A RTL8139/NE2000 compatible PCI ethernet card, and maybe a Voodoo2 if your pass-through cable can reach your onboard VGA, just so you can play some of the vewdew titles, though I got a feeling the onboard vga might suck, so it's either that, or a Voodoo3 PCI. (yeah V3 is a bit overkill)

I'd put a K6-III+ in it and clock it to 400Mhz using the 6x multi (which is the same as 2x multi), 256MB of memory, then put a V3 in it and perhaps a NIC or a sound card by choice.
But then I'd put ME on it 😁

PIII 500mhz ati pro rage 8mb sb16 512mb ram 8x cdrom

dosquest wrote:

PIII 500mhz

Not Socket 7

dosquest wrote:

ati pro rage 8mb

*vomit*

dosquest wrote:

sb16

Potentially redundant

dosquest wrote:

512mb ram

Overkill

dosquest wrote:

8x cdrom

Considering the period the said machine is from, it probably already has one.

dosquest wrote:

PIII 500mhz ati pro rage 8mb sb16 512mb ram 8x cdrom

PIII won't fit in the socket unless you try with a hammer 😜

Tetrium wrote:

dosquest wrote:

PIII 500mhz ati pro rage 8mb sb16 512mb ram 8x cdrom

PIII won't fit in the socket unless you try with a hammer 😜

I've done that. It didn't end well.

Okay, actually I never did it, but I thought about it once...

And ATI rage pro 8mb, vomit is right. My P233 MMX box with a Voodoo Rush (4MB texture, 2MB framebuffer) could throw down fiercely against a friends 400mhz PII with an ATI Rage 8mb piece. Yes, the rage really was that much of a steaming pile, even in directx titles.

As for the original post. I agree with the idea of adding a V2 for 3d, and a NIC card for networking. The K6-2+ is also a nice idea if it will work, but be careful not to blow out your VRM's. Often people got a few years out of such a setup and it died, and if you need more horsepower now, it's worth it to buy more horsepower rather than risk killing working old hardware.

Perhaps an external MIDI device if cost is no object? You've already got SB 16/SB PRO compatibility, so external Midi should enable you to have a truly great DOS gaming experience.

SavantStrike wrote:

I've done that. It didn't end well. […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote:

dosquest wrote:

PIII 500mhz ati pro rage 8mb sb16 512mb ram 8x cdrom

PIII won't fit in the socket unless you try with a hammer 😜

I've done that. It didn't end well.

Okay, actually I never did it, but I thought about it once...

And ATI rage pro 8mb, vomit is right. My P233 MMX box with a Voodoo Rush (4MB texture, 2MB framebuffer) could throw down fiercely against a friends 400mhz PII with an ATI Rage 8mb piece. Yes, the rage really was that much of a steaming pile, even in directx titles.

As for the original post. I agree with the idea of adding a V2 for 3d, and a NIC card for networking. The K6-2+ is also a nice idea if it will work, but be careful not to blow out your VRM's. Often people got a few years out of such a setup and it died, and if you need more horsepower now, it's worth it to buy more horsepower rather than risk killing working old hardware.

Perhaps an external MIDI device if cost is no object? You've already got SB 16/SB PRO compatibility, so external Midi should enable you to have a truly great DOS gaming experience.

You should try it, it's not as easy as it seems on first sight 😜

And usually if a board supports K6-III, they'll usually work with the mobiles as well 😉

No 75mhz bus speed option? 🙁 If your mobo had that, it would be my 1st "upgrade"... 75mhz x3 = 225mhz. Or change out that 200 for a 233MMX and run that at 262mhz. Or a K6-2/3 if your board supports them, though those run scarily hot and I'd worry about motherboard longevity with the increased power draw.

That apart, I'd say looking at the rest of your system, I'd just add a network card (if it's a networked machine) and a V2/ Banshee/ V3 pci.

Err... Socket5 or Socket7 motherboard?

sgt76 wrote:

No 75mhz bus speed option? 🙁 If your mobo had that, it would be my 1st "upgrade"... 75mhz x3 = 225mhz. Or change out that 200 for a 233MMX and run that at 262mhz. Or a K6-2/3 if your board supports them, though those run scarily hot and I'd worry about motherboard longevity with the increased power draw.

That apart, I'd say looking at the rest of your system, I'd just add a network card (if it's a networked machine) and a V2/ Banshee/ V3 pci.

