SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-06-02, 22:08:

Socket 7 on a early 95' build? […]
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Socket 7 on a early 95' build?

Not that it particularly matters I guess. Assuming your going the whole "period correct on everything except for the motherboard/bios date".

I have this debate with myself alot tbh. Period corrext builds are awesome. But then some components like motherboards are often better off being later-editions 😀

Love where this build is heading! Iv been thinking about doing an early 95 build myself.

Don't mind me if I take some notes ;D

I know in the past I had some mobo even older (I don't remember the chipset) with only SIMM modules and 3,2 and above voltages, but I don't have it anymore. I'd love to build one day a Pentium 60 0,80um bug-enabled socket 4/5 build but mobo are rare and quite big for any case. Not to mention to buy a whole pc itself..
So i've to stay to the oldest AT oriented mobo I find. Obviously those later mobo with heatsinks on the chipset or whatever I don't even want to see them.. at that point just go for a SS7 mobo. Actually I don't want to see a BGA chip based card on this build. 😁

AKA Aristo AM-435VX

This bios is used on MB520NH, VXB810DS, VXB820DS, VXB830DS. So if you find a newer one for one of these it might work on your board too.

386SX wrote on 2020-06-03, 08:56:

(...)
Also I've seen some very early Pentium board still having those Dallas (?) battery I don't even want to see after the time I spent years ago trying to replace it internally.. I don't even want to remember the effort trying that..

Those Dallas clocks are not that hard to modify and mount a CR2032 socket. Just scrape the clock open at the right places and solder a wire to it (any blob of tin will do perfectly).

I look forward to see this project getting more shape and to see what other hardware you're going to use 😀

386SX wrote on 2020-06-03, 08:56:

[...] […]
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[...]

Thanks again of newer opinions. Yesterday I tried the Pentium 100 and 120 but strangely the board didn't boot. I suppose having used a similar reflashed eeprom chip (the original was gone), need some jumper reset combination before using a new cpu because I don't think both the cpu I have are both gone) but magically with the P-75 it works. The board is a Pc Partner VXB820DS and the bios is the latest (I know not necessary period correct Aug-97).
I'm sure I booted it with a P-166 MMX so I expect it to run others P54C too but I was thinking something more similar to a next-generation 486 than the usual Pentium 166 or whatever. At that point I think I'd go for the absolute maximun, or the P-233 MMX or the K6-233 with some Riva128 PCI, maybe step by step I'll arrive there. 😁

Some questions for the future:
-in the manual, it says that both 5v and 3,3v DIMM are supported, I didn't know that 5V DIMM existed at all, the oldest dimm I have are both 32mb old type (fewer chip pins, smaller height, dark pcb etc..) and marked as IBM 13n4649jcd-10t (75H5198-01), but right now I'm using two 16MB FPM simms (I've many ones, the ones I've used have a strange BP44C chip in the middle I don't know what for) just to stay old (bench say the 32MB single dimm were around 69MB/s when the 16MB simm are around 39MB/s.. impressive difference).

5V DIMMs exist, but they physically won't fit as they have different keying. Never understood this jumper...

In terms of DIMMs, the i430VX was the first SDRAM chipset and only accepts 16Mb chips, so you need 32MB DIMMs with 16 16Mb chips (or 16MB DIMMs with 8 16Mb chips). FP is very slow, if you don't have the SDRAM DIMMs, go for EDO.

That extra chip is probably for parity.

-also in the manual there's a JP6 jumper that says (reserved for future K6 cpus.. while the manual already wrote the config for the K6-233. Does it means maybe it'd support the K6-2 66mhz model?)

Good question. It sounds like BF2, i.e. a third multiplier bit. If so you can set 4x - 5.5x with it with a CTX K6-2

Anyway I think I'll use mainly dos but I was expecting this machine to be slower in W98 upgraded to 2004 patches. Ok, my concept of "fast" or "slow" may be subjective but I'm impressed anyway. I'm sure the vga really accelerate a lot. I don't want to use a Voodoo card on this it feels already too modern but something older would be nice like a 3D Blaster ISA but I don't have it. Maybe I'll consider some older Mpeg2 accelerator card... or maybe some Mpeg1 decoder.. I want to add something period correct to the PCI bus.. 😁
Or maybe some module for the Millennium card I may look for.

Matrox had the Rainbow Runner card that used the second connector on the Millennium cards. Don't think it would be useful, but would look cool...

I've used a ISA ethernet card that's already too modern around 97 and I don't like it but I have some already still built in 1999.. I'll search for a 95/96 ethernet card for sure.

