VOGONS


First post, by .legaCy

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Hello folks, i'm have a work in progress project of one vintage build
The goal of the build is to have a rig that win run on 3 modes: 386,486 and Pentium.
I already have the following parts:
- Cooler Master ATX Elite PSU 400W ( its kind of a overkill but i its more reliable than one generic 200w psu)
- ASUS SP97-XV
- Intel Pentium 100 MHz OR AMD K6-2 400 MHz
- Creative SoundBlaster AWE64
- PCI S3 Trio 64v+
- 10/100M Encore NIC ENL832-TX-ICNT (maybe i keep it if i run windows)
- 128MB PC 100 DIMM
- 3.5" 1.44MB Floppy Drive
- 30GB IDE Maxtor Fireball 3
- AOpen IDE DVD-ROM / CD-RW

Which Processor i should stick with(I need to achieve 386 and 486 speed just adjusting L1 and L2 cache) ?
Which O.S i should install ?

Reply 1 of 6, by PhilsComputerLab

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Great timing, I've got a similar video project going live tomorrow 😁

It depends on what games you want to play. A pentium is quite versatile. At 100 you can run pretty much any DOS game from the 386 era and onwards. Newer games running at high resolution might chug a little, here a Pentium 133, 166 or 200 might be worth getting.

At 100 MHz likely a few more older DOS games will work compared to running at 200 MHz, but I don't have any examples.

At 400 MHz the K6 could be causing more DOS games have issues.

YouTube, Facebook, Website

Reply 2 of 6, by .legaCy

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
PhilsComputerLab wrote:
Great timing, I've got a similar video project going live tomorrow :D […]
Show full quote

Great timing, I've got a similar video project going live tomorrow 😁

It depends on what games you want to play. A pentium is quite versatile. At 100 you can run pretty much any DOS game from the 386 era and onwards. Newer games running at high resolution might chug a little, here a Pentium 133, 166 or 200 might be worth getting.

At 100 MHz likely a few more older DOS games will work compared to running at 200 MHz, but I don't have any examples.

At 400 MHz the K6 could be causing more DOS games have issues.

And i'm pretty sure that i will watch your video as soon as the video goes live.

Well i was looking to play Maniac Mansion,Wing Commander,Life and Death, Life and Death 2,Battle Chess, Super Offroad, Prince of Persia,Another World,Pinball Fantasies,DOOM, Duke Nukem 3D(maybe).
I found one cheap Pentium 133 working great
Nothing on High Resolution, i will use my old CRT for extra retro look and feel.
And which OS i should stick with?
and thank you for the hints.

Reply 3 of 6, by PhilsComputerLab

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

For those games a P100 should be perfect 😀

For OS you can't go wrong with MS-DOS 6.22.

YouTube, Facebook, Website

Reply 4 of 6, by clueless1

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Of the games you mention, only Duke 3D would struggle, but only if you decided to run in 640x480. At VGA resolutions, it should be fine.

You might also find my project useful. I am documenting CPU performance with various caches disabled.
Thread: Let's benchmark our systems with caches disabled
There is a link to a spreadsheet of results that you are welcome to add to when you get your system up and going. 😀

Best of luck! BTW, I'm looking forward to Phil's video too! It's a topic that fascinates me. 😉

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 5 of 6, by .legaCy

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
PhilsComputerLab wrote:

For those games a P100 should be perfect 😀

For OS you can't go wrong with MS-DOS 6.22.

Thank you again, maybe i will make dual boot with win95(just for fun) and MS-DOS 6.22 for retro gaming
It will be a good opportunity to experiment BootIt NG on a vintage hardware.
If i have any issues i will make just msdos 6.22

clueless1 wrote:
Of the games you mention, only Duke 3D would struggle, but only if you decided to run in 640x480. At VGA resolutions, it should […]
Show full quote

Of the games you mention, only Duke 3D would struggle, but only if you decided to run in 640x480. At VGA resolutions, it should be fine.

You might also find my project useful. I am documenting CPU performance with various caches disabled.
Thread: Let's benchmark our systems with caches disabled
There is a link to a spreadsheet of results that you are welcome to add to when you get your system up and going. 😀

Best of luck! BTW, I'm looking forward to Phil's video too! It's a topic that fascinates me. 😉

Well i will leave de Duke Nukem 3D to my pentium 4 win98 and dos retrogaming rig.
I will do video about both builds and post here on system specs section.
Thank you all for the replies.

Reply 6 of 6, by chinny22

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

If your installing Win95, I wouldn't worry about Dos 6.22 and just use the included Dos 7
its actually got bit better management as well
http://www.mdgx.com/mem7.htm