Yeah longitevity is a real problem. A lot of 430TX and 430HX motherboards only could deliver 7A max (the Pentium 233 MMX draws 6.5A at a higher voltage to keep the motherboard from dying, and 7A at nominal voltages). The 430NX and 430LX chipsets are probably even worse, but they might not be on the boards where the VRE capable VRM was added with an expansion card. Short story long, even when the board will deliver 2.2-2.5V (some of the SS7 chips ran at 2.4V), that was often just because the board manufacturer figured why not.

The trouble was the target market. SS7 boards were a year or two newer and were designed to deliver enough power to power the SS7 chips. Socket 7 boards with the 430TX and HX chipsets were never designed for this and as a result could be running dangerously out of spec. I read one report where a guy modded his bios for the SS7 chips, and added a resistor to lower the voltage to the chip. Current draw was a little over the nominal draw for the motherboard. He said it ran great for about two years, and then it quit.

Considering how cheap SS7 boards were, and how underpowered computers were at the time I can see where the attraction is. A new computer with a Pentium II or even a Celeron was expensive. A SS7 chip was cheap and gave you another year or two of gaming and another 5 years of office productivity. If the old board died in a year or two, SS7 boards were cheap any ways.

Thank you for all the replies so far! I'm reading through them all (except maybe dosquest's) and i guess the general consensus is to either add a Voodoo 2 (the pass-through cable would reach, no problem) or a Voodoo 3.
The onboard graphics are crappy but 4mb should be fine for running dos and windows 95 with the Voodoo 2 taking over 3d in games. Voodoo 3 PCI also sounds like a great option, since it would be an all-around card. I have to dig in to my boxes of hardware.

I guess I have missed threads that explain why you need a NIC card in old computers like this one? I'm not going to be browsing the net with that thing, so what exactly is the NIC card needed for this? Anything i need to put on that computer would come on a cd/dvd or the SD->IDE adapter I have installed on Secondary IDE.

How is the ESS when it comes to sound? Would it not be more beneficial to use the second PCI slot to install a better sound card, like an MX300 with a midi db for example?

sgt76 wrote:

No 75mhz bus speed option?

sgt76, I further researched the board and found all the available speeds and here they are:
50, 55, 60, 66, 68.5, 75, 83
Mult freq: 2x,2.5x,3x,3.5x,4x,4.5x,5x,5.5x and 6x (which as Tetrium mentioned is same as 2x)

Gamecollector wrote:

Err... Socket5 or Socket7 motherboard?

It's a SS7

Thinking a bit more about it, it seems the problem with these boards (the normal Socket 7 ones) is that the lower the CPU voltage is set and the higher the energy consumption of the CPU is, the more the board will be stressed, particularly with a regular K6-III.
However, if underclocking a K6-III to, say, 200Mhz, the K6-III would have a guessed power consumption of around 8W (I guessed this by halving the K6-III/400's power consumption as stated on this website) with a voltage set @ 2.2v

The theoretical benefit of this would be the increased cacheable area. But in the end it's the choice of the owner to use a K6-III in such a way 😉

Jan3Sobieski wrote:

Thank you for all the replies so far! I'm reading through them all (except maybe dosquest's) and i guess the general consensus i […]
Show full quote

Thank you for all the replies so far! I'm reading through them all (except maybe dosquest's) and i guess the general consensus is to either add a Voodoo 2 (the pass-through cable would reach, no problem) or a Voodoo 3.
The onboard graphics are crappy but 4mb should be fine for running dos and windows 95 with the Voodoo 2 taking over 3d in games. Voodoo 3 PCI also sounds like a great option, since it would be an all-around card. I have to dig in to my boxes of hardware.

I guess I have missed threads that explain why you need a NIC card in old computers like this one? I'm not going to be browsing the net with that thing, so what exactly is the NIC card needed for this? Anything i need to put on that computer would come on a cd/dvd or the SD->IDE adapter I have installed on Secondary IDE.

How is the ESS when it comes to sound? Would it not be more beneficial to use the second PCI slot to install a better sound card, like an MX300 with a midi db for example?

sgt76 wrote:

No 75mhz bus speed option?

sgt76, I further researched the board and found all the available speeds and here they are:
50, 55, 60, 66, 68.5, 75, 83
Mult freq: 2x,2.5x,3x,3.5x,4x,4.5x,5x,5.5x and 6x (which as Tetrium mentioned is same as 2x)

Gamecollector wrote:

Err... Socket5 or Socket7 motherboard?

