I bought the same monitor (997MB) two months ago. I prefer it because he has "retro" look for today style standarts. Actually first i prefer 17" 797BM model - i think 19" is too big for old games, but only 997mb has that useful "2nd input sugnal" function.

Try to get Tyan TsunamiAT motherboard. I have it. This awesome mobo (based as P2B on 440bx - legendary and best of times chipset) has 4(!) isa slots. A must have for good sense setup oriented for both pc games era - early '90 (legendary ega quests with beutiful midi tunes) and latest '90 (big complex rts/fps games with hires graphics). This mobo even can handle tualatin (with some non-trivial bios hacks).

My vision of "hardware overdosen" old-new retro rig setup that oriented for very old games and some new game as possible is:
Tyan TsunamiAT:
Tualatin Celeron 1.4@1570 (14x112 in example)
(this cpu with this mobo require some smart slot1 adapter (like ip3/t or slot/z) and bios hack for cpu caches recognizing)
512mb or 1gb ram (with some tweaks for w98)
Geforce4 TI4800 (i prefer Nvidia because this company give best stereo3d expirience except ATI and others)
Quantum3d Obsidian X-24 (2x Voodoo2 12mb on single PCI card)
TB Montego, TB Santa Cruz, or Vortex2 based card with daughterboard 26pin interface.
DB50XG daughterboard connected to this soundcard.
Any smart PCI NIC with small CPU utilization (like 3COM 3Cx series)
AWE-32 CT3900 or CT3980 and ofcourse SCB-55 on it 😀
GUS MAX or GUS PnP (Pro)

and we has two ISA and one PCI slot unused and can use it as we want:
ISA: USRobotics Currier V.everything
ISA: Roland LAPC
ISA: Roland SCC-1
ISA: IBM Music Feature
ISA: 3DO Blaster
ISA: VFX-1 controller
and many others legendary and cool old cards.
PCI: SATA controller
PCI: USB2.0 controller
PCI: TVtuner (or get videocard with tvtuner)
PCI: HardSID Soundcard (for playing Commodore64 SID chip tunes on real SID hardware)
I think this mobo (Tyan TsunamiAT) has bigger than others potential for building of retro-oriented rig. But 2 minor downwards it has:
1. 133mhz FSB not available
2. Tualatin installation is pain in ass.

I have an Abit BF6 (440BX P2B competitor). In fact, I've had it since 1999 or so. 😀

Abit BF6
512 MB PC133 CL2 Crucial
Celeron-T 1200 @ 1400
Whatever hardware I feel like running 🤣

Actually right now I've got running:
FIC VA-503+ MVP3 chipset
AMD K6-III+ @ 617 MHz on 112 FSB
256MB PC133 CAS 2 Crucial @ 112 MHz
Voodoo5 5500
Sound Blaster Live!
Linksys PCI Ethernet
SiiG UltraATA 133 card (wayy faster than VIA onboard)

Also have built:
MSI MS-4144 PCI/ISA SiS496/497
AMD 5x86-P75 133 @ 160 MHz 40x4
32MB FP DRAM @ 40 MHz
Diamond Stealth II S220 Verite V2100 PCI 4 MB
PCI IDE controller
Philips Seismic Edge PCI sound card (Tbird128)
Ensoniq Soundscape ISA sound card
3Com ISA Etherlink 3

😀 I spent a week not long ago building these things. Fun stuff.

@ c.imp : Many thanks for the motherboard suggestion 😀 I may try to look for that Tyan Tsunami AT board.

One problem I'm facing is free IRQ addresses. I only have IRQ10 free at the moment. Don't know if the Gravis Ultrasound Max would work with that. Alternatively I could try to change the Wireless LAN card from IRQ7 to IRQ10 and then put the MAX on IRQ7. Hmm. Have to do a bit of research on that.

(Anyone know if it's even possible to get hold of a silver 5.25-inch floppy drive 😎 )

Many games look for GUS only on IRQ7. It is strictly recommended use GUS on IRQ7. Second variant is use IRQ11 but IRQ7 is much better and bugless.

Get a 5.25" and paint it. Works nice. Just gotta get the faceplate and lever off.

Guess that Tsunami AT motherboard doesn't fit in my case. It requires eight expansion slots. My case (and most other ATX cases) only have seven. After a lot of searching I finally found a motherboard that would be perfect for me. The IPOX EP-3BXA2. (4xISA/3xPCI/1xAGP configuration ,440BX , ATX)
http://www.lead-online.com/catalog/popup.php? … 9d057b6c31e92c9

What do you think of this motherboard? It's an industrial model. Don't know exactly what that means (more stable?), Maybe I'll try it out. It's the only ATX motherboard I have found with 1xAGP and 4xISA slots.

Oh, and I swapped the LAPC-I for the Gravis Ultrasound MAX yesterday to see if I could get it to work peacefully with the AWE64 Gold. Took quite a few hours to configure it correctly and make the drivers "behave". The GUS is set at I/O port 240, IRQ 7, DMA 7. Only configured the playback IRQ and DMA, as I won't use the card to record sound.

In DOS it works just fine (4.11 drivers). In Win98SE I had to use the original GUS Win95 1.1 drivers. The newest 1.2beta drivers would crash the system upon entering the windows desktop. The GUS MAX is one of the toughest cards I have ever installed.

Congratulations! Very nice old-school rig 😉

Spaz wrote:

After a lot of searching I finally found a motherboard that would be perfect for me. The IPOX EP-3BXA2. (4xISA/3xPCI/1xAGP configuration ,440BX , ATX)
http://www.lead-online.com/catalog/popup.php? … 9d057b6c31e92c9
What do you think of this motherboard? It's an industrial model. Don't know exactly what that means (more stable?), Maybe I'll try it out. It's the only ATX motherboard I have found with 1xAGP and 4xISA slots.

