Yesterday I finally got an SSD working in my Athlon XP 1700+ PC and today I installed DOS 6.22 and Windows 98 SE on it, along with all the drivers for each (which took longer than the actual OS installs, especially for the DOS stuff). Next day off I have, I plan to install Windows XP so I have a multiboot system. Right now Win98 and DOS are on the same 2GB partition, which may or may not be satisfying to me, we'll see. I have about 118GB left for Windows XP, and my BIOS can see all of that. I do plan to install pretty much everything I can under XP and run it mostly as an XP system; Win98 is just for the few games I have that really won't run under XP, and DOS is obviously for DOS games that tend to be a lot smaller. (And I do know Win98 has its own version of DOS; that's why I was ok putting them on the same partition. It's only very rarely that I'd have to boot to the "previous version of DOS" or whatever Windows calls it in the boot menu.)

I will say it was fun playing the original NHL Hockey for DOS on this system tonight, with sound from the SB Live PCI card emulating the SB16. The sound wasn't totally smooth so I'll have to figure that out somehow, but it was still pretty good.

I've had some instability that could really be coming from anywhere in a system like this (Windows freezing, DOS installs suddenly reporting the hard drive unwritable), but I did notice that my power supply seems to be drifting slightly out of spec, with the BIOS reporting the +12V rail at 11.27 at one point. That's beyond the +/- 5% tolerance of the ATX spec. I don't know if that's causing issues or not but I've ordered another power supply (a NOS version of the same one I have, an Antec SL400, which has something crazy like a 36 amp 5V rail, good for an Athlon system). I'll probably recap my current PSU at some point, since I've read that's probably its problem, but right now I just want to get this computer running reliably quickly, I don't want to have to learn a whole new thing and then actually do it properly in order to just play some games. But at some point, it might be a fun little project.

I'll have to test some more games with the SB Live in DOS but worst case, I have a spare ISA slot and could just get a cheap SB16 or something to go in there for DOS games. It seemed like the sampled voices were mistimed or something in NHL Hockey, they were just rhythmically clicking whenever a sampled sound (like the voice commentary) was being played. The MIDI stuff and other generated sound effects seemed fine, though.

Seemed like a mostly successful starting point in making this system an all-in-one retro gaming PC, but it obviously needs a little more work to really get it right, and obviously to get everything installed that I want installed too. I had meant to get all three OS's installed today but ran out of time. I always forget how much of a time sink doing stuff in DOS always ends up being.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-02-06, 21:02:

At one point Novell seemed to be shipping a set of disks per license, so you'd see IT closets stacked with these in the 90s, then later, stacked in the hallways or free pile at colleges hoping they'd disappear. Anyway, lots of them kicking round in the day, ppl may have grabbed a couple of boxes from work or school for when they ran out of disks, but being near end of 5.25 era, maybe went un-reused, Novell in particular were slow in adopting the next disk format, there were almost street parties when they shipped on 1.44, but their star was in decline by then.

Almost sounds like some weird tax thing. In Poland magazines and newspapers fall into 8% VAT tax bracket instead of 22%. Game, movie and softpr0n publishers took advantage releasing magazines with added free games/movies.

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2024-02-07, 07:47:

I still remember that when I started working in IT, the sysadmins had netware 4.11 servers and that an upgrade to Netware 5 was a huge stress for them. No snapshots at the time and it was the company's main file server 😀

Netware servers were rock solid and needed very little maintenance/updates. Uptimes of 365+ days were common.

mcyt wrote on 2024-02-07, 08:13:

Yesterday I finally got an SSD working in my Athlon XP 1700+ PC and today I installed DOS 6.22 and Windows 98 SE on it, along with all the drivers for each (which took longer than the actual OS installs, especially for the DOS stuff). Next day off I have, I plan to install Windows XP so I have a multiboot system. Right now Win98 and DOS are on the same 2GB partition, which may or may not be satisfying to me, we'll see. I have about 118GB left for Windows XP, and my BIOS can see all of that. I do plan to install pretty much everything I can under XP and run it mostly as an XP system; Win98 is just for the few games I have that really won't run under XP, and DOS is obviously for DOS games that tend to be a lot smaller. (And I do know Win98 has its own version of DOS; that's why I was ok putting them on the same partition. It's only very rarely that I'd have to boot to the "previous version of DOS" or whatever Windows calls it in the boot menu.)

