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Thin client HP t5720 Win98/DOS experience

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First post, by s0ren

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Hi everyone. I have been leeching tips & tricks on this forum for a couple of weeks in relation to my own retro computing project, so i thought i would share my experience.

I decided to go with a thin client setup, and went for a HP t5720 with a nVidia Quatro NVS 280 (its one of the standard configurations) running Windows 98SE - even though i have 486 and Pentium I computers on storage. The setup is as follows:

HP t5720 512MB RAM w. Quatro NVS 280 64MB 30€
Sandisk Extreme pro compact flash 16GB 32€
DMS-59 to dual VGA 8€ (bummer, but the video card has no other output)
CF to 44-pin IDE + IDE cable = 5€
~ 75€ total incl. delivery

Drivers:
SiS 7012 PCI Audio Driver
VIA Rhine NDIS5 V384A ethernet driver
81.98 forceware nVidia VGA driver
SiS UVGA3 373 for the on-board VGA (i just tested it once)
Native USB disk driver for Windows 98SE v3.3
VDMSound beta 3 for Windows 98

Pros:
- The hardware is newer and thus more reliable
- Has Windows 98 drivers for everything
- Great performance
- Low power consumption and low noise
- Legacy USB support for USB mouse/keyboard
- Low price
Cons:
- No native soundblaster support (for dos games)

Disk:
I went for the Compact Flash solution, although wear might be an issue.
In config.sys i added ACCDATE values for the C drive to avoid writing to the disk every time i opened a file to set the "last accessed date", and set ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 in system.ini. Both configurations work as anticipated.
I also left 4GB free on the CF card so that the build-in wear leveling functionality has some unused space to use. If you are very paranoid, you could buy the 100+€ Transcend industrial grade SLC compact flash cards and get about 4 times longer lifespan, in which case i would not worry about wear at all. Afaik, only Transcend is still producing SLC compact flash cards. Everything else seems to be MLC or TLC. There are cheaper 16GB CF cards out there, but to my very limited experience, i have found that the Sandisk Extreme cards are of better quality than for instance the "Ultra" versions.

Video:
The nVidia Quatro NVS 280 offers excellent performance for playing Unreal Tournament in full HD and Half-Life 1, and thats about the newest games i want to play. It does not work at all with FIFA soccer 98, 99, and 2000 though. I also tried with nGlide but at most i got a 99% black screen with a lot of glitches going on. GTA1 is also flickering, and build games like Duke3D needs the nolfb patch to work in VESA modes.
I tried the on-board SiS GPU as well, but then i could not get sound to work in some games like Duke Nukem 3D (!). The on-board supported screen resolutions also left a lot to desire.

Audio:
Some games, like Duke Nukem 3D works fine with the Windows 98 supplied soundblaster emulation. I installed VDMSound for some dos games, but it only works with a few titles. Astrofire, Magic Carpet, and others, do not work at all with neither Win98 sound or VDMSound unfortunately. Also, if i have used VDMSound, and then later run Duke Nukem 3D, the windows 98 soundblaster emulation thing doesnt work and i have to reboot - even if i run the VDMSound unload programb (btw anyone know how to disable the tip of the day popup?).

Software installation:
Installing Windows 98 directly from USB was a nogo, as the USB drive was detected as the primary hard drive, and i couldnt change the active partition in fdisk. The compact flash IDE drive thus became drive D:. I could however format the CF drive, and copy system files with "Format d: /S", after which i could copy the Win98 installation files. I then booted from an external USB floppy drive with a Windows 98 start disk, so that i could run fdisk to make the compact flash drive active (else DOS wont boot). At last i could boot from the CF drive, got a dos promt, and could run the Win98 setup. Installing the drivers was a breeze after i had found them 😀

Next:
I have a Neoware Capio 508 that i wish to turn into a DOS/Win 3.11 box for the games im missing. At least on paper, the motherboard has native sundblaster emulation so hopefully i can run Magic Carpet, Astrofire, Redneck Rampage, etc. If anyone is interested, i can make a new post when that experiment has been carried out 😀

*** EDIT ***
Tried a Radeon 9200SE graphics card in this machine: Re: Thin client HP t5720 Win98/DOS experience

Last edited by s0ren on 2016-09-24, 11:47. Edited 6 times in total.

