For me, DOS only means Pentium Socket 7 or older.. anything else just doesn't make sense.

My DOS system is a 386DX-40 w/ 8 Megs of RAM and a 100 Meg hard drive at the moment.

I've got Windows 95 on a 486DX2-66 system and Windows 98 on a Pentium 120.

Well, gotta work with what I've got, and eventually I intend to play some cpu hungry flight sims.

My other idea was to offload all of the Win9x gaming to the faster machine and reserve the second machine to DOS duties. Well, the second machine and the last one I picked up are so close spec wise there's not much difference. (Both boards are ASUS P2B based).

Ok, let me present it from a different angle.

Since these two machines are for the most part identical in respect to the motherboard and cpu, the main distinction is splitting up duties to accommodate sound requirements based on OS needs. I've done the multiple sound card route and it was just too much of a pain in the ass.

Machine 1 will have the P3 clocked back up to 500mhz and will be strictly for early Win9x games. (I'm considering trying to use the p3-933 for this, but that's a project for another time). Machine 2 will have only DOS duties, either via Win95 or 98 with msdos.sys set to boot straight to the command prompt, or a direct DOS 7 only install via Mau's methods as in his videos.

Machine 2 will have the older parts to facilitate DOS's needs for sound and video.

The main question that will determine what parts are I use are which of the video card options, either the built in Rage Pro or the other cards I mentioned, will give me the best video compatibility, taking into account the issues I have with TIE Fighter, as that tends to be my litmus test for video needs on a DOS setup.

The fact that the DOS machine will be so overpowered is just a way to make use of what I already have without going nuts trying to acquire older hardware. PLUS, I'll need the extra horsepower as most of the games I'll be playing on it are later DOS games that need DOS sound setups without worrying about sound blaster emulation via some PCI card black magic. Jane's USNF family of sims, Longbow, the Terminator games, Lands of Lore, etc. They all need a little more oomph, plus with the voodoo1 card I'll get the chance to try out dos glide games on a system that can keep up with the voodoo.

I'll have to keep the board running at a 66mhz fsb so that the voodoo card will run, at least until I acquire one of the faster 66mhz bus PII chips to replace it.

24 video long playlist showing why Super Socket 7 is the "best" option for a dedicated DOS machine 😀

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_cc838XPm4&li … _eeUW74SzgbVqyX

Many of the best DOS games have issues running on a machine like a Pentium 3.

My second choice would be DOSBox with MUNT.

For the P3 approach you are suggesting you could as well use your "Playground" PC with booting to DOS. I don't see much of a difference there.
It is way overpowered for DOS only, most DOS games play well starting from a local bus 486DX2-66. For very demanding stuff you can go up to a fast S7.
Also if you say your oldest limit is about 1994, most games will run from within a Win9x dosbox fine. And already with a Pentium system the performance hit compared to plain DOS is negligible. (Considering you plug 16 MB memory or more)

I would also like to remind you that performance in DOS games on newer hardware is much more related to FSB/memory speed than to CPU clock. You should use TOPBench to get an impression.

I say go for it, its not authentic but it does the job fine for 99% of later dos games
My P3 1Ghz machine spends half its time playing dos games such as the C&C's, the 1st NFS, Dooms and Duke3d all without any problem. even earlier games like Street Rod are fine. I used to boot into dos and use a ISA soundcard, but as the games ran fine from Win98, I dont bother anymore and run from windows. I have had the games using the Audigy 2 ZS, but prefer the onboard Yamaha card for the midi. I would think your live would work much the same.
The only games that ran fast are the scroll speeds in Warcraft 1 & 2, but I just use the mini map now.
I'm also using a Ti4600 which gives mixed results with Duke3d, but havent really tried to work out what going on with that yet.

chinny22 wrote:

The only games that ran fast are the scroll speeds in Warcraft 1 & 2, but I just use the mini map now.

For WC2 you can get the BNET edition for Windows which fixes this. It lacks MIDI support though, but the music it has was supposedly recorded on a SC-88, so it's good enough in that respect.

Guys...you're all making me face my laziness where it comes to just finding another atx case to house my AX59Pro and start over with a p200mmx or something like that.

Oh well, guess the effort needs to happen.

So, any recommendations out of the video cards I mentioned?

This might help you: http://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

You have an AX59Pro? Such a great board 😀

I have one and it's one of my favourites. A great foundation for a Super Socket 7 Time-Machine!

Yeah, probably just going to go that route. Still haven't decided on what cpu to use though. I've got a socket 5 p100, the p200mmx that came in the board, and a pair of K6-2s, at 475 and 500mhz. Going through your videos now, specifically the cpu ones to try and pick one.

I've noticed you bounced around a bit in the videos on what hardware to settle on. What did your Time Machine eventually end up with?

d1stortion wrote:

For WC2 you can get the BNET edition for Windows which fixes this.

yeh I pretty sure it was here I found out BNET edition works ok, I even "found" a copy.
But I only own the dos version so I thought I'd be honest in case someone from Blizzard came round to visit.
(dispite the fact I NO-CD crack all my games, so im still screwed)

I have to chuckle a bit. I read the title "DOS only rig" and the first thing I see is Windows 98 Second Edition.

DOS only in my book is just that, no secondary OS or "Oh btw I stuck Windows 3.11 in there". "DOS only" should just boot to good old C prompt or a DOS menu at best. Best of luck with your system.

Well, I bit the bullet and pulled apart the Playground rig to use the case for the AX59Pro. Everything is together and seems to be working, but for some reason, the POST shows the chip running at 120mhz.

FSB is at 66, multi is at 3x according to the switches on the board. I dropped it to the 1.5x setting to see if it would give me something different and it displayed 105mhz, so that setting works. Not sure what others will do but I'll try running through the different multis and see what I get.

Edit - Here's what I found:
1.5x = 105mhz
2.0x = 90mhz
2.5x = 105mhz
3.0x = 120mhz
4.0x = 105mhz

Is the chip bad? Something wrong with the motherboard?

Edit 2:

Looks like the board itself may be bad. I swapped over to a k6-2 500, and with the correct jumper settings, it shows up as k62 @ 416mhz.

Not sure if this is something I need to worry about in the long run. Is the board going to die or something? I can't find any blown or leaking caps on it.

416 is obviously 5x 83 MHZ.
But how did you measure the CPU clock? With ctcm7r ?

I'm going based on the settings both silk screened on the board and in the manual, thankfully they match up. For the actual clock number, I'm going by what's displayed during POST.

Ok, I'm completely lost. These numbers are all over the dam place. If I set the FSB per the jumper settings to 66mhz, it averages out to a 50mhz setting depending on the multi I choose. If I set it to 100mhz FSB, it's closer to 83mhz. What the fuck is up with this board?

That's a shame.

Do you want to take a photo of the jumper settings and I can compare it to my board?

I think I have it figured out.

I loaded up the rig with the Acer sound card, my Riva and voodoo1, and this old scsi card I had salvaged from the DOA 486 I was given. I said fuck it and tried to install some games with the k6-2 running at whatever it decided to run at. Any MIDI music that played was running way too fast. So, I swapped out the Acer card for my crappy SB16 ct-2940 and pulled out the scsi card just in case. On the next reboot, the machine reported the correct speed. 66mhz FSB with the 3.5x multi gave me a K6-2 running at 233mhz.

I honestly have no idea how the ISA cards would have screwed up the reporting the correct cpu speeds but hey, it works now.

I just need to figure out why the sb16 isn't playing music off of the daughtercard I have plugged into it. Mixerset has everything on, I don't have a joystick plugged in (which is my next issue to figure out, MIDI and joystick at the same time).