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HP Z800 Time machine build

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First post, by wbahnassi

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Alright, I owned an HP Z400 workstation until last month, which I finally upgraded to an HP Z800 workstation.

Background:
The HP Z400 was my daily Windows 11 machine which I like to use as a real DOS machine as well. It was performing all fine on Win 11 with its RTX 2060 and M.2 storage device. It also had a Voodoo3 PCI and Yamaha YMF-744 PCI card with true OPL3 and DOS SBPro support.

It happened that my friend got his hands on a Z800 and was showing it to me (he got it for free). Impressive build. Top quality components. Humongous motherboard... dual Xeon CPU setup. Fully populated RAM... Aaaand a well-hidden shy floppy drive connector 😅

The floppy connector triggered my interest and my friend offered me the workstation to upgrade my HP Z400, so I took it, unsure if it would satisfy and surpass the Z400 as an ultimate time machine... so began the adventure.

The build's modern part:

  • HP Z800 dual Xeon CPUs (currently X5560 @ 2.8Ghz)
  • 48 GB RAM
  • 1TB M.2 SSD via PCI-E M.2 card
  • RTX 2080Ti
  • 1250W PSU

The build's retro part:

  • ATi RageXL PCI via PCIE-PCI bridge
  • Yamaha YMF-744 PCI directly on PCI slot
  • 5.25" Teac 1.2MB floppy drive
  • 3.5" Teac 1.44MB floppy drive
  • Samsung IDE DVD-RW Drive with analog audio with IDE-to-Sata adapter
  • 500GB SATA mechanical HDD

The OSes:
Windows 11, DOS 6.22, Win3.11, Win95. WinXP also possible but GPU should be swapped.

Now, comparing to my HP Z400:

  • 1250W for Z800 vs. 475W of the Z400. This allowed me to confidentally upgrade the GPU as below
  • RTX 2080Ti for Z800 vs. RTX 2060 for the Z400, and I can go to 3xxx or 4xxx territory too, but I don't have any suitable ones around now
  • Single PCI slot on Z800 vs two on Z400. This is very annoying on the Z800. It limits your options to PCIE-PCI bridges, which don't work for everything. The YMF-744 didn't like it. But the Voodoo3 worked fine.. alas, the bridge pushed the V3 way too high beyond the case's dimensions.. so no.. That's why I had to go for a half-height VGA PCI card.. the RageXL.
  • ATI RageXL for Z800 vs. Voodoo3 for Z400. The Voodoo3 is nicer, but it was not fully compatible on the Z400 (any use of Glide API would fail), so I wasn't gaining much of the V3. The RageXL performs well on legacy CGA/EGA modes with only very rare cases producing artifacts (Stunts EGA).
  • Dual CPUs (duh).. X5560 (4 core 2.8GHz) for Z800 vs. W5690 (6 core 3.46GHz) for Z400. The total core count on the Z800 is higher, but they are slower. I will upgrade those to dual X5690 for 12 core total at 3.46GHz.
  • Z800 has a COM serial port, the Z400 doesn't. Both machines have PS2 keyboard+mouse. So it's not really needed, but hey.. one more point for the Z800 anyways 🙂

General notes:

  • It wasn't easy hooking up the floppy drives in the Z400, but the Z800 makes that 100x more difficult despite its larger case. The fans over the RAM eat up all the space, and leave very little for 5.25" bay drives. So, longer drives like the 5.25" floppy drive can only be fit in certain bays.
  • It wasn't easy getting the Z400 to work with native DOS with SBPro and good compatibility. The same applies to the Z800. Luckily I transferred the same setup from the Z400 to the Z800 so I saved a lot of time and headache rediscovering the proper BIOS settings and resource allocations.
  • The Z400 isn't for the faint-hearted. But the Z800 is even 100x tougher! You really need patience and perseverance to drive it to work in this time-machine/production-machine configuration. But in the end, your effort pays off and you get a nice tamed wild mustang 😆.
  • I tried fitting in an RTX3090 or RTX4090, but both were too high for the case to close. That plastic cover you put over the cards won't close anymore.

Final words:
The Z400 is a great and relatively friendly platform for native DOS and modern Windows, but it has limits in its modern parts. The Z800 brings stronger modern specs, but on the expense of native DOS convenience. It limits your retro GPU options, and limits your retro drive options too.

And now... a few photos:

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Turbo XT 12MHz, 8-bit VGA, Dual 360K drives
Intel 386 DX-33, TSeng ET3000, SB 1.5, 1x CD
Intel 486 DX2-66, CL5428 VLB, SBPro 2, 2x CD
Intel Pentium 90, Matrox Millenium 2, SB16, 4x CD
HP Z400, Xeon 3.46GHz, YMF-744, Voodoo3, RTX2080Ti

Reply 1 of 9, by Intel486dx33

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The HP z400 and z800 are some of the Best computers for running WinXP.
Fully supported by HP with Drivers.

I had a HP z800 with Dual Xeon E5-5690 ( 12-cores, 24-threads ) and 64gb RAM.
Running WinXP Pro and it performed very good, Stable and reliable.
I also had an HP z400 and z600
I sold them all but I am going to buy another HP z400 to run WinXP Pro and my Terratec sound cards.
These have PCI slots.
I run an HP z440 today also because it has a PCI slot. ( Fully supported with Win-10 and Win-11 )
I really like the build quality and reliability of these computers.

Reply 2 of 9, by chinny22

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Win11 down to Dos/Win3x Thats a hell of a jump!

