VOGONS


First post, by Lylat1an

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My current retro rig motherboard doesn't have an AGP slot, just an onboard SiS 530/5595 chipset.

I chose to use an Nvidia GeForce 6200 PCI card, as it was the most recent PCI card to support 98SE on their driver page.

But now that I want a newer motherboard for faster storage, I'm wondering whether I should seek one with an AGP slot?

Reply 1 of 25, by clueless1

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Might as well if you're getting a new mobo anyway. Are you mainly gaming? If so, which era of games. Too fast a system will make older DOS games harder to run well. If that's not a concern, then go for it!

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 2 of 25, by Lylat1an

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clueless1 wrote on 2022-01-02, 19:01:

Might as well if you're getting a new mobo anyway. Are you mainly gaming? If so, which era of games. Too fast a system will make older DOS games harder to run well. If that's not a concern, then go for it!

Yes, the system is for DOS and Windows 9x games. (On separate drives)

I'm looking at socket 478 or socket A boards, as they seem to be the latest with ISA slots for my sound card and mouse controller. (Possibly needing a 3rd ISA slot for a Voltage Blaster)

Would my current PCI card struggle on any 3D games?

Reply 3 of 25, by clueless1

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I'm not super familiar with the 6200, but I think it should be fine for the most part. It may have some compatibility issues with older Win9x titles, not sure. Maybe someone else can chime in.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 5 of 25, by Joakim

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Not sure what your intention is but for late 98 and xp, you can get a Pentium 4 or whatever almost for free if you have room for more PCs.

I don't know your specs but it is possible that the drivers required for that card are not optimal for older systems.

Reply 6 of 25, by RandomStranger

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Lylat1an wrote on 2022-01-02, 19:19:

I'm looking at socket 478 or socket A boards, as they seem to be the latest with ISA slots for my sound card and mouse controller. (Possibly needing a 3rd ISA slot for a Voltage Blaster)

Getting socket 478 with ISA will be difficult enough Socket A with ISA are more common. Getting either s478 or socket A with 3 ISA slots is I think impossible, unless you find some industrial boards. But if you go industrial, then there are much newer boards with ISA slot. But then no AGP or W98 support.

Most likely you'll have to make do with Socket A + 1 ISA slot.

sreq.png retrogamer-s.png

Reply 8 of 25, by Lylat1an

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I found a Socket 478 board with AGP 1.5v, four PCI v2.2, and 3 ISA slots.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/264115189029

That should allow me to run my Sound Blaster 16, mouse controller, and a Voltage Blaster with a better video card.

I haven't thought much about which Windows games I want to play: I'm currently using the system to re-live my childhood memories in DOS.

Reply 11 of 25, by pixelatedscraps

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Meatball wrote on 2022-01-02, 20:26:

And this is how it begins... first you'll have a system which probably meets your needs... but then you start to read further about palleted textures, midi, table fog, 3dfx, PowerVR, idiosyncrasies of various video/fsb/cpu/chipset configurations set together, games which run too fast, games which look too good, games which don't look good enough. Soon you'll have 35 video cards, 25 motherboards, 6 Dreamblasters, $400 ISA sound cards, 25 cases, and nothing installed in any of them! haha...

This in a nutshell 😜

My ultimate dual 440LX / Voodoo2 SLI build

Reply 12 of 25, by darry

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pixelatedscraps wrote on 2022-01-03, 00:12:
Meatball wrote on 2022-01-02, 20:26:

And this is how it begins... first you'll have a system which probably meets your needs... but then you start to read further about palleted textures, midi, table fog, 3dfx, PowerVR, idiosyncrasies of various video/fsb/cpu/chipset configurations set together, games which run too fast, games which look too good, games which don't look good enough. Soon you'll have 35 video cards, 25 motherboards, 6 Dreamblasters, $400 ISA sound cards, 25 cases, and nothing installed in any of them! haha...

This in a nutshell 😜

And that's just the beginning... It will never end until you run out of either

a) disposable income
b) space
c) spousal patience
d) breath (permanently)
e) 2 or more of the above 😉

Reply 13 of 25, by Lylat1an

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Meatball wrote on 2022-01-03, 00:12:

Be sure to review this spreadsheet (gona?) put together for the best DOS video experience. the 6200 wasn't checked directly, but the 6800 GS was. You might be just fine with the card you already have for DOS and Windows as it's from the same family NV4x. But is yours turbocache? LE? Anyway, plenty of cards are listed if you're looking to go the AGP route.

https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/#AT3D

It seems only the PCIe versions of my card had turbocache.

Thanks for the link. Looks like my current Nvidia card has a shot at being good, and if not I have options. 😀

Reply 14 of 25, by Lylat1an

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darry wrote on 2022-01-03, 01:20:
And that's just the beginning... It will never end until you run out of either […]
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pixelatedscraps wrote on 2022-01-03, 00:12:
Meatball wrote on 2022-01-02, 20:26:

And this is how it begins... first you'll have a system which probably meets your needs... but then you start to read further about palleted textures, midi, table fog, 3dfx, PowerVR, idiosyncrasies of various video/fsb/cpu/chipset configurations set together, games which run too fast, games which look too good, games which don't look good enough. Soon you'll have 35 video cards, 25 motherboards, 6 Dreamblasters, $400 ISA sound cards, 25 cases, and nothing installed in any of them! haha...

This in a nutshell 😜

And that's just the beginning... It will never end until you run out of either

a) disposable income
b) space
c) spousal patience
d) breath (permanently)
e) 2 or more of the above 😉

Sounds like most hobbies. 😜

Reply 15 of 25, by RandomStranger

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Lylat1an wrote on 2022-01-02, 23:03:
I found a Socket 478 board with AGP 1.5v, four PCI v2.2, and 3 ISA slots. […]
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I found a Socket 478 board with AGP 1.5v, four PCI v2.2, and 3 ISA slots.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/264115189029

That should allow me to run my Sound Blaster 16, mouse controller, and a Voltage Blaster with a better video card.