sounds good, when i did a dos/98 and xp dual boot i used to partition the drive into 3 chunks, 1 as fat for 98(and/or dos), 1 a ntfs for XP and a third as fat32 for "stuff". that third partition could contain anything that needed 9x, even installed games but also contain various xp things. it was also handy for transferring files to so that they would be visible to both 98 and xp. it isnt really necessary (esp now we have such large usb capacity) but it seemed good at the time 😀

mcyt wrote on 2024-02-07, 08:13:

Yesterday I finally got an SSD working in my Athlon XP 1700+ PC and today I installed DOS 6.22 and Windows 98 SE on it, along with all the drivers for each (which took longer than the actual OS installs, especially for the DOS stuff). Next day off I have, I plan to install Windows XP so I have a multiboot system. Right now Win98 and DOS are on the same 2GB partition, which may or may not be satisfying to me, we'll see. I have about 118GB left for Windows XP, and my BIOS can see all of that. I do plan to install pretty much everything I can under XP and run it mostly as an XP system; Win98 is just for the few games I have that really won't run under XP, and DOS is obviously for DOS games that tend to be a lot smaller. (And I do know Win98 has its own version of DOS; that's why I was ok putting them on the same partition. It's only very rarely that I'd have to boot to the "previous version of DOS" or whatever Windows calls it in the boot menu.)

Be careful not to use an SSD that is too large without the proper patch.

Trying to figure out the cause of data corruption in Windows 9x

Got Gravis Ultrasound MAX 2.1 (serial 0495) which apparently requires care: setup hangs on interrupt test, impulse tracker it.exe /s7 just hangs in three different mobos/cpus/DOS'es/cards etc.
Quick inspection shows that following three crystals (by oscilloscope):
Y1 is 19.7568 MHz (Ecliptek ECX-1689) which is near ICS1614 (GF1) has 5.5Vin and no wave, seems gone;
Y2 is 24.576 MHz (Ecliptek EC246) - good and clean wave 24.5MHz;
Y3 is 16.9344 MHz (Ecliptek EC169) near Y2 - have no input voltage. Seems powered on demand via Crystal codec chip (in and out are connected from one CS4231A pin to another), according to individual codec test (which is passed), they both seems working.

Maybe fellow Vogons members point me the way to get Y1 in PM ? Are Y3 should be always powered on ?

I had a broken socket A Athlon XP.
POSTs until D3 C4 (this being the last issued). AMIBIOS ver 3.31a. Any clue? I guess D3 to be ram related and c4 probably no sizing.

Edit: being a 2200+ it'll make a good cpu to test boards avoiding any sacrifice of a known working one 😀

Currently gutted a Compaq Evo d310v w/ 478 Celeron.

Not sure what can I do with the board... 845G chipset, but the SuperIO chip prevents me from replacing the Compaq BIOS. It does have AGP, DDR, as well as onboard Intel LAN and I think it even supports internal speaker for audio output. The thing that puts me off is the proprietay Compaq BIOS and the slightly proprietary cooler.

The case could be handy as long as I rewire the front panel wires (PW_ON, HDD and PWR_LED, not sure if it has a reset button) as it's nearly bog-standard microATX, save for the custom header for power button and LEDs. Oh, and got the 40GB Maxtor 6E040L0 (didn't even think Compaq would use Maxtors, I thought Seagates were their fave drives) and a free 128bit Radeon 9250 128MB, made by HIS.

vsharun wrote on 2024-02-07, 13:26:

Got Gravis Ultrasound MAX 2.1 (serial 0495) which apparently requires care: setup hangs on interrupt test, impulse tracker it.exe /s7 just hangs in three different mobos/cpus/DOS'es/cards etc.
Y1 is 19.7568 MHz (Ecliptek ECX-1689) which is near ICS1614 (GF1) has 5.5Vin and no wave, seems gone;
Maybe fellow Vogons members point me the way to get Y1 in PM ? Are Y3 should be always powered on ?

Need help repairing a Gravis Ultrasound Classic 2.4!

I dont think anyone found reliable source, you might have to replace it with modern PLL clock gen like Silicon Lab Si5351A + small micro to program frequency on every powerup.

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-02-08, 03:11:

Need help repairing a Gravis Ultrasound Classic 2.4!
I dont think anyone found reliable source, you might have to replace it with modern PLL clock gen like Silicon Lab Si5351A + small micro to program frequency on every powerup.

