Good job!

For DOS games, there is no getting around using am ISA sound card 😀

There is software to enable / disable CPU cache while the machine is running. SETMUL and CPUCACHE for example.

A question for you. Could you please give a brief run-down how to setup dual boot MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 98 SE? Do you use a boot manager or something like that?

Thanks Phil. To dual boot (I've done it from scratch several times now), I have the following on hand:

MS-DOS 6.22 Floppies (3)
Win 98 SE Bootable CD

1. Boot off of the DOS floppy. When setup starts, press f3 twice to get back to the command prompt (A:\).

2. Using FDisk from the floppy, delete partitions and create a Primary DOS partition and Extended DOS Partition (for Win98). You should now have a C and D drive.

NOTE: if these two FAT16 partitions are already made (from endless tinkering), you can just format C and D instead and skip to step 4.

3. Reboot the system so the changes take effect and boot off of the floppy again. Press F3 twice to get back to the prompt, and type FORMAT C: /U, then FORMAT D: /U. Now both C and D are formatted to FAT16 (so the Win 98 installer can recognize the partition).

4. Type INSTALL from the A:\ of MS-DOS Disk 1. Install DOS from all three floppies.

5. Insert the Win 98 CD and boot from it before DOS loads (change BIOS boot options appropriately). When setup starts, exit out to the command prompt or you may get an error that you already have an operating system. Now manually start the Win 98 setup program.

6. Install Win 98 to the D drive (manually change the directory to D:\WINDOWS).

7. When finally booting into Win 98 (after all done, the system will restart once to finish the install), go to Start->Run and type msconfig. Click Advanced on the General tab, and Enable Startup Menu.

NOTE: When in Windows, your DOS Autoexec and Config files will be renamed into Autoexec.dos and Config.dos. They are restored as normal when booting into DOS. This is helpful to know when you want to edit your DOS boot files while in Windows.

Hopefully that was helpful and not confusing. I don't use a boot manager, but I did create some custom batch menus to select different sound card drivers at boot on my Socket A (for ISA or SB Live!). I have attached them for reference. The menu items in Autoexec correspond to the menu items in Config.

Thanks for this. Reason I'm asking is because I'm mucking around with boot managers and seeing which method suits the KISS principle 🤣

I'm following your steps now, but did the second partition as FAT32, so I'd have more space. Using a 32 GB drive, 2 GB for FAT and 30 for FAT32. It's installing, we shall see if it works.

In regards to boot managers, I don't have that much experience, but I found a lot of tools really frustrating. By far the one I like the best so far is GAG (http://gag.sourceforge.net/), works well and is very easy to use. It hides the drives, so Windows 98 SE is installed on C and there is no other drive. Which is neat, but also means that you can't copy files from Windows 98 SE (let's say through Ethernet) onto the FAT partitions.

But I'm still playing around. Might be trying to install Windows 98 SE first, then add DOS and use GAG.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Thanks for this. Reason I'm asking is because I'm mucking around with boot managers and seeing which method suits the KISS princ […]
Show full quote

Thanks for this. Reason I'm asking is because I'm mucking around with boot managers and seeing which method suits the KISS principle 🤣

I'm following your steps now, but did the second partition as FAT32, so I'd have more space. Using a 32 GB drive, 2 GB for FAT and 30 for FAT32. It's installing, we shall see if it works.

In regards to boot managers, I don't have that much experience, but I found a lot of tools really frustrating. By far the one I like the best so far is GAG (http://gag.sourceforge.net/), works well and is very easy to use. It hides the drives, so Windows 98 SE is installed on C and there is no other drive. Which is neat, but also means that you can't copy files from Windows 98 SE (let's say through Ethernet) onto the FAT partitions.

But I'm still playing around. Might be trying to install Windows 98 SE first, then add DOS and use GAG.

I suggest you to check also "Master Booter". I had the same dilemma a few years ago, and this was my choice. It's free/shareware version is ok for booting up 3 different OS, for more than that (up to eight) you need to register, but there is almost no other crippling in it's shareware version. It can use multiple disks, multiple primary partitions (its own efdisk utility can create up to 4 primary partitions per disk, and can handle 4 separate disks) and hiding the other partitions/disks while booting is optional (*). It has a bootable floppy image which is very nice, and its documentation is quite ok.

(*) I generally use the option to hide other partitions but always have a second disk which is non OS, and visible to all operating systems just for data exchange from one system to other (i.e. from MS DOS boot to Windows 98 boot).

EDIT: Here is the link: http://www.masterbooter.com/main/news.php?lang=en

Cool, I will check it out!

If the goal is to dual-boot only Win9x together with an older version of DOS, then the method outlined by RetroBoogie is good and you don't need any third party boot managers. Win9x will detect the existence of an old DOS version and allow you to switch to it in the startup menu as "Previous MS-DOS Version".

The important thing, of course, is to install DOS first, then Win9x, as explained. The Windows directory can be placed on any partition, FAT16 or FAT32. The core boot files will still be on C:, a.k.a. the primary partition, which is FAT16 (otherwise you would not be able to install DOS there in the first place).

Now, DOS6 will not see the FAT32 partition, of course, but I can't remember what happens if you have an extended partition that contains multiple logical partitions, some of which are FAT16 and some FAT32. I think DOS6 will not see any extended partitions if their total size (the sum of all logicals) is >6GB (+2GB primary), but whether you can use multiple extended partitions, in a way that the first one is within the DOS6 limit, and will be seen by it, I don't remember.