I haven't thought much about which Windows games I want to play: I'm currently using the system to re-live my childhood memories in DOS.

Yes, that's an industrial board. That's why I wrote, if you go industrial, you can get much newer boards with ISA slot.

You could even get an IBASE MB865-R. It's built with the Intel 865G + ICH5 chipsets so Windows 98 is theoretically not a problem, has AGP and 2 ISA slots, but it's LGA775, so if it has BIOS with Core2 support, you can triple-boot DOS and Windows 98 with XP.

Thing is, with industrial boards, I don't know what you get for gaming/home use and for myself, I wouldn't pay $120 to find it out.

sreq.png retrogamer-s.png

Reply 16 of 25, by darry

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RandomStranger wrote on 2022-01-03, 06:14:
Yes, that's an industrial board. That's why I wrote, if you go industrial, you can get much newer boards with ISA slot. […]
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Lylat1an wrote on 2022-01-02, 23:03:
I found a Socket 478 board with AGP 1.5v, four PCI v2.2, and 3 ISA slots. […]
Show full quote

I found a Socket 478 board with AGP 1.5v, four PCI v2.2, and 3 ISA slots.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/264115189029

That should allow me to run my Sound Blaster 16, mouse controller, and a Voltage Blaster with a better video card.

I haven't thought much about which Windows games I want to play: I'm currently using the system to re-live my childhood memories in DOS.

Yes, that's an industrial board. That's why I wrote, if you go industrial, you can get much newer boards with ISA slot.

You could even get an IBASE MB865-R. It's built with the Intel 865G + ICH5 chipsets so Windows 98 is theoretically not a problem, has AGP and 2 ISA slots, but it's LGA775, so if it has BIOS with Core2 support, you can triple-boot DOS and Windows 98 with XP.

Thing is, with industrial boards, I don't know what you get for gaming/home use and for myself, I wouldn't pay $120 to find it out.

Not all such boards actually properly support ISA DMA, which is essential for ISA sound cards that have wave (PCM) output .

Reply 17 of 25, by RandomStranger

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darry wrote on 2022-01-03, 06:18:

Not all such boards actually properly support ISA DMA, which is essential for ISA sound cards that have wave (PCM) output .

And that's why I wrote:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-01-03, 06:14:

Thing is, with industrial boards, I don't know what you get for gaming/home use and for myself, I wouldn't pay $120 to find it out.

sreq.png retrogamer-s.png

Reply 18 of 25, by MN_Moody

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You're also in prime capacitor plague territory ... I've had very mixed luck sourcing industrial PC components from Aliexpress / eBay sellers, the last go-round took a few months and 3 exchanges to get a working board.

For the money, time, and risk required to buy a bare mainboard you can buy an entire "premium" late Windows 98 Pentium 4 based computer (this one has RDRAM for a particularly interesting bit of period correct nostalgia): https://www.ebay.com/itm/304268855967

I understand the appeal of a single computer doing it all, but the SB16 was not an objectively great sound card outside of it's period correct golden age (and many would argue, not even then). The effort and cost to drag it forward into a more modern Windows 98 compatible machine while missing out on the 3D positional effects and other features of more modern PCI sound cards that may have slightly poorer DOS support but vastly superior Windows features seems impractical, from an objective standpoint.

By the time you source a CPU and cooler to go with that mainboard you'll be at close to $200, plus you still need to find an AGP graphics card. You also don't know if that Diebold ATM motherboard supports the sorts of features you're going to want as an enthusiast, the BIOS may be heavily stripped down or limited unlike a consumer/commercial mainboard.

If you want faster storage what about a simple PATA-SATA adapter and a small SSD hard drive in your current machine?

Reply 19 of 25, by Lylat1an

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MN_Moody wrote on 2022-01-03, 14:48:
You're also in prime capacitor plague territory ... I've had very mixed luck sourcing industrial PC components from Aliexpress / […]
Show full quote

You're also in prime capacitor plague territory ... I've had very mixed luck sourcing industrial PC components from Aliexpress / eBay sellers, the last go-round took a few months and 3 exchanges to get a working board.

For the money, time, and risk required to buy a bare mainboard you can buy an entire "premium" late Windows 98 Pentium 4 based computer (this one has RDRAM for a particularly interesting bit of period correct nostalgia): https://www.ebay.com/itm/304268855967

I understand the appeal of a single computer doing it all, but the SB16 was not an objectively great sound card outside of it's period correct golden age (and many would argue, not even then). The effort and cost to drag it forward into a more modern Windows 98 compatible machine while missing out on the 3D positional effects and other features of more modern PCI sound cards that may have slightly poorer DOS support but vastly superior Windows features seems impractical, from an objective standpoint.

By the time you source a CPU and cooler to go with that mainboard you'll be at close to $200, plus you still need to find an AGP graphics card. You also don't know if that Diebold ATM motherboard supports the sorts of features you're going to want as an enthusiast, the BIOS may be heavily stripped down or limited unlike a consumer/commercial mainboard.

If you want faster storage what about a simple PATA-SATA adapter and a small SSD hard drive in your current machine?

It would be 'easier' to have two old PCs, but I'd prefer to have just one due to space constraints.

My current motherboard only supports PCI 2.1 and 66Mhz IDE speeds. That industrial board has PCI 2.2, which may be enough to use a faster native SATA card which my current board won't recognize.

I could do some digging into the chipset specs to see if the ISA slots will work with an audio card, but I don't exactly know what I should look for...