It's a SS7

I'd use a NIC simply for having it networkable with other computers of mine, it's not really necessary 😉

I used an ESS Solo-1 once and it worked alright for what I used it for (which was old 9x games). But mind you, I'm not particularly high-demanding when it comes to audio quality. I'm more of a "Well, as long as I hear sound, I'm fine with it" person 😜

About the onboard graphics card, iirc it was a SiS 6236 or something which imo "really" sucked. I'd say even a Virge would be better 😜

And if you have any further questions, feel free to ask! 😉

I would feel too limited with this motherboard. The onboard sound being SB compatible helps it a bit, but there's going to be other things that you will want to add and two expansion slots wouldn't do it for me. I'd need two video cards, one for Glide and another for DX/OpenGL and there goes your two expansion slots already. No ISA slots also eliminates a lot of the more desirable sound cards for expanding your system's sound capabilities beyond a single SB16/SB Pro. For testing purposes or to be able to slap together a working machine from a box of spare parts that aren't otherwise being used to sell on ebay it might be useful but not for a machine that I would want to use as my main vintage gaming rig.

Tetrium wrote:

I'm more of a "Well, as long as I hear sound, I'm fine with it"

Haha, I'm "kinda" the same way, but I do get annoyed by clicking/popping/cracking noises especially with poor drivers in windows games.

sliderider wrote:

I would feel too limited with this motherboard.

I agree with you a 100% but this will not be my main SS7 gaming rig. I look at it more as a scenario. It's more of a "if this is all I can have, what can I do with it?" It's not a perfect motherboard, but the whole computer is tiny, almost half the size of normal desktops and has it's charm.

sliderider wrote:

I'd need two video cards, one for Glide and another for DX/OpenGL and there goes your two expansion slots already.

Since I'm assuming the onboard video does not support OpenGL and has crappy DX performance, wouldn't a V3 accomplish both to a certain extent?

sliderider wrote:

No ISA slots also eliminates a lot of the more desirable sound cards for expanding your system's sound capabilities beyond a single SB16/SB Pro.

Yes, that's why I'm trying to figure out what PCI card would give me the best all-around compatibility. I know swayee praises the Vortex2 cards when it comes to DOS and they're good enough for DX5 in windows, slap on a wavetable daughterboard on that and it should be decent.

What do you guys/gals think?

Jan3Sobieski wrote:

sgt76, I further researched the board and found all the available speeds and here they are: 50, 55, 60, 66, 68.5, 75, 83 Mult fr […]
Show full quote

sgt76, I further researched the board and found all the available speeds and here they are:
50, 55, 60, 66, 68.5, 75, 83
Mult freq: 2x,2.5x,3x,3.5x,4x,4.5x,5x,5.5x and 6x (which as Tetrium mentioned is same as 2x)

Gamecollector wrote:

Err... Socket5 or Socket7 motherboard?

It's a SS7

75 and 83mhz bus speed options and SS7... nice- you're fully sorted out on the cpu front then.

nothing beats real ISA sound card power :p

schlang wrote:

nothing beats real ISA sound card power :p

So true...

Retro PC#3: 386DX-40, 32MB, CL-GD5434, SB Pro, GUS MAX, PAS

When did you get the PAS?

I admit I still haven't even seen one on eBay. Don't want to know what they sell for...

Jan3Sobieski wrote:

I agree with you a 100% but this will not be my main SS7 gaming rig. I look at it more as a scenario. It's more of a "if this is all I can have, what can I do with it?" It's not a perfect motherboard, but the whole computer is tiny, almost half the size of normal desktops and has it's charm.

Actually, I just remembered I once build a system around a SiS-5598 myself some years back!

No AGP, no SDRAM and no 100Mhz FSB. I ended up with 98SE, a K6-2/333 underclocked and running @ 4 x 75Mhz (iirc the board supports a-synchronous FSB, the rest was running @ 66Mhz), 4 x 16MB EDO, a SB 64 ISA and *OUCH* a Trident Blade 3D! 😜

This was also the rig which was my first experiment with a custom-made suspended harddrive. It was quite slow but I blame that on the graphics card and/or the use of an ISA sound card.

The SiS chipsets also support linburst, which is made specifically for Cyrix chips.

Iirc the board also had a 64MB maximum cacheable area, just like TX even though the chipset could cache more if they put more cache memory on the board.
I kinda view these boards as similar to TX, except these boards usually come in µATX while TX ATX boards are usually full-ATX.