There's enough out there - lots of 3C509B, but also a lot of NE2000 cards.

At first I'd have gone for a Socket 4/5 board if existed in usual AT sizes and not those massive large ones that without case would really be a problem to use. Also I've seen some very early Pentium board still having those Dallas (?) battery I don't even want to see after the time I spent years ago trying to replace it internally.. I don't even want to remember the effort trying that..

Oh, they certainly exist in nice sizes, but are rare. I was lucky enough to find a working Asus P5SP4 So4 board, it's no bigger than regular BabyAT. So5 in regular BabyAT is common enough, you can even find dual So5 in that form factor (although that will be dead slow i430NX chipset).

dionb wrote on 2020-06-03, 22:08:

5V DIMMs exist, but they physically won't fit as they have different keying. Never understood this jumper... […]
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386SX wrote on 2020-06-03, 08:56:

[...] […]
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[...]

Thanks again of newer opinions. Yesterday I tried the Pentium 100 and 120 but strangely the board didn't boot. I suppose having used a similar reflashed eeprom chip (the original was gone), need some jumper reset combination before using a new cpu because I don't think both the cpu I have are both gone) but magically with the P-75 it works. The board is a Pc Partner VXB820DS and the bios is the latest (I know not necessary period correct Aug-97).
I'm sure I booted it with a P-166 MMX so I expect it to run others P54C too but I was thinking something more similar to a next-generation 486 than the usual Pentium 166 or whatever. At that point I think I'd go for the absolute maximun, or the P-233 MMX or the K6-233 with some Riva128 PCI, maybe step by step I'll arrive there. 😁

Some questions for the future:
-in the manual, it says that both 5v and 3,3v DIMM are supported, I didn't know that 5V DIMM existed at all, the oldest dimm I have are both 32mb old type (fewer chip pins, smaller height, dark pcb etc..) and marked as IBM 13n4649jcd-10t (75H5198-01), but right now I'm using two 16MB FPM simms (I've many ones, the ones I've used have a strange BP44C chip in the middle I don't know what for) just to stay old (bench say the 32MB single dimm were around 69MB/s when the 16MB simm are around 39MB/s.. impressive difference).

5V DIMMs exist, but they physically won't fit as they have different keying. Never understood this jumper...

In terms of DIMMs, the i430VX was the first SDRAM chipset and only accepts 16Mb chips, so you need 32MB DIMMs with 16 16Mb chips (or 16MB DIMMs with 8 16Mb chips). FP is very slow, if you don't have the SDRAM DIMMs, go for EDO.

That extra chip is probably for parity.

-also in the manual there's a JP6 jumper that says (reserved for future K6 cpus.. while the manual already wrote the config for the K6-233. Does it means maybe it'd support the K6-2 66mhz model?)

Good question. It sounds like BF2, i.e. a third multiplier bit. If so you can set 4x - 5.5x with it with a CTX K6-2

Anyway I think I'll use mainly dos but I was expecting this machine to be slower in W98 upgraded to 2004 patches. Ok, my concept of "fast" or "slow" may be subjective but I'm impressed anyway. I'm sure the vga really accelerate a lot. I don't want to use a Voodoo card on this it feels already too modern but something older would be nice like a 3D Blaster ISA but I don't have it. Maybe I'll consider some older Mpeg2 accelerator card... or maybe some Mpeg1 decoder.. I want to add something period correct to the PCI bus.. 😁
Or maybe some module for the Millennium card I may look for.

Matrox had the Rainbow Runner card that used the second connector on the Millennium cards. Don't think it would be useful, but would look cool...

I've used a ISA ethernet card that's already too modern around 97 and I don't like it but I have some already still built in 1999.. I'll search for a 95/96 ethernet card for sure.

There's enough out there - lots of 3C509B, but also a lot of NE2000 cards.

At first I'd have gone for a Socket 4/5 board if existed in usual AT sizes and not those massive large ones that without case would really be a problem to use. Also I've seen some very early Pentium board still having those Dallas (?) battery I don't even want to see after the time I spent years ago trying to replace it internally.. I don't even want to remember the effort trying that..

Oh, they certainly exist in nice sizes, but are rare. I was lucky enough to find a working Asus P5SP4 So4 board, it's no bigger than regular BabyAT. So5 in regular BabyAT is common enough, you can even find dual So5 in that form factor (although that will be dead slow i430NX chipset).

