DonutKing wrote:

I don't know about the rest of the world, but here in Australia computers were damn expensive, and people would run them for 5 years or more before upgrading. Seeing a Pentium class machine in regular use in 99/2000 was not unusual at all.

yep, we and a friend were still using 486's up till late 97/ early 98 and that was still the "family computer" not just the kids hand me down.

I approve but would have been authentic and stuck with the vibra, No rules against external Midi now though

chinny22 wrote:

I approve but would have been authentic and stuck with the vibra, No rules against external Midi now though

Yep a Vibra16S was in the mix when choosing a sound card but the only one I had on hand (after getting rid of several over recent years) appeared to be dodgy; the channels were mixed up. They’re a good option though I agree.

The other card that came close was the CMI8330 based Audio Excel 3D - SB16 compatible, OK FM, and great software make it an attractive option; sound quality isn’t great though unfortunately.

I’ve made a few refinements to this machine, woo! The 6x86MX PR233 (188MHz) wasn’t quite up to the challenge of running Duke3D at 640X480 and NetworkQ Rally smoothly, so I’ve upgraded to a Cyrix MII 300. This thing is still just a 6x86 at heart so meets my nostalgia requirements, and as an added bonus it’s actual clock speed is 233MHz so I don’t have to mess around with my LED MHz display 😎

The RedHill guide says of this chip: "In reality, calling it a '300' was not justified — but it was a good little mainstream part just the same". Not exactly a gushing review but I’m happy with it – it seems to run cooler than the PR233 and pumps out an acceptable frame rate for the SVGA games this machine was built to run. Windows 98 flies along and even Quake 1 is quite playable in software mode (at low res).

The second change I made was to the sound card – the ES1688 based AudioDrive is an excellent card but for whatever reason the "AudioDrive" option didn’t work in most games (where offered) when running them in a Windows 98 DOS box; I had to boot to pure DOS. A small detail but that sort of thing keeps me awake at night. After flirting with a couple of Creative cards I finally accepted that I don’t need an FM option in this machine, which is aimed at GM or Redbook era games. With that requirement off the list then the choice became clear – the Aopen AW32 Pro (a rebadged Magic S23A). This is a great implementation of the CS4232-KQ chipset:

- No nasty pops on startup / shutdown
- Default levels are perfect, no messing with the mixer is required
- Really nice software for both DOS / Win 3.1 and Windows95
- Excellent wavetable via the CS9233-CQ chipset; only 1MB but sounds great I think and again the levels are perfect
- Beautiful sounding SB Pro
- WSS implementation that works with everything I’ve thrown at it, and excellent sound quality
- Onboard amp can be turned off via jumpers

If it had descent FM then this would be a killer card, but of course there is an unwritten law that all ISA sound cards will have at least one downside. I have other machines for FM only games and I can use the trusty PC speaker if I want to mess with non-GM games.

I'm really happy with this PC now, let the Rally Championship begin 😈