tomcattech wrote on 2021-10-19, 03:53:

My 2 cents here: Retro systems are like rabbits.... You build one and then you are surrounded by builds that always need "just o […]
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My 2 cents here:
Retro systems are like rabbits....
You build one and then you are surrounded by builds that always need "just one more thing".

Both of my recent systems have been built by Craigslist and OfferUp, as I'm always keeping an eye open for stuff people are just getting rid of. Complete P3 Win98 SE with a bad power supply? I'll take it for $15 if they are going to pitch it anyway.

EBay prices are just insane these days so I normally stay away...

Without a car I echo the same about finding a working system and then tweaking to taste.

I'm still waiting on that golden Voodoo2 find.... It WILL happen.

Yeah, eBay prices have gotten crazy for the most part.. However, I snagged a huge lot of mostly PCI Creative sound cards for a whopping $12.50 shipped just a few days ago. I was really surprised that I was the only bidder.
Came with 3x AWE64 CT4500 cards, a CT3600 (AWE32 / Sound Blaster 32), 5x Audigy 2 ZS, Audigy 4, a massive number of Live! cards and a few other cards.

The deals are still out there, but they don't pop up near as much as they used to.

JustRob wrote on 2021-10-19, 00:56:

I found a GIGABYTE GA-6VXC7-4X-P, which I think is the mobo LGR used in one of his builds... It has only one ISA, but a 4x AGP port. I think that should be a better option for doing both Dos and Windows games.

Yeah, that would be a pretty good board for late DOS and Win9x games.

For the ISA sound card, I would try to pair it with something that is Sound Blaster 16 compatible.... You can go with a real Creative Labs cards... an AWE32 CT3670 would be great as it has the AWE64 chip and also has SIMM slots to upgrade the RAM. You can even flash it with the AWE64 firmware which will permanently disable the onboard IDE port.

It doesn't have real OPL3, but you can use a Yamaha YMF7x4 PCI card for that. I don't see a PC-PCI / SB-Link header on that motherboard so you would be limited to DDMA mode for the digital audio on that particular card but it doesn't matter one bit if you are only using it for OPL3.

Another good choice though usually a lot more expensive is one of the AWE32 cards that includes a real OPL3 chip as opposed to Creative's CQM.
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2012/07/s … 64-options.html

If you don't care about AWE32/64 support for DOS games, there are a ton of other cards that will work just fine and are much cheaper. Any of the OPTi 930 cards will have real or clone OPL3 except for a very few that don't have OPL3 at all.. but they will have onboard wavetable... I've only seen a single card like this.
The Sound Blaster Pro support on these cards is top notch and I used one with onboard wavetable and clone OPL3, which I still have, for years until I moved to a system that didn't have an ISA slot.

For PCI sound cards in Win9x, the best for games would be an Audigy 2 ZS or Audigy 4 Pro. The Audigy 2 ZS will be much cheaper. And Aureal Vortex 2 (AU8830) is also nice to have for the games that support the surround sound of the Aureal cards.

For a video card, I would recommend a Geforce FX 5200 Ultra or better for Win9x games and some sort of Voodoo 2 or 3 for DOS games and Windows 9x games that support Glide.
You can get the Geforce FX cards and 3dfx Voodoo 3 in either AGP or PCI.

The higher performance Geforce FX in PCI is the 5700 LE (maybe). I only recently found out that a couple companies made this card in PCI and have not received the one I purchased yet.
The Quadro FX 600 is the fastest Quadro made for PCI. It is about the same as a Geforce FX-5500.

Thanks for the tips. I came across an AWE64 gold CT4390, is that any good? It looks all shiny and stuff.

JustRob wrote on 2021-10-20, 01:31:

Thanks for the tips. I came across an AWE64 gold CT4390, is that any good? It looks all shiny and stuff.

Great card, but usually extremely overpriced these days. They often fetch >100€ or even 150€ on eBay, personally I wouldn't spend more than 50€ on one. I have two of them, got them both for much cheaper on the local classifieds platform.

