First post, by Dochartaigh
I'm looking to slow down either a 100mhz DX4 or a 200mhz MMX - whichever is the best candidate. I want to play games which my newly-finished Win98/late-DOS build can't play because it's too fast.
I picked up two systems lately:
486DX4 100MHz:
MMX 200MHz:
BUT I've never messed with cache disabling or programs like Mo'Slo or SetMul before and am having a hard time figuring out what the best way to do this is. The Mo'Slo website even says "the compatibility list is currently offline"; SetMul seems to not be for Intel CPU's... so I'm open to any advice. I'm also totally open to buying a new processor, as long as it's compatible with my MB(s). I'll put some more details below.
I also have a question about the turbo button. The 200mhz has a turbo button - doesn't seem to be hooked-up (or at least when I press it nothing seems to happen and the light stays on). Is the turbo feature dependent on either (or both) the processor itself AND/OR the motherboard? Does it need to be turned on or off in the BIOS or something? I don't even know how the LCD display even gets the information that it's 100mhz then displays that on the screen...is it set by jumpers? Or does the MB communicate with the LCD's board I guess? If the 100mhz is the best candidate to slow down, and it can benefit from a turbo button, I can switch the cases from the 200mhz to the 100mhz (would need somebody to confirm the cases would allow this...or I guess if I physically measure the MB's and they're the same size then it's a no-brainer switch?)
The 100mhz seems to be the best candidate as it's the slowest, right? Here's the IMGUR album for that one - I even found the manual for the "80486 VIP", M919 V3.4B/F motherboard which has the (real) cache modul installed; those pics are at the very end of the album.
The user Kisx here was nice enough to link to the jumper settings and such here and here. He also said "To really slow down the CPU, you have to disable L1 and L2 cache in the BIOS settings. If this isn't slow enough, you can lower the FSB speed of the motherboard - look at the jumpers settings - now you have 33MHz FSB. You could go down to 25MHz and with 2X multi you'd have a slow 486DX2-50. With L1 and L2 caches disabled it would be really slow.". Maxtherabbit said I could easily buy a DX-33 or DX2-66 CPU, and that the MB has the jumpers to run the voltage at either 3.3V (current 100mhz DX4 I believe), or 5V (for those slower DX/DX2 ones).
So what's the best way to go about doing this? I like the current 100mhz - it even allows me to play Quake at a slow but not unplayable framerate (maybe... only played the first level...might slow down later on and it's def. not doing 60 FPS or anything). Quake is the very last DOS game I would want to play, along with Duke Nukem 3D. Both of those have the recommended system requirements at an Intel Pentium 75 MHz with 16mb of RAM (I have 32mb)... but if I have to, in order to slow this down enough for (here's some of the games I currently have issues with): Barbarian from 1987, Battle Chess 1988, Silent Service II '90, Wing Commander '90, Scorched Earth '92, Jazz the Jackrabbit '94, King Quest VII /94, even Crusader no Remorse from 1995 - I can get a slower processor and just not be able to play some of those later games like Quake/Duke3d.
My bigger issue is making this easy to use when my godsons can come over and play it. Which means hopefully we don't have to go into the BIOS every time and tweak certain settings to get certain games to work, and have to keep a list handy to cross-reference every time - that's not going to work for them. Hopefully there's a command line way to do this and I can write little batch files for games which need a cache disabled, then upon exit it can re-enable the cache(s). If there's no way around it here's the pages I found on the BIOS which might be of use (just have no clue which to use, or which settings for each):
https://imgur.com/ciomCpc
https://imgur.com/agoa7Q7
https://imgur.com/HtFXH9q
https://imgur.com/GLI8jPK
If the 200 MMX is a better candidate (I don't think it is from what I've found out so far), please let me know and I can post some more information about that. It uses a Topgun/Alton M575 Socket 7 motherboard.
Sidenote, but I have the option of two (think both PCI) video cards to use in the (presumably 100mhz) computer. Trident 3dImage 9750, or Trident Pro Vidia 9685 - I'm unsure of how much RAM each has (would love to know! Pics are in that IMGUR above). ...but I know on one I'm even having problems doing 1024x768 at even 24-bit color in Win98 without the screen getting funky, so I'm open to getting something faster.
BUT, aren't most games of this era not dependent on the video card much at all? Like it's mostly hardware rendering (even Quake which is real 3D)? Please correct me if I'm wrong. I was researching and seems like people like the S3 Savage Pro 4 with 32mb RAM? Or even a TNT2 PCI version (which is a shame as I have 3x! AGP versions of this card I have no use for but no PCI version!). This confuses me because I'm looking to build a computer around 1995ish? but those cards are from quite a few years later. Were people in 1995 not able to play these games at acceptable frame rates and resolutions? (which to me is ~60FPS at at least ~640x480...but I could be WAY off for this era...).