First post, by EdmondDantes
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So I've spoken of my "Mazinkaiser" before. In case you never saw those topics, here's what it currently has in it:
It's 700mhz AMD chip (I'm not sure which line, I think either Duron or Thunderbird)
a pair of 256mb Kingston pc133 ram chips
The motherboard (an Epox-8KTA) has like six PCI slots, one AGP (I think) slot, and one ISA slot.
The ISA slot has a Soundblaster 16 (pretty sure its a PnP edition)
My video card is a Voodoo 3 2000, PCI slot.
Now, like I said I'm thinking of making modifications but I'm not sure how worthwhile or dangerous they might be. Mazinkaiser's basic function is to handle pretty much any Windows 98(SE) game that doesn't require higher than DirectX 8 (after recent events I'm wary about trying DirectX 9 on Win98se again), as well as give me my choice of playing old DOS games in either a pure environment or Dosbox. So far the only game I've seen outright refuse to work outside of Dosbox is Alien Logic: Skyrealms of Jorune, which I think has the same "it absolutely requires an Intel Pentium CPU" problem that Wrath of Earth does, so there's no fixing that.
Anyway... first thing I'm wondering is if I should replace the sound card with an AWE64. Would I get any noticable improvement in either DOS or Windows? Some topics I've read seem to indicate that the AWE32 and AWE64 are basically just SB16s with more stuff attached and I've even heard rumblings that you can add memory or something to the SB16 to give it all the features the later cards have, though I'm not sure if that's true or not. The only actual technical issue I have is that in FPS games I feel like I hear the left speaker more clearly than I do the right, though that might be an issue with the speakers or even my own ears and nothing to do with the card.
(By the way, I have a question... how come when I'm using Dosbox, I can set a game--like Monkey Island or Wing Commnder--to use Roland sound and actually get Roland quality music? That seems just weird that an SB16 could even reproduce the sounds of a contemporary competitor).
Secondly I'm wondering if I should install a second PCI video card? I recently watched Phil's Computer Labs' video on the Voodoo 3 and while he praised the card he also showed some areas where its contemporaries outshone it. Also recently I tried to play The Longest Journey and its setup told me that Voodoo 3 does not support hardware acceleration with 32-bit colors. To be honest I don't see a lot of difference between hardware-rendered 16-bit and software-rendered 32-bit, but still it makes me wonder if I might be missing out on features. Or there's the opposite end of the spectrum--I can't remember names off the top of my head (perhaps Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit) but I've seen games claim they can support Voodoo 1 or 2 which I thought would mean they can do Voodoo 3 as well but then either they can't, or they can only do it in Direct3D mode or something like that. It's been awhile since I tested this so I may be remembering the circumstances wrong, but anyway I'm trying to ask if getting multiple video cards and plugging them in would give me the best of every world?
Finally... is there a way to make a ps/2 optical mouse work in a DB9 port? I had adapters that I got on ebay but the mouse would only light up for a brief moment. I'm guessing its because they can't draw power from those kinds of port. How can I fix that? (The actual ps/2 mouse port on the motherboard came loose, and I'm afraid if I mess with a soldering iron I may kill the motherboard so I'd prefer an alternative... though I've also heard you can add more ps/2 ports using PCI cards).
All info/suggestions/warnings are welcome. Thanks in advance.