Considering I'm not using FTP, I don't have any issue in using RTL8139C.
Again, the atrocious download speeds over any site is what makes me avoid using it in my K6-II+.
For example, downloading the same SB Live 5.1 driver, the 3com took me way past an entire hour to download, while the RTL8139C took barely over 20 minutes at best with the same LAN connection.
This wasn't just across Windows 98SE, but WinME too, as well as XP SP2.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-06-06, 20:56:

Considering I'm not using FTP, I don't have any issue in using RTL8139C. Again, the atrocious download speeds over any site is […]
Show full quote

Considering I'm not using FTP, I don't have any issue in using RTL8139C.
Again, the atrocious download speeds over any site is what makes me avoid using it in my K6-II+.
For example, downloading the same SB Live 5.1 driver, the 3com took me way past an entire hour to download, while the RTL8139C took barely over 20 minutes at best with the same LAN connection.
This wasn't just across Windows 98SE, but WinME too, as well as XP SP2.

The Internet on slow retro computers with old browsers without https is not the Internet, even if you use a WebOne proxy. With FTP, your drivers will load in minutes.

ynopot wrote on 2022-06-06, 21:26:

PcBytes wrote on 2022-06-06, 20:56:

Considering I'm not using FTP, I don't have any issue in using RTL8139C. Again, the atrocious download speeds over any site is […]
Show full quote

Considering I'm not using FTP, I don't have any issue in using RTL8139C.
Again, the atrocious download speeds over any site is what makes me avoid using it in my K6-II+.
For example, downloading the same SB Live 5.1 driver, the 3com took me way past an entire hour to download, while the RTL8139C took barely over 20 minutes at best with the same LAN connection.
This wasn't just across Windows 98SE, but WinME too, as well as XP SP2.

The Internet on slow retro computers with old browsers without https is not the Internet, even if you use a WebOne proxy. With FTP, your drivers will load in minutes.

I use internet on my retro machines just as if I was using my main machine - no proxy or any fancy stuff.

Just plain FF2.0 or 3.6, depending on what OS I run, and that's about it. No idea what the WebOne proxy is.

As for loading drivers on my machines - I use a USB flash drive + Live XP from HBCD (Hirens) and copy them over in separate folders created on the HDD. Hence my need for the USB2.0 card.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-06-06, 21:36:

I use internet on my retro machines just as if I was using my main machine - no proxy or any fancy stuff.
Just plain FF2.0 or 3.6, depending on what OS I run, and that's about it. No idea what the WebOne proxy is.
As for loading drivers on my machines - I use a USB flash drive + Live XP from HBCD (Hirens) and copy them over in separate folders created on the HDD. Hence my need for the USB2.0 card.

WebOne proxy is - "HTTP 1.x proxy that makes old web browsers usable again in the Web 2.0 world."
https://github.com/atauenis/webone

You don't need any USB sticks, USB 2.0 controllers, old browsers and other CDs if you use FTP ))

Thanks, but I guess I'll stick to the traditional HBCD + USB copy way, instead of replacing my Realtek with a 3com just for FTP.

It's a much more sureproof way to copy my discs, drivers and whatnot that way, even if it isn't as fast as FTP.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-06-07, 06:34:

Thanks, but I guess I'll stick to the traditional HBCD + USB copy way, instead of replacing my Realtek with a 3com just for FTP.
It's a much more sureproof way to copy my discs, drivers and whatnot that way, even if it isn't as fast as FTP.

You may not change anything in the computer configuration if it works fine. But using FTP, you can transfer a large amount of data at high speed without leaving your chair. It's simple. Why make life difficult for yourself? Think about it ))

ynopot wrote on 2022-06-07, 14:03:

Using FTP, you can transfer a large amount of data at high speed without leaving your chair. It's simple. Why make life difficult for yourself? Think about it ))

Because I'd rather have a means of copying even when offline? FTP requires a network connection. Let's say I'd want to carry this PC with me to another town where I don't have access to a LAN connection (the router is installed on the ceiling), only WiFi.

What would I do then? Simple - download whatever game/driver/application I would need on a laptop, copy it over to USB, and depending whether I have Windows installed or not, I would have 2 options - first would be setting up the HDD, then make separate folders for copying Win9x files over, and a few more separate folders for drivers and software, and the second is basically just sticking the USB pendrive in any of the 5 USB ports the 2.0 card offers, copy my stuff over to the HDD, then simply unplug it.