Thank you. Tomorrow I hope I will get a handful of nearby freq crystals and will check is this is an issue at all (ICS1614 may be gone too). If this is the root cause, well, it's good then - I'll redirect to a PLL way and'll learn something new.

vsharun wrote on 2024-02-08, 09:01:

Thank you. Tomorrow I hope I will get a handful of nearby freq crystals and will check is this is an issue at all (ICS1614 may be gone too). If this is the root cause, well, it's good then - I'll redirect to a PLL way and'll learn something new.

I just remembered there is also this GUS repro project ARGUS Project thread - Now with gerbers and documentation in initial post! and I think they managed to shit ship correct crystals because they ordered custom from manufacturer with min 1000qty

Just arrived, LOVE to see a proper old school big box game with loads of documentation. I had this game back in the day but it went missing to the sands of time. Happy to have replaced it now. Looking forward to remembering how hard it is to play 🤩

Shadzilla wrote on 2024-02-08, 11:31:

Just arrived, LOVE to see a proper old school big box game with loads of documentation. I had this game back in the day but it went missing to the sands of time. Happy to have replaced it now. Looking forward to remembering how hard it is to play 🤩

Quite possibly my favorite racing sim of all time. I have such fond memories of using falcon woman's setup and driving my Ferrari around Watkins Glen in this game..

Shadzilla wrote on 2024-02-08, 11:31:

Just arrived, LOVE to see a proper old school big box game with loads of documentation. I had this game back in the day but it went missing to the sands of time. Happy to have replaced it now. Looking forward to remembering how hard it is to play 🤩

I still have this game too. One of the best simracing games of all time. The Lotus is a beast to tame.

Did my first eeprom flashing today with T48.
Everything went smoothly. I can now use Am5x86 in my qdi-v4s471-g now.

I was surprised that by replacing BIOS chip all my settings remained intact. Where the hell 486 era boards are storing custom settings?

vutt wrote on 2024-02-08, 16:56:

I was surprised that by replacing BIOS chip all my settings remained intact. Where the hell 486 era boards are storing custom settings?

CMOS settings are not saved to the BIOS chip. The motherboard provides a small amount of non-volatile RAM to store these settings (the battery keeps it powered when you turn off the machine). There may be a dedicated chip for this, but more commonly it's integrated to the chipset. In your case, this RAM is in the SiS 85C407 chip near the BIOS.

TheMobRules wrote on 2024-02-08, 17:21:

vutt wrote on 2024-02-08, 16:56:

I was surprised that by replacing BIOS chip all my settings remained intact. Where the hell 486 era boards are storing custom settings?

CMOS settings are not saved to the BIOS chip. The motherboard provides a small amount of non-volatile RAM to store these settings (the battery keeps it powered when you turn off the machine). There may be a dedicated chip for this, but more commonly it's integrated to the chipset. In your case, this RAM is in the SiS 85C407 chip near the BIOS.

Obviously 486 era EPROMS are only UV erasable. Never thought about that. So it's in SiS 85C407. Learned something new today...

vsharun wrote on 2024-02-07, 13:26:

Maybe fellow Vogons members point me the way to get Y1 in PM ? Are Y3 should be always powered on ?

You could also try and ask Ian Polpo if he happens to still have one:
Re: Need help repairing a Gravis Ultrasound Classic 2.4!

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-02-08, 11:13:

vsharun wrote on 2024-02-08, 09:01:

Thank you. Tomorrow I hope I will get a handful of nearby freq crystals and will check is this is an issue at all (ICS1614 may be gone too). If this is the root cause, well, it's good then - I'll redirect to a PLL way and'll learn something new.

I just remembered there is also this GUS repro project ARGUS Project thread - Now with gerbers and documentation in initial post! and I think they managed to shit ship correct crystals because they ordered custom from manufacturer with min 1000qty

The ArGUS doesn't use a 19.7568 MHz crystal. Those were used as along with the original GF1 chip, which is not used on the ArGUS (it uses the Interwave chip).

Unfortunately as others have mentioned, 19.7568 MHz crystals are no longer manufactured.

Backing up my retro and modern vms. the QEMU Ubuntu vm bricked during an update. I lost a few tiny shit, but nothing worth crying... moving on