Started attempt number 2 at a multi-boot Pentium 4.

This one I'm planning around a DFI ITOX G7S620-N motherboard. It's LGA775 board, so can support faster processors than the previous S478 Asus board. It also has a couple ISA slots for native DOS sound card support.

This evening did a test Windows XP install with the Audigy 2 ZS and confirmed it works perfectly.

Next will be testing Windows 98 and seeing how that goes...

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-13, 00:47:

This one I'm planning around a DFI ITOX G7S620-N motherboard.

That's a really cool board. Dual Gigabit NICs on a Windows 98 machine is wild!

I added a 6800 GS instead of a 6600 GT to see if i could improve performances in bloodlines and...
Nope, the game behaves in the same way even though the GS is more powerful and not by a small margin, i take it bloodlines was just a mess nobody could play at constant 30 or 60fps at the time.

iraito wrote on 2024-03-13, 14:10:

I added a 6800 GS instead of a 6600 GT to see if i could improve performances in bloodlines and...
Nope, the game behaves in the same way even though the GS is more powerful and not by a small margin, i take it bloodlines was just a mess nobody could play at constant 30 or 60fps at the time.

Yeah, Bloodlines was a poorly optimized game, probably due to its troubled development.

I recently replayed it on an i5 system with a GTX970 and it finally ran smoothly at 1600x1200, with everything fully maxed out. For some games, using period correct hardware just won't give you a good experience.

One of the benefits of later drivers is the optimizations built in that are meant to alleviate inefficiencies in game code and shaders. It's possible that the newer drivers are simply better at optimizing away whatever is causing the game to lag in performance. It could equally be brute force though. Graphics performance compared to even the 6800 series has improved tremendously.

InTheStudy wrote on 2024-03-13, 01:18:

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-13, 00:47:

This one I'm planning around a DFI ITOX G7S620-N motherboard.

That's a really cool board. Dual Gigabit NICs on a Windows 98 machine is wild!

I'm liking it so far! I haven't done any testing under Win 9X yet so we'll see how it performs. Big challenge will be making sure everything has drivers.

jmphill01 wrote on 2021-10-09, 21:23:

I finally setup a test machine to try and retrieve files from some old MFM hard drives that have not seen action in decades. My setup currently is an old Packard Bell (Socket 7 150 mhz ) paired with a Gotek floppy emulator with Flash Floppy installed. This is the first time I've been successful in such an endeavor as my previous test machine, a Pentium II with a stubborn oem bios that does not really let you disable the IDE controller it seems.

Drive #2 - 42 MB Seagate ST251-0 - This one came from an IBM XT 5160 that was seriously decked out for it's time featuring color graphics, AST SixPak expansion, 3.5'' 720k floppy, math coprocessor, and a DEFINICON DSI-020 68020 coprocessor. In today's money this system as spec'd could easily pay for a new car. Unfortunately it seems that it is too late for the drive unless someone with some expertise can assist or advise in this matter. I was however able to access this drive which gave me some insights of what this machine was used for and copy a small handful of files. Essentially I would hear drive noises and get a 'sector not found' message about 99% of the time when copying a file or accessing certain directories. This is unfortunate as this drive was chock full of interesting development software, source code, and various utilities including a directory with all the software needed to enable the Definicon Coprocessor to actually work. The previous owner it seems may have been an engineer or scientist of some kind, perhaps aviation related.

do you still have that harddrive image? I am looking for the software for the DEFINICON DSI-785.

Found out about "Windows ME Second Edition". Figured I'd give it a spin on a Athlon XP 2500.

Fairly obvious why it's running so well compared to original WinME 🤣

"Feels like Millennium, runs TOO WELL to be Millennium" 😁

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-03-13, 14:44:

One of the benefits of later drivers is the optimizations built in that are meant to alleviate inefficiencies in game code and shaders. It's possible that the newer drivers are simply better at optimizing away whatever is causing the game to lag in performance. It could equally be brute force though. Graphics performance compared to even the 6800 series has improved tremendously.

Uhm that could help I guess but I'm using 2005 drivers already, I imagined the game itself is really broken in the optimization department.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-03-13, 14:23:

Yeah, Bloodlines was a poorly optimized game, probably due to its troubled development.

