First post, by mmmark84
Hello! I am wondering if you guys can help me decide some end builds...
First, some background.
After getting my pentium 1 200 MMX with voodoo2 in SLI back up and running to play some old DOS games and early win98 games a while back, I was a little disapointed at some of the games' performance.
To get some ideas on how to upgrade this old machine, I began watching and reading retro guides (PhilsComputerLab mainly and this site 😀).
One thing lead to another, and I am now pretty hooked on building and collecting retro machines and hardware.
I however am a little stuck now on making final decisions and to (try) to stop gathering stuff.
I already figured that one machine for all my retro needs, simply doesnt exist, so I want to make 2 final machines.
My main wish is to play most DOS games from my childhood and be able to run every windows 95/98 game that came out (is that possible?).
I figured that I needed to make a nice and fast DOS machine and an as fast as possible windows 98 machine that still had win98 supported drivers.
For the DOS machine i think the famous BX440 chipset would be best.
The games that I hold close to my heart, are the (late?) dos games like carmageddon, duke3d, doom1/2, the incredible machine1/2, quake, indiana jones fate of atlantis, settlers II (all top of my head, must be loads more)
For the fastest windows 98 setup i could think of, I want to go with P4 875 chipset and the last official supported geforce card (the 6800 series).
I cant seem to get the stuff sorted into 2 sepparate machines, however.
What hardware to put in the DOS machine, and what to put in the win98 machine? Do I want glide in windows 98? Or can the DOS machine also handle that?
From the now (getting out of hand) pile of motherboards, cpu's, memory, cases, videocards, soundcards, PSU's (ok, you get it, a lot of stuff) I gathered so far, I think these are the most usefull pieces I guess I can use:
Motherboards:
Asus TX97-E (430TX, socket 7)
Asus CUSL2-C (i815, socket 370)
Brandless (Intel 440BX, Slot 1) (I believe 133Mhz FSB capable, it has the jumpers for it)
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe (i875, socket 478)
CPU's:
Pentium 200 MMX, socket 7
PIII 1000Mhz, Socket 370 Coppermine
PIII 450Mhz, Slot 1 Katmai
P4 3,2Ghz, Socket 478 Prescott
Videocards:
Asus V770 Nvidia TNT2 16MB AGP
Hercules 3d Prophet II Geforce 2 GTS 64MB AGP
3Dfx voodoo3 3500 TV AGP
3Dfx voodoo2 12MB (I got 4 of these, also SLI cables)
MSI 6800GT AGP
S3 virge/DX (4MB?) PCI
Trident Blade3D 8MB PCI
Soundcards:
Creative CT4180 Soundblaster vibra 16C ISA
Creative CT4500 Soundblaster AWE64 ISA
Creative CT4830 Soundblaster Live! PCI
Creative SB0350 Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS PCI
Turtle beach Montego II Aureal vortex II
All the other hardware like ram, hdd's, optical drives etc, I got loads to choose from aswell. I guess I need max 512 ram for win98, and for dos I havent got a clue...
Do I need to collect other hardware still, or can you guys give me advice on how to utilise my current collection? Can I achieve what I want with all this? What would you guys build with these?
Greetings,
Mark