Not planning to get one but hey, if i find one cheap i will be definitely be getting one.
Right now, priorities for this system are a compact General MIDI device and of course the dual OPL2 Pro Audio Spectrum.
And a Voodoo 2 would be nice on this system to enjoy some 3DFX DOS games.
Carlos, is this your only retro computer? Looks like you're building an ultimate retro gaming machine up to 1997 even.
Was looking for a PCI Nvidia card myself recently, the PCI Riva's and TNTs aren't too common on UK eBay. There are plenty of TNT2 M64s though, any disadvantage to these?
Ended up with a GF2 MX for £9 delivered, not too bad...
I have tested the r128/tnt/tnt2/gf2mx lines in pure Dos with my 200mmx build, all behave the same. Even AGP/PCI doesn't make a difference. The vga core is the same in all of them AFAIK. I just stuck with the r128s because they are older and fanless.
wrote:Carlos, is this your only retro computer? Looks like you're building an ultimate retro gaming machine up to 1997 even.
In England? Yes. But this is a DOS build only, although i can still install a hard drive in primary slave and install Windows 98 and then use a boot manager.
I couldn't bring all my stuff from Portugal, houses here are way too small and space here is very expensive.
In Protugal i have a few assembled builds.
Here's a 286 that at the time i took the photo it wasn't complete.
And a 386 build which is using the case of my first computer 386 DX40. So it is restored to a 386 DX-40. It includes the original Goldstar CDROM that was bought for that computer.
Then there's a 486 VESA build i want to one day finish just for fun and of course the most immediate one i would like to finish building is the XT build i mention in this thread. I still need to find and get stuff for this XT build such as XT-IDE,an XT Keyboard and a old desktop case to go with it.
Just a little update, i replaced my trusted Yamaha YMF-718 card by this baby:
A PCI card as a Sound Blaster?? Well these cards have amazing compatibility. I have yet to find a game that refuses to work but, so far this is not a problem for me. It does not want to work with SoftMPU as it crashes but... i have other cards in the system that can take care of that. That mission is now on the AWE64 Gold.
The advantage of this is that i have an ISA slot free. I've put my Innovation SSI replica in, but i would rather have a Game Blaster card in there.
So i'm hoping this project comes to a good ending.
Just look for a Yamaha 724E or 724F. The F version is newer i think. I also want to try the 744 version.
It does have Soft MIDI via Windows and it's XG MIDI compliant. They work well enough in DOS with a motherboard that has SB Link connector or supports DDMA to replace a Sound Blaster card. And it's a silent card with very good SnR.
Drivers here
My Asus TX97XE supports DDMA, in fact all 430TX boards will. So what i'm achieving is without SB Link. Like i said Compatibility so far is amazing considering this is a PCI card. I've tried 30 or so games so far and all are working. FM quality is excellent by the way.
The YMF71x chipset cards have been working very well for me, work fine in Windows 3.11 as well and its great to know that it works OK in Windows 98 too!
Unfortunately these chipsets haven't had the opportunity to be implemented in a high end designed ISA card, only with the exception of the Audiotrix 3D-XG, which could bring even more positive effects in terms of sound quality and other functionality, software or hardware. A properly placed Waveblaster header comes to mind.
As far as the PCI card well it's working great, even in real mode DOS which just encourages me to test and test more. I'm still testing games but so far, everything has been working great. Doom 2 was refusing to work at one point but after running the optional DSDMA program that comes with the drivers Doom 2 work perfectly.
I also had a full gaming session of Dune CD version, played the whole thing until end and the card was excellent. The FM quality is really really good, and the noise is very low. I think i read something some time ago that these cards have something like 95db SnR, which may vary or not be entirely true but i won't be surprised if the numbers are accurate.
Now i just need to find another Gameblaster to vacate that ISA slot. 😀 And the original Pro Audio Spectrum...
Roland SC-7 & SC-55ST are nice & compact.
wrote:Roland SC-7 & SC-55ST are nice & compact.
Yamaha MU10/15 > Roland SC-7. I have a MU15 and it's enough for my General MIDI needs.
Carlos, how is the overall output quality of the YMF cards like? I would love to have a card with SBpro/16, no hanging notes, true OPL3 and relatively good bass/treble to play with 😀
wrote:Carlos, how is the overall output quality of the YMF cards like? I would love to have a card with SBpro/16, no hanging notes, true OPL3 and relatively good bass/treble to play with 😀
Got to try the Audician 32 Plus. It has bass, treble and Ymersion settings in the ini file. The card is super quiet. Very impressive.
Unfortunately i have found that Dune 2 crashes with the YMF 724 PCI cards. Games that use DOS extenders might also have problems, where some Games work with DSDMA.EXE while others crash with it.
What a shame, the card was nearly perfect. I wonder if this will be better with SB LINK instead of DDMA.
Yesterday, while playing a nice session of Microprose Formula One Grand Prix my machine suddenly completely hanged, to the point a software reset wouldn't work. So i do a hardware reset and i get continuous beeps on an endless loop. Yeah, RAM is dead. The worst of this is that i took all of my remaining RAM to stash in Portugal. I just didn't think this would happen and i found myself without any spares. So i had to order a pair of 64MB DIMMS. Luckily i got them real cheap.
While trying to reseat and clean the slot, i noticed that one of the caps is slightly bulged. It seems that regularly using a motherboard that was left unpowered so many years takes its toll. So i'm planning to get a soldering station and get some Panasonic caps to completely recap the motherboard. Luckily its only 10 capacitors. I wonder if the caps are not filtering voltage properly and it kills the RAM slowly.
The ATX Socket 7 era really suffered from the capacitor plague and this is a major disadvantage of the platform, if you don't feel comfortable using a soldering iron. I better do this and get the problem out of the way.
Well everybody knows what happened to my Asus TX97-XE. Recapping didn't went well, and the board is half dead. I know what the problem is now but i don't have all the tools to fix it.
So i got an ASUS SP97-XV as a temporary replacement until i can find something better. The SP97-XV has really terrible layout. The panel connectors block one of the ISA slots denying using a card bigger than a Sound Blaster 2 and the IDE connectors are also blocking the first ISA slot. Because i use a YMF-718 card i could solve one easily, but i had to bend the panel connectors slightly to make the AWE64 Gold to fit.
However i was trying to find a permanent replacement and in good time i did! A very nice fellow at Amibay offered me a QDI Titanium IIB, which is a board i absolutely love, and the original board i started this system with. So i'm delighted i've found another one.
The QDI Titanium IIB has a great Layout in comparison, supports 2.0V and has a BIOS for K6+.
Sorry to hear about the Asus TX97-XE...some of us have been there and feel your pain 🤣 (yours truly included), but great to hear that you picked up that QDI board! I am guessing that it accommodate all the same components you had on your Asus board?
