VOGONS


First post, by halls_well

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Hi, I'm new here and in need of some sage advice 😁

I'm trying to build a reliable "new" system to run 90's DOS and Windows 98 games. This may be an odd usecase, but besides retro gaming for me I want something that I can let my kids play without having to worry about the content that they're getting into, titles like MECC games and Putt Putt.

At my disposal I have a K6-2 500 in a DFI K6XV3+/66 that I built my second computer with in 1999, as well as a Celeron 333 in an Asus P2B that I acquired in the early 2000's.

I have just finished setting up the K6-2, and it was not as simple as I was expecting - my old Audigy Vortex soundcard didn't work because apparently it doesn't play nice with MVP3 chipsets, so now I have a Sound Blaster instead. My usually dead-simple 3Com Etherlink III and Kingston network adapters didn't work, I'm using an old Compaq NIC instead. Linux also took some tampering with to get to boot. From searching around here, it looks like MVP3 boards can be... temperamental ( source thread for the Aureal Vortex). I'd also been planning on using an AGP Radeon 7000, but am currently using a PCI Stealth II card because it seemed to be the source of momentary hangs.

I'd been hoping to use the K6-2 for nostalgia reasons, but I also want something that will "just work" once configured, so that my kids can use it when they earn screen time or for homework on down the road. Would you agree that I should re-shelve the K6 and move on to the Celeron instead?

Thanks for your time!

Reply 1 of 30, by leileilol

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I'd avoid VIA MVP3 boards in general if stability is what you're looking for. As far as AGP cards go, they're best behaved with 3dfx Voodoo3s, which gives quite little room for a versatile stable MVP3 setup. It was already a very common combo for MVP3 systems before it was known that better newer AGP cards would be problematic and cause freeze and/or PCI issues.

Go for a Slot1 Celeron and save some of that potential drama 😀

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 2 of 30, by halls_well

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
leileilol wrote on 2020-02-25, 02:38:

I'd avoid VIA MVP3 boards in general if stability is what you're looking for. As far as AGP cards go, they're best behaved with 3dfx Voodoo3s, which gives quite little room for a versatile stable MVP3 setup. It was already a very common combo for MVP3 systems before it was known that better newer AGP cards would be problematic and cause freeze and/or PCI issues.

Go for a Slot1 Celeron and save some of that potential drama 😀

Thanks leileilol, the Celeron sounds like the way to go then!

Amusingly, when I built the K6-2 computer originally it had a Voodoo 3 3000 that a friend gave me out of pity after seeing the Permedia II I got talked into at a computer show trying to run Half-Life. I'll never forget how "smooth" it felt after that, and how much better Unreal Tournament was 😁. Sadly I loaned the card out and never saw it again.

I'll go get this thing running, thanks again!

Reply 3 of 30, by sledge

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I agree with leileilol, it was fun to tinker with AMD K6-III+ / Voodoo 3 3000, but that rig was never really reliable. If you want Win98 PC that will "just work", go for Celeron / Pentium 2 / Pentium 3. I'm running P3/933MHz, and it's rock stable, even with VIA chipset 😀

doshaven.eu / high-voltage.cz

Reply 4 of 30, by halls_well

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Thanks for the tips guys, this new setup is exactly what I was hoping for! I'd actually thought my old Vortex sound card was dead years ago... I'm pretty sure I thought it was dead because it stopped working when I picked up that MVP2 board 😀

I still ended up with a bit of a runaround, my only IDE hard drive is 120GB, which the P2B with stock BIOS couldn't see, and I don't have any other machines with a floppy drive 😂. I dug up my old 2GB CompactFlash + 44 pin IDE adapter which got me into Damn Small Linux, which let me get the BIOS file locally, though now I see I could have made a FreeDOS boot disk and Plop boot CD... now I know 😃

I've now put a small overclock on it and really need to stop wondering whether I should pick up more RAM or a Coppermine P3 for it, this always happens 🤪

Reply 5 of 30, by ragefury32

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Eh, you did say “reliable”, right, and probably mostly period-correct?