When looking around your local auction sites, don't try to find any specific hardware, it will almost certainly be overpriced. Look for the most generic auction titles instead: "old PC", "lot of old hardware", "sound card", "computer parts" etc.
You will have to browse through many listings, and have a close look at the pictures to find the 0.5% of interesting stuff among all the crap, but it certainly pays off.

Seems like it’s hard to get an old PC (case) without owning a car… most people aren’t interested in shipping a big hunk of junk.

Guess I’ll have to get a stupidly priced old PC on eBay…

You can always just use a newer case. Really no reason to use an old case other than aesthetics and wanting very poor airflow.

JustRob wrote on 2021-10-21, 17:36:

Seems like it’s hard to get an old PC (case) without owning a car… most people aren’t interested in shipping a big hunk of junk.

Guess I’ll have to get a stupidly priced old PC on eBay…

If the pc tower/part is not that far away, I guess you could ask the potential seller to send it in a taxi, to be paid at arrival by you. No idea how expensive cabs are in the Netherlands though.

JustRob wrote on 2021-10-21, 17:36:

Seems like it’s hard to get an old PC (case) without owning a car… most people aren’t interested in shipping a big hunk of junk.

Guess I’ll have to get a stupidly priced old PC on eBay…

There are good deals.. maybe not on eBay but on local sites. I find interesting stuff maybe once a month.

I actually put a baby at SS7 board in an ATX case, it is possible but to me it did not give me the right retro vibes. But it works.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-10-21, 18:53:

You can always just use a newer case. Really no reason to use an old case other than aesthetics and wanting very poor airflow.

My problem with newer cases is they usually don't have the drive bays that I need, I need two small ones for a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive and an SD card reader, and at least one, preferably two big ones. The newest cases don't have anything in the front at all, nobody uses CD-roms anymore.

JustRob wrote on 2021-10-21, 20:14:

My problem with newer cases is they usually don't have the drive bays that I need, I need two small ones for a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive and an SD card reader, and at least one, preferably two big ones. The newest cases don't have anything in the front at all, nobody uses CD-roms anymore.

Ah, yes, that's a real problem of most modern "mainstream" cases: with no or just one 5.25" drive bay, making them unsuitable for retro builds. You might have to find more options online for either new or old models.

JustRob wrote on 2021-10-21, 20:14:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-10-21, 18:53:

You can always just use a newer case. Really no reason to use an old case other than aesthetics and wanting very poor airflow.

My problem with newer cases is they usually don't have the drive bays that I need, I need two small ones for a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive and an SD card reader, and at least one, preferably two big ones. The newest cases don't have anything in the front at all, nobody uses CD-roms anymore.

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/case/#X=100 … 9999&A=0&H=2,15 should give you a start. Rosewill apparently still sells the CHALLENGER new for about $45-65 USD which has 2x 3.5" and 3x 5.25" bays, so maybe it might still be available in your country, and if you can find a CoolerMaster HAF 912 you can also convert one of the extra 5.25" bays into a 3.5" one with an adapter (if your SD reader doesn't come with one).

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/case/#X=100 … 9999&A=0&G=3,12
It looks like it gets much easier (in the US at least) to find cases with 3+ 5.25" bays (that you'd need adapters for your 3.5" stuff, of course) still new depending on how much you're willing to spend and how much you're willing to ignore the USB 3.0 headers or front audio headers.

It's certainly a conversation piece when people come in and ask about your RGB full-tower monster and you go "yeah it runs Windows 98 and DOS, just need to find another few MB of RAM though"

EDIT (except not really I just found it after I wrote all this and before posting): here's a list for the Netherlands
https://nl.pcpartpicker.com/products/case/#X= … 00,99895&G=3,12

Still looks like your best bet is to find either 1x 3.5" + 2x 5.25" bays and use an adapter or, more easily, 3x 5.25" bays and 2 adapters.