Reply 1 of 10, by Roman78

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🤐

What are you doing in my room...

🤣

Nah, just kidding, but I also have this HP and a NeoWare.

I noticed on My HP that the video-output is only 1024x768 whit the on-board card. I could go higher, but than I get a scrolling 1024x768. Even whit the newest drivers, But I have to say that I run Windows 2000. And I fitted an 160 gig harddisk in it. But you gave me the idea of using the PCI bus for an extra videocard.

So the NeoWare, it supports DOS sound. I have one whit a DOC2000 (disk on chip, kind of SSD). And also I could connect a IDE harddisk, or IDE2SD kind of stuff. An IDE2SD makes software transfers easy. So I installed DOS on the DOC and can use the SD card as second harddisk just for games. Works fine. But I had some problems wile playing Lemmings, the graphics were kind of strange. Well I did not much testing.

Reply 2 of 10, by s0ren

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I think i got the onboard SiS vga chip to 1280x800 (in 16 bit i think) without the scroll thing, but then came the sound weirdness which wasnt worth the trouble as i dont play that much FIFA anyway. I havent got a clue why it would mess up the sound. I wanted to test with a TNT2 PCI card that i think would have better retro support, but when i went looking for it i found out that my wife had thrown the box with old PCI cards out =/

Very interesting about the Neoware capio! Quite excited that it supports dos sound, so i look forward to try that. How is the performance and did you just use the standard soundblaster driver in dos?

Reply 3 of 10, by Roman78

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I can't really remember, mostly I just don't install soundblaster drivers. Only use setsound in each game. But I'll hock it up the next days, than I can give you some more info.

Somehow your nickname sounds familiar... are you from Germany? DosForum, A1K, VZEKC?

Reply 5 of 10, by PhilsComputerLab

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Very nice project!

Could you perhaps run a 3DMark benchmark like 99Max or 2000?

YouTube, Facebook, Website

Reply 8 of 10, by keenerb

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I used an old thin client to "fake" a dedicated DOS machine, just had them start up DOS full-screen directly after booting into XP embedded. They had nowhere near the horsepower of your thin client but I was quite surprised at how well they managed.

Sound had quite a few problems, it was only a slow single-core CPU but generic Soundblaster/PC Speaker worked well enough.

Reply 9 of 10, by s0ren

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Tried a Radeon 9200SE PCI and it works better in some ways.

GTA1, FIFA98 and FIFA99 now works perfectly, and build engine games no longer need nolfb for VESA modes. The original OpenGL renderers in UT99 works (no need to find alternative renderers online), and in Shogo the main menu now works as well (uses DirectX). The performance in Shogo and UT99 is a lot worse though. I get max 30-40 fps in UT 720p and 20fps or less in 1080p, going to even lower resolutions does not help a lot. Luckily it is a lot cooler than the GeForce FX 5200 based Quadro NVS280, but the GeForce FX series were notorious for their heat.

Had to use PowerStrip 2.78 to enforce 1080p desktop resolution though. Seems like DDC isnt working for this card.

The 3dMark99 scores were:
Default GPU settings: 4795
GPU core 200MHz -> 230MHz: 4726 (!? wtf)
Graphics RAM 133MHz -> 150MHz: 4850 (Gives weird lags and severe audio distortion in UT99)

The card seems crippled by the 64 bit memory bus and slow RAM. Overclocking didnt help much, and it caused other issues. It was however a lot easier to get working and works better with some games. Cant decide which card to keep...

Reply 10 of 10, by darkNiGHTS

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Awesome thread, thanks for sharing your experience. I was wondering if you had tried a PCI sound card and used it with the onboard video. Seems like that would make it work for gaming with native SoundBlaster support.

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