tokyoracer wrote:

I'm sure I got a spare PII CPU card at 500Mhz, is that good enough to run System Shock 2? What's the fastest PII made just out of interest?

The fastest regular P2 CPU was a Deschutes at 450 MHZ. This CPU is not suitable for your project, since it's multiplier is locked at 4,5 iirc.

tokyoracer wrote:

So if I could 'underclock' a PII at say 500Mhz to 133Mhz, then would that do the job of a genuine PI @ 133Mhz just as well?

No, it won't. The P2-333 to my knowledge is the fastest P2 without a locked multiplier. This would be the CPU to choose. OC up to 450 MHz or DC to 133 MHz, mobo permitting.

The reason I don't use DOSbox is because I find it very buggy and the games I tried where either very slow or didn't work at all...
Sorry to be a pain. 🙁

I fully agree with dosbox being to slow on an athlon XP. However, I run Windows 98se myself on an athlon and I run DosBox on a C2D. Neither seems particulary buggy or crash prone. So either your version of Dosbox was older or poorly configured, or your PC has aged by constant use. Have you checked your capacitors?

There is a data bank about how well games work on Dosbox. My experience is, that if they say it works, they are right. One may just have to figure it out. Takes time, just like tinkering does. I prefer Dosbox these days.

ux-3, you are almost right about the P-II underclocking, but not there yet. here is how it is:
Slowing a 440BX based PC

Even after reading through three pages of refinement posts, I don't quite see how you solved the slowdown better?
Would you care to enlighten me? We are not talking about engineering samples here, are we?

Are you worried about the L2 shutting down at those slow speeds? I mean, when you try to slow down this much, you probably want to turn off the cache anyway.

Can you provide more information about the slowing utility? You seem to have tested it with real DOS games but were not convinced. Which games worked, which games didn't?

Edit: The southbridge of the BX440 should be supported by throttle, so I wonder why it doesn't work (for you)?

Come to think about it. My Epox 8Krai does have a Via 8237 South bridge. I can slow the CPU (Athlon XP-m) down to 500 MHz, with FSB 100 and multi 5. (or 5,5?). If I could then use a working program to get down to as far as 7% of that - sweet! I guess I have some checks to run on the weekend.

Well, I should have pointed you to the P-II CPU summary of that topic, this one:

To summarize, we have these Deschutes Core Pentium II's (no celeron): […]
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To summarize, we have these Deschutes Core Pentium II's (no celeron):

The P-II 333/66MHz and 350/100MHz, with 5.5 ns L2 cache.
The P-II 400/100MHz, with faster 5.0 ns L2 cache with a slower timing and heatsink connection.
The L2 cache is in the form of external chips which run at half the CPU speed.

The above three can potentially be found multiplier limited, at least when produced before week 34 1998, but maybe even afterwards. When multiplier limited they accept a multiplier of 2.0x and 2.5x, but disable the L2 cache at these settings. They run properly at multiplier 3.0x and up, until a certain limit which depends on the CPU type and the FSB speed. These CPU's are not too good for overclocking because their external L2 cache chips become the bottleneck.

Possibly it still doesn't 'solve' anything for you, but this is what is possible with retail P-II CPU multiplier underclocking. As most readers probably know, The bus speed to multiply with the multiplier is usually 66 or 100MHz.

Throttle is an interesting tool, but with some games it gives hickups; the scrolling and or the sound effects do not always come along smoothly. I can't recall exactly how it was with specific games.

Thanks for clarifying. So you haven't solved the slowdown either. What it boils down to is this: To get a 100 MHz CPU with open multi is not really a good idea. The bios may deny you the 66 MHz FSB - ending all plans. The 350 MHz P2, from what you write, will not be any different, other than bus and multi setting. You could operate the 333 with FSB 100 and Multi 3.5 if you like. The P2-400 (without lock) will be extremely hard to find, but the 333 will most likely be able to act like a 400. If you need to crank up the clock, I guess you can disable L2 and go even higher. Mine worked ok at 450 for testing. Above, I had reboot problems too. I don't see any need to OC these Chips though: If I want more, I just swap in my 800 MHz P3.

(I might try if a P3/800 could run at FSB66, but I don't know how to invert the masking tape trick)

Yes, that is also my thought.

Ultimately you have a multiplier limited P2-400/100MHz CPU and a mainboard such as a Soyo 440BX that can force a 66MHz bus and a multiplier down to 2x. So you can have a speed range of 133MHz (no L2) to 450Mhz (overclocked) by just changing BIOS settings.

