Just set up what you need as you go, and have some spare gear you can throw together or reorganise to set up a rig for whatever you want to play. Plenty people on here do that one way or another. Trying to formalise it into the one perfect rig that will never change, is futile imho.

My own example:

- my main "retro" box is athlon xp + win 98 + voodoo5 + mx300 + scb7 + yamaha724 + santa cruz, plays all the early stuff i'm interested in that's not speed sensitive and plenty of windows stuff. At some point I may take one of those sound cards out and put the PowerVR back in. If only it had one more PCI slot [it has, but I'm using it for a 3C905].

- i then have my flexible system currently with slot A athlon, kyro2, v2sli, gus, innovation clone. Not perfect at all. No sound in windows right now. Disabling cache gives me 386 speeds. Some dos games give garbled display. v2sli is rather pointless. But I can change the cards and even swap the motherboard for SS7 if I need to.

Lately I've been wanting to build a Socket 7 box, something with like a Pentium 233MMX, Voodoo 3, SB16 with real OPL3, just something that would strike a good balance of performance and compatibility. I'm not entirely sure what I'd do for GM support, an AWE64 is tempting but I really want the sound of a true OPL3 as well. Maybe I'd pair the SB16 with an Aureal Vortex for some A3D goodness.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Lately I've been wanting to build a Socket 7 box, something with like a Pentium 233MMX, Voodoo 3, SB16 with real OPL3, just something that would strike a good balance of performance and compatibility. I'm not entirely sure what I'd do for GM support, an AWE64 is tempting but I really want the sound of a true OPL3 as well. Maybe I'd pair the SB16 with an Aureal Vortex for some A3D goodness.

Something like AWE32 CT3980 or CT2760 maybe? Those have GM and OPL3.

jheronimus wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Lately I've been wanting to build a Socket 7 box, something with like a Pentium 233MMX, Voodoo 3, SB16 with real OPL3, just something that would strike a good balance of performance and compatibility. I'm not entirely sure what I'd do for GM support, an AWE64 is tempting but I really want the sound of a true OPL3 as well. Maybe I'd pair the SB16 with an Aureal Vortex for some A3D goodness.

Something like AWE32 CT3980 or CT2760 maybe? Those have GM and OPL3.

Like real OPL3 or CQM-simulated OPL3?

CT2760 is real OPL3. Or mine was anyhow, I don't know if there were variants.

The Yamaha 724 cards also give real OPL3 in a PCI form factor, and some at least have XG MIDI built in.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

jheronimus wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Lately I've been wanting to build a Socket 7 box, something with like a Pentium 233MMX, Voodoo 3, SB16 with real OPL3, just something that would strike a good balance of performance and compatibility. I'm not entirely sure what I'd do for GM support, an AWE64 is tempting but I really want the sound of a true OPL3 as well. Maybe I'd pair the SB16 with an Aureal Vortex for some A3D goodness.

Something like AWE32 CT3980 or CT2760 maybe? Those have GM and OPL3.

Like real OPL3 or CQM-simulated OPL3?

Both should have real OPL3. Here is a detailed writeup on those.

Today, I really wanted if existed something like the Cyrix MediaGXM all in one (CPU + GPU + SOUND CARD) ina single chip, but something like a K6-III+ That could change the multiplier by software (2x - 6x) and also the FSB (15 - 100MHz), + Yamaha opl3 (like The libreto 110 áudio), and also a voodoo 3 inside of it.
and also, some sdram.
with that you may play games just fine from 198x till 2000 *__*
and also, ofc, the screen, a 7" crt display heh

jheronimus wrote:

I know there are people on Reddit who consider even 486/Pentium machines "too modern", but I still wonder — why does anyone need a dedicated machine for late 90s-early 00s games? None of you here mention any games that can't run properly on Socket 7 (or on modern hardware, for that matter) and A3D seems to be the only standard that probably needs dedicated hardware. Am I missing something here?

There are certain games like Terracide and anything based on the MechWarrior 2 engine (which also powers Interstate '76, Heavy Gear 1 and Battlezone) that just do NOT like NT-derived versions of Windows, for starters. Instability in the best cases (and that's AFTER XP compatibility hacks), outright refusing to start in the worst cases.

I need a native Win98SE machine for those, especially if they support A3D (Heavy Gear II via that Interactive Around-Sound middleware, for instance) and I want them to sound right.

I don't know which games won't run properly on Socket 7 or newer, but if they run properly under DOSBox, then I don't need to build a computer for them. DOSBox has come a remarkably long way with modern forks even boasting MT-32 emulation built in, no need for redirecting external MIDI to Munt.

ibm5155 wrote:

Today, I really wanted if existed something like the Cyrix MediaGXM all in one (CPU + GPU + SOUND CARD) ina single chip, but som […]
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Today, I really wanted if existed something like the Cyrix MediaGXM all in one (CPU + GPU + SOUND CARD) ina single chip, but something like a K6-III+ That could change the multiplier by software (2x - 6x) and also the FSB (15 - 100MHz), + Yamaha opl3 (like The libreto 110 áudio), and also a voodoo 3 inside of it.
and also, some sdram.
with that you may play games just fine from 198x till 2000 *__*
and also, ofc, the screen, a 7" crt display heh

I normally don't like such all-in-one designs since it ensures that you're just going to have a bunch of subpar components on one chip that you can't upgrade without replacing the entire thing, but it's understandably the prevailing mobile implementation today, hence why we say "SoC" instead of just "CPU" or "GPU" for a modern smartphone/tablet processor.

There's also the problem of some games inherently looking best on one GPU, like Splinter Cell on GeForce 4 (dynamic shadow buffers) or anything that supports TRUFORM/N-Patches on Radeon 8500, and since you mentioned sound cards, the whole A3D/EAX thing all over again...