VOGONS


5 euros build

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First post, by jcarvalho

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Hi, two weeks ago I was wondering in a local flea market when I found a little and cheap motherboard (5 euros). ECS P6VEM3 is her name.
After some cleaning it was time to test, first problem: the board didn't always booted, the fix was reflashing with the right BIOS, in the ECS support page for this board we can find 2 BIOS files, one for embed NIC and other for the models without NIC (mine dont have NIC) and it was flashed with the wrong BIOS file. Now the board always boot.
Second problem: the board didnt keep the BIOS settings when powered off. I replaced the coin cell but same thing, I have here some EPROM chips, found one similar and flashed again. Now it saves the settings.
For the case I have one that as offered to me by a good friend that is also an member here.
In my spare box I have found an 128 MB memory stick SDRAM 133 Mhz to match the frequency of the C3 chip (1 GIGA PRO @ 733Mhz).
For storage an old PATA 160GB hard disk.
For sound I found in my magical spares box an YMF724 bought some years ago for 2 euros.

My main goal is an flexible W98/DOS machine going from 386, 486 and Pentium class, so why not enjoy some 3DFX capable titles? Once again magic spare box to the rescue and I found a Voodoo1 card.

Using SETMUL the result is outstanding. Some pics now

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Voodoo card

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Longshine branded NIC

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The audio card

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All 3 PCI slots full

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Last edited by jcarvalho on 2019-12-18, 20:21. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 4, by jcarvalho

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Old case

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It is alive!!

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Slowing down the system

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Benchmark

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Reply 2 of 4, by jcarvalho

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Sure!! No speed problems at all

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But can it run Jim Power??? Sure, just dial some settings for setmul and install the game into a partition that is less than 1GB

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Reply 3 of 4, by MKT_Gundam

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So that Yamaha card is original or the fake one?

Retro rig 1: Asus CUV4X, VIA c3 800, Voodoo Banshee (Diamond fusion) and SB32 ct3670.
Retro rig 2: Intel DX2 66, SB16 Ct1740 and Cirrus Logic VLB.

Reply 4 of 4, by jcarvalho

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MKT_Gundam wrote:

So that Yamaha card is original or the fake one?

Hello!!!
This card is original. The motherboard doesnt have SBLINK, I installed the modified drivers from a cool vogons member. I am having problems in setup sound for Screammer Rally, DOS4GW gives an error and quits when doing the sound test in setup.exe. This also fails launching the game, once again DOS4GW. I have tried several versions of it. The latest one also gives error. It is the only game that I tested that is not working. Tomb Raider also uses DOS4GW (1.97 if memory serves me) and the game works with all sounds and effects no problems at all.