VOGONS


First post, by Nic-93

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Hey all! since most of you are sharing pc build's here, thought on giving a specification sheet over mine.
its a slot 1 pentium mmx around 300 mhz cpu, with x2 512 ram, holding a tnt 2 ultra graphics card, sound blaster awe64 isa,
pci ethernet card, and its running windows 98se on 60 gig ide drive.

Last edited by Nic-93 on 2018-07-12, 12:49. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 7, by ATauenis

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May be "Pentium II with MMX technology"? 😀 It is simply a early Pentium-2, later CPUs were labeled as simply "Pentium-II" however they're same P2 processors.

1 GB of RAM is too large for Win98. It still can work with such large memory, but for stable work it is better to have no more than 512 MB. Most of Slot 1 systems had 64 MB of RAM, and it's a good memory size for 1999 year. But later they was mostly upgraded to 128...512 MB (especially those PCs that was used with Windows XP in mid-00s). Only Photoshop 6/7, Firefox 2 and similar modern software can use advantages from more than 256MB installed. Most of software from Slot-1/Win98SE era were requiring approx. 2...10 MB per window, no more. This means that 256 MB is optimal memory size for Windows 98 system.

2×Soviet ZX-Speccy, 1×MacIIsi, 1×086, 1×286, 2×386DX, 1×386SX, 2×486, 1×P54C, 7×P55C, 6×Slot1, 4×S370, 1×SlotA, 2×S462, ∞×Modern.

Reply 2 of 7, by Cbb

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Nic-93 wrote:

Hey all! since most of you are sharing pc build's here, thought on giving a specification sheet over mine.
its a slot 1 pentium mmx around 300 mhz cpu, with x2 512 ram, holding a tnt 2 ultra graphics card, sound blaster awe64 isa,
pci ethernet card, and its running windows 98se on 60 gig ide drive.

1. Look for 440BX mainboard with PII 350-450MHz since you always can downclock any of them to 233-300 MHz respectively if needed. P-III's in my practices are not so flexible (I was unable to start any of them @66MHz). But they're got SSE instructions set that may be very useful feature in many windows games.
2. Don't install so much RAM since on this platform it will be mostly unused and you'll got to encounter "too much RAM" Win9x error. 256M is enough, but sure you can install 512 for any reason. The timings that your modules can handle are much more important than just amount.
3. For sound yes, you can use AWE64 as most compatible card, but it lacks genuine OPL3 synthezer. So games used FM will sound little bit another way.
Also take a look at ESS based boards: there's curious solutions like Guillemot MaxiSound Home Studio. It combines SBPro compatibility and a really good wave synth. And it sets up in 1-2-3 both in dos and windows (instead of that monster EWS64XL that ate my brains out two days ago).
4. In such retro machine some child of 3Dfx I think is just nessessary. Would it be a Voodoo3/4 or may be Voodoo1/2/SLI with TNT/2/Geforce2/3/4 as primary dadpter it's your preference. Something that will be available and that will cost adequate to you at the moment. I'm using GF4Ti 4200 + V2SLI but it's up to you. Buy and try 😀)))
That's my thoughts on the topic.

Reply 3 of 7, by Nic-93

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well, the ram stick's i used in this build seem to be fine in the bios, gives an OK each time starting up, windows also detect's most of the memory, gues im just lucky with the board?
i do have a real sound blaster 16 i could use along with it, i think its the model without a volume knob on the card.

Reply 4 of 7, by ATauenis

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Nic-93 wrote:

gues im just lucky with the board?

You're lucky in hardware and software that you are using. I.e. many users saying that Voodoo cards cannot work if there are more than 512 MB is installed. Some people have experiencing crashes in DOS apps in DOS-windows in Win9x when RAM is larger than 512 MB. On some hardware Windows 9x cannot even boot with large RAM or can boot only in Safe Mode. It's a Windows 9x architecture bug that was not fixed even in WinME. i440BX with nVidia cards is a large RAM compatible configuration, but I'm still don't recommend to use more than 512 MB until such large size is really needed. I.e. if you are planning to work 24/7 in Adobe Photoshop with large photos or work with HD video on P-II-300 (huh, it's a real perversion 😀 ), then 1024 MB is a normal memory size, but in other cases it will give unexpected problems at any time.
Detailed info is easy to be googled: https://www.google.ru/search?q=win98+%26+512+MB&lr=lang_en

Nic-93 wrote:

i do have a real sound blaster 16 i could use along with it, i think its the model without a volume knob on the card.

Why? SB AWE64 is enough for almost all software. It is SB16-compatible (except PnP stuff), and working correctly in both DOS and Windowses. It's no need to install both SBs at one time.

2×Soviet ZX-Speccy, 1×MacIIsi, 1×086, 1×286, 2×386DX, 1×386SX, 2×486, 1×P54C, 7×P55C, 6×Slot1, 4×S370, 1×SlotA, 2×S462, ∞×Modern.

Reply 5 of 7, by chinny22

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Awesome late dos SVGA machine, The TNT2 and AWE64 are perfect.
Early Win9x gaming should be good as well, its fairly period correct, but 300Mhz and the TNT will limit the later 9x games.
While its true you don't need that much ram, if it isn't hurting anything why not right?

Reply 7 of 7, by Nic-93

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Just a small post, found a spec list of the asus board im using for the variant of this build i have.

https://soggi.org/motherboards/asus/P2B-D.htm

i was right, it where 2 kingston valueram 3.3v 512 sticks.