An alternative would be to use a fast Cyrix 6x86, obviously before the MX version.

You will take a slight hit in the FPU department though.

Best Socket 7 chip is IMO the AMD K6-III+.

Total speed demons, if you use an ASUS TX-97XE i'm sure there's a modded BIOS to support K6+ CPU's. They accept 2x to 6x multiplier that can be changed via the DOS command prompt or there are even Windows tools for it. 83 x 6 will give you 500MHz. I have no problems in DOS running these fast speeds, and the PCI card despite running of spec at 41.5MHz does not complain in the games that need the speed. Never tried in windows though.

Also it can be very slow, i usually clock the CPU with 50 x 2 which with playing with caches i can get 386DX-25 to 386DX-40 performance. I can get Wing Commander 1 to work very well. Playing further with multiplier and caches can give you several speeds from the 386DX-25 to something like a 486DX2-66.

I think the Asus TX-97XE does have 2.0V CPU support, so the CPU will run very cool without need for noisy cooling.

For reference here's my Socket 7 build with a somewhat similar motherboard.

Great Hierophant wrote:

USB support just reaches the level of usefulness in an i440BX motherboard. It is still USB 1.1, so you are limited to 12Mbit speeds.

Mind you, you're not limited to the onboard USB ports.
There are plenty of PCI cards around with USB2.0 ports. I use one as well in my Athlon and Celeron Northwood laptop (PCMCIA version).

HighTreason wrote:

You will take a slight hit in the FPU department though.

More than just a slight hit.
I had a Cyrix 133+ at one time, and a Pentium 120.
FPU-wise the Pentium was more than 3 times as fast.

Of course, most applications aren't dictated solely by the FPU performance, but there is a big difference.
The Cyrix even had trouble getting Quake to run smoothly. Something that even a P75-P90 can do easily.

Yeah, it's very noticeable in Quake. Though my 150MHz version, whilst significantly slower than the Pentium, does not have any trouble as noted in this video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhFsifeA5z8

It yields 24fps. Though I was using a fast motherboard, RAM and video card.

bjt wrote:

HDD-wise I'm a fan of 2.5" notebook HDDs with a converter, they run very cool and quiet. On the other hand HDD noise is also part of the fun.

I'm still trying to decide on the storage. I'm planning to multiboot several classic OSes (DOS, Win98SE, old Linux, maybe OS/2 or BeOS). I'm leaning towards the option of actually having two HDDs just for the sake of all those legacy OSes not exploding upon seeing my massive partition table. I'm either going to put in some old <100GB drives or modern SSDs (for the sake of reliability and small capacity). I also plan to make backups by dumping raw disk images onto my home NAS over the network and for really big drives it would take days over 100Mbit/s connection.

bjt wrote:

Try to get a low-speed optical drive or one that can be slowed down with a software util, as otherwise you may get the hairdryer effect.

What was the standard in, let's say, 98-99? 4x, 8x?

bjt wrote:

No mention of the 2D card but I'd recommend an S3 Trio/Virge for compatibility. I also had good experiences with ATI Mach64.

I'm getting S3 Virge DX. 😀

bjt wrote:

Interesting that you specify high framerates for Quake. I think in general our tolerance of low framerate was much better in the 90s. Framerates 60+ have become the norm for modern PC gaming. To achieve solid 60fps in 640x480 software quake you'd need a much faster machine. Even 60fps in 320x240 takes more grunt than a 233MMX.

That's very true. Back in the day people referred to 15fps as "playable". When it comes to Quake, the more fps the better, but honestly I'm going to be happy with anything around 30fps. http://youtu.be/XrArsxYloD8 <- This may not be 60fps, but it's still very snappy.

carlostex wrote:

Best Socket 7 chip is IMO the AMD K6-III+.

Keep in mind though that I'm not really trying to max-out my Socket 7 configuration. Right now I feel that P233MMX is well.. fast enough (or slow enough - depending on your view) for what I'm trying to achieve. Although the multiplier flexibility you're describing is indeed interesting.

Were MMX processors multiplier-locked? If not, you should be easily able to slow it down a bit without messing with the cache whenever necessary.

alexanrs wrote:

Were MMX processors multiplier-locked? If not, you should be easily able to slow it down a bit without messing with the cache whenever necessary.

Not locked but he has to open the case to change a jumper. The K6+ CPU's allow to change the multiplier via the OS. Extremely handy considering the K6 can be extremely fast and slow, which is good for retro gaming purposes.

MasterM wrote:

What was the standard in, let's say, 98-99? 4x, 8x?

In mid-1998 my PC came with a 32X CD-ROM which I think was the fastest available at that time. In 1999 probably 40X or 48X was common. 4X came out about late 1994 IIRC and 8X probably in 1995.

I've tried a couple of years back to build just one retro PC that would suit all my needs in terms of games from the late 80's right up to the point when DOS (and to an extend Win9x) games became obsolete.
After hours of playing around and testing, I realised that it was becoming quite a challenge to slow down your Pentium 233MHz to play some of your late 80's and early 90's (up to 1992) games (especially your speed sensitive games).
So, what I decided was to actually build two retro PC's:

A 486DX4 100 MHz which I use to play all my pre 1994 DOS games on (mostly my MT-32 era titles and earlier).
Because this PC has a turbo switch, it's quite easy to slow the CPU down to the speed of a 486DX 33 MHz, which all my old "speed sensitive" games seem to be happy with.
I've hooked this PC up to a Roland CM-32L and a Roland Sound Canvas SC-55, with a Sound Galaxy Pro II sound card (most games from that era only supported up to Sound Blaster Pro 2 anyway and not your Sound Blaster 16).
Since no games from that era supported 3D accelaration, I just installed a Vesa Local Bus Tseng Labs ET4000 W32/P.
If you're lucky enough to have a PCI based 486 machine, then you can install a PCI based graphics card (I build up a similar PC on which I installed an ATI Rage II+ DVD PCI graphics card).

A Celeron 900 MHz which I use to play any DOS & Windows 9x games on that supports a higher resolution than 320x200 (starting with games like the Need for Speed 1 SE, Duke Nukem 3D, etc.).
This PC has a Voodoo 2 graphics card and an ATI Radeon 8500 (64 MB).
The reason why I didn't go for a faster PC is that I still wanted a Pentium III based PC that had at least one ISA slot to ensure that I can install an ISA sound card (for better DOS compatibility). I've installted a Sound Blaster AWE64.

devius wrote:

MasterM wrote:

What was the standard in, let's say, 98-99? 4x, 8x?

In mid-1998 my PC came with a 32X CD-ROM which I think was the fastest available at that time. In 1999 probably 40X or 48X was common. 4X came out about late 1994 IIRC and 8X probably in 1995.

I'm looking at an HP OEM Hitachi CD-ROM drive with a date code of 9930 which places it in the 3rd week of July, 1999. It happens to be a 32X. Just another data point.

jesolo wrote:

A 486DX4 100 MHz which I use to play all my pre 1994 DOS games on (mostly my MT-32 era titles and earlier).

A 486-class computer is on my list once I move to a bigger appartment. No space right now. 😠

Anyway, further down the path I encountered another problem: It appears that finding a suitable case is harder than I thought. Once again I'd like to ask you for recommendations: Do you know of any new white/beige ATX case (desktop or midi-tower form factor) that has an oldschool feeling to it? I'm sorry for such a vauge description, I'm looking for something that will fit visually alongside my Amigas and match my white 15'' monitor.