More easy to get is a multiplier limited P2-333/66MHz CPU and one of the many mainboards that can overclock the FSB and set the multiplier down to 2x in the BIOS. So you can have a speed range of 133MHz (no L2) to 400Mhz (overclocked) by just changing BIOS settings.

Very hard to get is the coppermine engineering sample CPU: speed range of 200MHz..800MHz. Now what about a Tualatin engineering sample CPU.. 200MHz to 1400MHz??? 🙄

But one can also decide to go for an earlier Pentium system, some can be clocked down much further, but of course will never perform as the P-II@400MHz. Next to that there are AMD CPU based systems from the same era, but I am not the person to write about these.

"Invert the masking tape trick" 😀 me also thought about doing just that on one system...

I have tested throttle with some of my speed sensitive games. So far, I did not encounter a problem that I would attribute to Throttle. On my board, after a few tests, it seems to run ok.

Unfortunately, this makes the P1000 on a Via 686B (horror) Southbridge quite an interesting alternative. If I read it correctly, it could be slowed to a 16th of its regular speed. If L1 Cache can be also disabled, it would basically stand still.
Too bad that I always find something new when I think I am finished.

I do have a P3 550 too. Any idea how to fake it into acting as 66MHz CPU?

I used to habve a board that would allow me to set the FSB by software between 66 and 133 on the fly. I am not sure if such software could be of use. Called SoftFSB, iirc

When these games run well with throttle, you are in luck.

SoftFSB, I just tried it, it works fine on my Soyo 440BX mainboard. The Bios also has these settings available, but now I can change it from within windows. unfortunately not from within dos.
My Soyo board can run any 100MHz FSB CPU at 66MHz FSB, the Aopen board does not have this option.

Some in-depth information on the hardware FSB selector on P2/P3 CPU's Here.
Let me attach it to this post as to save it from being lost.

I know that article, but I can't reverse it.

Regarding SoftFSB - you can always leave windows after slowing down.

Wow, well im really lost in his sea of CPU suggestions, though this "throttling" stuff sounds very interesting.
If I could find a CPU that has a good movment both in under and over-clocking, would that make more games compatible then just sticking to one CPU and one clockspeed?

swaaye wrote:

After years of tinkering, for 98SE I've settled on: […]
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After years of tinkering, for 98SE I've settled on:

• Athlon XP 1800+
• nForce2 mobo
• 1GB RAM
• SBLive! or Vortex 2
• GeForce 3 or Voodoo5
• Voodoo2

This is essentially what a lot of people had at the end of the 98SE era. It will run any 9x game out there and run it well.

I just got my first GF3! It's an MSI 64Mb G3Ti200 Pro-TD. Looking at the nVidia comparison page on Wikipedia -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nv … eForce_3_series

, the Ti200 model appears to be the slowest of three GF3 models available. The general desktop image quality seemed good. It's got both VGA and DVI output. The onboard fan was noisy, but then again so many are, and they're probably easy to replace. The card looks well made.

After I installed the card and switched on power, Win98 identified the card correctly, and decided to assign my old generic 45.xx nVidia driver to it. When the machine rebooted, it froze, and so I removed the 45.xx driver using Safe Mode, and installed the MSI driver from the supplied CD-ROM. That worked.

I ran 3DMark 2001 s.e., and I'm sorry but I forget the score. It was about 4,600. The tests looked a bit sluggish. I always look at that very first frame rate value when the first jeep test starts. On this occasion, using the GF3 card, it was 60 FPS. That was using a 1Ghz P3 system. I like this card, but the overall graphics appearance quality in 3DMark 2001 s.e. looked inferior to my GF4 cards. Perhaps I need to upgrade the driver?

tokyoracer wrote:

Wow, well im really lost in his sea of CPU suggestions...

Come on, P2-333 isn't exactly a sea! 😉

That is the one that will most likely do the trick - Haven't yet seen a locked one yet.

Regarding the general plan - I am not exactly sure yet what is best. With my current hardware, Throttle will increment in 8 steps. If I were to choose the Via Apollo Pro chipset ( 😒 ), I should have 16 Steps, which would allow a much faster CPU (like P3-1000) to be used. I will have to run some experiments on that. Currently, I have no ISA Board with that chip. I would have to figure out, how well a SB Live! would emulate SB16 at minimal speed (L1 off). PCI may just fold. I can however live with IDE1 disabled - the Via Bug.