Probably something like an Abit BX6 R2, any coppermine P3/Celeron, 2-4 sticks of PC100 from the same stock, an nVidia TNT2 AGP, a decent mSATA-to-IDE adapter, a small mSATA SSD (no one should deal with a 20 year old hard drive), a solid brand name power supply (something people skimp on but shouldn’t) and something that plays well with OPL3.

Reply 6 of 30, by Doornkaat

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
ragefury32 wrote on 2020-02-27, 05:00:

Eh, you did say “reliable”, right, and probably mostly period-correct?

Probably something like an Abit BX6 R2, any coppermine P3/Celeron, 2-4 sticks of PC100 from the same stock, an nVidia TNT2 AGP, a decent mSATA-to-IDE adapter, a small mSATA SSD (no one should deal with a 20 year old hard drive), a solid brand name power supply (something people skimp on but shouldn’t) and something that plays well with OPL3.

He's already got a P2B to run his Mendocino Celeron in. In my experience that's a rock stable combo.👍 For what he said he's going to run on it that's just fine, don't you think?

Reply 7 of 30, by Jo22

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

..reliable ? Windows 98 ?

🤣

Xo8NLoJ.gif
https://youtu.be/73wMnU7xbwE

Edit: Okay, seriously.. Hm. SoftWindows 98 on a Power Mac, maybe ? 😉

Edit: Anyway. One of Seagate's SSHDs might be worth a try. 😀
They're quick, can be limited in capacity and can handle misalignment.
Phil mentioned it on his site: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/seagate-sshd.html

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 8 of 30, by cyclone3d

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Those Seagate SSHDs are junk. I tired a few a couple years ago to try and save money over buying large SSDs.

Super slow and might as well just buy an HDD.

A regular 7200 rpm drive is going to be just as fast from what I could tell. The systems I had those SSHD drives in made me angry every time I had to work on them because all the other systems were already moved over to SSDs and those couple systems with the SSHDs in them were just so incredibly slow comparatively.

Booting was maybe a bit faster than a regular HDD, but anything else was slower because the HDD part is only 5400 rpm. Complete pieces of trash they are.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 9 of 30, by keenmaster486

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

The most reliable you will get with 98 is probably i440BX motherboard with PIII Katmai or Coppermine, TNT2 or Voodoo3, ISA Sound Blaster 16 or AWE64, 512 MB RAM, vanilla 98SE with virtual memory disabled, ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1 and disk cache limited to a fixed value.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 10 of 30, by ragefury32

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Doornkaat wrote on 2020-02-27, 05:52:
ragefury32 wrote on 2020-02-27, 05:00:

Eh, you did say “reliable”, right, and probably mostly period-correct?

Probably something like an Abit BX6 R2, any coppermine P3/Celeron, 2-4 sticks of PC100 from the same stock, an nVidia TNT2 AGP, a decent mSATA-to-IDE adapter, a small mSATA SSD (no one should deal with a 20 year old hard drive), a solid brand name power supply (something people skimp on but shouldn’t) and something that plays well with OPL3.

He's already got a P2B to run his Mendocino Celeron in. In my experience that's a rock stable combo.👍 For what he said he's going to run on it that's just fine, don't you think?

Yeah, I skimped over the P2B part. That's an oldschool slot 1 440 board, right? My guess is that wth the right adapters and a recent BIOS it should play well with the Coppermines.

Reply 12 of 30, by ragefury32

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Jo22 wrote on 2020-02-27, 11:33:
..reliable ? Windows 98 ? […]
Show full quote

..reliable ? Windows 98 ?

🤣

Xo8NLoJ.gif
https://youtu.be/73wMnU7xbwE

Edit: Okay, seriously.. Hm. SoftWindows 98 on a Power Mac, maybe ? 😉

Edit: Anyway. One of Seagate's SSHDs might be worth a try. 😀
They're quick, can be limited in capacity and can handle misalignment.
Phil mentioned it on his site: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/seagate-sshd.html

Wait. Are you suggesting that running a Win98 emulator on MacOS 9 (itself a flaming radioactive garbage can if you have all sorts of system extensions enabled) is more STABLE than Win98 itself?

