VOGONS


First post, by CLXIV

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Hello, I'm planning on a 90s vintage gaming setup and would really appreciate some advice. I'd like something along the lines of:

- 400-900MHz P3 / K6-2 / Athlon
- 128-256MB
- horizontal desktop case
- 14-17" CRT monitor

I already have a Voodoo 3 (PCI), Soundblaster AWE64 Gold (ISA) and a Samsung 40GB IDE HDD and there's local guy selling one of these for cheap:

http://www.motherboard.cz/mb/qdi/KinetiZ%207E.htm

Including an unknown CPU, RAM and cooler (judging by what the board supports though, any compatible CPU should be fine).

My first question is if I'll be able to install this (pretty normal-looking) motherboard in a horizontal case? I was young in the 90s so only have vague recollections, but didn't horizontal systems require riser boards etc? Would I be able to get this board into a horizontal case with my Voodoo and Soundblaster?

Also I've seen a lot of talk about popped capacitors. Realistically will I need to re-cap or will it most likely work fine?

And for operating systems, presumably if I install MS-DOS 6.22 first, I can install Windows 98 second for a dual-boot on a single partition?

Thanks for any advice.

Reply 1 of 6, by pewpewpew

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You seem to have things generally correct -- I say carry on with your adventure.

There are horizontal cases that are "full height" -- on the inside they are basically the same as tower boxes. That's the type you want, not the "pizza box" style you're remembering.

Caps... it's not everywhere & everytime. But it happens regularly enough. And it was particularly a problem with the era of hardware you're looking at. There was a bad batch of electrolyte that got shipped to several manufactures. And that's mostly why you hear a lot of talk about bad caps -- it's not normal. I have about 2/3 of my motherboards from that period still working, no repairs.

EDIT: Speaking of not-quite-normal, I'm using one of these cases for my P4P800SE. These were popular with people doing home theatre systems. You don't need something this elaborate, but you should know they exist as an option.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=articl … tone_lc13&num=2

Reply 2 of 6, by PCBONEZ

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Your video and sound card choices are fine. That's actually what I had in one of my main PC's back in the late 90's.
If the mobo has AGP I would probably go with an AGP Voodoo card but that's just because they are cheaper and era appropriate.

FSB (RAM speed) and CPU cache were important back then and made a big difference.

RAM
512MB PC133 preferably in 2x low density (16 chip) 256MB modules.
6ns CL2 if you can find some. Otherwise 7-7.5ns CL3.
If you have to step down to a 100MHz FSB then use 7-7.5ns PC133 anyway.
PC133 7 & 7.5ns will normally run at CL2 on a 100MHz FSB so close to the same performance as PC133 at CL3 on a 133MHz FSB.

CPU's (The order does not imply a preference. These are all decent depending on needs.)
Also I'm only mentioning CPUs that are common and usually reasonably priced.
The uncommon special 'cream puff' CPUs are more expensive and don't usually get you much over these anyway.

Intel @ 133MHz_#1 P3 Tualatin-S (512k)_#2 P3 Tualatin non-S (256k)_#3 Coppermine 800MB-1Ghz P3 (@133MHz)
... (Tualatin or Coppermine) use an i815 B-Step or a VIA 694T chipset.
... (Coppermine only) use an i815 with a southbridge that supports UDMA100 or a VIA 694X/694A
Intel @ 100MHz Coppermine 800MB-1Ghz P3 @100MHz
... use a late BX chipset that supports 100MHz P3 Coppermine. (Early chipset versions don't.)
... some venders built BX boads that support 133MHz P3's. Those tend to be expensive and I'd go with a VIA 133MHz over that
K6 (2 or 3) at 400-550MHz
... VIA MVP3 chipset (not MVP4 - too much integrated crap to work around with those.)
... Mine ran a K6-2 at 500MHz IIRC. It was the infamous and now very expensive FIC VA-503+. I still have it!!
... There are much cheaper options for a MVP3 board, that's just what I had back in the day.
Athlon 700MHz to 1GHz
... Mine was a Slot A with a KX133 chipset and a 750MHz Athlon. I killed the OB sound in BIOS and used an ISA slot.
... I don't know much about newer AMD chipsets but that one kicked butt for it's time. (I still have that board too.)

Boards with the chipsets I mentioned usually have ISA slots but it's not guaranteed so but a box in you shoppin' check-off sheet for ISA.
In other-words; don't forget to check that.

==========
On the case.
Some work, some don't. Depends on the specific case and the specific mobo.
You need to look up the board dimensions and measure the case to compare.
Also looking at the mounting hole locations in mobo photos and the case can be helpful.

