A socket 7 / Pentium MMX build combined with the SETMUL utility for speed throttling makes an ideal DOS system to cover basically the entire 1990s. You can slow it down to 386 speeds all the way to a fast Pentium for late 90s DOS games.

For motherboards, something with an Intel HX, VX or TX chipset would be fine. For RAM, 32MB will suffice. 64MB would be the max I'd go (especially with a VX or TX chipset where 64MB is max cacheable).

You can run Windows 95 or 98 as well. Using CF cards makes for convenient OS swapping. I had a Pentium MMX 200 system with both DOS 6.22 on one CF card and Windows 95 on another.

Orpheus II will be great for sound. With SB Pro / WSS / GUS support and genuine OPL for FM, you're pretty covered for all audio you'll need for that time period. Throw in a wavetable daughtercard for General MIDI, and it's basically the best single card sound card solution you can get.

An alternative less expensive sound option would be something a Yamaha Audician 32 with the aforementioned wavetable daughtercard. You'd lose GUS support, but still retain SB Pro compatibility, genuine OPL for FM synthesis, General MIDI via the daughtercard, and reasonably clean audio output.

For the video card, an S3 Virge should be good. I specifically use Hercules Terminator 3D cards with that S3 chip. It's highly compatible with various graphics modes and DOS games.

You mention already having a Windows 98 system with a Voodoo card? What card is it specifically? If it's a later Voodoo card (e.g. Voodoo 2 or Voodoo 3) there is still possibly justification for putting a classic Voodoo in this system, since there are some early 3D accelerated games designed specifically for it. But that entirely depends on which games you want to play.

This is a fantastic reply, thanks!

So I think I'll start with hunting down a mobo. You've given me some great insight here. I suppose the best place to look is eBay, so it's time to let the hunting begin...hopefully these haven't skyrocketed in cost. If there are any known specific motherboards that the community vouches for and/or has had good experience with, that would be great! But now with some of the instructions you've provided I think I can figure out much of the rest.

I have an Orpheus I and a PNP GUS so I suppose an Orpheus II isn't really necessary, especially if I have the requisite slots available for the cards.

For my Win98 box, I have a Voodoo 3 3500. I _did_ have two Voodoo 2 cards that I intended to run in SLI but got rid of them, perhaps foolishly. But I'm not opposed to going that route again, however I'll probably consider that one more down the road once I have everything else I want set up.

Thanks again!

For onboard PS/2 you need an ATX board. They exist for So7, although earlier ones are hard to find (basically anything before i430TX chipset is Intel OEM only, boards like Thor and Marl). ATX also means you can use whatever case you have at hand, and you can use a modern PSU (although you will lack -12V on any ATX 2.x PSU, which can be issues with some sound cards - but you can solve this). It increases the chance of CR2032 rather than Dallas integrated RTC.

As for which specs, that depends on your focus. DOS prefers to have 16MB or less (some games have memory detection routines that fail on larger amounts of memory) and 16MB is sweet spot for Win3.11 too. For Win9x however this is far too little RAM. Win98 will run happily on a Pentium MMX with 64MB, but very few Win98 games will have decent performance - it's period correct, but the average 1999 experience sucked badly. I prefer to use a Tualatin P3 1400S for Windows 98 stuff, and use a Pentium 3 500 for DOS/Win3.11. That's overkill, but there are definitely very late DOS games that run better on this than on the K6-2 350 I used before, so even for (late) DOS a Pentium MMX can need all the speed it can get. Given you already have a Win98 system, I'd strongly recommend to keep the scope of this system to earlier stuff, so you don't need to compromise.

Orpheus II is beautiful and elegant, but you pay for the privilege. Then again, no GUS derivative is remotely cheap these days. Still, you're asking for multiple ISA slots, so no need to concentrate everything into that one card.

I'd say if you want pure DOS and have no ambitions to put faster So7 CPUs (K6-2(+)) in the system, an i430TX-based ATX board is the way to go. Things like the Abit AX-5, Asus TX97-X, FIC PT-2012, Gigabyte GA-586ATX, MSI 5148 etc - but basically any TX board should do the trick. Add 16MB SDRAM DIMM for best performance, an S3 Trio64 or Virge PCI card and however deep and expensive you decide to dive down the sound card rabbit hole and you're good to go.

