VOGONS


First post, by Archero34

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Hi!

I have been given several old parts and I wanted to build an old gaming pc, I had thought about Windows 3.11..

I wanted to know with the following pieces what would be more appropriate

motherboard: Socket 7, 2A5K1BOB

CPU: Cyrix MII

expansion cards:
Creative, CT3670
S3 Trio 64V2/DX
Philips ES3.TMIX
ADAPTEC: fgt2940uw

My question is, what OS would take advantage of this hardware for old games?

Thank you very much for the help ^^

Reply 1 of 6, by kixs

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Pentium (socket 7) era (and the rest of your hardware) is for late DOS games and early Windows 95 games. Windows 3.11 will run too. With "slow down" programs or disable caches it will also run more speed sensitive games (which tend to run too fast on faster processors).

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 2 of 6, by dionb

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That stuff says late SVGA era DOS 😀

2A5K1BOB - that's probably 2A5KIBOB or B0B. Can't ID the exact board, but 2A5KI is the AWARD BIOS code for an ALi Aladdin IV(+) chipset, which is clock-for-clock the fastest So7 chipset. Good pairing for that MII assuming it works and is stable.
S3 Trio is one of the most VESA-compatible chips out there.
CT3670 is an AWE64 in disguise, arguably the best one due to the SIMM slot. It gives you SB16 compatibility, EMU8k AWE stuff if you add a SIMM (4MB is more than enough for most purposes) and about as bug-free as a Creative SB16-series card will get (just MIDI slowdowns if you're playing 16b DA at the same time). FM synth is CQM, not OPL3, so not so great for old DOS stuff.
The 2940AU is a bog-standard SCSI host adapter, good if you have a 50p SCSI device (HDD or CDRom), but tbh with an Aladdin IV with UDMA support, SCSI isn't going to get you any extra performance over IDE.
Philips ES3.TMIX - weird AV editing board. Spotted once before on Vogons in a Win2k-era machine: IntelliStation M Pro Type 6868-5AG - but the driver link there seems to be for different cards: http://www.video-drivers.com/companies/399.htm (it's not a Movie Machine, it's not an AV Master and I can't find anything on the "SM II")

Tbh, I'd separate out the AV editing board. Finding software for it will be "fun" and even if you do, those things (and their software) frequently require building a whole PC around them with very specific specs. If one was found in a dual P3 system with Intel 840 chipset, I'd strongly doubt you could do anything sensible with it on a single MII.

What's left is perfect for 1994-1998 DOS stuff. If you want to run Windows, check how much memory the S3 Trio64 has. That determines window resolution. As someone who had to put up with a 1MB S3 868 card until mid 1999, I can tell you 1MB and max 800x600@16b colour is no fun. 2MB would give you 1024x768@16b colour, 4MB 1024x768@24b/32b colour.

Reply 3 of 6, by BurnedPinguin

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2A5KIB0B, not 2A5K1BOB or 2A5KIBOB. That ID goes to this board https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/8359 (Biostar M5ATD), you can open the downloads section and see that the AwardBIOS string has that ID in there. If possible please take a good photo of the board and upload here for the website!

Reply 4 of 6, by Archero34

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Thanks to all for the help,

My intention was 3.11 because I already have a PC with w98 SE and I wanted to discard MS-DOS for not having a graphical environment (from w98 it stops below I get a little lost).

would the issue of drivers be difficult?

is it possible to upload photos?

Reply 5 of 6, by BurnedPinguin

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Your SoundBlaster has drivers for Win 3.11, and they're easy to find, you can just google them, and same goes for the S3 video. The SCSI card you can probably find a matching ASPI driver for it and then use ASPICD for CD-ROM and ASPIDISK for any additional hard drives that weren't handled by the card's BIOS (your main hard drive for booting is already handled by the BIOS as without it it can't boot). I don't know what the philips card is. Let me attach some drivers I think should work for you in Win 3.11

SCSI.ZIP: extract all to boot drive, in config.sys, load first aspi8u2.sys, then if needed load aspidisk.sys (for hard drives apart from the boot drive, if necessary), then also if you have SCSI CD-ROM load "ASPICD.SYS /d:mscd001" and in autoexec.bat have "MSCDEX /d:mscd001"

Attachments

  • Filename
    scsi.zip
    File size
    43.2 KiB
    Downloads
    33 downloads
    File comment
    Adaptec SCSI DOS DRV
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception
  • Filename
    sb.zip
    File size
    1.8 MiB
    Downloads
    34 downloads
    File comment
    SoundBlaster DOS/Win 3.11 DRV
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception
  • Filename
    t64v2dx.zip
    File size
    614.64 KiB
    Downloads
    33 downloads
    File comment
    S3 Trio64 V2/DX Win 3.11 DRV
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 6 of 6, by Archero34

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There are some photos, I think I'll start installing 3.11 on the hard drive and insert drivers

IMG_20220820_090817.jpg
Filename
IMG_20220820_090817.jpg
File size
534.33 KiB
Views
390 views
File comment
motherboard
File license
Public domain
IMG_20220820_090835.jpg
Filename
IMG_20220820_090835.jpg
File size
556.61 KiB
Views
390 views
File comment
s 3 trio 64
File license
Public domain
IMG_20220820_161253.jpg
Filename
IMG_20220820_161253.jpg
File size
574.9 KiB
Views
390 views
File comment
creative
File license
Public domain
IMG_20220820_161020.jpg
Filename
IMG_20220820_161020.jpg
File size
870.07 KiB
Views
390 views
File comment
s3 virge
File license
Public domain