Reply 13 of 30, by ragefury32

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
cyclone3d wrote on 2020-02-27, 15:50:
Those Seagate SSHDs are junk. I tired a few a couple years ago to try and save money over buying large SSDs. […]
Show full quote

Those Seagate SSHDs are junk. I tired a few a couple years ago to try and save money over buying large SSDs.

Super slow and might as well just buy an HDD.

A regular 7200 rpm drive is going to be just as fast from what I could tell. The systems I had those SSHD drives in made me angry every time I had to work on them because all the other systems were already moved over to SSDs and those couple systems with the SSHDs in them were just so incredibly slow comparatively.

Booting was maybe a bit faster than a regular HDD, but anything else was slower because the HDD part is only 5400 rpm. Complete pieces of trash they are.

As primary storage on a modern-ish machine, yeah, they are crap. On a retro machine (where average transfer rates are probably capped at 25 MBytes/sec on the JMicron bridge chips common to most SATA-to-IDE adapters), they are perfectly fine. Most of the time the SSD is really there to improve random/sequential seek times. Hell, I was worried about my Class 6 SD card being too slow for my Thinkpad 560E...until I realized that the original drive was pegged to around 6MByte/sec sustained (no DMA available). Of course, the question was to figure out what to do with the extra capacity on a modern-ish drive like that. Considering that my long-sold-on BX6r2+Deschute PII/350MHz had only a 12GB HDD , I don't even know if I can work with something beyond 128GB of disk (the PIIX4 southbridges typical of that era doesn't do LBA48) .

Reply 14 of 30, by cyclone3d

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
ragefury32 wrote on 2020-02-27, 18:44:
cyclone3d wrote on 2020-02-27, 15:50:
Those Seagate SSHDs are junk. I tired a few a couple years ago to try and save money over buying large SSDs. […]
Show full quote

Those Seagate SSHDs are junk. I tired a few a couple years ago to try and save money over buying large SSDs.

Super slow and might as well just buy an HDD.

A regular 7200 rpm drive is going to be just as fast from what I could tell. The systems I had those SSHD drives in made me angry every time I had to work on them because all the other systems were already moved over to SSDs and those couple systems with the SSHDs in them were just so incredibly slow comparatively.

Booting was maybe a bit faster than a regular HDD, but anything else was slower because the HDD part is only 5400 rpm. Complete pieces of trash they are.

As primary storage on a modern-ish machine, yeah, they are crap. On a retro machine (where average transfer rates are probably capped at 25 MBytes/sec on the JMicron bridge chips common to most SATA-to-IDE adapters), they are perfectly fine. Most of the time the SSD is really there to improve random/sequential seek times. Hell, I was worried about my Class 6 SD card being too slow for my Thinkpad 560E...until I realized that the original drive was pegged to around 6MByte/sec sustained (no DMA available). Of course, the question was to figure out what to do with the extra capacity on a modern-ish drive like that. Considering that my long-sold-on BX6r2+Deschute PII/350MHz had only a 12GB HDD , I don't even know if I can work with something beyond 128GB of disk (the PIIX4 southbridges typical of that era doesn't do LBA48) .

Yeah, maybe ok for a retro machine... but I just go regular SSD all the time anyway.

Easy way to use the rest of the size of the drive on a system that doesn't support that size is to use a drive overlay program like we used to do back in the day. Not sure if any of them support that large of a drive though as I've never tried it.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 16 of 30, by ultra_code

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

For storage, any modern SATA drive will work just fine (if you intend to use an SSD, though, I'd suggest you format the drive to FAT32 using gdisk under Linux, as Windows will only allow you to format 32GB FAT32 partitions; I believe that formatting an SSD in such a matter will prevent DOS's fdisk from doing a full-format, and give you any benefits that a modern disk partition manager will provide in terms knowing what type of disk it's formatting). As for how to use a SATA drive under 98SE if you aren't using a Pentium 4 machine with SATA ports, a brand-name IDE-to-SATA adapter from, say, StarTech or a PCI SATA card will do the trick. In the case of the later, though, it might be hard to find such a card, and finding the drivers for it might be harder. I can recommend the Adaptec ASH-1205 PCI SATA card. They're cheap on ebay, and you can easily find the driver for it (https://adaptec.com/en-us/speed/sata/ash1205_ … _v10041_exe.php). I've been using one in my Pentium 4 system to hook up the SSD being used for 98SE, and I've had no issues.