Hence why I don't need FTP.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-06-07, 14:35:

Because I'd rather have a means of copying even when offline? FTP requires a network connection. Let's say I'd want to carry this PC with me to another town where I don't have access to a LAN connection (the router is installed on the ceiling), only WiFi.
What would I do then? Simple - download whatever game/driver/application I would need on a laptop, copy it over to USB, and depending whether I have Windows installed or not, I would have 2 options - first would be setting up the HDD, then make separate folders for copying Win9x files over, and a few more separate folders for drivers and software, and the second is basically just sticking the USB pendrive in any of the 5 USB ports the 2.0 card offers, copy my stuff over to the HDD, then simply unplug it.
Hence why I don't need FTP.

Autonomy is a fallback in case of a nuclear war ))
At home, you need to take care of convenience and speed, and not run around the apartment with flash drives and spend money on USB 2.0 controllers ))

ynopot wrote on 2022-06-07, 16:28:

PcBytes wrote on 2022-06-07, 14:35:

Because I'd rather have a means of copying even when offline? FTP requires a network connection. Let's say I'd want to carry this PC with me to another town where I don't have access to a LAN connection (the router is installed on the ceiling), only WiFi.
What would I do then? Simple - download whatever game/driver/application I would need on a laptop, copy it over to USB, and depending whether I have Windows installed or not, I would have 2 options - first would be setting up the HDD, then make separate folders for copying Win9x files over, and a few more separate folders for drivers and software, and the second is basically just sticking the USB pendrive in any of the 5 USB ports the 2.0 card offers, copy my stuff over to the HDD, then simply unplug it.
Hence why I don't need FTP.

Autonomy is a fallback in case of a nuclear war ))
At home, you need to take care of convenience and speed, and not run around the apartment with flash drives and spend money on USB 2.0 controllers ))

My retro machines and USBs and all that, all are organized in one place. Wherever I need to copy stuff, my USB flash drives are readily available.

I would rather have USB2.0 over FTP. I prefer to have solutions that can work offline regardless of situation.

Anyone got some suggestions for this machine? I'd like to hear from you on what else can I modify to it.

What will remain unchanged are:

-PSU (I've put enough work in it so I'm pretty confident on what upgrades I've done to the 200W unit I have)
-USB 2.0 card (I prefer this as I have a lot of flash drives, ranging from a 512MB chinesium stick all the way to a 64GB Kingston Exodia, and they make it easier for me to transfer files in critical cases)
-RTL8139C NIC (about the only card that has decent download speed on big (as in 100MB and up) files)
-Voodoo 3 GPU (pretty much since it's one of this build's main points. Gotta get a fan on it though.)

PcBytes wrote on 2022-06-19, 20:51:

Anyone got some suggestions for this machine? I'd like to hear from you on what else can I modify to it. […]
Show full quote

Anyone got some suggestions for this machine? I'd like to hear from you on what else can I modify to it.

What will remain unchanged are:

-PSU (I've put enough work in it so I'm pretty confident on what upgrades I've done to the 200W unit I have)
-USB 2.0 card (I prefer this as I have a lot of flash drives, ranging from a 512MB chinesium stick all the way to a 64GB Kingston Exodia, and they make it easier for me to transfer files in critical cases)
-RTL8139C NIC (about the only card that has decent download speed on big (as in 100MB and up) files)
-Voodoo 3 GPU (pretty much since it's one of this build's main points. Gotta get a fan on it though.)

Pick the correct version of the 4-in-1 drivers (4.33 + Viagart from 4.16).
Increase memory bandwidth with wpcredit/wpcrset.
Remove USB 2.0 controller.
Replace the software network card with a hardware one.
Post screenshots with benchmarks
Consult on even greater increase in system performance
Modify the processor in K6-3+

Otherwise, you don’t want to bring the system to maximum performance and there’s nothing to talk about with you))

Okay, a few points I'd like to make out:

