With not working DOS audio (like on all nForce chipsets)? I don' think so...

My answer to the OPs initial Question......

486 DX-4 100mhz
64MB RAM
L2 cache
80GB HDD...SSD perhaps
VLB or PCI video 1+MB SVGA...3D accel If possible
Stripped to the Core Windows 95 OSR 2.1
SoundBlaster AWE series
LAN over TCP/IP

Moslo or Turbo for XT era stuff - ie. paratrooper, Ultima 1-3, Burger Blaster, and for stuff like Sierra AGI you don't even need to slow it down.

Turbo button for 286/386 era - Test Drive 3, Wolfenstein 3D, Street Rod 1&2, if you really want to be nitpicky about speed, Ultima VI. But honestly I like the extra Speed the DX4 gives these so I don't need turbo.

486 native stuff runs incredible of course (7th Guest, MYST, Doom, Ultima 7 & 8, Dungeon Hack)

And some early Pentium stuff will work as well but might have tiny snags here and there (Duke Nukem 3D, Postal, Menzobarrenzan, I even got The Sims to just barely run...once)....later 486s can and do have some Pentium features baked in (Write back cache, CMPXCHG, pipelining...IIRC).

This is all my own personal experience of the last 18 years. YMMV. But to me the late era DX2 and DX4 486s are the ultimate retrogaming powerhouses when it comes to the widest range of what runs. They can even run some decent emulators without much fuss (MAME, NESticle, Z26).

While 486DX4 is nice system, but when it comes to underclocking, you can do much more with Pentium MMX system. Not to mention that you can obtain some neat ATX Socket 7 board.

WIP 2: The 6-in-1 Turbo-switched Socket 7 - from XT to 500MHz; dual Tseng powered...

Above is a Speedsys speed index profile with just using hardware slowdown tricks and without tools like Throttle.exe. The index starts slower than an IBM XT 4.77 MHz, as slow as an IBM PCjr - Speedsys 0.45 to smoothly scaling to Speedsys 567.

super socket 7 with a moderatly slow K6 or a MMX 233 is an amazing platform but its hardly a platform to rule them all. Its great for going from a 286 to Pentium speeds, but pentium speeds isn't enough to run later games. Thing is there simply isnt a platform that can do it all.

Those SS7 platforms would be considered basically low end systems by the time 1999 rolled around so any kinda 3d games that are not glide based assuming you have 3dfx accelrators that run better on PIIIs with Geforce 4s is out of the question unless you enjoy super low frams and 640x480.

j^aws wrote:

Sppedsys scale 600.png

WIP 2: The 6-in-1 Turbo-switched Socket 7 - from XT to 500MHz; dual Tseng powered...

Above is a Speedsys speed index profile with just using hardware slowdown tricks and without tools like Throttle.exe. The index starts slower than an IBM XT 4.77 MHz, as slow as an IBM PCjr - Speedsys 0.45 to smoothly scaling to Speedsys 567.

Your motherboard is a special kind of freak. I wish we could help it procreate.

manbearpig wrote:

Do the floppy controllers on 775 boards still support dual disk drives?

You didn't mention an FDD but if I wanted something for DOS games, I would want to be able to use the disk if I had stumbled upon one.

Also, PCI-e wasn't common until 98 was dead and buried. Even ME was a distant memory. I wouldn't say that 98 "covered" that era.

PCI-E worked with 98, and there are drivers. There was a while I was dual booting XP/98 before the hardware killed that ability just to play certain DOS games.

And for floppy support, it might be tech heresy but a Gotek works just fine. I've a loving mother who had no idea what she had and donated most of my originals many years ago. (Pretty much every Sierra Quest game ever complete with box and a generous collection of others in various states of completion. I'd bet real money at least one person on this board has one of my old games.) Beyond the basic ability to read 3.5" disks I'd pretty much assumed the method thereof was kind of irrelevant. And yes, every late era floppy controller I'm aware of supported 2 drives likely because breaking that compatibility would have involved altering the entire standard. (Plus at that point so long as you weren't loading pure DOS from it you could use a USB floppy in the worst case.)

the 1st pci express graphics cards came out in 2004 and Microsoft didn't stop supporting 98se officially until 2006. so manbearpig I dont share your opion becase I know its not fact. my supermicro X38 supports dual floppys it doesn't run 98 tho. 🤣

I kinda agree with your sentiment though but then again that's like saying XP doesn't support usb 3.0 but in fact some controllers work with it just fine.

