I remember, as a kid, setting the display to show HI and LO once 😀

I had a similar case and I drilled two holes in the front, mounted two switches and wired them up with the FSB and multiplier jumper.

That way I could set the AMD 486DX4-100 to various speeds, ranging from a DX2-50 all the way an overclocked DX4-120 (which wasn't stable).

I remember that the multiplier setting worked on the fly, but the FSB setting froze the machine and needed a reboot.

I remember, as a kid, setting the display to show HI and LO once :) […]
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I remember, as a kid, setting the display to show HI and LO once 😀

I had a similar case and I drilled two holes in the front, mounted two switches and wired them up with the FSB and multiplier jumper.

That way I could set the AMD 486DX4-100 to various speeds, ranging from a DX2-50 all the way an overclocked DX4-120 (which wasn't stable).

I remember that the multiplier setting worked on the fly, but the FSB setting froze the machine and needed a reboot.

Mau1wurf1977: So glad to hear that someone tried that....I was looking all over Vogons for an example of this! I was thinking of doing that for an NEC Ready 133Mhz Pentium system I have. I tried changing multiplier settings, but not on the fly because I was worried I would fry the motherboard...but since I have a back up system because I just picked up another NEC ready system recently 🤣 , I may be willing to risk trying it.

Has anyone tried hooking up an external switch to their multiplier and/or their motherboard's FSB jumpers to change on the fly? I think that might be a good way to slowdown my socket 7 system. Not too much of a range, but it may work well for some games. I would still need to disable the cache for older sierra games to work properly with my MT-32 and such.

Here are the jumpers on my NEC system.

Just promise me that you won't mount the switches in the front of those mean looking NEC cases 😎 I haven't seen one of those before.

retrofanatic wrote:

Does going with EDO RAM instead of FPM just make the system run faster overall? Are there any compatibility issues with using EDO in lieu of FPM for you so far? I am a little confused as to what I should use in my system for maximum dos compatibility (I may opt out of installing WIndows on my build )...any suggestions?

No problems or issues so far; unfortunately, no apparent speed increases in DOS either. Windows 95 appears to be a little more responsive, but it could just be me.

For the build you're planning, I would suggest starting with 16 megs of RAM (either FPM or EDO) if installing DOS only, and add more only if needed; if you go for Windows, then start with 32 megs. Finally, get a PCI video card instead of using your Speedstar64 (unless you have a good reason to keep it); anything with S3 or Cirrus Logic 543x GPUs will be way faster and extremely compatible. Nvidia Riva128 and TNT GPUs are also very fast and compatible.

badmojo wrote:

I can't remember the exact model of the HDD I'm using I'm sorry, it's just a very simple 2GB Western Digital IDE drive

No problem badmojo, It's just that it reminded me of my uncle's Seagate hard drive that he had in his 200MHz Pentium Pro back in 1996.

badmojo wrote:

Do you have any pics of the new ATX case?

I wish I did, but my camera broke down (and just when I was getting the hang of it, too 🙁 ). I'm currently looking for a replacement; as soon as I get a new one, I'll snap some new pics and update my thread with them.

I haven't seen one of those before.

Ya they are pretty rare actually...they both come with IR remotes as well for windows. I only have one and it's almost impossible to find another for my 2nd system because of the apparent rarity of these systems.

badmojo wrote:

Just promise me that you won't mount the switches in the front of those mean looking NEC cases 😎

🤣 I promise I won't...I may try to mount a couple on an old 5.25 bay cover I can change out later or something like that. I'm not going to mess with it...too hard to find another and I usually prefer a simple "stock look" to my retro rigs anyway.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

For the build you're planning, I would suggest starting with 16 megs of RAM (either FPM or EDO) if installing DOS only, and add more only if needed; if you go for Windows, then start with 32 megs. Finally, get a PCI video card instead of using your Speedstar64 (unless you have a good reason to keep it); anything with S3 or Cirrus Logic 543x GPUs will be way faster and extremely compatible. Nvidia Riva128 and TNT GPUs are also very fast and compatible.

