VOGONS


New guy and hardware...

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First post, by humanoid

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Hey all - new guy here.

After fiddling around with DOSBox a couple of years ago (to satisfy my craving for X-Wing and TIE Fighter), I built a retro pc to play some of the old classics. I soon learned that the PIII wasn't retro enough for some of the other classics I wanted to play. Spent a lot of time lurking on Vogons during that build. I recently picked up a $15 486 and relapsed into retro fever. Currently planning a Pentium 166 machine, as well. Here's the specs for the two I have and the one that's planned:

PIII 866 (have a 1.4 Tualatin proc on hand for a possible upgrade)
ASUS TUV4X mobo
4 x 256mb PC133
AGP 16MB TNT2 (Just picked up a 32MB G400 and two STB Voodoo 2 12MB cards to replace it)
Running Win98SE

Packard Bell 486DX2 66 (all ISA bus)
32MB RAM
430MB HD (gotta get something a little bigger)
Onboard video (picked up a Tseng Labs ET4000AX 2MB card to put in)
Running Win 95 (not sure which version)

Pentium 166MMX (also have a 233MMX)
Biostar M5SAA Mobo
64MB PC100 (planned)
PCI Diamond Stealth 64 2MB
PCI Monster 3D 4MB
ISA SB AWE 64 Gold
Planning to run Win 95

This forum has already been a huge help to me. Hopefully, I can give a little back.

Reply 1 of 6, by Mau1wurf1977

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That's awesome!

For the 486, don't forget that you can slow it down by disabling the Cache. You can do this through BIOS, or through a command line tool if the BIOS doesn't have such an option.

Often there is a turbo button as well.

I would put DOS 6.22 on the 486 and use this as the dedicated DOS machine...

My website with reviews, demos, drivers, tutorials and more...
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Reply 2 of 6, by ratfink

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Nice rigs!

The 1gb is pretty much overkill for 98 in your p3 box, 256 is probably enough. It's said to cause issues due to the way windows 98 uses it's memory iirc.

Good luck getting the g400 to play with the v2's - I never got my g200 to play with mine [though batracio says it is doable, I could never figure the hocus pocus out]. Though it may only be the g200 that has the issues [i think it's one of those unreported-resource-conflict issues].

What sound cards do you plan for the 486?

Reply 3 of 6, by humanoid

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ratfink:

I think you're right about the amount of RAM. I've been meaning to pull 3 of the sticks to see how it ran. I also recently read about issues Longbow has with RAM. Never could get that game to work.

What card did you end up using for 2D with your Voodoo 2's?

Sound card for the 486 is currently an ISA - Crystal something-or-other (sorry, I don't have the numbers handy). Could not get it to work with Mechwarrior's digital sound. I'm thinking about picking up an ISA soundblaster 16. Thoughts?

Mau1wurf1977:

Thanks for the tip on the cache. I installed a couple of the AD&D Gold Box games on the 486 and they run a little too fast.

Never had a DOS only machine. Does sound interesting though. I may just have to try it...

Last edited by humanoid on 2011-07-07, 06:50. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 4 of 6, by ratfink

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humanoid wrote:

ratfink:
What card did you end up using for 2D with your Voodoo 2's?

Plenty of cards worked fine for me [gf2, s3 trio for example] but like i said g400 may not have issues and the g200 may just have been me.

Reply 5 of 6, by Tetrium

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And a warm welcome to Vogons! Where thankfully the coffee isn't as old as the rigs we use 😜

Nice to see someone using a TUV4X as I got a couple of those laying around which I intend to use for one of my future Tualatin rigs 😁

I agree with the 1GB being overkill for 98SE. 256MB should be perfectly fine. Depending on if you're running very demanding games or use your P3 rig for web browsing (unlikely since you're running 98SE, but still a possibility) 98SE will run perfectly fine with 256MB. Once 9x reaches and passes the 512MB boundary, things can get a bit icky for 9x without doing any tweaks (msfn.org has a lot of detailed info on that subject).

Looking at your rigs, you obviously done your homework, congrats! 😁

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
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Reply 6 of 6, by Tetrium

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ratfink wrote:
humanoid wrote:

ratfink:
What card did you end up using for 2D with your Voodoo 2's?

Plenty of cards worked fine for me [gf2, s3 trio for example] but like i said g400 may not have issues and the g200 may just have been me.

I fully agree 😉

When it comes to 2D, theres plenty of choices out there. Trio might have 'comparatively' slow 2D but in all honesty, I've found using a Virge as 2D card in an XP rig was actually usable after applying the standard XP GUI tweaks 😉

For a 2D-only card I'd suggest to stick with either what you happen to have laying around, or to use some low-powered mid-range/budget 3D card like a GF2MX or even something like a TNT2 M64

Edit:

humanoid wrote:

Typical... Noob double post. 😜

*looks at my last 2 posts* whut u l00k1ng @?

😜 😜 😜

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!