For DOS, CF is usable, Windows tends to wear out the cards much too fast. I use a 16GB DOM (Disk-on-module) for my late DOS box which suits me fine so far.

File transfers are easiest over network. I use 3Com or Intel NICs with DOS packet driver and mTCP - more specifically, I run the FTP server on the DOS machine and log onto it with a client running on my modern PC.

Intel TC430HX Tucson motherboard (Intel 430HX chipset) is ATX, with support up to 233MMX, 128MB RAM, S3 Virge/DX, Yamaha OPL3 sound and Yamaha OPL4 wavetable, USB ports, great “software” de-turbo function with speed slow-down by keyboard to mid-386 level 😉

This is all great info, thanks!

I love the mobo recommendations. I'm going to have a look around and see how unobtanium this stuff is. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Dumb q - if I'm focused on DOS and Win3.11, will there be any downside to limiting myself to 16mb RAM? If not, that sounds like the easiest solution anyway.

Thanks everyone!

cloverskull wrote on 2023-10-04, 07:35:

This is all great info, thanks! […]
Show full quote

This is all great info, thanks!

I love the mobo recommendations. I'm going to have a look around and see how unobtanium this stuff is. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Dumb q - if I'm focused on DOS and Win3.11, will there be any downside to limiting myself to 16mb RAM? If not, that sounds like the easiest solution anyway.

Thanks everyone!

You can use any amount of RAM and limit it with BURNMEM if you need. Loo in your private messages 😉

cloverskull wrote on 2023-10-04, 07:35:

This is all great info, thanks!

I love the mobo recommendations. I'm going to have a look around and see how unobtanium this stuff is. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Don't fixate on board names, focus on chipset and form factor. That's what determines performance and most of the compatibility; unless you have very strong reasons to choose a particular board/brand and are prepared to pay a premium for your inflexibility, it pays (literally) to keep a wide view.

Dumb q - if I'm focused on DOS and Win3.11, will there be any downside to limiting myself to 16mb RAM? If not, that sounds like the easiest solution anyway.

Unless you intend to so some very spectacular stuff in Win3.11, you should be fine. I had a Pentium 60 with 16MB and Win3.1 as daily driver from 1995-1999 and ran both office stuff (Word 6, Excel 6 😜 ) and games (Civ2, Battle Isle 3) without issues.

dionb wrote on 2023-10-04, 08:06:

Don't fixate on board names, focus on chipset and form factor. That's what determines performance and most of the compatibility; unless you have very strong reasons to choose a particular board/brand and are prepared to pay a premium for your inflexibility, it pays (literally) to keep a wide view.

I think this is very good advice. For Socket 7 deciding whether it should be AT or ATX is one of the most important decisions. Depending on where you are located, good AT cases and PSUs may be hard do find. TX chipset is much more common in ATX boards than HX chipset. Most AT boards don't have a PS/2 mouse port but usually they have a pin header for it. But then you will have to find or build a bracket for that. AT HX boards tend to be a bit cheaper with more ISA slots.

Another option I don't think was mentioned is just obtaining a fully built system and stripping it for parts or refurbishing it.

If you start with a fully built system, you can always swap individual parts as needed.

If you have an LCD monitor, you might consider not using older S3 cards. I have two Virge cards and they are both unusable because they produce a dark image, someone else here had the same problem with an S3 VLB card. Trident and Cirrus Logic were much better, although slightly blurry in higher resolutions (800x600 and up). I'd use Cirrus Logic for a DOS/Win3.11 build.

Socket 7 is probably the least problematic platform of all, so your choice of board is not as important. One thing is if you plan to use newer processors, make sure it supports dual voltage mode. I love using VIA boards for their legacy features (support adjusting CPU speed from 5% to 100% using throttle.exe, USB support that can also work under DOS with Bret Johnson's drivers), Intel boards can also do that, SiS do not I believe.

@Cloverskull: Check out my two replies in this thread and links within them:
Re: which specs would you recommend for a gaming rig that can cover the whole DOS area
Re: which specs would you recommend for a gaming rig that can cover the whole DOS area

Replies from other users are very informative as well.

asdf53 wrote on 2023-10-04, 18:20:

If you have an LCD monitor, you might consider not using older S3 cards. I have two Virge cards and they are both unusable because they produce a dark image, someone else here had the same problem with an S3 VLB card. Trident and Cirrus Logic were much better, although slightly blurry in higher resolutions (800x600 and up). I'd use Cirrus Logic for a DOS/Win3.11 build.