On a different note, I'd also recommend updating IE to IE6, and Windows Media Player to WMP9, in that order. It'll update some under-the-hood things, and if you ever want to access an FTP server or have a relatively built-in modern media player in the OS, for example, they come in handy. There's this guy who has offline installers for IE6 on his own servers I presume, and I've used his installer for 98SE without issue (https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29992). As for WMP9, I forget where I found my installer, but if you look around you should be able to find a copy, or you can ask me to share it with you.

As a bonus, I also update the ASPI driver for 98SE, but I can't say it does much. It doesn't hurt to do so, though, and if you wanna deal with anything SCSI, it'll probs help. (https://storage.microsemi.com/en-us/speed/sof … i_471a2_exe.php)

Builds
ttgwnt-6.png
kcxlg9-6.png

Reply 17 of 30, by halls_well

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
ragefury32 wrote on 2020-02-27, 05:00:

Eh, you did say “reliable”, right, and probably mostly period-correct?

Probably something like an Abit BX6 R2, any coppermine P3/Celeron, 2-4 sticks of PC100 from the same stock, an nVidia TNT2 AGP, a decent mSATA-to-IDE adapter, a small mSATA SSD (no one should deal with a 20 year old hard drive), a solid brand name power supply (something people skimp on but shouldn’t) and something that plays well with OPL3.

Hah, I guess I should have defined "reliable" here - if it "reliably" crashes during certain things but is otherwise stable, it's reliable! If it randomly crashes, it's not reliable 😀. For me "period-correct" is "anything my mom didn't donate the second I left for college", I've been eyeing this GeForce FX5900XT as one example 😁
I agree on the hard drive though, the one I'm running is a WD 120GB I got in 2004. No issues yet, except the dog is terrified of its noise...

the_ultra_code wrote on 2020-02-27, 20:45:

For storage, any modern SATA drive will work just fine (if you intend to use an SSD, though, I'd suggest you format the drive to FAT32 using gdisk under Linux, as Windows will only allow you to format 32GB FAT32 partitions; I believe that formatting an SSD in such a matter will prevent DOS's fdisk from doing a full-format, and give you any benefits that a modern disk partition manager will provide in terms knowing what type of disk it's formatting). As for how to use a SATA drive under 98SE if you aren't using a Pentium 4 machine with SATA ports, a brand-name IDE-to-SATA adapter from, say, StarTech or a PCI SATA card will do the trick. In the case of the later, though, it might be hard to find such a card, and finding the drivers for it might be harder. I can recommend the Adaptec ASH-1205 PCI SATA card. They're cheap on ebay, and you can easily find the driver for it (https://adaptec.com/en-us/speed/sata/ash1205_ … _v10041_exe.php). I've been using one in my Pentium 4 system to hook up the SSD being used for 98SE, and I've had no issues.

On a different note, I'd also recommend updating IE to IE6, and Windows Media Player to WMP9, in that order. It'll update some under-the-hood things, and if you ever want to access an FTP server or have a relatively built-in modern media player in the OS, for example, they come in handy. There's this guy who has offline installers for IE6 on his own servers I presume, and I've used his installer for 98SE without issue (https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29992). As for WMP9, I forget where I found my installer, but if you look around you should be able to find a copy, or you can ask me to share it with you.

As a bonus, I also update the ASPI driver for 98SE, but I can't say it does much. It doesn't hurt to do so, though, and if you wanna deal with anything SCSI, it'll probs help. (https://storage.microsemi.com/en-us/speed/sof … i_471a2_exe.php)

I was actually planning on getting a 32GB CF card but the SLC Industrial-grade ones are $10/GB! It looks like I'd be better served by getting a SATA<->IDE adapter and using that with some of my old SSDs, and not worrying too much about the swapping once the file is disabled.

I'll update those programs hopefully I can find them around somewhere! I was looking at which DirectX to go with as well, along with the user-supported Service Pack. There's a ton out there to sift through!

