First post, by FGB
Hello everyone,
I'm in the need of a fast system for the late DOS games and also want to play the early 3dfx and OpenGL games and decided to build a Pentium Pro system with a triple-boot Menu (DOS / Win98SE / WinNT 4.0) from scratch.
Although this CPU has no 32/16-Bit fallback feature like its sucsessor the Pentium II, it's still a very fast CPU for DOS that has quite a few benefits for the late, demanding SVGA DOS games like an ultra strong FPU, insane speed of the cached memory due to the worlds first x86 CPU with on-DIE and also full speed L2 cache.
I love the platform because the Pentium Pro was such a milestone. It was Intels first ever dedicated server CPU and a great forerunner of a caching concept which is common today. It's also a system you don't see every day. The CPU was unbelievable expensive when released, I think it was more than 5000 Deutsche Mark for just the CPU (~2500 Euro) so it was out of range for most home users.
Larger 2000px version available here: http://www.amoretro.de/ppro_scratch.jpg
Much more pictures still to come. This is a raw version of my preselected hardware I want to use for this project.
The CPU and the Mobo:
Recently I traded a K6plus CPU/Mobo/VGA bundle for a Pentium Pro CPU (166MHz, 512KB) with a ugly and noisy Heatsink/Fan combo on a QDI Commander III Board, a AT Board which looks nice and works like a charm and more important: It has PS/2 header and USB headers as well. I replaced the bad heatsink with a good passive heatsink of a Dell Dimension PPro and attached a fluid bearing fan. Board and CPU are from 1996.
The picture shows the originally installed Pentium Pro 166MHz CPU.
So the Commander III will be the Mobo. I will keep the 166MHz in my collection or for trade and take a Pentium Pro 200MHz for the system, maybe overclocked to 233MHz. The Board supports multiplicators from 2 up to 4 and voltages from 2,0V up to 3,5V without the need of an additional VRM. Quite nice IMO. I want to use the system with 128MB of EDO or if available BEDO (burst EDO)
The graphics card:
I made a preselection of a few cards, however I don't know yet if I will go for authentic timeline of just for the maximum possible speed. Anyways, these are the candidates:
- Tseng Labs ET6000, 4.5MB MDRAM
- nVidia Riva128, 4MB SGRAM
- 3dfx Voodoo Banshee, 16MB SDRAM
- 3dfx Voodoo 3 2000, 16MB SDRAM
- nVidia RivaTNT, 16MB SDRAM
In addition of these there will be either a Voodoo I or a Voodoo II card inside to maintain full compatibility for the critical DOS-only Glide games. Which card would you suggest and why?
All cards are excellent performers under DOS. No doubt. All cards but the Tseng have the VBE 3.0 extensions. Under Windows the Tseng is the less advanced card. But it still has a nice VGA signal quality. The Tseng also is the most authentic choice because it's from 1996.
The Riva128 is maybe my favourite. It's from 1997, fast under DOS and Windows. Supports 3D, good alrounder.
The Banshee card from 1998 as well as the Voodoo III and the TNT from 1999 are a bit on the "too modern" side but of course they are excellent performers and the system would still be within 3 years (Mobo 1996 - VGA 1999). Under W98SE and NT4.0 SP6 the system would benefit the most if I use either the Voodoo III or the TNT.
Other PCI VGA cards are not available at the moment.
The sound card:
Well, when it comes to the "best" sound card we geeks know that there is none. It always depends. There are many good cards and nearly every card has its advantages and drawbacks.
I decided to go with a 2 card solution.
- Gravis UltraSound MAX
- Primax Altrasound / Soundstorm GUS Clone + Mixer
Well it doesn't make a difference in sound quality. Both cards sound equal. But I'm not sure which card is able to disable as much IRQ as possible. Does the Crystal chip on the GUS Max need an IRQ? If yes, I'd go with the Primax.
Why GUS? Because of the leap in sound quality in games like "Epic Pinball" and where MOD-sound comes into play. And of course - for demos!
The second card is for SoundBlaster Pro and General Midi. I made a preselection of these cards:
- Terratec Maestro 32/96 with onboard 4MB Roland Sound Canvas + 4MB Yamaha Daughterboard
- Oksori WS32 with attached 4MB Roland Sound Canvas
Hmm.. I tend to choose the Maestro because it is a card that is still great under Windows. It also has 2 independent MPU401 interfaces so I can choose the internal Roland or the attached Yamaha module. The Crystal codec is very quiet and has excellent SB Pro compatibility.
The Oksori on the other hand has a programmable effects processor to the Roland Sound Canvas can be modified to have a bit more "punch". But on the oher hand I think it's unable a find drivers for Windows NT and in addition to this it's a kind of nightmare to install the drivers because the Windows installer is in korean, needs DOS init first and so on. I also thought about the Terratec EWS64 but I don't want to have a RAM-based soundfont that has to load every time I boot the machine.
The rest:
Ok, I think a 6,4GB harddisk is sufficient for what I want to do with the system. But if now there are other disks available.
The system will have an optical drive, of course. I still don't know if I should go CD-ROM only because of the timeline (1996) or should go for a DVD-ROM from 1998 because it is so much useful. The system will also have a NIC, namely a PCI based 3COM Etherlink XL or something like this. A floppy will also be there.
The case:
I don't really have a better case but I think it's not such a bad choice. It's just not original.
I'm talking about a Packard Bell "Professional" AT case that can be used as deskop or tower. It's from a 1995 486 PCI system. The drivebay is also 90 degrees turnable so the drives can always be in horizontal position if you want.
I would be happy to read some comments, thoughts, suggestions or critics.
Thank you in advance
Fabian
www.AmoRetro.de Visit my huge hardware gallery with many historic items from 16MHz 286 to 1000MHz Slot A. Includes more than 80 soundcards and a growing Wavetable Recording section with more than 300 recordings.