Thanks for the suggestion. I do have a bunch of PCI cards I can use instead of the Speedstar64...I just thought that having an ISA card may help with speed/timing issues on older DOS games. I will try some PCI cards when I build it though...I may throw in a TNT2 or a MATROX card (inspired by badmojo's P166mmx tower of power Pentium 166MMX tower of power and some other builds I've seen here on vogons).

Sorry about double post...still a noob here

retrofanatic, save your Speedstar for 486, for god's sake:D

Using an ISA video card in order to slow down a faster DOS system is actually not the worst idea. This often yields smoother results than disabling caches or turbo buttons, but it doesn't work universally, since it depends on the way a game is programmed.

Badmojo, where would I go to find the display unit to display 3 digits? I had a look around eBay with no such luck. You don't happen to have a spare I could buy/trade with you?

borgie83 wrote:

Badmojo, where would I go to find the display unit to display 3 digits? I had a look around eBay with no such luck. You don't happen to have a spare I could buy/trade with you?

I'll see if I have a spare one, if yes then it's all yours. Did you have any luck cleaning up the yellowed drive bays in that case of yours?

So is this any good?
http://www.bolha.com/racunalnistvo/namizni-ra … clct=1388529867

I'm just wondering since you're building from scratch, why you would choose a 166MMX and not a 233MMX.

Badmojo, thanks for that 😀 yeah at first I tried using some beige bay covers I had spare but the lugs on the back of the covers were too long and didn't fit right. I then got some soft steel wool and rubbed away at the yellow stained covers and they came up looking great. Like new! I'm glad because I'm very fussy with my builds and don't like messy wiring, scratches, marks etc.. I also removed one of the bay covers altogether to add a CD-ROM drive in addition to the existing 5.25 and 3.5 floppy drives.

sliderider wrote:

I'm just wondering since you're building from scratch, why you would choose a 166MMX and not a 233MMX.

I explained myself already.

@borgie83
That's good news, I hope you make a thread for it once it's complete.

I dug through my bag of tricks and I don't have the exact LED unit you need, but I do have one which will fit with a bit of work on the inside of the case - I fitted it to mine before I found the exact one. You'll have to file down the surrounding plastic a bit, but it looks perfect from the outside.

PM me your postal address if you want it, and I'll send it over.

Yea the 166MMX is no slouch anyway. I mean it should perform like a regular Pentium 200. And the 233 isn't going to make stuttery games smoother either.

I'm shooting the next footage for my upcoming DOSBox / MS-DOS Installation and Tweak Guide covering Descent 1 and 2 and although it runs fine on the Pentium, it could really need a Pentium 3 🤣

@badmojo, PM Sent! Thanks for that 😀

Tower of Power update.

I’ve added an IDE->CF adapter, hooray for those things.

I tracked down a NOS, 4MB Matrox Millennium to replace the used 2MB I had been using. The bundle included Nascar Racing, which is a frame rate killer, but this bundled version is ‘hardware accelerated’ apparently and it does run pretty well I must say. You’d hope so though on a 166MHz MMX, which is a lot more powerful than the machines available at the game’s release. It does look beautiful as you’d expect – these Millenniums pump out perfect pixels.

I’ve yanked out the Voodoo2 because I wasn’t using it – I have a Voodoo3 machine if I want to get my glide on. I do have a Voodoo1 hanging around which I’ve considered installing for those few games which expect a 1, but the whole pass through thing doesn’t do much for me.

And the Roland SCC1 I was using is long gone (and sold off), because I found a General Midi setup that I much prefer. I took a Sound Blaster 16 (CT2290) and added an NEC XR385, which is of course a pretty good combination, but to get around the stutter in Duke3D, Tie Fighter, etc, and allow for AWE capability and the option to play around with sound fonts, I added a Creative CT1920 'Goldfinch'. These nifty little ISA cards can be bought NOS here for 14USD (or he will accept offers).

