VOGONS


Retro PC problems and thoughts

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First post, by F2bnp

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Ok I found this some months ago while searching for my SNES.I was so exited:

Cyrix 6x86 133 mhz CPU
S3 Virge 2 mb card
64 mb ram
SB 16
HD Quantum Fireball 2.1(2 gb)

Searching the attic proved to give me the retro feeling back.I found an 15' Compaq monitor,freed up some space and mounted that thing over there.After a couple of time Windows 98 was running on it.I installed Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 and started playing.To tell you the truth I was disappointed...
The game run great at 320x280 but it was really annoying to play it like that.I tried 640x480 but the framerate was varying making it hard to play.I was stunned when pressing the 3D Accelerator option checked at 640x480 worked actually faster than the 3D Accelerator unchecked.Still it needed something.I put the Millennium 2 card I had and the game did run faster,a lot faster.But many games such as Warhammer Dark Omen,Legacy of Kain,Atlantis,Commandos either were unplayable or were very slow.Jazz Jackrabbit 2 had a some kind of problem with the 3D menus it was really slow,although the gameplay run perfectly.Then came school and the PC had to be pushed back in to the fire cauldrons of hell.
Some days later,a friend of me called about an old P166 mhz MMX he found.He wanted some more memory and a better video card.So I gave him half of my 64 mb memory and the millennium 2,boosting his memory to 64 mb he gave me his mystique 170 card with 4 mb ram.I was amazed that his PC could handle Dark Omen with full speed at full detail.So did Jedi Knight!But when I tried Blood 2 I saw that I wasn't the only one with problems 😜/It was then I understood that the problem was not only the cpu but the graphics card also.So the main task was to find a suitable p1 cpu and a voodoo 2 graphics card.But till now I haven't found anything.
Only yesterday I got the pc up and running again!I formatted it and then put Windows 95.Still everything was slow with the mystique card.Then I noticed a LED in the frond cover reading:
HIGH
It all came back,TURBO buttons and stuff 😜,within moments turning the LED to LOW using the jumpers from the back was the best I did.I actually got some performance,REAL performance.Still the whole thing was kinda slow.I thought using the Mystique for 2D and the Virge for some 3D and bilinear filtering would be the best for this...But here is the problem!How the heck am I gonna do this?:S Mounting both pci cards will use only one and until I build my REAL retro PC,I need to make this better.Please help me...!!!

REAL Retro PC thoughts:

CPU: P2 450 MHz
RAM: 128mb ram
HD: 10 GB
Graphics card: 2 Voodoo 2 cards on SLI

Reply 1 of 39, by keropi

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my advice would be a K6-II cpu... I currenlty use the 400mhz version...
One thing that I like about it (except being fast) is that it does not produce the error:200 on old programs that cannot cope with fast cpu's...

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Reply 2 of 39, by F2bnp

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It is AMD right?Is it slot 1 because my mainboard is only slot 1.

Reply 3 of 39, by StickByDos

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K6 use socket7 it would replace Cyrix

Slot1 only accept Pentium II and III

Cyrix and S3 ViRGE are too slow for 3D
Cyrix integrated fpu run at half speed of cpu
S3 was nicknamed decelerator

Type win to loose the power of your computer !

Reply 5 of 39, by F2bnp

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Well I thought it was good,but oh god I was wrong 😜
About the slot 1 cpu
I have another PC with a P2 233MHz,64 mb ram and a Mystique with 2 mb(yes I have it two times!)
I was thinking upgrading this one!I found a guy selling a P2 450 MHz for 8 euro in my country but I don't know if it would be compatible with the motherboard.CPU IS slot 1 and the mainboard doesn't even have agp(I would have mounted a TNT 2 otherwise 😉 )
I think the PC was an HP Vectra 6 or smth,released in 1998.

Reply 6 of 39, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

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F2bnp wrote:
Cyrix 6x86 133 mhz CPU S3 Virge 2 mb card 64 mb ram SB 16 HD Quantum Fireball 2.1(2 gb) […]
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Cyrix 6x86 133 mhz CPU
S3 Virge 2 mb card
64 mb ram
SB 16
HD Quantum Fireball 2.1(2 gb)

F2bnp wrote:

.I installed Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 and started playing.To tell you the truth I was disappointed...
The game run great at 320x280 but it was really annoying to play it like that.I tried 640x480 but the framerate was varying making it hard to play.I was stunned when pressing the 3D Accelerator option checked at 640x480 worked actually faster than the 3D Accelerator unchecked.

