The Retro-friendly Modern PC

You can make it work in some situations but it's not necessarily plug and play. It's not just that PCI sound cards themselves changed to make compatibility harder, but PCI doesn't support all of the same features that ISA does. PCI of course adds many features over ISA but it drops certain features too.

Supposedly Vortex 2 is relatively good for DOS but I can't personally confirm. Try to stick to the MX300 or the Turtle Beach Montego II as the MX200 is Vortex 1 which isn't as good (though might be about the same as far as DOS is concerned).

What are you planning to run in DOS that you care about having a P4, anyway? Not all DOS games will run correctly on such a new CPU.

You might be able to find a PCI-only motherboard with the "SB Link" feature to use certain PCI sound cards in most DOS games, though I'm not sure what motherboard availability is for that feature.

It is not as much the p4 as it is some of the motherboard featues. For instance inhave a sata dock built into my case for ssd. So i have a plug and play ssd for transferring games. Also i find that even some of the games that can be played in compat mode on higher windows still do better in 98 like starcraft. Its just a personal prefference really. I was considering getting a p3 xps mobo and replacing it but that power supply havibg the special 6 pin makes it a pain if it dies. I havent had any issues with dos games on the setup except in the sound area. I was thinking originally befor i got the sound card that it was still on vortex 2 chips only to find out they are canyon i believe.

The thing about PCI to ISA converters is that they don't support DMA, so you can really only use them for music output(FM/MIDI/Wavetable). The digital sound part of the card will be nonfunctional.

I even have an old PCI to ISA setup with a PCI card that goes in the computer, then the ISA card goes in the backplane. They are connected by a special cable.

Although the datasheets for the chips used say that it could support DMA, the software/drivers for the setup do not support DMA.

See here for at least a partial list of motherboards with the SB-Link
List of motherboards with SB-link (PC/PCI) header

There is a USB to ISA adapter that has a custom version of DOSBOX that supports DMA through the adapter.. but of course you have to run it through Windows.
http://arstech.com/install/ecom-prodshow/usb2isar.html

So in other words over all the best scenario would be either mx 300 or montego or swap to a true isa motherboard. Thankyou for your responses. I hunt down one of those cards for the time being untill i make a full switch on mobo.

I'd suggest using a more DOS compatible board (like a 440bx or a Socket 7) and sourcing an IDE to SATA converter so you can connect your drive dock. P4 boards can work well for games that require maximum performance, but many games require throttling so they don't run too fast. P4s aren't as flexible in this regard.

Yeah i had seen a video where socket 7 was suggested as the ultimate because of clock speed control where it matter such as the original warcraft. I have ide hdd im using for the os. The ssd is just for games and software. Plus it makes drivers easy to transfer over befor the usb mass is installed. Thankyou for your suggestions. one last question. Is it just the vortex chipset that is what creates the compatability? Ike the montego and the mx300 are the sugested go to cards but i see other cards brands that are vortex 2.

gdjacobs wrote:

I'd suggest using a more DOS compatible board (like a 440bx or a Socket 7) and sourcing an IDE to SATA converter so you can connect your drive dock. P4 boards can work well for games that require maximum performance, but many games require throttling so they don't run too fast. P4s aren't as flexible in this regard.

There are SATA controllers that are compatible with Windows 98 (have drivers), and are bootable as well.

Anything that is Promise SATA 150 (NOT SATAII 150) based should work fine.

The Promise models are
SATA150 TX2plus
SATA150 TX4

There are also variations and OEM versions that have the same chipsets that will work also.

As long as you have one of these chipsets it should work.
PDC20371 - SATA Only
PDC20376 - SATA and IDE

The drivers can be downloaded directly from promise.com

Edit: Looking around and I have found some more that support Windows 98 - Silicone image 3512 chipset.
SABRENT SBT-SRD2
SABRENT SBT-SRD4

There is also a Via chipset one that supports Windows 98
VT6421A

There is pretty much absolutely no reason to deal with IDE for HDDs or SSDs.

