How exactly does this work? Do you have to disable certain hardware under Win98 for example and vice versa? I never tried anything like that so I have no idea.

Yes, only one gpu and only one sound card is enabled on each OS, and the remaining cards are disabled in device manager, and do not have drivers installed. That way no conflicts. At least as far as I can see. And if this works for 3, should also work with 4 cards 😀

This would also work with dual PCI/AGP cards, right? It's a very interesting build! What is your reasoning behind using 3 sound cards?

Half-Saint wrote on 2024-03-11, 19:39:

This would also work with dual PCI/AGP cards, right?

well sure, though I am not aware of any dual AGP motherboards existing

Half-Saint wrote on 2024-03-11, 19:39:

What is your reasoning behind using 3 sound cards?

Well, the X-Fi is the best sound card for winXP, an Audigy 2 just doesnt cut it. The vortex 2 is the most interesting win98 sound card, for the games that support the A3D api. Then there are some games that support directsound3d/eax and are better played on 98 than XP, for example NFS High Stakes / Road Challenge, that can work on XP but the EAX effects are broken unless you run it on win98 with a creative card with vxd drivers. Hence the Audigy. No compromise here. I think with this set of cards I can probably cover 99% of games. Theres still some oddballs though

If you wanted you could drop dosbox and still have dos gaming on actual hardware.
Use Win98 to boot into dos mode and either use the official Vortex dos driver or the modified Audigy 2 ZS ones.

No real benefit over dosbox but as your trying to push things to the limit already!

I considered playing with something like this a few years back, but ended up going a bit older with my hardware, and leaving games from the late 90's onward to my modern machine.

I built dedicated DOS/Win3.11 and Windows 95 machines. With the Win95 build keeping within my very limited space budget. 😜

The DOS build took the space an old AMD FX-8350 system used to occupy that I had running as a "server" for various things. I now use SFF/USFF/UCFF systems for my server needs.

Here: https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/2024/02/a … s-3x-retro.html
And here: https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/2023/03/m … -with-epia.html

My interest is sparked. I can't wait to see where this goes! 😀

chinny22 wrote on 2024-03-11, 23:27:

If you wanted you could drop dosbox and still have dos gaming on actual hardware.
Use Win98 to boot into dos mode and either use the official Vortex dos driver or the modified Audigy 2 ZS ones.

No real benefit over dosbox but as your trying to push things to the limit already!

Sure but neither card is great for DOS, while the emulated sb16 on dosbox is pretty good. Also can control the cpu speed in DOSBox to allow for speed sensitive games to work correctly. Guess theres also PCem that can emulate an awe32, tho dunno if an athlon 64 will be fast enough for PCem. However just realised, theres the issue with Roland MT32 and SC55, which can be emulated too, but would probably require a separate newer faster machine. And of course emulating the last 4:3 ratio consoles, the PS2, gamecube and og xbox, need way faster cpu than this. So sadly it seems a secondary machine is needed to cover absolutely every 4:3 game on a single setup. Could be one of those tiny ryzen apu boxes you can buy today, maybe can even find space inside the case of the main system to tuck it in

Very nice setup! Always love crazy multi-boot/multi-hardware setups. 😁

How are the video card outputs handled? Do you have both VGA and DVI going to the same monitor?

God Of Gaming wrote on 2024-03-12, 09:15:

[..] Sure but neither card is great for DOS, while the emulated sb16 on dosbox is pretty good. Also can control the cpu speed in […]
Show full quote

chinny22 wrote on 2024-03-11, 23:27:

If you wanted you could drop dosbox and still have dos gaming on actual hardware.
Use Win98 to boot into dos mode and either use the official Vortex dos driver or the modified Audigy 2 ZS ones.

No real benefit over dosbox but as your trying to push things to the limit already!

[..]
Sure but neither card is great for DOS, while the emulated sb16 on dosbox is pretty good. Also can control the cpu speed in DOSBox to allow for speed sensitive games to work correctly.
Guess theres also PCem that can emulate an awe32, tho dunno if an athlon 64 will be fast enough for PCem. [..]

Hi there, I don't know about an Athlon 64, but I once got an 486DX-50 emulation working at near full speed with an older PCem on an Athlon 64 X2.
Emulation of something slower (say, 486DX-33 or other CPU brand) or an SX model might be possible, thus. 😀

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-13, 01:29:

How are the video card outputs handled? Do you have both VGA and DVI going to the same monitor?

Well yes, here on the test bench vga and dvi both go to a dell 2007fp monitor and can just switch inputs with a button, however for an actual build I'd use one of my IBM C170 CRTs probably, so gonna have to think of some sort of VGA switch device

Jo22 wrote on 2024-03-13, 01:52:

Hi there, I don't know about an Athlon 64, but I once got an 486DX-50 emulation working at near full speed with an older PCem on an Athlon 64 X2.
Emulation of something slower (say, 486DX-33 or other CPU brand) or an SX model might be possible, thus. 😀

I suppose I do have an Opteron 185 I could install, its the same chip as Athlon 64 X2 FX-60 minus the unlocked multiplier. However I'm concerned about installing a 110 watt cpu on this motherboard, the VRM doesn't look very impressive and probably gonna run hot? That's why I'd like to find an AM2CPU upgrade card, theres some nice efficient cpus for AM2 I could use