I recently replayed it on an i5 system with a GTX970 and it finally ran smoothly at 1600x1200, with everything fully maxed out. For some games, using period correct hardware just won't give you a good experience.

It was insanely broken, at the time I played it on 6600gt and it was good enough, with the gs it goes from 80fps to 15, now to be clear the sharpest drops are only in specific and small areas and the game is overall playable but it's still ridiculous, it seems to be mostly related to certain particles effects, so I imagine the issues being related to fillrate with textures overlapping and in scenes with a far draw distance.

More testing of the DFI G7S620-N motherboard.

Ran into an issue using CF cards. I'd previously been using them with an adapter that plugs directly into the IDE slot. That always worked fine.

However, when connecting an adapter with a ribbon cable I started having issues with the cards not booting or being recognized by FDISK. Solution was to disable UDMA mode in the BIOS. Oddly, one CF still worked with UDMA mode enabled, while three others did not.

I also did a test install of Windows 98 SE. Windows 98 SE seems to work fine.

Further did some testing adding both an Audigy 2 ZS and Orpheus II sound cards. It took a couple attempts, but I was able to get them both installed and configured. The main thing I wanted was to have CD audio and MPU-401 playback with the Orpheus, and digital audio with the Audigy 2 ZS. This did work.

Did some further testing with the Orpheus II under DOS. Currently I've reserved IRQ 5 for the main Crystal chip, and am using IRQ 3 for GUS. Everything seems to work.

This board uses a lot of system resources, so resource management is going to be a challenge.

Serviced my recently purchased Chaintech CT-6BDU. All electrolytic capacitor were suffering from the "plague".

It was somewhat hard to remove the cpu smoothing caps, the ground plains keep sucking heat from my soldering station. Had to use the hot air station to preheat the area surrounding those capacitors.

Xicor wrote on 2024-03-14, 18:52:

It was somewhat hard to remove the cpu smoothing caps, the ground plains keep sucking heat from my soldering station. Had to use the hot air station to preheat the area surrounding those capacitors.

I was going to suggest exactly this. You got it.

At worse, you can always apply low temperature solder to combat a highly thermally conductive ground plane.

I managed to recap my 686LX3 as well. I did go a bit overkill in capacitance and lowered the voltages on the caps:

- 15x Jenpo 330uF 25v (Gigabyte is by far the only I encountered to use this rating) - 15x Panasonic FJ 820uF 6.3v
- 8x Sanyo DX 1200uF 6.3v - 4x Rubycon MCZ 1500uF 16v + 4x Rubycon 3300uF 6.3v

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-14, 13:42:

More testing of the DFI G7S620-N motherboard.

Ran into an issue using CF cards. I'd previously been using them with an adapter that plugs directly into the IDE slot. That always worked fine.

However, when connecting an adapter with a ribbon cable I started having issues with the cards not booting or being recognized by FDISK. Solution was to disable UDMA mode in the BIOS. Oddly, one CF still worked with UDMA mode enabled, while three others did not.

Have you tried using an 80-wire IDE cable?

Some motherboards always detect IDE-CF adapters as being on a 40-pin cable and restrict the maximum supported UDMA.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-03-13, 21:37:

Found out about "Windows ME Second Edition". Figured I'd give it a spin on a Athlon XP 2500. […]
Show full quote

Found out about "Windows ME Second Edition". Figured I'd give it a spin on a Athlon XP 2500.

Fairly obvious why it's running so well compared to original WinME 🤣

"Feels like Millennium, runs TOO WELL to be Millennium" 😁

It's actually XP?

Yes, although very well customized to look like WinME, with a few 2000 elements mixed in.

For the love of all that is holy can we please stop saying that accursed name?

If I could snap my fingers and erase it from the time line, I *would*.

Why not try the alternative timeline Millennium? Trust me, it's worth a shot.

(seriously, this "WinME Second Edition" actually does what the original couldn't.)

PcBytes wrote on 2024-03-15, 09:02:

Why not try the alternative timeline Millennium? Trust me, it's worth a shot.

(seriously, this "WinME Second Edition" actually does what the original couldn't.)

Considering it is Windows 2000 SP3, that is no wonder. Windows GOAT Edition.