"Installing"the patch (unless I'm mistaken you just copy-paste a bunch of files manually?) didn't help. Always a hard crash -even reboot- when returning to main menu. Onwards to different games while waiting for the cpu cooler!

I did many different attempts at a full reinstall in order to have the correct chipset drivers and have everything working. In the end, I found the magic combo. No more crashes in Settlers Heritage of Kings. Higher 3DMark99 score. No crashes in Rally Trophy, and playable framerate at pretty much max settings! Geforce limits AGP to 2x but that should be expected behaviour with this older mobo (they don't trust 4x mode, basically). I have AGP aperture mode at 64mb for safety reasons, I might experiment with higher values later.

Good good good.

However. On my previous install, I played TOCA 2 just fine. Now, it will install but after that it won't run at all, not even the setup utility. "Launcher performed an illegal operation." Also after patching to version 4.something (included in this CD). Is it because it's a DX6 game and I have DX9.0C (because of the more modern Settlers)? I might have tried it with DX8 installed the last time around. Still, weird. For reference: NFS3 and Sega Rally 2 both work perfect, also in Voodoo2 mode so TOCA is on its own in refusing to run now. It worked beautifully before on this PC with the Voodoos.

I understand you can't uninstall DX9? So that would be one day down the drain if DX9 is indeed the culprit...

Might be of interest: the TOCA 2 installer asks to install DX6. If I say "yes" it says that I don't have enough space to install DX6 (I do, I really do).

Would this be a safe option to see how things go with a lower DX version (I'd try 7)? If I *have* to choose, I'd rather have TOCA than Settlers but I don't know if it's DX version related or another problem.

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/dire … google_vignette

The ThermalTake 80mm CPU cooler arrived. While it does appear to be Socket370 compatible, there is no room for it on my motherboard as there are capacitors right next to the CPU socket...Sigh.

I have some aluminium stock and a mill. So I was thinking about the following mod: keep the copper plaque as the contact between CPU and cooler, but add a solid block of aluminium the size of the socket370 between the plaque and the actual heatsink to clear the capacitors. I'd only have to drill holes to screw the parts together, and mill a new keyway for the clamp. It would also be a completely reversible mod.

Apart from the effort required, does this sound like a good idea? there is enough width in the case to still have ample room above the fan with an extra 10mm or so heatsink height.

This idea, but with the copper first instead of in the middle:

This is 10mm and clears the capacitor tops by the height of the copper (2.5-3mm or something, I haven't measured). I also have much thicker stock, 25mm or something. But I thi k that, as long as it doesn't touch the caps, it's fine. It's not THAT hot there. And I can add a plastic insulator surround below the wide part so nothing shorts even when the heatsink would tilt and touch a cap.

The issue is - you'll also have to modify mounting mechanism and you will have to do it in such way that it maintains correct mounting pressure, does not fall off and does not break the CPU die...

Otherwise it should work.

Or you could cut holes in the heatsinks where the caps go instead. Would not be reversible though...

The mounting mechanism just needs a flat keyway of the same depth as original, no biggie. I'll just have to check if 10mm offers enough height for it...

There are too many capacitors to cut holes in the original heatsink.

I've checked and the 10mm block is too low for the clamp, so I will have to go with the massive solution of the 25 or so mm spacer. Well, clearing the caps won't be a problem. 😀 It's aluminium so it's not getting too heavy for the motherboard. I hope my mill can reach deep enough in it for the clamp keyway.

A bit different from your regular programme...how to fit a huge ThermalTake 80mm cooler to a tightly packed Socket370 motherboard.

The reason: my original small cooler is a VERY loose fit over the CPU, its heatsink gets crazy hot and the CPU measures 70°C or more when working, 60°C or more when booting, and rarely below 46°C at idle.

The problem: capacitors right next to the CPU socket, allowing no room for the overhang of the ThermalTake 80mm cooler.

The solution: build a spacer the size of the socket to provide enough height to clear the capacitors with the 80mm part.

The challenge: all mods must be reversible. Everything needs to be buildable with the machines I have available here.

Here we go!

The idea: take some 25mm thick aluminium stock and place it between the copper part and the aluminum heatsink (here shown in the wrong order as I hadn't done the disassembly yet).

Cut the stock to length with a hand saw (pfffffff) and make true with a hand file. Next, measure where the slot for the clamp needs to be. 25mm height is on the low side for the clamp mechanism, but doable.

Milled out the slot with a manual lathe. No measurement on the lathe itself, so a lot of measuring in between. Here the slot hasn't been cleaned/made true yet.

The clamp also needs a perpendicular slot to fixate its hinge point. This was a very challenging plunge cut with a tiny end mill. It would have been easier to do this step before the main clamp slot, but that would require quite exact measuring and milling.

Now I needed to replace the original short bolts with long ones to take the extra 25mm. I have those, but not the countersunk kind. So I modified them on the lathe. I switched to drill press + Dremel for this task later, as I was bending too many bolts on the lathe.

Now indicate and center punch the 4 holes VERY precisely: I'll drill them 3.5mm for M3 bolts.

Done!

The result after a lot of thermal paste:

This contraption installed quite easily on the CPU. I had measured the clamp slot very precisely to assure I'd end up with the same clamp pressure as original. It installed easily, far better than some horror stories in reviews. It's also not too loose; nicely fixed in place without crushing the CPU at all.

