First post, by VenomSpark
- Rank
- Newbie
Hi everyone 😀
This is my first post, and I'd like first to introdue myself.. Im Niko, a 25 years old guy with an extremely HARDCORE passion for retro gaming\computing.. even if im still young and born "only" in 1991, I still have feelings and passion for computing of those real gold times 😜 First of all sorry for my horrible english (im italian, born and living in Rome, Italy) so please forgive me if sometimes I speak like a dummy..
Even thought I have a good modern pc (Core i7, 12GB, R9 380X, SSD, Win10 Pro x64 ecc.) im still into retrogaming, as I like emulators but I way prefer the real native sensation, so DOSBOX and other (great) emulators don't give me the sensation of gaming like I did in those years (plus, some games still have problems, lags or stuttering) so I come to the question, hoping this is the right section and forum 😄
I have a second pc, with Windows 2000, and old AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.20Ghz Single core, 1GB DDR2 and one Nvidia GeForce 9800GTX+ made for old games that in my main modern one won't never run, and is pretty cool and stable, after hard software work on it I managed to create a good gaming station, but not old enough for DOS games, that is my core goal of this post... As you all know, W2K is a NT 4.0 operative system, so It don't have real DOS anymore, not like until Millenium Edition did (it can be unlockable).. I have a LOT of DOS games on that machine, but as I said they don't work properly, as W2K have a poor DOS emulation, audio will and won't work in any way, not even with VDM Sound, as most of times it gives lags or crashes..
So, one day I found this awesome gold treasure from the past in my attic: is an old Tyan S1894 Tigercub 100 Micro-ATX motherboard, i440BX BIOS dated 1999 with an old Pentium III 500Mhz Katmai core on a Slot 1!!! 😲 😲 I was soo excited to have found finally a really old PC for gaming, but I was afraid that it was never working or not even turning on, so I took it down in my home and tried to give it a try.. This mobo had a lot of issues, starting from the panel pins bended, battery dead and ram not working and another few details, but the condition was looking apparentely in good shape.. after almost 4 days of full work I managed to finally make it turn on, run and perfectly functional by added some old pieces I had in my collection, like a 10GB 1999 HDD, a 256MB of SDRAM stick (even if system recognize only 128MB), a GeForce 2 MX 200 64mb AGP4x (system recognize 2x), an old PS\2 (!!) mouse and keyboard, and of course Windows 98 SE... now, I managed, with my big surprise, to make everything run, even USB sticks works, video driver too and everything, and now I come to the point of the topic (sorry for long post, but I like to be the most accurate possible!): I just CAN'T make sound card work.. I have two slightly different PCI SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 cards (one model is SB0100, the other "sister" SB0060) that I remember one of two 100% works, but they won't on this computer 🙁 I tried to put both of them in every of 4 PCI slots the motherboard have (there's also one ISA connector, but this stuff is REALLY way too old), without results: Windows 98 won't recognize them. This motherboard have an audio card integrated, or at least I think as it have a Creative chip near the 3 audio jack's holes, so I guess it should work but it simply won't.. Can somebody help me getting audio (and if possible, even under DOS.. with IRQ settings ecc.) please? What im missing? I tried to search drivers for this model but with no luck, I tried to use the original SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 CD-ROM driver but even if they installs the system won't physically see the card, I tried to get a look into the bios (is an AWARD one), even if is very too old and there's a lot of options that I can't understand, but nothing that mentions integrated audio settings (until now, I never managed to see the little audio speaker near the clock in W98SE) or how to activate it.. This motherboard looks rare or at least very old, or both.
This should be the PDF manual of the motherboard if it can help ftp://ftp.tyan.com/manuals/m_s1894_110.pdf, Im not sure if is the 100% original one, but I can confirm from photos that is 98,99% near to what it actually looks like (beyond the sigle S1894, there's nothing else written in the board except the brand, Tyan), so I guess this should be the right manual but it didn't help me to solve my problem 🙁 I'd like just to fix this as im pratically done with this project, I tried passing via USB stick some DOS games for test, like DOOM and Blood, and they perfectly run but without of course audio..
Thanks for your possible replies and help, and sorry for long drama post!