EDIT 2: super alternatively would be to mount the SD card adapter at the rear of the case if you can spare that space

TehGuy wrote on 2021-10-23, 14:47:

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/case/#X=100 … 9999&A=0&H=2,15 should give you a start. Rosewill apparently still sells the CHA […]
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JustRob wrote on 2021-10-21, 20:14:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-10-21, 18:53:

You can always just use a newer case. Really no reason to use an old case other than aesthetics and wanting very poor airflow.

My problem with newer cases is they usually don't have the drive bays that I need, I need two small ones for a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive and an SD card reader, and at least one, preferably two big ones. The newest cases don't have anything in the front at all, nobody uses CD-roms anymore.

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/case/#X=100 … 9999&A=0&H=2,15 should give you a start. Rosewill apparently still sells the CHALLENGER new for about $45-65 USD which has 2x 3.5" and 3x 5.25" bays, so maybe it might still be available in your country, and if you can find a CoolerMaster HAF 912 you can also convert one of the extra 5.25" bays into a 3.5" one with an adapter (if your SD reader doesn't come with one).

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/case/#X=100 … 9999&A=0&G=3,12
It looks like it gets much easier (in the US at least) to find cases with 3+ 5.25" bays (that you'd need adapters for your 3.5" stuff, of course) still new depending on how much you're willing to spend and how much you're willing to ignore the USB 3.0 headers or front audio headers.

It's certainly a conversation piece when people come in and ask about your RGB full-tower monster and you go "yeah it runs Windows 98 and DOS, just need to find another few MB of RAM though"

EDIT (except not really I just found it after I wrote all this and before posting): here's a list for the Netherlands
https://nl.pcpartpicker.com/products/case/#X= … 00,99895&G=3,12

Still looks like your best bet is to find either 1x 3.5" + 2x 5.25" bays and use an adapter or, more easily, 3x 5.25" bays and 2 adapters.

EDIT 2: super alternatively would be to mount the SD card adapter at the rear of the case if you can spare that space

Someone here approached me about an older AT case I could pick up for a price not as crazy as eBay, but these are all really good options for future projects. Thanks!

You ain't playing DOS games on a pentium 3. The good news is you can just swap it out with a Via C3, which will game fine up to around 1998, and slow down nicely for DOS games.

You sure? I tried some of my favorite on the old pentium 3 Packard Bell, they seem to run pretty well.

JustRob wrote on 2021-10-23, 22:29:

You sure? I tried some of my favorite on the old pentium 3 Packard Bell, they seem to run pretty well.

Some will, many will run too fast or not at all.

I don't suppose there's a compatibility list of specifically which games?

JustRob wrote on 2021-10-23, 22:52:

I don't suppose there's a compatibility list of specifically which games?

It's on the Vogons wiki.

This thread might also be helpful since the entries from the last couple of pages haven't been added to the wiki yet: Games that don't run properly on faster CPUs

Doesn't look too bad, there's proposed fixes for many of them. Dos games are kind of an odd beast, no matter which hardware you choose, it seems you can never get 100% perfect compatibility.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-10-19, 17:41:

Yeah, eBay prices have gotten crazy for the most part.. However, I snagged a huge lot of mostly PCI Creative sound cards for a whopping $12.50 shipped just a few days ago. I was really surprised that I was the only bidder.
Came with 3x AWE64 CT4500 cards, a CT3600 (AWE32 / Sound Blaster 32), 5x Audigy 2 ZS, Audigy 4, a massive number of Live! cards and a few other cards.

The deals are still out there, but they don't pop up near as much as they used to.

I think I saw that lot.

via and intel had pentium 4 chipset graphics that shared system ram to run .
where there be low and expensive supply of gpu cards these can get you by until a good card pops up.
I was interesting pentium 4 era had drivers for windows 9x especially with more generous shared ram access.
I think theres models with 64 mb video memory support and even more on later models. (VIA)
Please avoid gpu cards marketed as not tested they are 100% out of order. (took 5 times for me to realise)