Looks like a solid board (typical BX layout, there is nothing to go wrong with that chipset 😀). I'm only afraid it would be quite expensive if you buy it new. Industrial means that this board is meant to be used in a professional environment, so it's more likely to be built to last, and it doesn't come with consumer gimmicks like overclocking options and suchlike.

Spaz wrote:

Oh, and I swapped the LAPC-I for the Gravis Ultrasound MAX yesterday to see if I could get it to work peacefully with the AWE64 Gold. Took quite a few hours to configure it correctly and make the drivers "behave". The GUS is set at I/O port 240, IRQ 7, DMA 7. Only configured the playback IRQ and DMA, as I won't use the card to record sound.
In DOS it works just fine (4.11 drivers). In Win98SE I had to use the original GUS Win95 1.1 drivers. The newest 1.2beta drivers would crash the system upon entering the windows desktop. The GUS MAX is one of the toughest cards I have ever installed.

Yeah, the GUS is a tough piece to set up (I only know two cards that are worse, the EWS64 and the GUS/Interwave "PnP"). Your configuration looks decent. Generally, resource management for the GUS works a lot better than for a SB card, because the IRQs and DMAs always were software configurable and games tend to look at the ULTRASND environment variable rather than rely on insecure hardware probing.

I would like to upgrade my GUS MAX memory from the stock 512K to 1MB, so that I can use the 'Pro Patches Lite' set. Anyone know which RAM chip I need? What's it called, where to find it?

What's written on the chips that are already there?

Unlike the normal GUS, which takes the ubiqitous standard 44256 DRAMs, the GUS MAX needs a single 256x16 40-pin SOJ, which may be rather hard to find 😒

I did a search on google and found a few interesting results. This, for example:
http://www.jdr.com/interact/item.asp?itemno=256X16-60SOJ

Does this looks like it could work? Don't know if the ns number is correct/what it should be.

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

What's written on the chips that are already there?

Took the card out and looked at the onboard 512K RAM chip. It says:

NEC JAPAN
42S4260-70
9429M5014

I have those chips (814260-70) soldered on Cirrus VLB cards here...

The DRAM on your link says FPM (Fast Page Mode) and not EDO, should work.

These chips exist on many old S3 videocards (Trio/Virge) and may easily pulled from socket (not soldered).

Those may be EDO though.

I really dont understand why a GUS should be so hard to set up.
You just have to set the Jumpers and the ULTRSND variable.
f.e. everything to 7 (7,7,7,7).
This works fine unless you want to record and playback at the same time.

I don't know what could be easier, with ISA PnP Cards I had to invest alot more time to get them running.

In my DOS Games PC a SB AWE 32 PnP, Crystal 4232 + Dream 9407 and a GUS Classic work together.

The problem with IRQ 11 is not GUS related but it's a bug in the Watcom DOS4GW extender. It seems that it doesn't map IRQ above 7 right (PM to RL Mode).

Spaz wrote:

(Anyone know if it's even possible to get hold of a silver 5.25-inch floppy drive :cool: )

I came across this reading up on scsi drive cooling.

http://www.7volts.com/paint_drives.htm

Should help you out quite well if you are new to that.

Nice upgrades! 😁

In the Windows 9x PC thread you also list a 12MB RAM upgrade for the AWE64. I'm just curious, is this an original Creative or a 3rd party addon for standard SIMMs?

Spaz wrote:

[...] so that I can use the 'Pro Patches Lite' set.

I was mildly disappointed with the performance of the Pro Patches Lite set (v1.61). The samples are of a higher quality, but some of the instruments are too loud or soft compared to the standard patches. Also, the guitars and strings seem to have wrong envelopes, they take much too long to "kick in", which sounds really ridiculous in faster tracks. The interface supplied with the patches is top notch, though. How do you like the Pro Patches Lite set?

5u3 wrote:

Nice upgrades! :happyhappy: […]
Show full quote

Nice upgrades! 😁

In the Windows 9x PC thread you also list a 12MB RAM upgrade for the AWE64. I'm just curious, is this an original Creative or a 3rd party addon for standard SIMMs?

Spaz wrote:

[...] so that I can use the 'Pro Patches Lite' set.

I was mildly disappointed with the performance of the Pro Patches Lite set (v1.61). The samples are of a higher quality, but some of the instruments are too loud or soft compared to the standard patches. Also, the guitars and strings seem to have wrong envelopes, they take much too long to "kick in", which sounds really ridiculous in faster tracks. The interface supplied with the patches is top notch, though. How do you like the Pro Patches Lite set?

It's an original Creative memory addon. I bought it from satech. Only place I found that still sells it:
http://www.satech.com/12memupforcr.html

The upgrade board is called CT1930 for the 4MB and 8MB configuration and CT1950 for the 12MB and 24MB versions. Nice to have if you want to try loading different sound fonts. This is what it looks like:

CT1930 8MB version: http://www.dogskin.net/computer/SoundCard/Cre … CT1930%2002.jpg
CT1930 installed: http://www.dogskin.net/computer/SoundCard/Cre … +%20CT%2001.jpg
CT1950 12MB version: http://www.dogskin.net/computer/SoundCard/Cre … CT1950%2001.jpg
CT1950 24MB version: http://www.dogskin.net/computer/SoundCard/Cre … CT1950%2004.jpg
CT1950 24MB installed: http://www.dogskin.net/computer/SoundCard/Cre … +%20CT%2002.jpg
CT1950 Back: http://www.dogskin.net/computer/SoundCard/Cre … CT1950%2005.jpg

From Creative to GUS. I haven't tried the Pro Patches Lite set yet. Thanks for your input though. Will keep that in mind when I do try them 😎