The results are astonishing! Partially this will be because the heatsink surface is huge compared to the original, as is the fan. Partially the fact that there is proper contact with the CPU will also help quite a bit. Anyway, 30°C during boot, 28°C idle and very shortly after running two 3DMarks. Ice ice baby!

In total this setup is quite heavy, but as long as the PC is stationary I don't think the motherboard cares at all. I wouldn't ship the PC with this aluminum throne installed, but I'd use it like this for decades without worrying. The bending moment is quite low as the heaviest part is closest to the motherboard.

Next for this PC: do some experiments on the hardware side (go back to 256MB RAM, perhaps go back to a Rage) just to see why on earth TOCA 2 doesn't want to run on this PC! (I've made a separate thread about this issue)

Nice job with that cooler!

And yeah, switching to 80mm fan/heatsink makes a huge difference. It is even more noticeable on socketA with hotter CPUs - switching from stock cooler with 60mm fan to one like this with 80mm fan significantly reduces noise and temperatures at the same time.

In terms of weight - should not be an issue as long as you are careful, but do be careful with the socket - it is 25 year old plastic after all - who knows how brittle it is at this point. And you definitely do not want to determine that experimentally... IIRC AMDs weight limit for socketA was 300g or something.

About Socket 370 cooler height with regards to the CPU, just a quick note that older Mendocino Celeron coolers are not suitable for newer Coppermine CPUs, and vice versa. Different clearance on both.

I doubt that was causing your particular issue, but I just thought I'd mention it.

I have no idea about the history of the simple cooler that used to be on it. It might have been a slightly incompatible model. But given how hot its heatsink got, it also simply did not have the capacity.

I was tired of the recent free release of gta 1 with all its flickering, so I've used an older file with 3dfx mode. Smooooth and no flickering but a bit of the typical voodoo2 banding. I might look into building a vga low pass filter for that some time.

I've done another reinstall related to a TOCA2 issue. Now I'm installing games. I've read that I best stick to DX7.0a because of my VXD sound drivers and the Geforce ti4200 drivers working optimally with 7.0a?

That does imply I will not be able to run some mid 2000's games that are W98 compatible but require DX8 or 9.

By the way, the most hilarious combination of stated system requirements combined with stated W98 compatibility must be Empire Earth 2. Sure it will run in W98, as long as you have at least a P3 1500 (that is a literal quote!) And a Dx9 compatible graphics card. How many people still using W98 in 2005 would have had such a spec at the time, 1 if we include their own test rig? 😁

Well, P3 1500 probably is not completely impossible with some OC, but yeah.

Overall i would not say such system is complete impossibility. DX9 was old by 2005 (every card would support it) and there surely were some people using 98 by then, just like some still use 7 nowadays. A lot of people stuck to 9x for a while...

So basically old high-end system with old OS...

Ignoring the 1500mhz P3 thingy, the most likely scenario to end up with such a system in 2005 would be buying an early P4 build around 2000, so before the XP launch by somebody sticking to his W98 copy until a new Windows worth upgrading to is launched. And then procrastinating for 4 years after XP launches. Quite realistic if you put it that way. 😁

Anyway I'll see if I can install/run some of the DX8 claiming games without upgrading DX beyond 7. If not, I'll use those games on my XP system instead. That's a P4 2000 with a Geforce 2600 and 1GB ram, nothing fancy but simply the PC I had as a student. It ran Half Life 2 nicely. I might pimp ut slightly once I'm done with the W98 pc.

Speaking of which: the case of the W98 pc is closed (literally). Significant milestone!

After some tests, most games that state to require DX8 will not launch as they are missing a D3D8 DLL. So those will move to the XP PC. I have managed to get some games running that said they require DX8:

-in the Hitman trilogy box, Hitman 1 is a DX7 game.
-4x4 Evo2 only needs DX8 for D3D mode. I could run it in OpenGL mode on the Ti4200 very smoothly with everything maxed out, on DX7.

Meanwhile I'm installing all games that require at most DX7 on this PC. I've done all jewel cases and DVD cases. On to the big boxes.

I've had to polish 2 discs, and in one case even retrieving a very stubborn file with another PC who apparently has a slightly better optical drive.

I've managed to get all games running, except for two issues with old games:

-F15 Strike Eagle II
-one of those "250 shareware games for DOS" CD's. One issue is that E: is my games drive, and it only wants C: or D:. But even from C: a lot doesn't run.

I don't feel like tinkering too much with this system to get it to run very old games so I'm leaving it like that for the moment. I might run into a 486 system one day, or try to get them to work when there's nothing else to do (yeah right). The PC plays some other DOS games fine so it's not a global issue.

The big box games, except for F15 II, are more recent games that run at least in W95 so this should be going smooth. There might be some DX8 in it, but I doubt it as by then the big box era had more or less ended.

My Voodoo2's (Creative 12MB), like pretty much all models, have some visible banding (in this iteration of my PC install, mainly horizontally) at some resolutions. I understood a low pass filter in the VGA output can solve this, but I've found no information on how to build one. Anyone? Preferably something to put in the cable, no card mods.

I use an external VGA switch so passthrough cable is not the issue here (primary display is razor sharp with no banding whatsoever).