Ya know, ever since I saw your sig at the beginning of this thread, I've been trying to remember the model number. I even went so far as to look for pics of my old machine in my moms photo albums but I can't find any that show the front of the machine.

I know the bezel was 't as flared as yours, and it had a slot load 24x cd drive, p200mmx, 32mb ram, 4.3g HD and I want to say a soundmax chip? Sounds familiar.

I remember we got it in like summer or early fall 97 at Sears. We took it over a P2-233 next to it because it had a better monitor/printer bundle and they even threw in an external zip drive. I want to say its a 4800 series? That sounds about right.

Edit: It was a Presario 4808 I believe. I'm going to look that up in a second.

Edit 2: Yep, Presario 4808. Goddamn it feels good to have finally remembered that.

Well, the board arrived in the mail today! It even had a p200mmx sitting in the socket. I thought it'd be a 233 but oh well. This is the same chip I originally had way back when so it's an extra point to nostalgia for me.

I plugged in my tnt and a 64mb pc100 stick and booted it just to make sure it works...and BAM! Booted right up:

It recognized the memory and the chip right off. The BIOS is still a waaaaay older 1.10 version. I'll need to update that right off. I don't have a heatsink for it or anything, but I only had it one for a couple of minutes to make sure it POSTed and to look into the BIOS, so it didn't get toooo hot I guess. Not too hot to touch anyway.

Clearer pic of what it's got. It's only the 512k cache version, but that's ok. I can stick 128MB in there and have it all be cacheable, and that's still more than I had planned to use.

Here's a pic of the mess I have at my old machine station. The bare board is sitting on top of my P3 machine, along with my home file server on the left and a couple of XP machines in various states of assembly on the right.

Here's a close up of the board:

Also, I found a guy selling a couple K6-2s. He had a 475 and a 500 for just a couple bucks a piece, so I nabbed them. The 475 even comes with a heatsink/fan. I think it's just a regular socket7 kit but that's ok, I don't plan on running these chips on anything other than stock so it'll do.

Just need to order that wavetable daughterboard and I'll be set once it all arrives.

Edit: Just ordered the wavetable card so I'm set. Once everything arrives, I'll be ready to go.

Very nice senrew!

I'm pretty sure you can overclock that 200mhz to 233mhz if you so desire 😀

So, I got the chips and hsf. Can I run the p200 bare against the hsf or does even something this old need thermal paste?

Took a closer look at the actual chips and noticed something...

The chips are still in their sockets, and the damn things were CUT out of a board. I'm guessing I must have bought them from a scrapper or something. Goddamn I'm worried about the static that was generated during the cutting...

Oh well, I'll deal with that later. The hsf should be just fine though.

So...to thermal paste the p200mmx or not? Anyone?

You should always use paste. Just put a tiny dab on the center of the P200. I've also seen OEMs use a thermal pad with these CPUs instead of paste.

🤣 @ the cut out sockets

Cut out sockets... Man, that's brutal

I have 233MMX under a thermal pad, works well.

thermal pad, paste, just don't let any air between the cpu and the hs 😉

Got my SB16 in the mail today. Another Beautiful trade with Clint from Lazy Game Reviews...

Anyway, it's a CT2940.

I've seen a few other pics of this card on the boards here, but noticed that for some of you, the whole board isn't populated. What's the difference there?

Can anyone tell me what I'm looking at here? My intention is to use this for pure DOS games for digital sound, and then use the daughterboard on the Vortex2 card I'm getting for music.

How nice can I expect the quality of digital sound on this thing for DOS games compared to the emulation from the Vortex2?

Anyone have any information or a link to the original manual for this to tell me what I can plug into the CD connector or what that second connector on the right is for? These things weren't supposed to have daughterboard connectivity, were they?

Got the Vortex2 card in the mail today:

Thing is brand new. So nice. Means it'll have at least the original drivers in it.

I had actually never heard of this make or brand until it was mentioned in this thread. It seems like the company doesn't exist anymore, at least not by the complete lack of information I can find on the web.

senrew wrote:

Got the Vortex2 card in the mail today:

I also ordered it 😀

Haven't tried out yet though but I'm sure it will work fine.

Well, I was more curious about capabilities and such. I have the sb16 that I'll be using for pure dos, along with the daughtercard on the vortex2 for music. May play with the vortex for comparisons.

senrew wrote:

Got my SB16 in the mail today. Another Beautiful trade with Clint from Lazy Game Reviews... […]
Show full quote

Got my SB16 in the mail today. Another Beautiful trade with Clint from Lazy Game Reviews...

Anyway, it's a CT2940.

I've seen a few other pics of this card on the boards here, but noticed that for some of you, the whole board isn't populated. What's the difference there?

Can anyone tell me what I'm looking at here? My intention is to use this for pure DOS games for digital sound, and then use the daughterboard on the Vortex2 card I'm getting for music.

How nice can I expect the quality of digital sound on this thing for DOS games compared to the emulation from the Vortex2?