Gixxxer wrote:

Yeah i had seen a video where socket 7 was suggested as the ultimate because of clock speed control where it matter such as the original warcraft. I have ide hdd im using for the os. The ssd is just for games and software. Plus it makes drivers easy to transfer over befor the usb mass is installed. Thankyou for your suggestions. one last question. Is it just the vortex chipset that is what creates the compatability? Ike the montego and the mx300 are the sugested go to cards but i see other cards brands that are vortex 2.

Any Vortex 2 based card should work fine.

For OPL3 music, you will want to pick up a Yamaha YMF 724/744/754 based card as the Vortex2 doesn't have a real OPL3 chip, while those Yamaha chipsets have real OPL3 built in.

Cheapest Yamaha card that meets that is a YMF744 card - http://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Channels-5-1-Surrou … p8AAOSw-KFXeRdb

For that matter, if you are only using it for DOS, a Yamaha card should work.

Edit:
I ordered one of these a couple weeks ago. I am still waiting for it to arrive, but the picture shows the YMF744 chipset and I found a post by somebody that actually pointed to that card and said it has the YMF944 chip on it.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/182193467237?_trksid= … K%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Edit: The card they sent me has a CMI 8738 chipset on it. Not happy. Already requested a refund.

Silicon Image PCI SATA are the 3112 and 3114, PCI-E are 3512 and 3514. I have a 3114... It's pretty darn slow with the Sandisk 16GB U100 SSD I have on it. I haven't tried the Promise TX2 or TX4 or the Adaptec ASH-1205SA which also has 98 drivers.

kenrouholo wrote:

Silicon Image PCI SATA are the 3112 and 3114, PCI-E are 3512 and 3514. I have a 3114... It's pretty darn slow with the Sandisk 16GB U100 SSD I have on it. I haven't tried the Promise TX2 or TX4 or the Adaptec ASH-1205SA which also has 98 drivers.

A 16GB SSD is not going to be speedy in the first place. The smallest I even bother using is 128GB.

The Adaptec controller has the Silicon Image 3112a chipset.

The Sabrent PCI Silicon Image controller I was looking at has the 3512 chipset on it.

I am currently using a Promise one in my KT7A build and it works really well. I haven't actually tested the throughput but it does boot to Windows 98SE really fast.

I have a VIA and a Sabrent 2-port on the way

kenrouholo wrote:

Supposedly Vortex 2 is relatively good for DOS but I can't personally confirm. Try to stick to the MX300 or the Turtle Beach Montego II as the MX200 is Vortex 1 which isn't as good (though might be about the same as far as DOS is concerned).

Don't forget about the Aureal SQ2500; it's basically the reference design, although it came out after the MX300. They also have Vortex 1's out there that you probably want to avoid if there's a choice. The Vortex 2 chip is AU8830, Vortex 1 is AU8820.

cyclone3d wrote:

A 16GB SSD is not going to be speedy in the first place. The smallest I even bother using is 128GB.

it's significantly less slow on newer machines with newer OS, but yes you are correct that it's nowhere near as fast as a newer and larger SSD. I'm going to get something like a 1TB for my main PC soon, and move a secondary 120GB SSD to my Pentium 3 at that time. But on the P3 with the SiI3114 this SSD is closer to HDD speed than SSD speed. It's pretty bad. And this is not a JMicron SSD (which are garbage).

Looks like I was wrong on the SiI311x vs SiI351x, sorry.

firage wrote:

Don't forget about the Aureal SQ2500; it's basically the reference design, although it came out after the MX300.

thanks for the addition. I'll try to remember to include that next time I talk about Vortex.

kenrouholo wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

A 16GB SSD is not going to be speedy in the first place. The smallest I even bother using is 128GB.

it's significantly less slow on newer machines with newer OS, but yes you are correct that it's nowhere near as fast as a newer and larger SSD. I'm going to get something like a 1TB for my main PC soon, and move a secondary 120GB SSD to my Pentium 3 at that time. But on the P3 with the SiI3114 this SSD is closer to HDD speed than SSD speed. It's pretty bad. And this is not a JMicron SSD (which are garbage).