Well, while we're on this topic, you could also check out this official Microsoft guide. Can't you also use something like Plop Boot Manager or GRUB4DOS?

Didn't have much luck with those.

I really like this one: http://sourceforge.net/projects/air-boot/

A "BIOS" oriented user interface 🤣

The Windows built-in method works really well, so it's indeed not needed. But if you want to have a few more OSes, then for sure.

As far as mixing FAT16 and FAT32, yes - DOS just won't see/assign drive letters to the FAT32 partitions, as well as large extended partitions that dr_st suggested. I think DOS shows a partition size of like -1% or something weird.

I've tried using a live linux distro to create/format fat32 partitions as needed (which worked fine as well), but it ended up being quicker for me to create FAT16s since I kept testing/nuking my installs.

Question - if I wanted to dabble with Quake 1/2 and some OpenGL stuff, would a TNT or TNT2 be a better match for the K6-2?

AFAIK, the 3dfx Voodoo cards are a better match for K6 processors. But I haven't done any testing myself. Maybe later NV drivers addressed this.

Quake II is a game that, personally, I would prefer playing on a Pentium III machine.

A K6-2+ or III+ running at 550 MHz on the other hand, would do quite well.

I've played Quake II on a K6-III+ 400 with V3 3500, and it's ok. But not great and I wouldn't play it on that system. It's "playable" though 😀

Interesting. I assume the Voodoo 2d VESA performance is pretty fast as well and hopefully just as compatible as the Virge DX; may be time to try one I suppose. I have read that Voodoo 2 cards are not as recognized in DOS without patches as Voodoo 1 cards are. Do Voodoo 3 cards address this? Which model would be a decent match for this K6-2/300 (and possibly something faster later on)? I am not looking so much for DirectX, as I have my Thunderbird, but opengl in DOS could be fun.

Vetz has done some terrific work in this regard: Voodoo 2 DOS Glide compatibility matrix

DOS speed and compatibility is excellent. Signal quality output of the V3 is also very good, on Matrox level I would say.

RetroBoogie wrote:

I have read that Voodoo 2 cards are not as recognized in DOS without patches as Voodoo 1 cards are.

That only applies to games hardcoded with the Voodoo1 library. The same goes for Windows when using Glide1 Dll.

philscomputerlab wrote:

AFAIK, the 3dfx Voodoo cards are a better match for K6 processors. But I haven't done any testing myself. Maybe later NV drivers […]
Show full quote

AFAIK, the 3dfx Voodoo cards are a better match for K6 processors. But I haven't done any testing myself. Maybe later NV drivers addressed this.

Quake II is a game that, personally, I would prefer playing on a Pentium III machine.

A K6-2+ or III+ running at 550 MHz on the other hand, would do quite well.

I've played Quake II on a K6-III+ 400 with V3 3500, and it's ok. But not great and I wouldn't play it on that system. It's "playable" though 😀

yea Nvidia updated their drivers in early 2000 with 3dnow optimizations.

but the K6 300 and K6-2 300 have one other big diffrence the K6-2 supports 3dnow, the K6 does not

candle_86 you're right about the 3dNow!, I forgot to mention that!

This stuff is so addictive - the ability to max out these old systems, I mean. I am actually eying a K6-III+ 450 for this build. From what I understand it has 256KB full-speed L2 cache (making the mobo L3), and has Powernow mobile frequency adjustments. I think I read in another thread that there is a DOS program that is useful for specifying the multiplier outside of the BIOS? My goal would still be DOS games, but I wonder if it is worth the effort vs the current K6-2.

Anyway, today I received both of these in the mail:

Wondering if I should use this in place of my SB32 w/OPL (CT3930), or put it in my Thunderbird machine for newer DOS games alongside the PCI Live! card. The SB32 does sound kind of scratchy in certain games and a little noisy when plugged into my surround receiver.

So I ordered a K6-III+ 450ACZ, hasn't arrived yet. I don't anticipate any issues with setting the motherboard DIP switches, as it supports the 2.0V requirement. Would this be too fast for DOS? I can still use Throttle pretty well with K6s. Although I don't have any issues with the Virge DX PCI card, I am wondering if I should get a TNT2. Do SS7 have AGP issues really?

I remember playing Quake II on a AMD K6-300 with a Voodoo Banshee and it was quite good. I can imagine a K6-III+ at 500MHz and a Voodoo 3 doing much better specially with the 3DNow patch applied.

On K6-3, K6-2+ you can change Multiplicator on the fly.
So you can underclock if its too fast.

K6-2+ and K6-3/3+ are Mobile CPUs, AMD had launched its Athlon, and it ran too Hot for Notebooks.
So they grabbed their old K6-2 Design and putted some L2 Cache on the DIE to make it faster, add a variable multi and shrink everything to a newer factoring process.
Voila a Mobile Notebook CPU.

matze79, that's exactly what I want to do with the K6-3+.

I'm thinking of changing the board, however. I am having a hell of a time getting DMA and USB transfers to stop freezing. I figured the DMA part (by not installing the 4in1 DMA driver), but I can't transfer from a USB stick for more than maybe 10 seconds before it and/or the system freezes. I have another MVP3 board I could try (an Azza PT-5VML), but aside from that I feel like drop-kicking this thing into the trash. Since I'm using a USB PCI card (D-Link DSB-500), maybe I'll play with the slots a bit.