First post, by Ozzuneoj
- Rank
- l33t
So, I've had this idea for a build over the last few months and haven't had time to actually try it... because it involves turning my daily driver PC into a multi-boot time machine experiment.
My system is currently running Windows 10 on an MSI P67-G43 (Intel P67), i5 2500K@4.2Ghz, GTX 970, 16GB DDR3 1866. The board has two standard PCI slots, and it should have no issue running in XP since it's from 2011. The GTX 970 is one of the last cards to have Windows XP drivers available, so that should take care of the vast majority of games from the 1999-2006 era that don't just work in Windows 10. The GTX 970 is also one of the last cards to have VGA so I can connect it to my CRT if I want. I'm also planning to have a Windows 98SE installation that boots to command prompt for DOS support, and would probably have some kind of RAM drive to make use of most of my RAM to keep it under 512MB when loading Windows.
For DOS and Windows games that are just too old to work properly on the GTX 970, I have a PCI Voodoo 5 5500. I've never tried it in this PC but I don't know of any specific reason why it wouldn't work since PCI doesn't have the voltage compatibility issues AGP does. If anyone has had trouble running a PCI card like this on "modern" boards, let me know.
For sound though, my idea is to install a PCI sound card that has great DOS and 9x compatibility but doesn't have odd hardware requirements. I think a Vortex 2 SQ2500 (which I have) would be a great candidate because I've heard they have great DOS support with a light weight TSR and I know there is an active project to improve various aspects of them. I currently use optical SPDIF out to an SMSL SD-793II DAC\headphone amp, so it would be amazing to have the ability to connect the Vortex 2's coaxial SPDIF to the other input.
Aside from possible speed issues or the overall uncertainty of combining newer hardware, older hardware and older software, are there any glaring flaws with this idea, or any serious limitations I'd find? How is the Vortex 2's DOS support? Does it require anything that interferes with certain games, like EMM386? I know it doesn't have a real OPL3 or anything, but I do have an SC55 and an SC7 to use for MIDI... is it possible to run a MIDI device to the line-in on the SQ2500 and then also have it send that through the SPDIF output? Does that work in DOS? If not, is that something that might be added with the modded drivers ZanQuance is working on?
Now for some blitting from the back buffer.