VOGONS


First post, by seob

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Running out of space, so i need to get rid of some systems, but what to keep. I want to keep 3 systems maximum.
I'm thinking to keep my:
AMD 386 DX40 with Ilon m-321 motherboard
Ark 2000PV 2Mb graphic card ISA
SB Vibra16 CT2260 Soundcard ISA

P233MMX Fujitsu system,
Daimond Stealth 3D 2000 PCI graphics card
Daimond 3Dfx voodoo2 12 MB
SB 32 AWE SB3980

PII-350 or PII-450 or PIII-450
Asus P2B motherboard
Hercules 3D Prophet II MX 64 MB AGP graphics card
SB Audigy LS PCI sound card

Those systems i'm thinking of holding on to. I think they are the best for dos early win95 games. I also have an option to keep:
IBM Model 30 XT, to limited for gaming in my opinion.
IBM model 30 286, Same as above, way to limited, also no easy upgrade path.
AMD Athlon 64 3000, with Asus K8V deluxe motherboard, to new i think.
HP DX2000MT P4 2.8Ghz, to new.
Intel pentium 166, with Gigabyte GA586VX motherboard, think a P233 mmx is the better option.
Intel Pentium 100??, with asus P/I P55T2P4 motherboard. same as above.
Intel Pentium 100??, Soyo SY-5MA motherboard, same as above.
Intel PII-233 with PCPartner LXA800D motherboard, Asus P2B is the better option.

As for graphics i can also choose:
ISA,
Machspeed Tseng ET4000AX 1Mb
Trident TVGA9000B 1Mb
But i guess for the best speed the ARK2000PV 2Mb is the better option for dos games.

VLB
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428 1Mb, don't have a vlb motherboard, so it's not an option.

AGP
Ati Rage 3D rage II+DVD 4Mb
Daimond Speedstar A50 8Mb sis6326
Hercules Terminator Beast 8Mb Savage3D
Asus V9560 Geforce FX5600 128 Mb, to new
Ati Radeon 9550 128Mb, to new
Ati Radeon 9600Pro 128 Mb, to new
Hercules Prophet 9000Pro 128 Mb, to new

PCI
Daimond stealth 3D 2000, 2Mb
Daimond S3 Stealth 64 Video Vram 4Mb
3DFX Voodoo2 12Mb SLI, not so much support for it that i think i would need it, think i can do with a single card.
Ati Radeon 9600 256Mb ddr, to new

Sound
Isa
J.J.L. Ultra Wave Gravis Ultrasound clone, more for demo scene then gaming i think
Sound Blaster 64 gold, the awe 32 i have has a memory upgrade, so i think it is more usable.
Sound Blaster CT4170 vibra16xv
Advance Logic ALS 100 plus+
Opti 931

PCI
Cmedia CMI8738
Sound Blaster Live CT4670
Sound Blaster Live CT4760
Sound Blaster Live SB0220

What would be the systems i could build out of these.

Reply 1 of 7, by cyclone3d

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I would keep
V2 SLI
Gravis Ultrasound clone

You can get a new simmcon adapter for the AWE64 from a community project here on Vogons. I would tend to keep it... but I hoard.

For Gravis Ultrasound info and game support, see here:
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2012/07/g … -dos-games.html
http://www.mobygames.com/attribute/sheet/attributeId,20/

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 2 of 7, by jheronimus

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I'd keep at least three systems:

1) Fastest Pentium with ISA. In your case P3-450
Combine AGP NVIDIA with Voodoo 2
Combine Audigy with AWE32 or AWE64 (you get proper sound in Win9x as well as MIDI in DOS games)

No real reason to keep P-1 or P-MMX since P3 will run everything they can but better

2) 386 — admittedly 40 MHz is too fast for a 386, but it's still useful
CT2260 (since it has OPL3) + GUS glone

3) IBM 286 — can be interesting for EGA games. Not sure what kind of graphics does you machine have or do you have an EGA screen. If you don't then there is no point, of course.

MR BIOS catalog
Unicore catalog

Reply 3 of 7, by gdjacobs

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I disagree.
1) The high end is probably better served with the Athlon64. VIA had driver support for this board with Win98 and it has good compatibility with ESS (and a few other) PCI sound cards in DOS due to DDMA not being fully removed yet. Along with a downward unlocked multiplier, this system would have you covered for anything too demanding for your middle machines.
2) Choice of either the PMMX in the T2P4 board or the P2B with a slotket and C3 Ezra. This would be a utility machine for DOS/Win3.1/Win9x as it's performance envelope goes as low as a fast 386SX/slow 386 DX using SETMUL and other tricks.
3) This one isn't a great fit either way, but there's potential for either the 286 or 386 machines. Ideally you want something that can handle 8088 games and run Deathtrack in less than hyper mode. I'd probably lean towards the 286 except all the proprietary parts are a real downer.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 4 of 7, by seob

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The only plus the model30 286 has, is that it comes with 2 isa slots and onboard mcga, that is vga compatible.
The downside is the harddisk not being ide. I have a xtide but i need to order parts to populate the board.

I have some what of a nostasia for the p1 233mmx because it was the first pc i bought all by myself. But maybe you are right a 286, and pIII-450 is a nice combo.

Reply 5 of 7, by cyclone3d

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There are some games that will have issues with the higher speed CPU.. and there are some sound cards that have issues with CPUs faster than 133Mhz.

Sure you can disable caches, etc to slow things down, but it isn't the same.

It just depends on what your final goals are. Do you think you will, at some point, regret getting rid of some of the slower systems?

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 6 of 7, by seob

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I don’t know, i have sold my Commodore PC-I xt clone, because i found it to limmited in what it could do. My first ibm compatible back then, was a Philips 286-12.5Mhz, looking at the fun i had with that system, keeping the 286 ibm isn’t a bad idee, combined with the xtide and a sound card this would almost be the same as i had back then.
I also got a Logitech Sound man wave, opl4 based card, but i don’t think this would be a good match for the ibm.

Reply 7 of 7, by gdjacobs

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seob wrote:

The only plus the model30 286 has, is that it comes with 2 isa slots and onboard mcga, that is vga compatible.
The downside is the harddisk not being ide. I have a xtide but i need to order parts to populate the board.

I have some what of a nostasia for the p1 233mmx because it was the first pc i bought all by myself. But maybe you are right a 286, and pIII-450 is a nice combo.

The central issue with the P3 is the large performance gap it has between caches being enabled and disabled. If you want to downsize your hardware stack, flexibility becomes much more important; the P3 simply doesn't have it.

seob wrote:

The only plus the model30 286 has, is that it comes with 2 isa slots and onboard mcga, that is vga compatible.
The downside is the harddisk not being ide. I have a xtide but i need to order parts to populate the board.

I have some what of a nostasia for the p1 233mmx because it was the first pc i bought all by myself. But maybe you are right a 286, and pIII-450 is a nice combo.

Proprietary drives and proprietary RAM are both significant problems.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder