I have a bunch of slot-1 motherboards that I don't know what to do with ?
Asus / Soyo / Intel
BX440 chipsets.
What would you build with these ?
What OS?
What apps ?
What Sound cards ?
What graphics cards ?
I have:
SB 5,1 - PCI
Nvidia FX550 ( PCI )
Voodoo-3 AGP
ATI Rage 128 AGP
SB AWE64
What would you recommend.
I just want a good computer for Audio playback, gaming, Video play back.
Given what you have I would stick with Win98 over WinXP because:
1) Apparently some of the last XP patches require cpu instructions not present in Pentium3’s.
2) None of your current CPU’s or GPU’s can handle high end XP gaming.
Check out DOSBox Distro:
https://sites.google.com/site/dosboxdistro/ [*]
a lightweight Linux distro (tinycore) which boots off a usb flash drive and goes straight to DOSBox.
Make your dos retrogaming experience portable!
I'd say :
OS : Windows 98
Sound card : AWE64
Video card : Voodoo 3 or ATi Rage 128 (the rage will probably be better if you want to play some video, but the Voodoo 3 is compatible with glide if that's your cup of tea)
This will make a nice little Windows 9x/DOS gaming PC
Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative
wrote:I just want a good computer for Audio playback, gaming, Video play back.
Why do you need audio/video on this machine? Just curious. It's probably okay for DVD or SD MPEG, but not much else.
Out of your list I'd pick:
Asus board
Voodoo 3
SB AWE64
SB Live
This would make a decent early Windows 98 machine. Fast enough to play Unreal, for instance. I'd use two soundcards because AWE64 gives better compatibility in DOS games, but Live has better sound quality in newer Win9x games. Just use a 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable to reroute one card's line output into another one's line in.
wrote:What would you build with these ? What OS? What apps ? What Sound cards ? What graphics cards ? […]
What would you build with these ?
What OS?
What apps ?
What Sound cards ?
What graphics cards ?I just want a good computer for Audio playback, gaming, Video play back.
My choice would likely be a DOS/mid-9x gaming rig of some sort. A machine like that should also be fine for MP3 and DVD/MPEG playback if you have the right software.
OS: Just like everyone else, Windows 98SE would be my first choice for an OS, but if you already have enough rigs of that era, I suppose you could go for either Windows 95 OSR2 or 98FE just to make this machine stand out in terms of its OS.
Applications: For WMA/MP3 audio playback, I would go for Windows Media Player, I'd personally go for WMP 7.1 with a WMP9 codec pack, but that's just me, maybe some old version of WinAMP will also work for MP3 playback. For DVD/MPEG playback, look for some compatible DVD player application, somewhere along the lines of an old version of WinDVD or PowerDVD would be my pick, but you'd need to know where to look because full versions of those old applications can be tricky to find. Some old version of VLC player is also a fine lazy solution for that area.
Sound Cards: Since you have ISA, you might as well install the Sound Blaster AWE64, at least for its DOS compatibility. You can also pair it with a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 should you feel like you need more (i.e. 3D EAX sound and native 48KHz sample rate).
Video Card: I'd go for the 3dfx Voodoo 3 AGP as a first choice, my second choice would be the ATI Rage 128 AGP.
wrote:I'd say : […]
I'd say :
OS : Windows 98
Sound card : AWE64
Video card : Voodoo 3 or ATi Rage 128 (the rage will probably be better if you want to play some video, but the Voodoo 3 is compatible with glide if that's your cup of tea)This will make a nice little Windows 9x/DOS gaming PC
I agree with this.
You definitely want an ISA sound card as it will give you the best DOS compatibility.