- for 4 in 1, I remember using 4.43 if that helps. I've used 4.43 with success on most chipsets (ranging from VIA MVP3 up to VIA 693A. I'm not sure if I used it on 694x as well but it might be a possibility). Not sure what you mean by using the GART driver from 4.16 as the one from 4.43 seems to run just as fine most of the times I've dealt with MVP3 based boards.
- I've already decided on keeping the USB 2.0 and RTL8139C NIC as I've stated above. I'm not using networking for transfers and will keep USB as a means of file transfer, period.
- modifying the CPU into a K6-3+ is also something I will certainly not do - contrary to what other romanian users might say, finding K6-2+ chips here is painfully hard, and I'm not risking my only available chip, as tempting as the resistor modification might be.
- I have no desire to push it to its limits. I suppose I can do some benchmarks in its actual state starting next month (as for now I am away from home with final exams for the 2nd year of uni), but I have no desire in overclocking (and for the record, I very clearly remember my board could absolutely not overclock anything - I'm not even kidding in this case, anything else than the rated speed for any CPU was a crashfest with this Luckytech mainboard), but rather keeping most of the hardware stock while at the same time expanding its performance, as much as stock speeds will let me. In this regard, I see it as a "to each his own liking" preference.
- RAM size will definitely be lowered to 128MB, since I guess I can rely on a faster hard drive to compensate for the slightly small amount of RAM (128MB is the max cacheable area for the 512KB of cache it has onboard.)

I'm sorry if you expected me to be pushing a K6 plus chip to the max but contrary to most people here, I'm not comfortable doing that. I have built this machine strictly for enjoying some old Glide games that I have from old magazines, as well as some Glide-enabled games. As I've probably stated before - this machine was not made for benchmarking, but for plain enjoyment of some old games of Voodoo3's period, and as such, I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible. That's why I don't see FTP a necessity (especially with most of my USB flash drives being fast save for two chinesium slowpokes.) and would rather prefer USB.

I am mostly into racing games (like Tank Racer, TOCA, NFS2, NFS Porsche 2000, Rollcage) and as such, am not interested in the Quake series. Other titles include the two Oddworld games released in 1997 and 1998 respectively, Mario Forever (which runs on absolutely everything), and about a good chunk of the games found on the Caiman game website.

The 4in1 driver version 4.43 copies Viagart.vxd version 3.30 to C:\Windows\System for the MVP3 chipset. Driver 4in1 version 4.16(4.17...) has file version Viagart.vxd - 3.56. It is verified that 3.56 is faster.

I didn't say anything about overclocking. I was talking about increasing memory bandwidth. With wpcredit/wpcrset utilities you can improve timings and enable interleaving of memory banks

Motherboards based on the MVP3 chipset can cache a limited amount of RAM. If the motherboard has 512 kilobytes of cache memory, then it can only cache 128 megabytes. Installing more memory on this system reduces system performance.

You have already been warned that your USB 2.0 controller may have a negative impact on performance. This is a problem with these motherboard chipsets.

You've built a good system, but you haven't optimized it. Enthusiasts don't work like that. This is not professionalism))
Your NFS Porsche 2000 can run faster on this system.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-06-20, 19:38:

- I've already decided on keeping the USB 2.0 and RTL8139C NIC as I've stated above. I'm not using networking for transfers and will keep USB as a means of file transfer, period.

Well, it's simple.
My definition of optimization differs from yours.

The end.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-06-20, 21:29:

Well, it's simple.
My definition of optimization differs from yours.

The end.

Your optimization definitions are good for i440, 815. MVP3 requires more because it was originally designed as a pumpkin ))

ynopot wrote on 2022-06-20, 21:41:

PcBytes wrote on 2022-06-20, 21:29:

Well, it's simple.
My definition of optimization differs from yours.

The end.

Your optimization definitions are good for i440, 815. MVP3 requires more because it was originally designed as a pumpkin ))

Then how am I running MVP3 just as well as i440 and 815? Simple.

I don't specifically care of hardware optimizations (hence why I am running the USB and RTL8139C cards just fine. I don't use 98 to transfer the files from USB, but instead use live Windows XP from F4UBCD, and alternatively HBCD in some cases) because most of the optimizations I'm looking at, are software.

NUSB, KernelEX, most of RLOEW's patches, as well as most of the stuff found at MDGx. NUSB for further USB support of the USB2.0 card under 98SE, KernelEX for most apps, and generally RLOEW patches which I found to highly enhance Windows' speed in most of my cases.

As a result, NFS 5 runs just as fine as it does on a i440BX based Gateway GP6-400 w/ Matrox G200. The only card I've legitimately seen choke on the game is anything that runs on ATI's Rage Pro Turbo chipset. I've had both an standard Rage Pro Turbo and an AIW variant, both choke on NFS5's graphics, and that's almost globablly - not just the MVP3, but 440BX/LX as well.

I wrote about what you can try. I could help more, but you're not interested. You are interested in collecting the maximum of boring systems in the minimum time and posting them here on the forum.