Anyone have any information or a link to the original manual for this to tell me what I can plug into the CD connector or what that second connector on the right is for? These things weren't supposed to have daughterboard connectivity, were they?

I didn't know Clint was selling stuff.

That SB16 unfortunately doesn't have a real OPL3 chip, it uses Creative's CQM. Probably why he got rid of it?
**Duke Nukem voice: I don't like CQM!**

I found an AWE32 which has a real OPL3 chip on ebay, a CT3780, consider that if you decide you don't like CQM ($36 isn't TOO bad compared to the prices of other ones). Or there are different OPL3 variants too, like Crystal FM (my favourite), ESS's ESFM, OPTi (which I have yet to try, heard it's gross), and probably some others floating around.

In combination with a voodoo2, I like Matrox Mystique (they perform better than the Millenniums, I swear!), or Trio64 as it is 2D-only.
--> I'm not so much a big fan of nvidia. Those who agree with me, know why I'm of that opinion.

Heh, no. Clint is not selling off his stuff. This was a straight trade. I've donated a bunch of games towards his collection (gotten a few name drops in the videos too, so that's awesome), and this time I needed hardware so I suggested a trade. The sb16 is just for max compatibility when in Pure does anyway so the lack of music quality on it doesn't really matter since I'll be running music through the daughter card on the vortex anyway.

Actually, about a year ago, I went through a great hardware purge and tossed a bunch of stuff that would have been very helpful right about now. The one I regret most was my Diamond Stealth 2000 3D Pro 4mb card...

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

senrew wrote:

Got the Vortex2 card in the mail today:

I also ordered it 😀

Haven't tried out yet though but I'm sure it will work fine.

Hope you will be happy with it as I am with my card 😀

I'm very anxious to try out the 3D positioning over headphones. Growing up, I was always using headphones because even the shitty bundled speakers that came with my compaq were too loud from my room for the family. I never got into the 3D sound thing at the time, so this part is all new to me.

Does it work with just any set of headphones, or will specific features of certain headphones work better?

The last thing I was waiting for came in the mail today. I'll be doing the actual build on Saturday morning and I'll be taking pictures along the way.

I just have a few questions left. Since I'll be using two sound cards, how should I setup the mix between the two? Can I just bridge from out on one to the input of the other or should I find some kind of external mixer to use?

I just run the output of one card into the line-in of the other.

And with A3D you can use any stereo headphones.

Next question, though this probably deserves its own thread, are there any period correct capture cards or software I can use to capture my gameplay? I intend to use clips in the gaming diary page I'll be starting soon.

Also, with that same piece of hardware, I'd like to be able to use it as a monitor for old gaming consoles, genesis, nes, etc and play them fullscreen and capture at the same time. Will anything of the period capture and produce youtube quality video and sound? Nothing special needed, but it has to not come out out of sync audio/video wise. Or, should I just use some other solution on my modern machines for that purpose?

I'd like a one system solution for this if possible.

Why do you want a period capture device? They are crap in terms of quality when you compare them to what exist today. The marked for period capture device are very limited. The two I know about are the Matrox Mystique Rainbow Runner module and a Creative product which I don't remember the name of atm, but was mentioned in a 95-96 issue of CGW.

The Rainbow Runner module works in the same way as a USB capture stick that you can get on Ebay for a few bucks. Input signals are composite and S-VIDEO. This means you need to have a video card with TV-OUT capability. There can be loads of problems in DOS with this method as it is no guarantee that the card will output every resolution and refreshrate so that the capture card can process it.

The other card is from Creative, but works on VGA signals. I don't know how rare this card is, but according to the article in CGW it just worked on some games/resolutions. On both these cards you will need two computers, one to run the game to output the videosignal and one to record.

Edit: Here are the Creative products: http://web.archive.org/web/19961221173834/htt … o/ps_video.html

As you need two computers I don't see why you want to use a period capture device. These old machines can't do both, there just aren't enough CPU power to do it in an acceptable quality. The possible bitrates and hardware accelerated encoding is minimal and quality and framerate suffers.

Actually framerate is the worst problem when using software capture programs on old computers. When I tried to use a software capture program on my my 1.4 ghz P3 I could just capture in 11-12 frames from a program that was running in 30 (frame limit). Also those programs only work in Windows.

As you may see if you want to use period devices, then don't expect very good quality, not compared to what else is out there on Youtube. If you want to be serious about it, getting a Avermedia VGA (or similar) HD capture card is the only way to go. I've also made a thread here on Vogons on how to capture unsupported resolutions and refreshrates on the card.

Capturing the VGA signal gives a much better quality than with S-VIDEO. Before I managed to capture the VGA signal I did some tests with S-VIDEO. Here is a short clip of Destruction Derby on the S3 Virge captured using S-VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RA8WHP3QFY Then compare that to my comparison video captured with VGA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFVcYvOvCrs. Bitrate and capture framerate is the same in both videos. The only difference is the source signal. Another advantage with capturing with VGA is that the signals are already progressive, but S-VIDEO is interlaced and thus will require post processing to get them deinterlaced, again more work.