To be honest though, that was only extended support with security updates, which ended in 2006. Mainstream support ended in 2002.

ya I kinda agree with you but we can use the same logic to argue that XP and windows 2000 are not designed with PCI express in mind. both operating systems were released before PCI express came out.

Beyond whatever Microsoft was doing, the manufacturers produced drivers for the cards, and they do work. Kind of silly to argue against something that's already been tried and tested. A LOT of people didn't upgrade to XP in any realistic timeframe. (I had an aunt go from 98 to Windows 8... surprised she didn't burn the new PC. Still, could have been ME or Vista.)

98 stands out to me as having had remarkably good support for DOS games, as well as 16-bit Windows through to several games that worked with both 98 and XP though granted the earliest stuff isn't going to play nice with anything measured in gigahertz. I doubt you're going to be booting many 5.25" disks into, say, California Games. But I'd say the majority of games capable of living on a hard drive can at least be made to run. Might toss VDMSound at a game or two depending on your particular sound card situation.

gdjacobs wrote:

j^aws wrote:

Sppedsys scale 600.png

WIP 2: The 6-in-1 Turbo-switched Socket 7 - from XT to 500MHz; dual Tseng powered...

Above is a Speedsys speed index profile with just using hardware slowdown tricks and without tools like Throttle.exe. The index starts slower than an IBM XT 4.77 MHz, as slow as an IBM PCjr - Speedsys 0.45 to smoothly scaling to Speedsys 567.

Your motherboard is a special kind of freak. I wish we could help it procreate.

That board "only" goes down to 50Mhz FSB. I have a Socket 7 board that has a 40Mhz FSB setting. Not even sure if the board works though.

You probably need a few computers.

DOS / Win3x games - Intel DX2-66 or DX4-100 or AMD 5x86-P75-133mhz computer.
The DX2-66 is good enough for most DOS / Win3x games.
With “Setmul” utility and turbo switch you can slow down the computer to 386 25mhz performance for playing old 386 games too.

For Voodoo games you want Win98se and an AMD K6-3-450 CPU which you can slow down to 200mhz speed for playing older games with Setmul utility. You can also over clock to 550mhz.
Or AMD Athlon computer. Or Intel P3 CPU

For WinXP games you want an intel Core-2-quad CPU at least.
Or AMD Athlon XP CPU.

For Win-7 games you want a Intel quad core i5 CPU or better.

Gigabyte and Asus motherboards have been around for a long time.
Good CPU support.

cyclone3d wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

j^aws wrote:

Sppedsys scale 600.png

WIP 2: The 6-in-1 Turbo-switched Socket 7 - from XT to 500MHz; dual Tseng powered...

Above is a Speedsys speed index profile with just using hardware slowdown tricks and without tools like Throttle.exe. The index starts slower than an IBM XT 4.77 MHz, as slow as an IBM PCjr - Speedsys 0.45 to smoothly scaling to Speedsys 567.

Your motherboard is a special kind of freak. I wish we could help it procreate.

That board "only" goes down to 50Mhz FSB. I have a Socket 7 board that has a 40Mhz FSB setting. Not even sure if the board works though.

It's not just the FSB that makes it extremely slow but rather a fully functioning Turbo switch. Moreover, it is also the choice of CPU, the architecture of the K6-III+ makes it even slower than a Pentium MMX on the same board.

I have Socket 5/ 7 boards that have 16/ 25 MHz FSB options and won't go as slow. I've tried a Pentium clocked at 1x multi and 16 MHz as well. Even with the FSB clocked at ISA bus speed ~ 7MHz, this slow speed isn't achieved (Pentium at 1.5x multi, 10 MHz). Also, different types of working Turbo switches behave in different ways, and aren't as effective at slowdown, too.

