I had great success playing games with Windows 2000 after upgrading from Windows 98se. There may have been some DOS game compatibility issues, but I did not have the proper vintage hardware to take advantage of Windows 98 on that machine anyways (it was a Pentium 4), so there was no great loss in my case.

DOS sound emulation was also quite good, along with Roland GM support. The only flaw was the lack of Yamaha FM synthesis and problems with speed sensitive games. I'm not sure if the DOS NTVDM works with Adlib FM synthesis, if it is available on the ISA bus.

Today I tested the 2 mainboards I got at the second hand shop:

Gigabyte GA-5AX: works flawlessly, already came with the latest BIOS and memtest86 runs without errors
Asus PVI-486SP3: also works! But it needs FPM memory and I only have 2x4 MB...if someone has 2x32MB FPM sticks doing nothing, this is a message for you :p

Finish recapping this Aztech Pro16 II-3D card.

dominusprog wrote on 2024-01-08, 19:58:

Finish recapping this Aztech Pro16 II-3D card.

IMG_20240108_215312.jpg

The caps look really nice on the yellow card. 👍

I have tons of questions 😁

Have you noticed any difference?
Wich brand of caps did you use?

Your card is set to use the "EEPROM SETTING" but the eeprom (U9) is missing.
Normally you use the aztech programs to write the settings into the eeprom and then the card initialises itself on bootup without drivers.
But with the missing eeprom i am not sure if it can work this way.
Do you have to initialise the card on every boot up to make it work? The volume and io settings should be lost after power is off...
Some OEM cards from aztech dont have the eeprom, because the drivers of the systems they are used in initialise them on every boot... and it saves some cents in production.

In theory you should be abled to retrofit the U9 eeprom with a 93c66 or exchangable part.
Its even a double footprint. UX2 is the through hole DIL variant of U9 (SMD Part).

DerBaum wrote on 2024-01-08, 20:23:

The caps look really nice on the yellow card. :thumbup: […]
Show full quote

dominusprog wrote on 2024-01-08, 19:58:

Finish recapping this Aztech Pro16 II-3D card.

IMG_20240108_215312.jpg

The caps look really nice on the yellow card. 👍

I have tons of questions 😁

Have you noticed any difference?
Wich brand of caps did you use?

Your card is set to use the "EEPROM SETTING" but the eeprom (U9) is missing.
Normally you use the aztech programs to write the settings into the eeprom and then the card initialises itself on bootup without drivers.
But with the missing eeprom i am not sure if it can work this way.
Do you have to initialise the card on every boot up to make it work? The volume and io settings should be lost after power is off...
Some OEM cards from aztech dont have the eeprom, because the drivers of the systems they are used in initialise them on every boot... and it saves some cents in production.

In theory you should be abled to retrofit the U9 eeprom with a 93c66 or exchangable part.
Its even a double footprint. UX2 is the through hole DIL variant of U9 (SMD Part).

Thanks, I think so too. Yes, the clicking sound is fixed and the bass has improved. I used Nichicon, Elna and Suncon (two large 470uF caps on the right).
Well the card is working and the driver is loading an EEPROM.SYS via config.sys.

Edit: I changed the jumper to software and it worked. Anyway, thanks for the info.

dominusprog wrote on 2024-01-08, 20:59:

DerBaum wrote on 2024-01-08, 20:23:

The caps look really nice on the yellow card. :thumbup: […]
Show full quote

dominusprog wrote on 2024-01-08, 19:58:

Finish recapping this Aztech Pro16 II-3D card.

IMG_20240108_215312.jpg

The caps look really nice on the yellow card. 👍

I have tons of questions 😁

Have you noticed any difference?
Wich brand of caps did you use?

Your card is set to use the "EEPROM SETTING" but the eeprom (U9) is missing.
Normally you use the aztech programs to write the settings into the eeprom and then the card initialises itself on bootup without drivers.
But with the missing eeprom i am not sure if it can work this way.
Do you have to initialise the card on every boot up to make it work? The volume and io settings should be lost after power is off...
Some OEM cards from aztech dont have the eeprom, because the drivers of the systems they are used in initialise them on every boot... and it saves some cents in production.

In theory you should be abled to retrofit the U9 eeprom with a 93c66 or exchangable part.
Its even a double footprint. UX2 is the through hole DIL variant of U9 (SMD Part).

Thanks, I think so too. Yes, the clicking sound is fixed and the bass has improved. I used Nichicon, Elna and Suncon (two large 470uF caps on the right).
Well the card is working and the driver is loading an EEPROM.SYS via config.sys.

