch Prediction VPD - Disable V Pipeline L1DX - Disable L1 cache exclusively CCD - Disable L1 code cache DCD - D […]
Show full quote

BPD - Disable Branch Prediction
VPD - Disable V Pipeline
L1DX - Disable L1 cache exclusively
CCD - Disable L1 code cache
DCD - Disable L1 data cache
PFE - Pentium Features Enable; Resets the above TR12 options to default.

Along with L2 cache switching and (in my case) FSB switching using the turbo switch, the test registers deliver very smooth scaling down to 386 territory. Switches to toggle multiplier on the front panel would also be quite powerful as slower clocks deliver deeper throttling.

Re: What's up with all those Setmul switches?

Just for the sake of it, I've added a 3Dfx logo to the front. 😁

derSammler wrote:

Was thinking about which graphics card I should use. Have a pile of S3 ViRGE/DX, those are always a good choice. First however I tried a ATi 3D Rage Pro 8 MB, as I thought that one should be quite fast. Interestingly, it only did 25 MB/sec. in 16 and 32 bit transfer modes. Next I did try was a S3 Savage Pro [8 MB PCI] and that immediately ended my quest for a graphics card.

IMG_20171201_223602521.jpg

(holy sh*t, still can't believe how fast it is...)

I was testing more PCI video cards today. It's very interesting to see how more-modern cards have better RAM speed, but otherwise fail to keep up with older cards. See this benchmark of a Geforce4 MX 440 PCI for example:

Video transfer rate is much better than that of the S3 Savage Pro, but 8- and 16-bit as well as BIOS/DOS access is ridiculously (s)low. There are ISA cards that are even faster. 😉 These cards were no longer made with DOS in mind.