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Dauphin Set Top Box PC with K6 450

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First post, by tarasque

Posted on 
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I found locally an interesting pc that I guess had a life as a set top box in the hospitality industry.

I could not find any info on the web about it so here what I found so far:

Motherboard is unknown but I can see it uses the VIA VT82C598MVP (Apollo MVP3) and the VT82C686A South Bridge
CPU: AMD K6 2 @450mhz with 100mhz fsb
RAM: 256mb
Hard disk: Seagate 20gb ST320410A
DVD: Quanta SDR-081
GPU: InteGraphics Systems(IGS Company Tvia Inc.) CyberPro 5300 and REALmagic Galaxy 2
Audio: CMI8738 / C3DX (saw this through windows)

It has a single empty PCI slot available through a riser placing the card parallel to the motherboard. It also features IrDa port for the remote control and smartcard reader (NST NRC2000 device in windows, no drivers unfortunately).

Luckily the original windows 98 installation has all the original drivers, a custom app for the remote control and a custom launcher that can be used with the remote control (which i also have) browsing through a music app (launches windows media player), a dvd app, a tv app etc

Size is 36x29x9 (cm) which makes it a compact yet powerful for some win98 gaming. Unfortunately sound in DOS gaming is very finnicky with the CMI8738. I initially thought that SBEMU would be an option with the existing 82C686A but I guess southbridge is not used for sound since the CMI8738 exists. Of course one can install a more dos friendly PCI sound card.

I also tried a 3dfx Voodoo 2 card which runs very nice but the card itself needed to be 2-3 mm shorter as it is very tight with the case closed.

All in all I think it's an interesting little machine!

If you have any info on this please let me know!

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Reply 1 of 1, by flupke11

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Interesting system, even for the specs, the customisation needed for this machine would probably have cost a premium. I remember Olivetti trying to commercialise set top pc's, which were to be seen as replacements for your VHS system and allowing much more. That was even in the early Pentium era. This is more recent, about 98-99 when DVD was the hot new thing. Is there a MPEG accelerator chip on the card that allows the tv cable input?

In my humble experience, such systems never delivered on their promises, even in the dvd era, like this system. TV's were not made for high resolution (nor was SCART) and you were better of buying either a good performance pc with an offloading DVD chip (Creative DXr2 and the like) or just buy a dedicated dvd player. This tried to be all, and probably failed.

Edit: "Dauphin", is this a French or French Canadian system?

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