It's the front to back dimension that will bite you.
The one you linked to says it's 230mm (~9") so that's the newer-common wide ATX footprint.
A wide one can work out but narrow boards are easier to deal with, especially in a desktop case.
Many 90's full ATX boards are only about 7" front to back and would work fine but the late 90's was the transition period for ATX board sizes so you just have to look at them board by board.
Narrow boards did exist all the way into Tualatin P3. I know because I've had some.

I have 5 or 6 of the same ATX desktop case. I snapped them up when they started to get hard to find because at the time I liked them better than towers.
My desktop cases have 3x 5.25" bays and a wide board like that one would prevent installing anything deep (like an ODD) in the lower bay.
The back of the drive would be blocked by the RAM and wouldn't go all the way in.
An ODD in the middle bay would go in but it might have to be removed just to access the RAM and some of the connectors which is a PITA.

It's not like it wouldn't work at all. Just be aware that you might have to fiddle with it to get everything right.
I'm too old and grumpy and LAZY (mostly LAZY) to do much fiddling anymore, but that's just me.
.

Last edited by PCBONEZ on 2019-12-06, 09:08. Edited 2 times in total.

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Reply 3 of 6, by badmojo

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CLXIV wrote:

And for operating systems, presumably if I install MS-DOS 6.22 first, I can install Windows 98 second for a dual-boot on a single partition?

I'd just install Windows 98 and then set up a boot menu to choose b/w Windows or DOS 7:

https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000132.htm

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/ques … windows-and-dos

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 4 of 6, by melbar

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Look at "PHILSCOMPUTERLAB.COM"

There is also a MS-DOS starter pack. You can use the DOS 7.1 from Windows 98 :
MS-DOS Starter Pack

I would use DOS 6.22 for 386 or 486, but not for your prefered late 90s build.

#1 K6-2/500, #2 Athlon1200, #3 Celeron1000A, #4 A64-3700, #5 P4HT-3200, #6 P4-2800, #7 Am486DX2-66

Reply 5 of 6, by CLXIV

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pewpewpew wrote:
You seem to have things generally correct -- I say carry on with your adventure. […]
Show full quote

You seem to have things generally correct -- I say carry on with your adventure.

There are horizontal cases that are "full height" -- on the inside they are basically the same as tower boxes. That's the type you want, not the "pizza box" style you're remembering.

Caps... it's not everywhere & everytime. But it happens regularly enough. And it was particularly a problem with the era of hardware you're looking at. There was a bad batch of electrolyte that got shipped to several manufactures. And that's mostly why you hear a lot of talk about bad caps -- it's not normal. I have about 2/3 of my motherboards from that period still working, no repairs.

EDIT: Speaking of not-quite-normal, I'm using one of these cases for my P4P800SE. These were popular with people doing home theatre systems. You don't need something this elaborate, but you should know they exist as an option.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=articl … tone_lc13&num=2

Thanks 😀 That is sleek! But sleek is not really what I'm going for here. I'm more interested in authentic crappy beige, just like I remember it!

PCBONEZ wrote:
Your video and sound card choices are fine. That's actually what I had in one of my main PC's back in the late 90's. If the mobo […]
Show full quote

Your video and sound card choices are fine. That's actually what I had in one of my main PC's back in the late 90's.
If the mobo has AGP I would probably go with an AGP Voodoo card but that's just because they are cheaper and era appropriate.

FSB (RAM speed) and CPU cache were important back then and made a big difference.

RAM
512MB PC133 preferably in 2x low density (16 chip) 256MB modules.
6ns CL2 if you can find some. Otherwise 7-7.5ns CL3.
If you have to step down to a 100MHz FSB then use 7-7.5ns PC133 anyway.
PC133 7 & 7.5ns will normally run at CL2 on a 100MHz FSB so close to the same performance as PC133 at CL3 on a 133MHz FSB.

CPU's (The order does not imply a preference. These are all decent depending on needs.)
Also I'm only mentioning CPUs that are common and usually reasonably priced.
The uncommon special 'cream puff' CPUs are more expensive and don't usually get you much over these anyway.

Intel @ 133MHz_#1 P3 Tualatin-S (512k)_#2 P3 Tualatin non-S (256k)_#3 Coppermine 800MB-1Ghz P3 (@133MHz)
... (Tualatin or Coppermine) use an i815 B-Step or a VIA 694T chipset.
... (Coppermine only) use an i815 with a southbridge that supports UDMA100 or a VIA 694X/694A
Intel @ 100MHz Coppermine 800MB-1Ghz P3 @100MHz
... use a late BX chipset that supports 100MHz P3 Coppermine. (Early chipset versions don't.)
... some venders built BX boads that support 133MHz P3's. Those tend to be expensive and I'd go with a VIA 133MHz over that
K2 (2 or 3) at 400-550MHz
... VIA MVP3 chipset (not MVP4 - too much integrated crap to work around with those.)
... Mine ran a K6-2 at 500MHz IIRC. It was the infamous and now very expensive FIC VA-503+. I still have it!!
... There are much cheaper options for a MVP3 board, that's just what I had back in the day.
Athlon 700MHz to 1GHz
... Mine was a Slot A with a KX133 chipset and a 750MHz Athlon. I killed the OB sound in BIOS and used an ISA slot.
... I don't know much about newer AMD chipsets but that one kicked butt for it's time. (I still have that board too.)