Thanks for the answers. The only problem I'd see in the upgrade to K6-2 66Mhz, would be the voltage there're no words about a 2.2v setting on the jumpers and the lower is 2,7v, still a bit too high. I suppose they were supporting something faster without considering the much lower voltages most cpu began to have.
The Millennium looks almost too good as choice considering it's the 4MB WRAM version but as said I'd have gone for some S3 cards or maybe some high end Cirrus Logic of that time but most ones I see are really cheaply built with the usual few layers short pcb, boring design, there were so many S3/Cirrus PCI cards out there of unknown brands that to find one well built and still period correct is difficult. I've seen only Diamonds and STB were built as I'd like, or the ATi own made cards, but as others said the Stealth 968 were in the same price target of the Millennium...(now I understand the 4k$ price target of those machine back inthe 95) what about others S3 chips? Are there any tables of release dates and features of their chips? I wonder why I don't see many ATi Mach64 / Rage /Cirrus cards in the '95 magazine reviews, most offers seems to go for the S3 solution.
Meanwhile I bought a genuine original Dos 6.22 o.s. to begin with (hoping the floppies will work). 😁

386SX wrote on 2020-06-04, 08:39:

[...]
Thanks for the answers. The only problem I'd see in the upgrade to K6-2 66Mhz, would be the voltage there're no words about a 2.2v setting on the jumpers and the lower is 2,7v, still a bit too high. I suppose they were supporting something faster without considering the much lower voltages most cpu began to have.

Yes, sounds a lot like the DIMM voltage jumper that's pointless too...

The Millennium looks almost too good as choice considering it's the 4MB WRAM version but as said I'd have gone for some S3 cards or maybe some high end Cirrus Logic of that time but most ones I see are really cheaply built with the usual few layers short pcb, boring design, there were so many S3/Cirrus PCI cards out there of unknown brands that to find one well built and still period correct is difficult. I've seen only Diamonds and STB were built as I'd like, or the ATi own made cards, but as others said the Stealth 968 were in the same price target of the Millennium...(now I understand the 4k$ price target of those machine back inthe 95) what about others S3 chips? Are there any tables of release dates and features of their chips? I wonder why I don't see many ATi Mach64 / Rage /Cirrus cards in the '95 magazine reviews, most offers seems to go for the S3 solution.

There were enough ATi solutions out there, but given their less than stellar VESA compatibility they tended to be used by OEMs (frequently onboard rather than separate card) more than retail.

For release dates, just look in computer magazines from the period. Byte is a good one. Half the magazine is advertising, and lots of those are pages full of component listings. Anything in an early 1995 edition is fair game.

As for build quality... STB didn't exactly have a good reputation in those days. Want good stuff? Go for German design. Miro and ELSA had absolutely bulletproof cards.

Meanwhile I bought a genuine original Dos 6.22 o.s. to begin with (hoping the floppies will work). 😁

Hope so 😀

dionb wrote on 2020-06-04, 09:55:

Yes, sounds a lot like the DIMM voltage jumper that's pointless too... […]
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386SX wrote on 2020-06-04, 08:39:

[...]
Thanks for the answers. The only problem I'd see in the upgrade to K6-2 66Mhz, would be the voltage there're no words about a 2.2v setting on the jumpers and the lower is 2,7v, still a bit too high. I suppose they were supporting something faster without considering the much lower voltages most cpu began to have.

Yes, sounds a lot like the DIMM voltage jumper that's pointless too...

The Millennium looks almost too good as choice considering it's the 4MB WRAM version but as said I'd have gone for some S3 cards or maybe some high end Cirrus Logic of that time but most ones I see are really cheaply built with the usual few layers short pcb, boring design, there were so many S3/Cirrus PCI cards out there of unknown brands that to find one well built and still period correct is difficult. I've seen only Diamonds and STB were built as I'd like, or the ATi own made cards, but as others said the Stealth 968 were in the same price target of the Millennium...(now I understand the 4k$ price target of those machine back inthe 95) what about others S3 chips? Are there any tables of release dates and features of their chips? I wonder why I don't see many ATi Mach64 / Rage /Cirrus cards in the '95 magazine reviews, most offers seems to go for the S3 solution.

There were enough ATi solutions out there, but given their less than stellar VESA compatibility they tended to be used by OEMs (frequently onboard rather than separate card) more than retail.

For release dates, just look in computer magazines from the period. Byte is a good one. Half the magazine is advertising, and lots of those are pages full of component listings. Anything in an early 1995 edition is fair game.

As for build quality... STB didn't exactly have a good reputation in those days. Want good stuff? Go for German design. Miro and ELSA had absolutely bulletproof cards.