Edit: Once I let go the option of ISA, I could also consider just one Retrobox to rule them all: My XP-M which can be FSB and Multi adjusted over the Range of 500 MHz to 2200 MHz and be throttled in 16 steps. This is the next item on my list of investigations. It has a SB Live which I heard is capable of doing DOS Midi quite well in a windows box. It will also act as SB16 in real Dos. The (passive) GF6 can FSAA many Glide-only games by wrapper. The rest will find a Voodoo2 SLI for comfort. It would require throttle to work.

@gerwin: Whats the name of your soyo board?

retro games 100 wrote:

swaaye wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nv … eForce_3_series

the Ti200 model appears to be the slowest of three GF3 models available. The general desktop image quality seemed good. It's got both VGA and DVI output. The onboard fan was noisy, but then again so many are, and they're probably easy to replace. The card looks well made.

That's the one I had except the 128Mb version, looekd well made also and did work but soon replaced with a Sapphire X800 Pro. 😀

ux-3 wrote:

Come on, P2-333 isn't exactly a sea! :wink: […]
Show full quote

tokyoracer wrote:

Wow, well im really lost in his sea of CPU suggestions...

Come on, P2-333 isn't exactly a sea! 😉

That is the one that will most likely do the trick - Haven't yet seen a locked one yet.

Regarding the general plan - I am not exactly sure yet what is best. With my current hardware, Throttle will increment in 8 steps. If I were to choose the Via Apollo Pro chipset ( 😒 ), I should have 16 Steps, which would allow a much faster CPU (like P3-1000) to be used. I will have to run some experiments on that. Currently, I have no ISA Board with that chip. I would have to figure out, how well a SB Live! would emulate SB16 at minimal speed (L1 off). PCI may just fold. I can however live with IDE1 disabled - the Via Bug.

Edit: Once I let go the option of ISA, I could also consider just one Retrobox to rule them all: My XP-M which can be FSB and Multi adjusted over the Range of 500 MHz to 2200 MHz and be throttled in 16 steps. This is the next item on my list of investigations. It has a SB Live which I heard is capable of doing DOS Midi quite well in a windows box. It will also act as SB16 in real Dos. The (passive) GF6 can FSAA many Glide-only games by wrapper. The rest will find a Voodoo2 SLI for comfort. It would require throttle to work.

@gerwin: Whats the name of your soyo board?

🤣! Ok then... PII @ 333Mhz it is then. Thanks for the advice! 😀

tokyoracer wrote:

retro games 100 wrote:

That's the one I had except the 128Mb version, looked well made with it's VRam coolers and did work but was soon replaced with a […]
Show full quote

swaaye wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nv … eForce_3_series

the Ti200 model appears to be the slowest of three GF3 models available. The general desktop image quality seemed good. It's got both VGA and DVI output. The onboard fan was noisy, but then again so many are, and they're probably easy to replace. The card looks well made.

That's the one I had except the 128Mb version, looked well made with it's VRam coolers and did work but was soon replaced with a Sapphire X800 Pro. 😀

ux-3 wrote:

Come on, P2-333 isn't exactly a sea! :wink: […]
Show full quote

Come on, P2-333 isn't exactly a sea! 😉

That is the one that will most likely do the trick - Haven't yet seen a locked one yet.

Regarding the general plan - I am not exactly sure yet what is best. With my current hardware, Throttle will increment in 8 steps. If I were to choose the Via Apollo Pro chipset ( 😒 ), I should have 16 Steps, which would allow a much faster CPU (like P3-1000) to be used. I will have to run some experiments on that. Currently, I have no ISA Board with that chip. I would have to figure out, how well a SB Live! would emulate SB16 at minimal speed (L1 off). PCI may just fold. I can however live with IDE1 disabled - the Via Bug.

Edit: Once I let go the option of ISA, I could also consider just one Retrobox to rule them all: My XP-M which can be FSB and Multi adjusted over the Range of 500 MHz to 2200 MHz and be throttled in 16 steps. This is the next item on my list of investigations. It has a SB Live which I heard is capable of doing DOS Midi quite well in a windows box. It will also act as SB16 in real Dos. The (passive) GF6 can FSAA many Glide-only games by wrapper. The rest will find a Voodoo2 SLI for comfort. It would require throttle to work.

@gerwin: Whats the name of your soyo board?

L0L! Ok then... PII @ 333Mhz it is then. Thanks for the advice! 😀

Would you mind learning how to quote and edit, tokyoracer? 😀

ux-3 wrote:

Would you mind learning how to quote and edit, tokyoracer? 😀

Sorry, I guess I wasn't paying enough attention. -_-