Packard Bell had a bad habit of using different motherboards in the same model.
What is the actual motherboard model?
Which BIOS revision do you have installed?
.

Might your board be listed here by any chance?
http://www.bcmcom.com/bcm_support_driversAndB … accept=I+Accept
Iirc many PB boards are listed here

For example the IN530 BIOS page: http://www.bcmcom.com/tech/IN530/IN530bios.asp
The IN530 spec webpage: http://www.bcmcom.com/tech/IN530/IN530.htm

There is a complete listing somewhere, but can't find it now that I am looking for it 😊

I -think- it's a PB600 board which was used in a lot of models.
I have a bunch of PB BIOSs on file, but not that one unfortunately.
Here's a little info on the latest BIOS revision I could find: http://www.bios-drivers.com/drivers/15/15292.htm

PCBONEZ wrote:

I -think- it's a PB600 board which was used in a lot of models.
I have a bunch of PB BIOSs on file, but not that one unfortunately.
Here's a little info on the latest BIOS revision I could find: http://www.bios-drivers.com/drivers/15/15292.htm

Thanks! The description for that BIOS cracks me up. The soundcard is not as bad as he indicates. 😉

When I get a chance, I'll see if I can figure out if mine is a PB600 and what rev is flashed on there.4

edit: BIOS rev shown at bootup is 1.00.07.BY0R. I found some info by googling that, but it all dead-ends to sites that no longer exist. I suppose I'll have to crack the case open to find a motherboard model. 😒

That BIOS ID corresponds to a series of Intel OEM boards called Hillary.
It could be one of 6 different boards but they all share the same BIOS and you already have the latest version.
Those boards are (by PB number) PB570/580/590/620/630/650.
As they use the same BIOS any differences are probably minor.

I had a PB 486 back in the day and I thought the PB Aztec SRS sound card was pretty good myself.
But a grain of salt. I'm not much of a gamer.

Oh, and, PB was not particularly good about marking the model numbers on their boards.
Sometimes they are marked on the solder side and sometimes not at all. Sometimes you get lucky.
The MFD and MCD (whatever they are) numbers in this table might help. http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/pb/faq/model.htm
.
It is socket 5: http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/pb/mb/pbmb1.htm

PCBONEZ wrote:

That BIOS ID corresponds to a series of Intel OEM boards called Hillary.
It could be one of 6 different boards but they all share the same BIOS and you already have the latest version.

That answers my question--I've already got the newest BIOS. I count myself lucky that US Navy Fighters is the only game (so far) that couldn't run on this system. Thanks again for your help.

Hi PCBONEZ,

I've just come across another game (besides US Navy Fighters) that won't run on the Packard Bell--Stargunner. When I launch it, it goes to the Apogee splash screen, then plays the intro, then drops to DOS with a "Divide Overflow" message. If I run the SETUP program to configure the game, it immediately drops back to DOS with "Divide Overflow" (and the DOS fontsize becomes huge). I tried this game on another DOS machine and it works normally. My suspicion is that whatever is preventing US Navy Fighters from working is what is causing Stargunner to fail. Since the US Navy Fighters readme file lists a problem like this with the solution being to disable video shadow features in the BIOS, I wonder if you are aware of any way to make these features available so that I can turn them off?

Maybe TweakBIOS will do the trick, but I have no idea if it works with Packard Bell computers. Give it a try.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/tweakbios.html

Thanks, JayCeeBee64. I will try it out.

You have the latest revision for the HIllary boards. Sadly a MR BIOS was never publicly released for those.

@ clueless1
Sorry. I can't help with that one.
I'm a hardware guy. Tricks to get stubborn games to work is out of my league.
.

NJRoadfan-thanks for the info.

PCBONEZ-I appreciate the help you have provided.

I'll give Tweakbios a shot.

I have only dabbled with modding BIOS and I'm not especially good at it.
There are probably a few members here that know that stuff cold and can help.
I dunno who they are though. Haven't been here long enough.
When I've need BIOS mod help in the past I've gone to one of these places.
https://www.bios-mods.com/
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/
.

Thanks. Tweakbios shows amazingly few settings. Basically some DRAM, PCI, and L2 timings. I'm not motivated enough to pursue this further.

That's too bad, looks like TweakBIOS doesn't recognize the motherboard and only gives generic settings. At least it was worth the try.

Great community here and I'm grateful for all the help. I don't believe this Packard Bell P133 is the ideal DOS retro rig, but it's been pretty decent so far. I do have two other boards to play with, though. I'm going to see if either of them have compatibility issues with US Navy Fighters or Stargunner. They are both much faster (Celeron 333 and K6-2 550) and run some of the more demanding games much smoother. The downside to them is I can't get either one to slow down (using SETMUL) to the proper speed for Wing Commander, whereas the Packard Bell with L1 cache disabled is at the *perfect* speed. I might have to try moslo on the other boards.

edit: I confirmed the Stargunner issue is an incompatibility with the Voodoo3 2000 PCI.