Meanwhile I bought a genuine original Dos 6.22 o.s. to begin with (hoping the floppies will work). 😁

Hope so 😀

I understand about the ATi cards VESA point. I remember reading it somewhere about it even if at least I've good memories of the ATi ISA cards for its output quality, pcb quality and certainly faster than others usual low end ISA video cards..
I was looking also into some multimedia PCI or ISA cards.. the Reelmagic MPEG1 cards seems have been built up to 1999, incredible still in the ISA bus when already there were the Dxr2 and the H+/Dxr3 PCI ones also the Cinemaster ones but I don't think 1994 to 96 had none of them or others multimedia oriented PCI cards beside some analog tv tuner maybe. Probably the MPEG1 was already in the target of Pentium capability with the various 2D vga beginning to "accelerate" something (zoom and color convertion.. 🤣..almost like a Voodoo3),.
Anyway if I start with dos o.s. I'll not need them at first. Too bad I had many components I trashed in the past I'd need it now, first of all the case... anyway one thing at time.. I'm thinking to the Pentium SX961 gold version but I see it'd need a different heatsink I suppose, the height of the cpu is higher than the usual P54C.

In 1995 the landscape of PCI cards was roughly as follows:

premium segment:

- S3 964 or 968 VRAM based cards from many vendors (incl. Diamond, ELSA, Miro, Hercules,#9, STB, ...) The 968 has some basic video acceleration but other than that it is the same thing
- Weitek P9000/91000 based cards from several vendors - very capable Windows/CAD accelerator, but not VGA compatible and somewhat problematic
- #9 Imagine 128 - unique world's first 128bit card a very capable accelerator with poor DOS support
- ATi Mach64 GX VRAM based cards (Graphics Pro Turbo, Graphics Pro Turbo 1600, Winturbo) - average card sometimes plagued by mediocre drivers
- Matrox Millenium with VRAM or WRAM - Very fast high-end card. Even with some baby-3D capabilities nobody used back then

mainstream

- S3 864 / 868 - 64bit DRAM based cards. Same feature set as 964/968 but with cheaper DRAM and worse DAC chips
- ATI Mach64 DRAM based cards (Graphics Expression, ...) with lesser DAC than on more expensive Mach64 cards

low-end

- 32bit DRAM based cards based on Cirrus-Logic 52xx, ARKx000, Alliance Promotion, ET4000 w32p, Trident 96xx, Advance Logic. These often had poor quality integrated DAC

Towards the end of 1995, S3 introduced more integrated S3 Trio which conquered mainstream/low-end segment. Everybody was rushing to add pointless video decoding features into the chips and except for Matrox completely missed the 3D revolution that was coming....

mpe wrote on 2020-06-04, 10:43:

In 1995 the landscape of PCI cards was roughly as follows: […]
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In 1995 the landscape of PCI cards was roughly as follows:

premium segment:

- S3 964 or 968 VRAM based cards from many vendors (incl. Diamond, ELSA, Miro, Hercules,#9, STB, ...) The 968 has some basic video acceleration but other than that it is the same thing
- Weitek P9000/91000 based cards from several vendors - very capable Windows/CAD accelerator, but not VGA compatible and somewhat problematic
- #9 Imagine 128 - unique world's first 128bit card a very capable accelerator with poor DOS support
- ATi Mach64 GX VRAM based cards (Graphics Pro Turbo, Graphics Pro Turbo 1600, Winturbo) - average card sometimes plagued by mediocre drivers
- Matrox Millenium with VRAM or WRAM - Very fast high-end card. Even with some baby-3D capabilities nobody used back then

mainstream

- S3 864 / 868 - 64bit DRAM based cards. Same feature set as 964/968 but with cheaper DRAM and worse DAC chips
- ATI Mach64 DRAM based cards (Graphics Expression, ...) with lesser DAC than on more expensive Mach64 cards

low-end

- 32bit DRAM based cards based on Cirrus-Logic 52xx, ARKx000, Alliance Promotion, ET4000 w32p, Trident 96xx, Advance Logic. These often had poor quality integrated DAC

Towards the end of 1995, S3 introduced more integrated S3 Trio which conquered mainstream/low-end segment. Everybody was rushing to add pointless video decoding features into the chips and except for Matrox completely missed the 3D revolution that was coming....