Of course; even Pentium 133 is still too slow to run unaccelerated 3D games in hi-res (640x480 and above), let alone Cyrix.

F2bnp wrote:

Still it needed something.I put the Millennium 2 card I had and the game did run faster,a lot faster.But many games such as Warhammer Dark Omen,Legacy of Kain,Atlantis,Commandos either were unplayable or were very slow.

Millenium II is of course faster than S3 Virge, but still too slow to play the games you mentioned above. You're playing 1998 games with a video card launched in 1997, mind you.

F2bnp wrote:

Some days later,a friend of me called about an old P166 mhz MMX he found.He wanted some more memory and a better video card.So I gave him half of my 64 mb memory and the millennium 2,boosting his memory to 64 mb he gave me his mystique 170 card with 4 mb ram.I was amazed that his PC could handle Dark Omen with full speed at full detail.So did Jedi Knight!But when I tried Blood 2 I saw that I wasn't the only one with problems 😜/It was then I understood that the problem was not only the cpu but the graphics card also.

A P166 MMX is way faster than Cyrix 133, and should be sufficient to run games like Dark Forces 2 (LucasArts ran DF2's impressive demo on P166, IIRC).

Nonetheless, you might want to check whether your friend runs the games above using Direct3D or software renderer. Here's some interesting fact: I have Pentium 100 with Matrox Mystique, and the first MDK runs with software renderer as fast as with Direct3D. However, Direct3D is actually uglier because Matrox does not support billinear filtering and transparency.

F2bnp wrote:
CPU: P2 450 MHz RAM: 128mb ram HD: 10 GB Graphics card: 2 Voodoo 2 cards on SLI […]
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CPU: P2 450 MHz
RAM: 128mb ram
HD: 10 GB
Graphics card: 2 Voodoo 2 cards on SLI

Correct. Voodoo (or Voodoo2) is way faster than S3, Mystique, or Millenium to run the games you've mentioned above. A good combo is TNT2 with Voodoo2 SLI.

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 7 of 39, by F2bnp

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Well actually I used to play the demo on another PC I think it was a P1 133 mhz with a Voodoo Rush and it actually worked great.
Hmmm the demo...That game is awesome I have to beat it 😜
I remember the demo clearly,it started with a bunch of screenshots from FMV of the game and the music was TEH awesome(yeah,Star Wars!)and if I remember in the end of the demo you had to jump on the airship while it was leaving!
Anyway so connecting a Virge and a Mystique is not a good idea right?
Well I found a store around here and told him to find me 1 Voodoo 2 on PCI and a P1 processor and also a slot1 p2 😉
Well he told me "Hey Kelly(his assistant)do you remember where the junkyard is?" xD

Reply 8 of 39, by Silent Loon

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Buying only the Voodoo2 might be the best idea. Try to get it at ebay. They are cheap, the most expensive part will be the shipping costs. The 8MB version should be okay, I don't think there is any difference to a 12mb Voodoo2.
Depending on the graphics card Dark Forces 2 (aka Jedi Knight) won't run faster with a faster cpu.
I found an old gaming mag from december 1997 and they tested it with various cpus from a P90 to a P200, and the P200 was declared "optimum" in combination with a voodoo 1 or a riva 128 card (...oh, those old days...). Remember that the voodoo2 and the TNT were not released, and the PII was too expensive for most (normal) people. So your PII 233 mmx in combination with a voodoo2 will do the job just fine, as you are limited to a 800x600 resolution with the voodoo2 anyway (1024x768 if you use two voodoos in SLI).
Yet Dark Forces 2 allows higher resolutions, and when you are really mad with this game, try to get a cheap P3 machine and a Voodoo5. Then you can possibly run it at 1600x1200 with 4x antialiasing. 😁

Reply 9 of 39, by swaaye

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Instead of blurring the hell out of your screen output with a pair of Voodoo2 cards inline with a 2D/3D card, just go with a Voodoo3. I can barely stand even a single Voodoo card in the chain because of how much the passthru blurs analog output. Voodoo3 has extremely fast 2D for Windows and it has very clear output. Even V3 2000 is faster than V2 SLI. I'm sure the 3D quality is better too. And you save yourself PCI slots.