I've never looked into this but is there no good PCI-E card with Win11 and XP support that still has dos compatibility?

oh and congratulations on joining the SMP club. Everyone knows more is always better 😀

Reply 3 of 9, by Crazyeights

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Very Nice! I have an HP Z820 on Windows 10. I find that it is both powerful and dependable.

Reply 4 of 9, by eisapc

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Congrats to the Z800. Owning two myself together with a Z600 and 3 Z400.
Never had any hardware fails so far.
From this good experience I switched to Z440 and Z230SFF for my daily drivers.

Reply 5 of 9, by wbahnassi

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Thanks all. The Z800 is already performing better in my daily tasks (3D programming and ray tracing) even before I install the CPU upgrade.

I just wanted to extend a thank you to ruthan on this forum who had a comprehensive guide to help get native DOS sound on Z400, and I'm now happy to report that the Z800 carries the same legacy as the Z400 in that aspect.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-08-23, 00:30:

I've never looked into this but is there no good PCI-E card with Win11 and XP support that still has dos compatibility?

I looked for a PCI-E card that can cover DOS/Win9x, as I spend more time on those than WinXP. So I have an ATI Radeon X800, which is a PCI-E card with drivers going back to Win98 (not sure about Win11). I tested DOS on it, and it had some compatibility issues unfortunately (certain games show garbage). But for WinXP it was ok, and I played Need for Speed Underground with it at full quality at 60FPS (forgot which resolution though, it's been a while). I imagine it would be easier to find XP/11 cards?

Turbo XT 12MHz, 8-bit VGA, Dual 360K drives
Intel 386 DX-33, TSeng ET3000, SB 1.5, 1x CD
Intel 486 DX2-66, CL5428 VLB, SBPro 2, 2x CD
Intel Pentium 90, Matrox Millenium 2, SB16, 4x CD
HP Z400, Xeon 3.46GHz, YMF-744, Voodoo3, RTX2080Ti

Reply 6 of 9, by Aui

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The black front with 5.25, 3.5 and CD drive looks awesome! Did you tweak anything to quiet down the machine. I had a Z800 in the past, working flawlessly, but I could not bear the incredible noise all those fans were making. A dream machine nevertheless - very nice.

Reply 7 of 9, by wbahnassi

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Aui wrote on 2024-08-23, 23:49:

The black front with 5.25, 3.5 and CD drive looks awesome! Did you tweak anything to quiet down the machine. I had a Z800 in the past, working flawlessly, but I could not bear the incredible noise all those fans were making. A dream machine nevertheless - very nice.

Thanks! I'm a big fan of 5.25" floppy drives so I can't make a build without one. This black 5.25" drive was new old stock still wrapped in its original bag.

I haven't done anything for the noise. Yes, it's noisier than the Z400 and produces more heat too during typical usage. There are times (mostly during some restarts) when the PC decides to engage all fans at max speed. It sounds like the roars of a thousand angry dieties (also happens on the Z400, but it's only 10 angry dieties rather than a thousand 😋). In DOS, I run DOSIDLE and it quiets the machine really nice.

Turbo XT 12MHz, 8-bit VGA, Dual 360K drives
Intel 386 DX-33, TSeng ET3000, SB 1.5, 1x CD
Intel 486 DX2-66, CL5428 VLB, SBPro 2, 2x CD
Intel Pentium 90, Matrox Millenium 2, SB16, 4x CD
HP Z400, Xeon 3.46GHz, YMF-744, Voodoo3, RTX2080Ti

Reply 8 of 9, by Intel486dx33

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wbahnassi wrote on 2024-08-24, 08:17:
Aui wrote on 2024-08-23, 23:49:

The black front with 5.25, 3.5 and CD drive looks awesome! Did you tweak anything to quiet down the machine. I had a Z800 in the past, working flawlessly, but I could not bear the incredible noise all those fans were making. A dream machine nevertheless - very nice.

Thanks! I'm a big fan of 5.25" floppy drives so I can't make a build without one. This black 5.25" drive was new old stock still wrapped in its original bag.

I haven't done anything for the noise. Yes, it's noisier than the Z400 and produces more heat too during typical usage. There are times (mostly during some restarts) when the PC decides to engage all fans at max speed. It sounds like the roars of a thousand angry dieties (also happens on the Z400, but it's only 10 angry dieties rather than a thousand 😋). In DOS, I run DOSIDLE and it quiets the machine really nice.

I had the same noisie fan problems with my HP z800’s thats why I sold the ones I had.
But later I was told by HP support that there is a bios setting where you can adjust the fan speed.
Also I did not like the fact that you needed to use a PS/2 keyboard to enter the bios.
So you had to use those bulky HP keyboards.

But other than that these are great machines very similar to the Cheese grater Mac Pro.

Reply 9 of 9, by wbahnassi

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Yeah I have the fan setting at minimum in the BIOS. But strange that yours needed a PS2 keyboard for BIOS. I can properly enter BIOS and control DOS entirely with the USB keyboard (Razer with RGB lights etc.).
A small kink that those Z800/Z400 have is that they don't emulate PS2 mouse from USB very well.
The PS2 mouse driver recognizes the USB mouse, then upon first movement of the mouse (e.g. in EDIT.COM or any DOS game) the cursor moves a nudge in the right direction, but then stops completely until next restart. If you plug a native PS2 mouse into the PS2 port directly then everything works great.

Turbo XT 12MHz, 8-bit VGA, Dual 360K drives
Intel 386 DX-33, TSeng ET3000, SB 1.5, 1x CD
Intel 486 DX2-66, CL5428 VLB, SBPro 2, 2x CD
Intel Pentium 90, Matrox Millenium 2, SB16, 4x CD
HP Z400, Xeon 3.46GHz, YMF-744, Voodoo3, RTX2080Ti

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