You have built a system. Installed the system and standard drivers and did nothing else. This is normal for 440/815, but not for MVP3.

Windows XP is not retro. Anything above socket 370 is not retro. Anything faster than 1500 MHz is not retro. And the Intel Core i9-12900K is also not retro ))

I never use USB on retro computers. I'm transferring files via FTP in seconds from Windows 10 to Windows 98. Keep doing your weird stuff if that's what you're interested in.

As you've said, I'm not interested in your optimizations. I have my own, and they have worked well over the years. And over the span of 4 different MVP3 mainboards (Acorp 5VIA77, LuckyStar 5MVP3 and 2x Luckystar P5MVP3 mainboards).

As long as it gets the task done, a disc containing XP is helpful for transferring from USB to the hard drive. Nowhere did I say I installed XP separately on the hard drive. Just booted into a live disc which creates a ramdrive, that is then cleared when rebooting. At best I also use it for partitioning within Windows, through the bundled apps by F4UBCD. (HBCD tends to not detect HDDs and storage drives until I tell it to install all PnP and non-PnP hardware)

I am not going to destroy a hard to find CPU (and you don't want to know how hard it was for me to find it in my country, because for me eBay and the likes are not an option - OLX classifieds are the only way for me to buy old retro parts, as FB Marketplace isn't helpful either when trying to search for retro parts) trying to delid or change faster hardware to slower cards just because you think those are "optimization" when they are absolutely not.

If I would have really wanted to set up FTP transfer (which I only need for consoles, not PCs, with the existence of USB and small capacity flash drives), I'd at least look into Intel cards, which I've had rather good experiences with, in most cases. (unfortunately just not with the Compaq NC3121 which for whatever reason stalls to a halt when trying to both download and visit a website at the same time - possibly due to age very likely.).
These Intel cards are also supported out of the box 99% of the time and have been proven to work better than 3com cards, close in performance to the RTL8139C, but with the same properties as 3com cards (hardware-based cards)

A slow 3com LAN card (I have legit recorded speeds no higher than maybe 600kbps at best on the 3com, compared to near 2Mbps on the RTL8139C for instance) that chokes to a halt when trying to download as much as a 20-30MB driver is nowhere near a optimization. It's actually a drawback, and a huge one at that.

For the record - XP is by now retro, and by a rather good lot (RTM release date is 24th August 2001 - a whole 21 years by now) even if people still keep using it. Vista, 7 and newer are not.
I would agree a i9 is nowhere near retro, but not that anything ranging up to Socket 370 as well is not retro - what is absolutely not retro would start with 775, even if there are boards that have 775 + AGP + DDR400.

Socket 370 came in almost mid 1998 (April 98), so it's still retro. Anything made before 775 is still considered retro.

With this, I'm resting my case.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-06-20, 23:11:

As you've said, I'm not interested in your optimizations. I have my own, and they have worked well over the years. And over the span of 4 different MVP3 mainboards (Acorp 5VIA77, LuckyStar 5MVP3 and 2x Luckystar P5MVP3 mainboards).

I will think that you built a non-working computer until I see screenshots of benchmarks.

Does your optimization lower the memory timings?
Does your optimization include memory bank interleaving?
Does your optimization install faster driver versions?

Think what you want, I don't owe you any results.

My optimizations in Windows rely on stock BIOS settings, aside from switching Auto IDE detection to pre-detected settings (as in already set up through IDE HDD Detection in BIOS) and disabled floppy drive + report no FDD for Win 95 to avoid long lockups because of a ghost floppy drive whenever I have to install a driver (specifically, whenever the Have Disk window pops up.)

Nothing else fiddled with. You want to screw up your RAM settings in the BIOS, be my guest, nobody stops you from watching a crashfest because you thought faster and tighter RAM timings will get you faster operation on cheap SDRAM that's been slowly degrading after 20+ years. And not just cheap SDRAM, but also on qualtiy SDRAM sticks as well (Micron and Samsung).

As for driver revisions, whatever works the most stable - VIA 4in1 4.43, Amigamerlin Voodoo drivers, standard RTL8139 drivers (for now, as I might give Intel a try, providing I avoid that NC3121 card which I am sure is pretty much done for), Maximus Decim's NUSB 3.6 for everything USB (and this includes both VIA's integrated chipset drivers as well as the USB2.0 card), and whatever Windows provides for the rest (which would be the OPL3-SAx soundcard).