Hmm, this is new to me. I've been using two S3 Trio64V2/DX (775) with 1MB and 2MB RAM, as well as Savage4 Pro (397) with 16MB RAM, under DOS, Win3.1, and Win98SE, connected to either modern (Asus ProArt PA249Q) or vintage (an used HP 1024x768 monitor; couldn't remember the model) LCD monitors, with no such "dark image" observed.

I know one even toed ungulate with a horn ATX 430TX chipset socket 7 board that doesn't get mentioned much ... Octek Rhino 20+ ... but it's also a bit of a unicorn... though in the "nobody cares about them much" way such that while you don't see them very often, people aren't searching for them either and price might be okay.

But Intel Tucson and other HX and TX ATX boards turn up in 97-99 Dells and Microns.

dormcat wrote on 2023-10-04, 19:31:

Hmm, this is new to me. I've been using two S3 Trio64V2/DX (775) with 1MB and 2MB RAM, as well as Savage4 Pro (397) with 16MB RAM, under DOS, Win3.1, and Win98SE, connected to either modern (Asus ProArt PA249Q) or vintage (an used HP 1024x768 monitor; couldn't remember the model) LCD monitors, with no such "dark image" observed.

Maybe Trio cards are not affected? Here's a good post that illustrates the problem:
Signal output quality difference S3 Virge vs Matrox Mystique
The left screenshot is exactly how my Virge cards look, it's so depressing. Even the crappiest, blurriest Trident cards that I own have a more vivid picture. When I changed the Virge for another card, I was blown away how bright and colorful the image suddenly became. I never used the cards again since then and consider them garbage. The Savage 4 does not have this problem, it has extremely good output quality.

asdf53 wrote on 2023-10-04, 20:23:

[...] Maybe Trio cards are not affected? Here's a good post that illustrates the problem: Signal output quality difference S3 Vi […]
Show full quote

[...]
Maybe Trio cards are not affected? Here's a good post that illustrates the problem:
Signal output quality difference S3 Virge vs Matrox Mystique
The left screenshot is exactly how my Virge cards look, it's so depressing. Even the crappiest, blurriest Trident cards that I own have a more vivid picture. When I changed the Virge for another card, I was blown away how bright and colorful the image suddenly became. I never used the cards again since then and consider them garbage. The Savage 4 does not have this problem, it has extremely good output quality.

This was a pretty infamous issue with low-end S3 cards in the mid/late 1990s. It's not actually a chipset problem as good cards with those chips (from Diamond, Elsa, Miro, Number Nine & co) are fine. Probably a combination of too loose specs for analog parts combined with bottom-scraping manufacturers sticking to the lowest possible implemantation.

The reason to recommend S3 is that they have one of the best VESA SVGA implementations. Pretty much any SVGA DOS title out there will work on them. By comparison, other high-end brands from the period such as ATi and - worse - Matrox have pretty awful issues in DOS SVGA. Ark, Cirrus Logic and Trident had pretty good implementations too, but good cards with those chips can be hard to find. Not so period-correct, but 3Dfx and early nVidia cards also had excellent DOS VESA performance.

Go for good brand S3 Trio/Virge implementations and they will be no worse than anything else - but a crappy no-name card will probably disappoint, more so than a crappy card with a different chip.

Thanks for all the replies, friends. I've settled on the Intel TC430HX Tucson that Babasha mentioned - seems like a lot of other mobos in this category aren't terribly expensive but this one seemed to have some positive reviews based on things I had researched following that post. So, mobo is settled!

Since that mobo already has graphics, I guess I can skip all of that. I am considering a voodoo1 card for 3d stuff.

I'm also probably going to do a dual OS setup (on separate cards) - dos/w3.11 and w95. I figure, if I have the hardware, what's the harm.

As far as the LCD/CRT thing goes, I have more CRT monitors than I have space for so I should be all set in that regard 😜 I'm a total CRT purist for vintage gaming. Even my consoles run through a CRT TV set that weighs like 200lb.

I suppose all I need to figure out now is RAM, PSU, case, and sick rgb lighting.

(if my sarcasm wasn't clear on that last item, please know it was intended 😜 )

Vogons is such a cool place. Everyone here is so helpful.