Which time period do you need to cover? just dos/Win9x or do you need an XP rig as well?

If it's just dos and Win9x I would have the slowest PC possible for dos so in your case a build based off one of your socket 7 motherboards.
and for Win9x I would keep your Asus A7M266 build as you seem to like it and it'll do the job just fine.

If you need dos/Win9x and XP
Most later dos games still work on newer systems so as long as you have an ISA slot you'll be ok 95% of the time.

So I'd probably use the MSI MS-6167 with the V5 for dos/win9x and the Abit AN-7 for WinXP

Thanks for the input and suggestions - that helps.

I think pretty much it's later DOS stuff that's of interest so the slow socket 7 machine I can probably do without - seems that when I have assembled it from time to time, it's more because it's hardware I used to have as my main PC rather than because it's useful in any unique way- so the hardware is the nostalgia trip in that case... and I invariably find it frustratingly slow.

I may need to assemble the AN-7 for XP or 2K for non-gaming reasons some time (if I ever want to resolve whether any of my firewire devices work any more) but that can be temporary (ie on test bench for now) - and I suspect any games I might think of playing on that would be fine on Windows 11. I ought to do that, because I can do without holding onto gear I don't need any more.

Yeh ok if you already find the Socket 7 PC slow then no point keeping it.
I must admit I mostly use a P3 600 for my dos gaming as well.

It's true a lot of games that work in XP will also work on Win11 but you loose EAX. which is why people still prefer an XP machine.
No reason an XP rig can't do both firewire AND games.

But are you sure you only have enough space for 2 PC's because you have some really nice hardware!
Maybe stack a few cases on top of each other and use a KVM?

[I have 10, I don't know why I said Win 11.]

I have that Creative XFi software in Win10 which I thought gave me EAX though to be honest I've never properly understood OpenAL vs Alchemy vs XFi-whatever-it-is. Think it cost me £20 some years ago, and Windows 7 and /or 10 have periodically broken it (a bit like my Bigfoot PCI-E card, which lives in a drawer now).

chinny22 wrote on 2024-10-01, 01:15:

But are you sure you only have enough space for 2 PC's because you have some really nice hardware!
Maybe stack a few cases on top of each other and use a KVM?

Haha! Yes I always said I'd do that again one day - used to have 4 hooked up with two on each cable-type KVM and those KVMs plugged into an old-fashioned KVM with a big switch on the front, but then various things happened and things got dismantled and sometimes thrown away (don't have the KVMs any more, one of those cable devices started failing anyway) but I tried to keep what I thought I might one day want to use again. I kept PSUs and CD/DVD drives etc so I do sometimes wonder if things would take up less space if I built the PCs... may be something I look at more seriously in the spring...

chinny22 wrote on 2024-10-01, 01:15:

Yeh ok if you already find the Socket 7 PC slow then no point keeping it.

I did run a K6/3+ with V2SLI and an EWS64XL and GUS ACE for quite a few years... but that's gone now and now I've built it I think the Athlon 700 is its spiritual successor - similar enough but with upgrades (I gather Banshee < V2 SLI but I can always swap graphics). Always had trouble sticking with anything slower - 286, 386, 486, 586, P100... I tried that IDT for a while and it was interesting and slow and that had plus sides... but it felt so exciting to set up the Slot A again.

ratfink wrote on 2024-10-01, 17:37:

[I have 10, I don't know why I said Win 11.]

I have that Creative XFi software in Win10 which I thought gave me EAX though to be honest I've never properly understood OpenAL vs Alchemy vs XFi-whatever-it-is. Think it cost me £20 some years ago, and Windows 7 and /or 10 have periodically broken it (a bit like my Bigfoot PCI-E card, which lives in a drawer now).

while not 100% accurate if we compare EAX to 3DFX Glide

SoundBlaster Live!, Audigy, X-Fi are all soundcards that support EAX
Much like 3dFX Banshee and Voodoo cards support Glide.

EAX was a proprietary sound API written by creative that only worked on their cards.
Just like Glide was a proprietary graphics API that only worked on 3dfx cards.

Changes in Windows Vista and above drivers meant EAX could no longer work so Creative invented Alchemy to sort of Emulate EAX.
This is kind of like how dgVoodoo allows old graphics API's on newer OS's

OpenAL is the successor to EAX

So this all means that your Windows 7 PC would have supported EAX using the Alchemy software, but as you experienced is a real pain to get working.
So people have a WinXP computer for trouble free EAX

and just to repeat this comparison isn't 100% true or accurate, yes some non creative cards support EAX, and yes Alchemy isn't an emulator.
I'm not going for accuracy just a simple comparison to help understand where everything sits in the big picture.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-10-02, 04:53:

I'm not going for accuracy just a simple comparison to help understand where everything sits in the big picture.

That's really helpful to see how it fits together, thanks. I had Alchemy on my Windows 7 machine (now running Windows 10) but also at some point bought X-Fi MB3, but I see that XFiMB3 can no longer be activated should it need reinstalling again, so yeah looks increasingly like an XP machine lies ahead.