Thanks, great list. In fact I was thinking also to the Trio32/64 that I see built in the 95 date PCBs. Probably already in the higher end Pentium 1xx target. I've seen a Miro Trio32, really well built but maybe too modern itself too.. I agree for the video features at least in MPEG1. Probably it was thought it'd have a longer lifetime as format but the MPEG2 really was the one to follow like ATi did already in the RageII and in the later 128/Pro versions.
Meanwhile I'm thinking I'll switch from the 32MB FPM to 2x8MB FPM if I will use the SX961 gold heatsink pentium. I suppose the SX961 were not exactly low end considering the higher costs of having that package solution. I don't remember if the 75/90/100 models came out in the same time or the P75 has ever been an high end itself or just the low end of the 0.60 process family.

Note that the DOS performance of cards was almost completely different to the Windows performance, with most of the premium segment performing very poorly (not just Weitek and Imagine128)

Fastest DOS PCI chipsets:
- Ark1000/2000PV
- Matrox Millennium WRAM
- S3 864/868 (yes, the DRAM 86x is faster in DOS than VRAM 96x)
- Tseng ET4000/W32P

Best VESA compatibility:
- S3 (all 86x/96x)
- Trident 9660
- Oak Spitfire
- most CL-GD54xx

So for best performance and compatibility, the DRAM S3 868 cards are very attractive. That said, performance differences in DOS with PCI cards are limited, so I'd suggest focusing more on compatibility.

Yes. In DOS the acceleration doesn't matter and no need for fast VRAM or high-speed DAC. Unless you talk AutoCAD or other professional software.

My S3 Trio64 delivers identical performance in DOS no matter if you clock it at 46 or 80 MHz or if using the slowest FPM or 1-cycle EDO. Even Trio32's performance with half-size path to memory is identical to Trio64.

Literally everything that matters is how quickly the CPU can move pixels to the host side of the interface over PCI.

mpe wrote on 2020-06-04, 11:29:

Yes. In DOS the acceleration doesn't matter and no need for fast VRAM or high-speed DAC. Unless you talk AutoCAD or other professional software.

My S3 Trio64 delivers identical performance in DOS no matter if you clock it at 46 or 80 MHz or if using the slowest FPM or 1-cycle EDO. Even Trio32's performance with half-size path to memory is identical to Trio64.

Literally everything that matters is how quickly the CPU can move pixels to the host side of the interface over PCI.

Even if vga analog output quality is variable depending on the card. I tried time ago a ATi Wonder 28800-5 XL ISA card in a 386 I had and its vga quality was much better than many others, stability, colors.. it was really a well built card with probably well designed dac filters or whatever.
Same thing I can't say for many S3 PCI cards tried in the past with the well knows variable vga final quality (beside the acceleration itself of course).

Update: back plastic customizable shield is arrived and installed.
Also which audio cards would you use beside looking maybe for something even older (these are all built in 96)?

Well, the photo's not great, but it looks like the top left card has wavetable onboard, which is a definite advantage over the other two. Apart from that they're pretty similar. ESS chips have a good reputation, OPTi slightly less so, although I've never really noticed much difference myself.

dionb wrote on 2020-06-05, 18:14:

Well, the photo's not great, but it looks like the top left card has wavetable onboard, which is a definite advantage over the other two. Apart from that they're pretty similar. ESS chips have a good reputation, OPTi slightly less so, although I've never really noticed much difference myself.

The big chip on the left is an ES981P, the smaller close to that is ES690F, the main is ES1868F and then above on the right an ES938J chip.

The other card ESS, has an ES1688F and a ES968F with that eeprom and the TGA1517 (Philips I suppose).

Meanwhile I wait to find a time correct case and some other components (a real time correct cd drive etc..) I tried for some moments a 1997 test, with Pentium 200 MMX upgrade, 2x32MB DIMM 66Mhz with the Riva 128 PCI (Diamond) and an AWE64. I could go for the 233 MMX but the case LED problem was a must.. 😁
Also switched for an older CD-ROM drive meanwhile.. 😉
But I'll be back to the 1995 components config soon. 😉

evasive wrote on 2020-06-03, 11:40:

AKA Aristo AM-435VX

This bios is used on MB520NH, VXB810DS, VXB820DS, VXB830DS. So if you find a newer one for one of these it might work on your board too.

The 35-8332-XX marking makes this a VXB820DS.

I remember I built a Pentium pc back when windows 95 launched. It was reasonably simple PC with 90Mhz pentium cpu, intel socket 5 motherboard, 16MB ram and Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM video card.

I actually still have all the parts I had in the PC I built back then, but I seem to prefer 386 or 486 for ms-dos and faster PC for win9x.