Quite proud of the rig and the journey to it so the description is long. Tail Deer at the bottom.

So I'm an IT worker and have been gaming since around 1985 (I was six at the time.) Time working as it does, my real renaissance for gaming was around 1995. Around that time the SNES was still fairly strong, then the Playstation came out, and there were just tons and tons of great DOS games out there.

Given that DOSBox is a thing, building an old school PC was on the backburner. I first did a full refurb of a SNES Jr. and upgraded it with RGB output (using the old solder, resistors and caps method, not the chip), then got an original model PS1 working with an RGB cable, modchip and PSIO. These have led to the downward decline of my free time, as the old games look so much better than they did back when. I even did the stereo output mod on an original Genesis even though I never owned one back in the day. (Still a worthwhile endeavor. I was an unrepentant Nintendo fanboy and there were a lot of great games I missed.) Still to do is a Turbo Grafx/PC Engine and N64 with HDMI.

Finally, I set my sights on a mid 90's powerhouse, only I had no interest in Windows 95 gaming. (Old school 3D accelerated games make me itch. Can't explain why since I did enjoy them back then, but they just don't work for me now. Quake and Unreal are the only exceptions.) So I set my restrictions based on a total focus on DOS goodness.

For the processor I didn't want any of that Pentium mumbo jumbo, but I did want as much power as the then venerable 486 could muster. I decided on an AM5x86 133MHz processor on a PCI/ISA board, fully loaded with 256KB of cache. The 5x86 was notable for giving its speed in "Pentium" equivalents, the 133MHz variant being called the P75 - a cute conceit but still arguably the most powerful 486 compatible chip ever made. The board itself is generic as can be, I literally can't tell who made the thing. It has a SiS chipset, 3 5v 32-bit PCI slots and 4 16-bit ISA slots. More than enough for evil plannery. 16 megs of parity RAM provided more than enough for anything DOS might require. Importantly, it also features dual IDE headers and a CR2032 coin cell CMOS battery, so no volatile chemical leakage and no need to purchase a bulky controller card.

For the video I knew that 3D acceleration wasn't going to be a big issue for me. GLQuake's successors scratch that itch nicely. In terms of bang-for-buck the MuTech S3 Virge DX with 4MB of RAM is extremely compatible and quite fast. Never heard of the brand - as was common of the times there were dozens of fly-by-night hardware makers popping up and going bust. Only the chips mattered.

I spent more time sourcing the sound card than anything else. The obvious answer was the Sound Blaster, probably an AWE32, but it didn't tick enough boxes and was pretty expensive. The ESS was a strong competitor but I didn't like the spotty OPL2/3 implementations. After a lot of thought I settled on a YMF-719 ISA card. Pure OPL3 goodness on a native Yamaha chip, excellent compatibility once set up, and has built-in MPU401 and WaveBlaster headers for future expansion.

Storage-wise, I wasn't about to be loyal to the era. Any magnetic storage from 1995 was going to be unreliable, optical drives would be slow as molasses, and I am not a patient man. A CF-to-IDE adapter occupied an empty expansion slot, a black plastic USB-to-Floppy emulator is up front, and a 52x CD drive lives alone in its 5.25" bay. DOS boots in seconds, games install in minutes, and in a system whose external cache is only slightly slower than a USB 2.0 port transfer speed is something you'll notice. An 8GB 333x (overkill or overhead?) Transcend CF card acts as drives C-F (2GB each) and I've had no problems with the implementation so far.

I've been sitting on an old Toshiba TIMM (20" combo TV and monitor supporting up to 800x600 resolution though can handle 1600x1200 if you like blur - AMAZING picture from S-Video for retro consoles BTW). Speakers are a set of studio monitors I already owned, and the case was salvaged from an old P4 system they junked at work. The power button now hangs outside of the case until I do some modding to connect it to the case switch. Speaker came from my parts box - I have no clue where i got it originally and the only sound I plan for it to emit is the beep at boot and perhaps some very old school digitized audio.

Software wise I am very loyal to the era. DOS 6.22, Windows 3.11 and QEMM 9.01 work their magic in calm synergy. There's 631KB available, and I've yet to meet the game that wouldn't load with only 9K used. There was some evil magic afoot with the CF card, I had to manually FDISK /MBR, FDISK, FORMAT /S and THEN install DOS before it would boot from the card. Once that was working, however, it was all gravy.

DOOM runs in full screen far better than I remember - my old rig was an Intel 486 DX2 66MHz with (as I recall) no external cache and 4MB of RAM. I was young and foolish and no one ever told me what the heck external cache was. I had to learn it on the streets. The true OPL3 FM sound is like angels making sweet love in my ears, and the digital audio is clear as crystal. (Those Yamaha cards have some of the cleanest audio I've heard. If only I knew at the time.) Sierra games are just as I remember them, and there are a multitude of tricks to get older games to not run at amphetamine addict speeds for the truly old stuff.

Future upgrades are already on the way. A Roland SC-55 device from Japan and a DreamBlaster X2 daughter card for maximum Midi and MPU-401 multimedia mast-er.. you know what I mean.

Still on the lookcout for a real case (would LOVE to come across an IBM case to mod to spec, but any AT spec mega tower would be great) and still need a CDDA cable (will fab one in the worst case, just hasn't been necessary yet). Other than that the build is complete, albeit quite ugly given the case situation and the fact that 90's cases were almost always off-white and my drives are black, and the side door needs to be left off to access the power button.

TL:DR Rig Specs:

Mainboard: Generic SiS PCI/ISA, 256KB Cache
CPU: AM5x86 133MHz "P75"
RAM: 16MB Parity
Video: S3 Virge DX 4MB
Sound: Yamaha YMF719
HD: 8GB 333x Transcend CF Card via CF-to-IDE adapter
Floppy: Gotek Floppy Emulator
Optical: 52x IDE CD
MIDI Options: Roland SC-55 or DreamBlaster X2