Getting these things setup isn’t a huge amount of work but there are a few things to consider. Firstly there’s the issue of drivers, but VogonDrivers has that covered. There also exists a comprehensive manual which can come in handy.

Secondly, there’s the question of which sound card to pair it with. I’ve tried a Sound Blaster Pro 2.0, a PAS16, a Vibra based SB16, and the card I’m using now, the CT2290. The Goldfinch didn’t work at all with the Pro installed, and although it did work with the PAS16 and the Vibra, AWEUTIL wouldn’t accept the full range of switches (/R for reverb, etc). I have no idea why this is – something to do with the sound cards mixer? Resource conflicts? Regardless, the CT2290 (and the CT2230) are great sounding cards with a real OPL3, bug free(ish) wavetable header, and are true SB16’s.

Thirdly there’s the issue of how to get sound out of the Goldfinch. The one I’m using was designed to be used with a sound card / motherboard with the ‘Goldfinch’ header, which was an additional input header with the relevant pinout. If you don’t have that input header available, then the easiest thing to do is hack up a CD-audio cable to connect the Goldfinch’s internal ‘out’ to your sound card’s internal CD-in (pinout included in the manual linked above). Then of course you can simply mix the Goldfinch’s output with the sound card’s CD audio channel. That’s fine but it does mean that you can’t use the CD-in for CD audio anymore, which doesn’t work for me.

The next option is to solder a 3.5 audio jack into the provided line-out solder pads on the CT1920. The hardest part of this operation is drilling a neat hole in the backing plate - the soldering itself is beginner level. Once you’ve installed your line out jack then it’s just a simple matter of connecting the Goldfinch line-out to the sound card’s line-in and mixing it accordingly.

Last but not least I added 8 MB’s of 30 pin RAM for sound fonts (from within Windows 95 in my case). Don’t forget to set the relevant jumper on the Goldfinch to disable the on-board RAM, and enable the 30 in RAM. The ‘AWE Upgrade’ software I linked to above comes with a few fonts, GM, MT-32, etc, but I use the 8MBGMSFX.SF2 font which I picked up somewhere along the way, and which I think sounds A-OK. You can of course add effects like reverb & chorus via the AWE32 Control panel in Windows.

When booting to DOS, the AWE32 Windows drivers are obviously not present and therefore not doing their ‘MPU401 Emulation’ thing (which overrides the sounds card’s MPU401 with the sound font), and so the SB16’s wavetable header comes into play. So all told, b/w both Windows 95 and DOS environments this setup allows for:

- SB16
- Real OPL3
- AWE32 capability
- Sound fonts
- XR385 via the wavetable header

I’ve tried an AWE64 + Simconn, which is obviously easier to implement, but negatives are no wavetable header and no real OPL3. The AWE64 does allow you to route your OPL3 tunes via the FX engine though, as does a true AWE32 from what I understand - the Goldfinch doesn't allow that. The other option is to get one of the few AWE32’s that provide everything in the list above, but those are generally outrageously expensive these days.

I’ve been using this setup for a while now and haven’t experienced any problems, it’s fun, functional, and (apart from the XR385 which are now hard to come by) it’s a relatively inexpensive way to get a solid AWE / General Midi up and running.

Excellent update! Great job and nice attention to detail.

Beautiful! This P166MMX is a bit more refined now ^^.

A Voodoo 1 is a good option, but only if you have games that can truly benefit from one. Keep the one you have around, it may come in handy someday. The CT2290 and XR385 look really good together.

I also have a CT1920 Goldfinch card (with Micron driver CD and two 16mb 30-pin SIMMs); still trying to decide if I should use it or not.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

I also have a CT1920 Goldfinch card (with Micron driver CD and two 16mb 30-pin SIMMs); still trying to decide if I should use it or not.

It'd be a handy addition to some lucky system 😎 Particularly with that 28MB (usable) of RAM. I dug through my box of 30 pins but didn't have anything bigger than 4MB simms, but 8's enough for my purposes (so far...)