Looks like a solid machine you're building there!

Sounds good to me! I really like the Antec 300 case. I've got my "ultimate" legacy PC inside one as well as my current "mainstream" daily-use machine. They may not be the most attractive case ever made, but you can't beat 'em for price/functionality/performance. I've actually got a spare NIB just in case I ever decide to put together another machine and Antec ever stops selling them.

As far as soundcards go, why not use a SB16? If not, the SB Pro 2 and AWE64 are also great choices.

Isn't 256mb RAM a bit overkill for a PPro 200? I mean, if you've already got it you should definitely use it. But if you don't, it seems a bit unnecessary.

I already have all the parts. The case and a 5.25 to 3.5 adapter were the only purchases I made.
I really like the Antec too. Had to wait 2 weeks for it to arrive from Germany.

Looks great! Excellent mix of some fine parts there with the PPro and SW60XG and of course the Roland gear. Can't wait to see the final result!

Well, I didn't quite like the aspect of the 5.25" to 3.5" adapter and the CF adapter ended up being mounted in the back for now.
I'm using a 4GB Hitachi Microdrive to move data to this machine. It's also a very capable MS-DOS HDD so I ended up installing MS-DOS 6.22 so I can have a backup boot HDD.

Awesome machine you are building there. Love the fully populated SIMM slots 😀

I heard the Pentium Pro is really slow at games.
Is that correct? What would be the socket 7 equivalent?

The games I play run just fine and I never needed to compare it.

Feipoa made some nice tests here:

Re: The Ultimate 686 Benchmark Comparison

The Pentium Pro's weakness was anything 16-bit. A machine like this was born to run NT or your vintage UNIX of choice. Or OS/2, if you're one of those people.

If you need an image of the original Matrox G450 installation CD (which has drivers for everything from DOS, 9x, W2K, to XP) you can download it here:
http://ibmfiles.com/misc/matrox/G450_LX_CD13B.zip
Of course other Matrox utilities as well if you're into that kind of thing...

Good selection of parts on this build; I have a promise controller like that (was thinking of using it for that very purpose to get SATA on an older system).

Are you going to get one of those Pentium Pro CPU conversions to turn it into a Pentium II?

calvin wrote:

The Pentium Pro's weakness was anything 16-bit. A machine like this was born to run NT or your vintage UNIX of choice. Or OS/2, if you're one of those people.

OS/2 was one of the few OSes at the time to support SMP. Frankly... it's hell of a lot more useful than NT.

raymangold wrote:

If you need an image of the original Matrox G450 installation CD (which has drivers for everything from DOS, 9x, W2K, to XP) you […]
Show full quote

If you need an image of the original Matrox G450 installation CD (which has drivers for everything from DOS, 9x, W2K, to XP) you can download it here:
http://ibmfiles.com/misc/matrox/G450_LX_CD13B.zip
Of course other Matrox utilities as well if you're into that kind of thing...

Good selection of parts on this build; I have a promise controller like that (was thinking of using it for that very purpose to get SATA on an older system).

Are you going to get one of those Pentium Pro CPU conversions to turn it into a Pentium II?

Thanks for the link, I'll give a look.

It would be cool to have an Overdrive, but I'll just keep it like this. I'm also avoiding to go over 200MHz and get those "Runtime error 200".

P-Pro overdrive chips are BEASTS in terms of performance. You honestly need a coppermine pentium 3 to even beat the 333 overdrive. the OD chip has 512kb of L2 cache and it just makes everything so fast. Compared to a normal P2 and katmai P3's 1/2 speed L2.

That said, P-Pro's are my favorite chips. I love your build! Only thing I would change... Add more processors. 2 is better than one! ^.^

calvin wrote:

The Pentium Pro's weakness was anything 16-bit. A machine like this was born to run NT or your vintage UNIX of choice. Or OS/2, if you're one of those people.

I've been playing DOS games on both PPro 233 and P MMX 233, performance is pretty much the same. When using true 32bit OS and applications the Pro is 50% faster, sometimes even more. In my (32bit only) tests Pentium Pro 200/256 is roughly equivalent to an overclocked Pentium MMX at 300 MHz.

I've been adding some more stuff to the case. I've mounted the DVD, added two silent Nexus fans to the front and mounted a 2.5" 80GB Toshiba HDD with an adapter. I could mount it in the bottom of the case but I want it in the middle of the airflow.

This is turning out to be a very cool and quiet machine.

The Nexus fans that i had kept from another machine (ironically they were installed on another PC built around an Antec 300 that i sold a few years ago).

The DVD-RW drive with working analog output! Most recent IDE drives lack the capability.

2.5" SATA Toshiba HDD with OCZ SSD adapter (SSD replaced the HDD in my old Qosmio laptop, so it was just laying around)