* edit to add thanks for the advice on formatting tools! My old CD wallet has a WD Data Lifeguard disk, which let me create the 120GB FAT32 partition without issues!

kolderman wrote on 2020-02-27, 18:20:

You are much better off with a K6-2+ or 3+ (or a via C3). You are not playing lots of DOS games with a CPU that can't easily be slowed down to 386 speeds.

Ahh my "alternative" was a K6XV3+ MVP3 with my old k6-2 500 (not plus, but I don't mind messing with jumpers), but it just didn't seem to want to cooperate with my other hardware. Once I had hardware in it that it liked it ran fine, but this Celeron seems a lot more idiot-proof (a trait which I probably severely need). I also like that the Celeron is a fully 6th gen x86 chip, so it can run 32 bit Linux without needing a 386/486/586 kernel that nobody builds anymore. Just nice to have the option, and worth a bit more to me than early DOS games.

I was looking a bit at Katmai and Coppermine P3's, but I just set the FSB on my Celeron to 100 MHZ and now it's running at 500 without issues, so I'm going to try not to mess with it, because if I get a new chip I'll want new RAM, in which case I may want a more fitting GPU, in which case I should have an AWE64... 😁 Plus with this board rev it looks like it's a roll of the dice for whether or not it can do the 1.8v that Coppermine needs, and all of the documentation for what voltage chips to look for seems to be lost to time.

Thanks for all the help everyone, this has been awesome!

Reply 18 of 30, by ultra_code

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
halls_well wrote on 2020-02-28, 02:20:

I'll update those programs hopefully I can find them around somewhere! I was looking at which DirectX to go with as well, along with the user-supported Service Pack. There's a ton out there to sift through!

I forgot to mention that too. You should always update DirectX to at least DX7. However, if you are doing more of a late 98 machine, then DX9 is perfectly fine. However, I'd recommend against those "service packs." They are unofficial in nature, and can be a bit sketchy.

Also, to make it simple, here's all of that software I was talking about, and then some. (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13fTRz … fTv?usp=sharing)

halls_well wrote on 2020-02-28, 02:20:

* edit to add thanks for the advice on formatting tools! My old CD wallet has a WD Data Lifeguard disk, which let me create the 120GB FAT32 partition without issues!

No problem. 😁

Builds
ttgwnt-6.png
kcxlg9-6.png

Reply 19 of 30, by Jo22

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
ragefury32 wrote on 2020-02-27, 18:28:
Jo22 wrote on 2020-02-27, 11:33:
..reliable ? Windows 98 ? […]
Show full quote

..reliable ? Windows 98 ?

🤣

Xo8NLoJ.gif
https://youtu.be/73wMnU7xbwE

Edit: Okay, seriously.. Hm. SoftWindows 98 on a Power Mac, maybe ? 😉

Edit: Anyway. One of Seagate's SSHDs might be worth a try. 😀
They're quick, can be limited in capacity and can handle misalignment.
Phil mentioned it on his site: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/seagate-sshd.html

Wait. Are you suggesting that running a Win98 emulator on MacOS 9 (itself a flaming radioactive garbage can if you have all sorts of system extensions enabled) is more STABLE than Win98 itself?

Well, a friend (Linux fan) once had to install Windows XP for his girl friend on a Macintosh (using BootCamp ?).
According to him, if memory serves, he was positively surprised that Windows XP ran without issues on that Macintosh.
In fact, he newer saw Windows running so smooth and stable. 😀

And speaking of SoftWindows 98, I wasn't completely kidding - it has a working pass-through feature for Voodoo 1 / Voodoo 2. 😀
So far, I haven't encountered any issue there as well. However, I'm not playing much 3D games also. 🙁
Though for real "gaming" (my English teacher would cry because of that term, btw) a CPU upgrade likely would be necessary (GHz range). 😐

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-02-27, 15:50:

Those Seagate SSHDs are junk. I tired a few a couple years ago to try and save money over buying large SSDs.

Super slow and might as well just buy an HDD.

You're thinking of the very old Momentus XT, aren't you ? 😉
- That was a 2,5" laptop drive series that was, according to some user reports of the day, plaqued with data loss, noise (constant spin-up/-down),
and a too small SSD cache (4GB ?)... Last thing I heard was that a firmware update was released to address some of the issues.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//