Voodoo3 is better than a Voodoo2 in every way I can imagine. Maybe there is some odd DOS Glide 1.x game that won't like it, but Voodoo2 also has problems with Voodoo 1 DOS stuff. There are often ways around such problems.

Hell, maybe just consider a Voodoo5 5500! Those are excellent cards for old Windows 3D games. The crappy little fans they used on them are usually dieing or dead by today though, so you may want to plan on having to replace them. Or perhaps stick some motor oil into the bearing under the sticker. That usually gets you a good bit more life out of them.

Reply 10 of 39, by F2bnp

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I do not have an AGP slot 😜

Reply 11 of 39, by Dominus

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I do share the terror of the pass through to Voodoo1/2. There are also PCI variants of the V3 and V5 (though the V5 variant is quite rare and thus expensive, I think).

Last edited by Dominus on 2007-11-11, 18:50. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 13 of 39, by F2bnp

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Now I have another problem.While in Windows 95 Dos Mode,I try to run Ultima Underworld and it seems that I don't have enough EMS memory.
To check how much I have I did this:
mem /c /p
470 kb of ems ram are free
But I do certainly remember that you could use more than 640 kb of EMS memory,does anyone remember that?The problem also happens in some other games too!
Also trying to install Crusader No Regret gives something like STACKS ERROR IN CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT FILE EDIT IT
This happens many times on other dos programs and you have to reset the pc in order to go again in windows.

Reply 14 of 39, by swaaye

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in your config.sys: (substitute the windows dir for DOS if you aren't running win9x)

device=c:\windows\himem.sys
device=c:\windows\emm386.exe RAM i=B000-B7FF
dos=high,umb
stacks=9,256 (may also want to try "0,0")
files=40

The RAM switch gets you expanded memory (EMS). If you only need extended memory (XMS) and upper memory (UMB), use NOEMS to get more free upper memory instead of EMS. Sometimes you can also add "i=E000-EFFF" for more upper memory, but things may be unstable with it. The range I have above almost always works fine (unless you are monochrome 🤣).

remember to use "devicehigh" in config.sys and "loadhigh" or "LH" in autoexec.bat to load stuff into upper memory. And if you really want to tweak things, load the largest TSRs/drivers first because they need to get the biggest open blocks of upper mem. Just look at their RAM usage with "mem /c /p".

Reply 15 of 39, by F2bnp

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Gee thanks dude!I'm gonna try it!

Edit:

This is ridiculous 😜
I run ultima underworld and now it says:

EMS memory allocated
Not enough lower memory!

What the hell this PC just doesn't want to play this game xD

Reply 16 of 39, by F2bnp

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Well I had to delete the line:

device=c:\windows\emm386.exe RAM i=B000-B7FF

Cause when it was about to boot,Windows gave a message like this:

Not enough memory to boot krnl386.exe and you have to install Windows again.Going in safe mode,I deleted it and it stopped.Still I'm back at start.Stacks problem STILL appears and endlich,I need HELP!

Reply 17 of 39, by StickByDos

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Run memmaker
You have too much tsr loaded in your config.sys/autoexec.bat who go in low memory
What does mem report with emm386.exe ?

Type win to loose the power of your computer !

Reply 18 of 39, by MiniMax

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F2bnp - you might want to take a look at the way I have my DOS PC set up:

http://www.jabba.dk/files/SysExp-2004.03.04.zip

Depending on the needs, I can boot different configurations (with/without EMS, XMS, MSCDEX, MOUSE, ...)

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Reply 19 of 39, by F2bnp

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Hmm...
Hmm...
HMM!!!
That's rather interesting 😁
I will throw this into C:(of course I will backup the other ones)and see what it does!Thanks dude!

Nah it doesn't work.I will play with it for a while and see what it can do!