First post, by envagyok
Dear Vogons Dos professionals!
Unfortunately in the 1980's I only had a Commodore 64 computer and in high school 8088 computers without a sound card until 1992 when I graduated. Then, after a longer period of absence, I got a computer again in 1998. Of course, assembling a computer worked quite differently back then, so I have a lot of shortcomings.
I would like to get to know the real DOS gaming era, I have been collecting the hardware for a long time to build two computers covering the entire DOS era, with the best possible quality and hardware supporting as many sound standards as possible.
I have several questions about this.
I would like to divide the DOS era into two parts, so that one computer would be around from the beginning until 1992, 1993, and the other for the 1992-1997 era.
What I thought about the first computer (The Classic):
Intel 486DX2 66 processor
ASUS VL/I-486SV2GX4 motherboard
VLB video card (TSeng ET4000/W32P or S3 805 or
WD Paradise) Which is better or what would be the best?
VLB IDE or IDE with cache or SCSI or SCSI with cache would be best, or just a CF Card with VLB IDE?
Sound cards
MDR-401x MPU-401, SB 2.0 CT1350B with CMS just for Gameblaster/CMS, SB Pro CT1330A for soundblaster, and adlib, Maybe Gravis Ultrasound Classic, and Aztech 1st generation sound card for covox and disney sound is it worth?
And Yamaha FB-01 and Roland MT-32
Mitsumi CRMC-LU005S prop. CD (I have sony, and cru-562B too)
Computer 2 by early 1997:
Pentium 233MMX processor
ASUS TX97 motherboard
S3 Virge PCI (Diamond or ELSA), would there be a better choice?
Music Quest MQX-32m MPU-401 midi
CT1600 SoundBlaster Pro2, AWE32 CT3900, Gravis Ultrasound CLassic/PNP/ACE? Which the best?
And a voodoo1, plus a Roland SC-55 or/and Yamaha MU-50
CDR-4300A CD Changer
I have many other old sound cards, video cards, and motherboards, I don't know what would be worth replacing with another one from the imagined configuration.
About what else there is:
AWE64/64Gold, more awe32, sb32, Soundblaster 16 more early and later, Aztech sound cards, Terratec Profimedia 16/96, Terratec EWS64XXL, Yamaha SW20PC, Yamaha SW60XG, DB50XG, SCB-55
And my questions:
In the above configurations, which sound card should be set to which IRQ, I/O range, and DMA?
In what order would it be advisable to route the sound between the sound cards if I don't want a mixing console?
When i have Joystick and Gravis gamepad, then i must enable joystick only one sound card, or can work with all?
Which sound card should the speaker output of the motherboard be connected to?
Which DOS version should me install?
Is it worth installing the MS-DOS starter pack for Phil? https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ms-dos-starter-pack.html
Is there a surge protector that can be placed between the power supply and the motherboard to safe hardware components?
What should you put in a network card?
I thought it would be good to install Windows as well, I thought Windows 3.11 for the first machine, Windows 95 OSR2 for the second.
I think 3.11 runs on the same partition as DOS, should the Windows 95 system be converted to dual boot, or should Windows be used by booting into DOS?
I would like to thank you very much in advance for all your help!