Boards with the chipsets I mentioned usually have ISA slots but it's not guaranteed so but a box in you shoppin' check-off sheet for ISA.
In other-words; don't forget to check that.

==========
On the case.
Some work, some don't. Depends on the specific case and the specific mobo.
You need to look up the board dimensions and measure the case to compare.
Also looking at the mounting hole locations in mobo photos and the case can be helpful.

It's the front to back dimension that will bite you.
The one you linked to says it's 230mm (~9") so that's the newer-common wide ATX footprint.
A wide one can work out but narrow boards are easier to deal with, especially in a desktop case.
Many 90's full ATX boards are only about 7" front to back and would work fine but the late 90's was the transition period for ATX board sizes so you just have to look at them board by board.
Narrow boards did exist all the way into Tualatin P3. I know because I've had some.

I have 5 or 6 of the same ATX desktop case. I snapped them up when they started to get hard to find because at the time I liked them better than towers.
My desktop cases have 3x 5.25" bays and a wide board like that one would prevent installing anything deep (like an ODD) in the lower bay.
The back of the drive would be blocked by the RAM and wouldn't go all the way in.
An ODD in the middle bay would go in but it might have to be removed just to access the RAM and some of the connectors which is a PITA.

It's not like it wouldn't work at all. Just be aware that you might have to fiddle with it to get everything right.
I'm too old and grumpy and LAZY (mostly LAZY) to do much fiddling anymore, but that's just me.
.

Loads of good advice here - appreciate it. I also had a K6-2 500MHz (got it in the same upgrade as my Voodoo3 3000 PCI) and that was my first decent 3D gaming! Not that I didn't try to play Half-Life before on that on my crappy SiS / onboard / whatever the hell that PC came with and Cyrix M2-300 but it was not great (as you can imagine) so the K6-2 and Voodoo3 upgrade was amazing - probably the biggest single improvement to any PC I've ever owned.

badmojo wrote:
I'd just install Windows 98 and then set up a boot menu to choose b/w Windows or DOS 7: […]
Show full quote
CLXIV wrote:

And for operating systems, presumably if I install MS-DOS 6.22 first, I can install Windows 98 second for a dual-boot on a single partition?

I'd just install Windows 98 and then set up a boot menu to choose b/w Windows or DOS 7:

https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000132.htm

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/ques … windows-and-dos

Thanks for these, that's really interesting! It never even occurred to me that's where they would be configured. I know modern operating systems write boot menus like Grub into the boot partition so I figured it had just always been that way. So did Windows 95/98 just come by default with an autoexec.bat ending in win.exe?

melbar wrote:
Look at "PHILSCOMPUTERLAB.COM" […]
Show full quote

Look at "PHILSCOMPUTERLAB.COM"

There is also a MS-DOS starter pack. You can use the DOS 7.1 from Windows 98 :
MS-DOS Starter Pack

I would use DOS 6.22 for 386 or 486, but not for your prefered late 90s build.

Thanks, this looks really handy. I'd prefer to configure stuff myself (partly more rewarding, partly I know exactly what's been done and partly for my AWE64 drivers) but I'll definitely open these up and pull out the useful bits. To clarify, this setup is primarily for DOS gaming. I was going to go with a 486 era setup initially but changed it to late 90s to also get Windows 9x gaming while not running hardware so new that it won't get along with DOS. So I'm open to using 7.1, but only if it's 100% as compatible as 6.22 and configuration is broadly the same.

Reply 6 of 6, by pewpewpew

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So I'm open to using 7.1, but only if it's 100% as compatible as 6.22 and configuration is broadly the same.

"Yes." -- you'll find threads arguing about tiny differences, but YES, just use the DOS that comes with 98.

Speaking of threads, make this bookmark
https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=site … org+&gws_rd=ssl

That's google trimmed for vogons.org. Now just add whatever search terms you need, as you need them.

You're basically doing fine and should just start putting pieces together and playing games. Both of those activities will draw you into new things to learn at their own rate. "90s games" is such a huge span of hardware and games and fun -- just jump in. You don't sound like you've got anything badly backwards.