Congrats! It's a very nice build. Post some benchmarks if you can.

I enjoyed the read and tagging along in your journey to building your S7 machine.
Very interesting and informative.
Thanks.

dominusprog wrote on 2024-02-05, 21:24:

Congrats! It's a very nice build. Post some benchmarks if you can.

Thanks!

I plan on doing a follow-up post basically covering what it can do, including benchmarks. Similar to what I did with my EPIA-800 Windows 95 build. 😀

If you're curious, this is the follow-up to that EPIA-800 build: https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/2024/01/t … -build-log.html

kiacadp wrote on 2024-02-06, 01:05:

I enjoyed the read and tagging along in your journey to building your S7 machine.
Very interesting and informative.
Thanks.

Thank you! 😀

I've always enjoyed writing. I'm not saying I'm any good at it, but I do find it fun and relaxing. Plus, if it can help someone in the future, then all the better.

Good read, and your philosophy is right up my alley too. I've always found it much more fun to choose from a number of quite good components than to pay through the nose for the one very best model.

If you're ever in need of writing prompts - I'd love a followup going into periphery, e.g. how to find a reasonable display supporting low-res, hi(-ish)-Hz DOS modes without too many issues, compatible mice (do we grab a vintage PS2 one straight away, or can we somewhat reliably identify USB models that support running through a passive adapter), that sorta thing.

You complain about voodoo prices yet you spend $40 on a simple fdd 🤷‍♀️

elszgensa wrote on 2024-02-06, 18:33:

Good read, and your philosophy is right up my alley too. I've always found it much more fun to choose from a number of quite good components than to pay through the nose for the one very best model.

If you're ever in need of writing prompts - I'd love a followup going into periphery, e.g. how to find a reasonable display supporting low-res, hi(-ish)-Hz DOS modes without too many issues, compatible mice (do we grab a vintage PS2 one straight away, or can we somewhat reliably identify USB models that support running through a passive adapter), that sorta thing.

Yeah, I have that same philosophy when it comes to my modern hardware as well, it's good, but not the best of the best. If it does what I need, and does it well, that's what matters to me the more. 😀

I will be doing a follow-up post once time permits, like I did for my Win95 EPIA-800 build.

For PS2 mice/keyboards, thankfully some are still available, and still being made by some companies (Like Perixx). While you can get away with using a USB-PS2 adapters for both, I really wanted "real" PS2. I picked up a NOS HP keyboard and NOS Mi MIcro mouse for this build.

Bruno128 wrote on 2024-02-09, 11:26:

You complain about voodoo prices yet you spend $40 on a simple fdd 🤷‍♀️

Indeed. 😀

The $40 FDD is still vastly cheaper than a Voodoo card, and also vastly more useful since I have a LOT of floppy disks I want to archive and having a new old stock drive I know is in 100% working order goes a long way in helping me complete that task.

Also, I don't have a need for a Voodoo, it would just be nice to have one to play with again, but I had a need for the floppy. There are many things I want, but I will always divert funds to what I need before the things I want. 😀

Very nice read and a nice build, thank you for sharing!

I used to have a Cyrix 133 CPU build (that mobo died, but I still have the CPU as a collector's item). For years I've been using an AWE64 (CT4520 like yours or CT4500) as the primary sound card of my retro system, though in later years I've switched to a Yamaha Audician 32 with a DreamBlaster daughterboard. At one point, I wanted to get an OPTi with a build-in wavetable like yours, but did not succeed and later lost interest.

dr_st wrote on 2024-02-09, 22:15:

Very nice read and a nice build, thank you for sharing!

I used to have a Cyrix 133 CPU build (that mobo died, but I still have the CPU as a collector's item). For years I've been using an AWE64 (CT4520 like yours or CT4500) as the primary sound card of my retro system, though in later years I've switched to a Yamaha Audician 32 with a DreamBlaster daughterboard. At one point, I wanted to get an OPTi with a build-in wavetable like yours, but did not succeed and later lost interest.

Thanks!

I used Cyrix processors many times in builds "back in the day", so I was glad to have one for this build. 😀

The AWE cards have always been favorites, but it wasn't until I started looking into this build that I became familiar with OPTi. I'm glad I did, they seem like nice cards, especially since you can still get them cheap. This build actually re-sparked my interest in learning more about different sound cards of the era, specifically ones I've never used before.