Ok cool. Thanks. Great to hear confirmed it really made a differece. I think i should consider recapping some of my cards too.

Aha! That is the trick... you have to load eeprom.sys because the eeprom is missing. thats interesting.
I think i have a card without eeprom too... and i have some spare eeproms... i think its worth a try, to make these cards a tiny bit more comfortable to use.

DerBaum wrote on 2024-01-08, 20:23:

The caps look really nice on the yellow card. 👍

My first sound card was similar aztech. 2 layer pcb, could hear every IRQ in the system.

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-01-08, 13:04:

I had great success playing games with Windows 2000 after upgrading from Windows 98se. There may have been some DOS game compatibility issues, but I did not have the proper vintage hardware to take advantage of Windows 98 on that machine anyways (it was a Pentium 4), so there was no great loss in my case.

DOS sound emulation was also quite good, along with Roland GM support. The only flaw was the lack of Yamaha FM synthesis and problems with speed sensitive games. I'm not sure if the DOS NTVDM works with Adlib FM synthesis, if it is available on the ISA bus.

My experience exactly. I switched over to 2000 Pro at release and never looked back or regretted it. I actually loved it so much that I did not switch to XP before XP SP2 IIRC. Windows 2000 was an amazing OS.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-01-09, 07:55:

Windows 2000 was an amazing OS.

True. Except maybe for the boot time.

mtest001 wrote on 2024-01-09, 08:10:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-01-09, 07:55:

Windows 2000 was an amazing OS.

True. Except maybe for the boot time.

My secondary OS at the time was RedHat 5.2 and to be honest Win2K never felt slower to boot 😁

My dad bought a copy of 2000 on launch day and he promptly installed it on the family computer in a dual boot setup with 98 SE. That system never felt faster and was nearly perfectly stable. Any of mine or my siblings games worked just fine we rarely need to use 98. We used 2000 untill we got a copy of XP Pro in 2004.

mtest001 wrote on 2024-01-09, 08:10:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-01-09, 07:55:

Windows 2000 was an amazing OS.

True. Except maybe for the boot time.

True, I just fired up the dual CuMine 500 - I actually thought boot was halted 🤣

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2024-01-09, 13:24:

My dad bought a copy of 2000 on launch day and he promptly installed it on the family computer in a dual boot setup with 98 SE. That system never felt faster and was nearly perfectly stable. Any of mine or my siblings games worked just fine we rarely need to use 98. We used 2000 untill we got a copy of XP Pro in 2004.

I share a similar history.

The only game that failed on Win 2000 was FIFA 2000, I believe mainly because of SecuROM issues. To this date, even in Win 2K VMs the game fails to start. But runs fine on XP and 98. *Shudder*

Can confirm 2k was fast too, except for the Server flavors.

For whatever reason, all Server flavours I tried, including Powered,would take around 2 minutes of a blank screen between the above window and continuing the logon process.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-01-09, 17:54:

Can confirm 2k was fast too, except for the Server flavors. https://www.vogons.org/download/file.php?mode=view&id=182473 For wh […]
Show full quote

Can confirm 2k was fast too, except for the Server flavors.

For whatever reason, all Server flavours I tried, including Powered,would take around 2 minutes of a blank screen between the above window and continuing the logon process.

It may have the same problem as Windows 98 where it is trying to resolve DNS servers and is timing it. Connect it to your LAN to confirm. Disabling all disconnected network adapters may also fix this.

It does it regardless if there's a LAN card or not.

Was able to find matching config files for my 486 EISA board that I bought recently. See my post here: Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Everything seems to work OK, so happy with this 😀
Next step is replace the CPU to the overdrive and perform some test.

After almost a decade of collecting, I've sold off a portion of my motherboard collection, as it was starting to take up obscene amounts of space. I've basically downsized to a few select motherboards for each platform, discounting the ones already installed in my period builds. I've also decided this manageable amount deserved to be bagged and tagged, so I did just that with electrostatic bags. Now they are stored in a plastic tub, probably much safer than they used to be. I will be doing the same for my sound cards, and eventually graphics cards as well..

Today I learned that Dark Forces doesn't like having more than one sound card doing the sound. My custom configuration that has few issues in everything else leads to crashes on every level. luckily I can just use my yamaha card for lesser sound quality and crash free levels.

Been working with the PicoMite VGA I built myself for the past couple days. Very cool little project, easy, cheap, and fun to play with! 😀

It's a pretty versatile little "retro computer" anyone can build if you're into such things like I am, all open-source. I'm teaching myself MMBasic, really brings back memories!

https://geoffg.net/picomitevga.html

download/file.php?mode=view&id=182519