I do have another board that is 4x slower than this board, but anything slower than an IBM PCjr becomes superfluous.

creepingnet wrote:

My answer to the OPs initial Question...... […]
Show full quote

My answer to the OPs initial Question......

486 DX-4 100mhz
64MB RAM
L2 cache
80GB HDD...SSD perhaps
VLB or PCI video 1+MB SVGA...3D accel If possible
Stripped to the Core Windows 95 OSR 2.1
SoundBlaster AWE series
LAN over TCP/IP

Moslo or Turbo for XT era stuff - ie. paratrooper, Ultima 1-3, Burger Blaster, and for stuff like Sierra AGI you don't even need to slow it down.

Turbo button for 286/386 era - Test Drive 3, Wolfenstein 3D, Street Rod 1&2, if you really want to be nitpicky about speed, Ultima VI. But honestly I like the extra Speed the DX4 gives these so I don't need turbo.

486 native stuff runs incredible of course (7th Guest, MYST, Doom, Ultima 7 & 8, Dungeon Hack)

And some early Pentium stuff will work as well but might have tiny snags here and there (Duke Nukem 3D, Postal, Menzobarrenzan, I even got The Sims to just barely run...once)....later 486s can and do have some Pentium features baked in (Write back cache, CMPXCHG, pipelining...IIRC).

This is all my own personal experience of the last 18 years. YMMV. But to me the late era DX2 and DX4 486s are the ultimate retrogaming powerhouses when it comes to the widest range of what runs. They can even run some decent emulators without much fuss (MAME, NESticle, Z26).

I take this opportunity for something I have in my head for a while. What is the benefit of using 5x86P75 instead of DX2? Aside from a benchmark talk, it's not as fast as a pentium so you earn some frames in heavy games like Doom but you lose the fact of having the legendary DX2 in your computer. Although slower it is still interesting to try the games in the cpu which was the standard (pre pentium). Not know if i explain. There is neither a 486 nor a Pentium. At the time it could be interesting to upgrade a 486, but now ?? If you need the speed of the pentium better get a pentium

j^aws wrote:

It's not just the FSB that makes it extremely slow but rather a fully functioning Turbo switch. Moreover, it is also the choice of CPU, the architecture of the K6-III+ makes it even slower than a Pentium MMX on the same board.

I have Socket 5/ 7 boards that have 16/ 25 MHz FSB options and won't go as slow. I've tried a Pentium clocked at 1x multi and 16 MHz as well. Even with the FSB clocked at ISA bus speed ~ 7MHz, this slow speed isn't achieved (Pentium at 1.5x multi, 10 MHz). Also, different types of working Turbo switches behave in different ways, and aren't as effective at slowdown, too.

I do have another board that is 4x slower than this board, but anything slower than an IBM PCjr becomes superfluous.

Indeed, my 386DX for instance just halves the effective clock rate. Along with limited BIOS capabilities, it's not nearly adequate for XT levels of performance. I'd be interested to see your numbers with the Rise board and a PMMX, though.

I benchmarked my K8 machine, and while it probably would be a credible W98 machine and perhaps (with some work) for some DOS performance regimes, it's by no means an all-in-one time machine. Like with the P2 and up, the performance gap from disabling cache is too wide to close with multiplier manipulation, and it's a bit coarse on the low end for fine tuned speed adjustment.
Let's benchmark our systems with caches disabled

agent_x007 wrote:

Personally, I think it's either : Super Socket 7 or 1366 (both would be ideal to have I think).

This is interesting, never ever read anything about socket 1366 in a retro computing perspective. You don't happen to know any good information sources?