Looks like I was wrong on the SiI311x vs SiI351x, sorry.

No problem on the mistake. I was just posting what I found. And as both the 311x and 351x is available in PCI cards I can see how it would be easy to think that the 351x was not PCI.

In any case, the max you are going to be able to get through the PCI 32-bit 33Mhz bus for any drive is 133MB/s without the PCI bus being used for anything else at all.

I'm kind of wondering how much of the limitation in speed has to do with the speed of the system though. Have you run benchmarks to see what the CPU utilization goes up to?

kenrouholo wrote:

firage wrote:

Don't forget about the Aureal SQ2500; it's basically the reference design, although it came out after the MX300.

thanks for the addition. I'll try to remember to include that next time I talk about Vortex.

There is also the Dell Turtle Beach Vortex2 card. Both the Vortex1 and Vortex2 cards from Dell carry the same Dell part number 07005 for some dumb reason as far as I can tell.

Edit: So the Dell part numbers for the Vortex1 and Vortex2 are actually different.

Vortex1 is 07005
Vortex2 is 0005931D

/Edit

There are two ways to tell them apart though.
1. Look at the Vortex chip itself.
2. Look at the part number silkscreened on the front of the board itself.
Vortex1 - TBS400-3355-01
Vortex2 - TBS400-3356-01

yeah I'm pretty sure the Dell card is the same as the standard Montego / Montego II. I had a Montego II Quadzilla back in the day and I have a couple of Dell ones now and the cards look the same as I remember (minus the extra bracket the Quadzilla gave me). I got one of my Dell cards because the seller thought it was a Vortex 1 and based his/her price on Vortex 1 prices, but I was specifically looking for AU8830s so I knew what to look for. I hadn't actually noticed that the Dell P/N was the same. Wow is that dumb. Really annoying when companies do that - it's a hassle not just when buying these parts but also if you'd bought the part from Dell and had an issue with it, the P/N alone might not get you the exact right part as a replacement.

Man did I get rid of so, so much hardware that I miss these days.

kenrouholo wrote:

yeah I'm pretty sure the Dell card is the same as the standard Montego / Montego II. I had a Montego II Quadzilla back in the day and I have a couple of Dell ones now and the cards look the same as I remember (minus the extra bracket the Quadzilla gave me). I got one of my Dell cards because the seller thought it was a Vortex 1 and based his/her price on Vortex 1 prices, but I was specifically looking for AU8830s so I knew what to look for. I hadn't actually noticed that the Dell P/N was the same. Wow is that dumb. Really annoying when companies do that - it's a hassle not just when buying these parts but also if you'd bought the part from Dell and had an issue with it, the P/N alone might not get you the exact right part as a replacement.

Man did I get rid of so, so much hardware that I miss these days.

Oh yeah, I know how you feel about that. Probably 7-8 years ago I got rid of a bunch of Pentium 1 and Pentium 1 MMX stuff, some SB 16 cards, some AWE32 cards, and some other stuff. I had no use for it, but it would be nice to have now.

The one place I worked at, they were getting rid of a massive amount of old Dell Pentium III computers. I grabbed a bunch of the CPUs, anything that was 866 or 933 and pretty much all the RAM. I guess I probably should have grabbed the computers themselves as well.. but who knew.

Way back in the day I had an IBM 386 or 486 MCA bus full tower system. Of course I couldn't get any drivers for anything for it back them so it was useless to me. I got rid of that as well.

And even before that, I at one point had an Adlib Gold card that I had picked up for like $5 at a local electronics place. Who knows where that card went. Probably in some computer I sold. I also had a Disney Sound System. Don't know where that went either.

I ended up finding a dell tb vortex 2 and its compatability is pretty good. I am still looking into a mb swap for one with isa. But then again if the games i play are supported may not be worth it.