I'm especially interested in why the 1366 platform would be better than 1155, maybe you already know the answer? 😀

gdjacobs wrote:

Indeed, my 386DX for instance just halves the effective clock rate. Along with limited BIOS capabilities, it's not nearly adequa […]
Show full quote

j^aws wrote:

It's not just the FSB that makes it extremely slow but rather a fully functioning Turbo switch. Moreover, it is also the choice of CPU, the architecture of the K6-III+ makes it even slower than a Pentium MMX on the same board.

I have Socket 5/ 7 boards that have 16/ 25 MHz FSB options and won't go as slow. I've tried a Pentium clocked at 1x multi and 16 MHz as well. Even with the FSB clocked at ISA bus speed ~ 7MHz, this slow speed isn't achieved (Pentium at 1.5x multi, 10 MHz). Also, different types of working Turbo switches behave in different ways, and aren't as effective at slowdown, too.

I do have another board that is 4x slower than this board, but anything slower than an IBM PCjr becomes superfluous.

Indeed, my 386DX for instance just halves the effective clock rate. Along with limited BIOS capabilities, it's not nearly adequate for XT levels of performance. I'd be interested to see your numbers with the Rise board and a PMMX, though.

I benchmarked my K8 machine, and while it probably would be a credible W98 machine and perhaps (with some work) for some DOS performance regimes, it's by no means an all-in-one time machine. Like with the P2 and up, the performance gap from disabling cache is too wide to close with multiplier manipulation, and it's a bit coarse on the low end for fine tuned speed adjustment.
Let's benchmark our systems with caches disabled

I can look into PMMX benches next time I'm running through testing the board. IIRC, the slowest PMMX on this board was around Speedsys 1.0 - 1.5 compared to Speedsys 0.45 for the K6-III+. Whilst the slowest Speedsys for a K6-III+ I've benched is 0.1 on another board. For reference, Speedsys 0.5 is around 4.77 MHz Intel 8080 territory on an IBM XT.

The PMMX is still very flexible - it just lacks the lower and higher end scores. It can also produce a smooth profile due to extra parameters available via Setmul.

BTW, those K8 scores behave similarly to Pentium 4 with cache disabled, possibly faster in the DX4 region.

@ kaputnik: You can check this thread out for S1366 - "Madness", One retro PC to rule them all :)
I recall agent_x007 building around that socket.

I'm working on such a system, that nobody here has done.

915 Mobile Chipset with a Pentium M Single Core
Aureal Vortex MX 300 for 98se + Audigy 2 ZS for XP
Quadro FX1300 This is a NV38 AGP FX gpu on a PC Express Bridge. This should give me max compatibility with DX 5 to DX 9 So i still get support for things like table fog.

SInce Pentium Ms are unlocked I should be able to use plenty of slow down tricks sinces its a mobile chip Is my plan. and I should be fast enough to run XP smoothly even browse the WEB with it.

I have another trick up my sleeve with it, I have a brodcom crstal HD that I am going to put in it so it can even do HD Video watching. So basically max coverage single system. DOS to 2005 XP.

Because 915 chipset is probably 99% suported in 98se and 100% supported in XP It should be good

All of this is theory ofcourse thing is sitting on my bench right nnow.

Warlord wrote:

I'm working on such a system, that nobody here has done. […]
Show full quote

I'm working on such a system, that nobody here has done.

915 Mobile Chipset with a Pentium M Single Core
Aureal Vortex MX 300 for 98se + Audigy 2 ZS for XP
Quadro FX1300 This is a NV38 AGP FX gpu on a PC Express Bridge. This should give me max compatibility with DX 5 to DX 9 So i still get support for things like table fog.

SInce Pentium Ms are unlocked I should be able to use plenty of slow down tricks sinces its a mobile chip Is my plan. and I should be fast enough to run XP smoothly even browse the WEB with it.

I have another trick up my sleeve with it, I have a brodcom crstal HD that I am going to put in it so it can even do HD Video watching. So basically max coverage single system. DOS to 2005 XP.

Because 915 chipset is probably 99% suported in 98se and 100% supported in XP It should be good

All of this is theory ofcourse thing is sitting on my bench right nnow.

Definitely want to see how it goes. Crazy builds are definitely my passion right now.