This is quite the usual route. Want one thing and in the end wanting it all 😁

Target specific application/games you want to run.

PCI lets you run openGL cards, and 640x480+ res in DOS.
Pentiums let you run more.

Yeah, I did this with my first build. I wanted a P233 with a Riva 128. Technically my first computer was a Pentium 120 with a Riva 128, but I quickly got a second hand P233 and did most of my gaming on that.

Anyways, one thing lead to another, and now that system is a K6-2+ 500 with a Geforce 2 MX. Oops. Then I wound up building the Pentium 233/Riva 128 system again, because I still wanted one, and I had all the parts minus a motherboard after all the upgrades I did. After all that, I do most of my retro gaming on it and the K6-2+ goes largely untouched.

I think it's typical to find yourself torn between maxing out your hardware in a way you never could as a kid, but also wanting to re-experience what you had then. It's like a ship of Theseus. I will say, the one small concession I made with my P233 is I overclocked it slightly to 2.5 * 100 instead of 3.5 * 66. You really feel that extra memory bandwidth. Likewise for yourself, going from a DX2 50 to a DX2 66, or adding more ram will probably preserve the authentic experience while giving you a little more quality of life. But to me, the 486 platform was always a DOS/Win3.1 system. I actually have one set up that way now which I've been playing a fuck ton of Master of Orion on. It's perfect. The DX2 was really a workhorse of a PC that does pretty well in games right up until Quake and DirectX started becoming the norm in games.

Yeah, that's sorta my problem. I do remember playing original Shareware versions of Doom and running W95 on that old Compudyne, but it might have run like crap and I didn't know any better. Like I remember trying to play Wing Commander and having to have a set boot disk to only load the bare minimum of stuff into memory.

Anyways, whatever I do, I do need it to be an AT based motherboard so it stays in that Comp case, but I'm pretty sure I can at least get Socket 7 and the K6/233 working in a AT/Baby AT format. Seems like the Celeron 700 is probably going to be AT/ATX. And I've already starting thinking through maxing out a socket 7 setup. Gah...

I guess from a games perspective, it'd probably be a mish mosh of stuff. Some older DOS stuff like Bandit Kings of Ancient China, Dungeon Keeper, SSN-21 Seawolf, Strikefleet, Lemmings and Risk. Then some 'newer games' like the Wing Commanders/Privateer, XWing, early Civ or Sim City games, and maybe Doom/Quake. Thinking I need something that can run Win95/98, but can still do the DOS games without too many issues.

Yup, best quit now and start a cheap hobby like quadcopters, RC cars, Warhammer miniatures, cabinet making, baseball cards, boats, cycling, novelty matchstick carving.

I would keep your DX2/66 frozen and start fresh rather than spoiling it... but yeah then you'll be finding room for 10 machines..

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-09-25, 14:57:

Yup, best quit now and start a cheap hobby like quadcopters, RC cars, Warhammer miniatures, cabinet making, baseball cards, boats, cycling, novelty matchstick carving.

I would keep your DX2/66 frozen and start fresh rather than spoiling it... but yeah then you'll be finding room for 10 machines..

Hey, cabinet making isn't that bad! I may have spent $200 on specialty router bits, but I saved $300 after spending 2 months of my free time making hard maple cabinet doors!

True story.

That said, I'll second keeping the DX2/66 and starting a new Win9x machine. Put them behind a KVM and you are good to go. KVMs are fantastic when you don't know which build you want to do, so you decide "Why not both?"

Oh if you are putting it like that, I saved $4998 on a 1GB full height SCSI hard disk by buying it in the noughts for $2 rather at list in 1991 for $5000

It's normal to go through different iterations or entirely different builds. The best indicator of figuring out what you really want is to build something, try it out, determine where it is lacking, and then upgrade or do a different build.

Case in point, I built my own 486 DX2-66. But when trying to do a playthrough of Doom 2 on it, realized it was just too slow for what I wanted. I moved on to a mid range Pentium, among other builds, and eventually landed on my 'all-in-one' industrial Pentium 4 build.

Experience is the best way to figure out what you really want and in all likelihood will involve multiple builds.

How many PC's do you want or have space for?

The Pentium 120 would make for a good dos PC but bit slow for Win9x games
The Celeron 700 would make for a good Win9x PC

486's are purely for nostalgia, really they are a bit slow for later dos game's (and terrible for win9x)
That said I have 3!
Dos era has many different soundcards and MIDI devices each with their pro's and con's So I put a different one in each PC to give them a purpose.
and 486's are fine for games from Apogee, Epic Megagames, Sierra, etc Doom is about its breaking point.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-09-25, 23:31:

and 486's are fine for games from Apogee, Epic Megagames, Sierra, etc Doom is about its breaking point.

IMHO, slower 486s (e.g. DX-33) are great for early 90s speed sensitive games especially when they can be throttled to 386 speeds via turbo button and/or cache disabling.

I downgraded my own 486 from DX2-66 to a DX-33, and the latter is much better for those late 80s and early 90s games.

With the K6-233 one could take inspiration from Phil's 136 in 1 MMX board, but it would only be a quarter the options so about 33 levels because I don't think the cache and branch mode is so granularly controllable, so basic l1 and l2 on and off and multiplier settings. https://www.philscomputerlab.com/136-in-1-pentium-mmx.html cover nearly the same range with bigger notches.

However, that's a bit of an expense these days, almost as much as building a low end modern machine with new parts at eBay prices. There's still whole machines popping up for probably less than you could put them together for. Shipping is usually the problem.

Tough to answer this one, and I’ve built many retro computers. There’s nostalgia for what you had, and then there’s the desire to try the hardware configurations that you missed out on.

MikeSG’s advice to target specific applications/games and build towards that seems pretty solid but then it’s also funny how sometimes you migh lt have multiple goals and they end up competing against each other and compromises must be made.

Maybe like Life, it’s not the destination but the journey. Develop a plan and dive in, but don’t be surprised when the plan changes and you end up somewhere unexpected.

So, I think I settled on going with a Socket 7 and dropping the K6-233 in it and install Win98SE. I think it should still allow me to play most games from DOS up through Windows that I want to from the late 80's to mid 90's. I know it may struggle a bit with some of the later games, but it will still fit in the Compudyne case, and I did actually run the K6 way back when (in a different case), so I've still got the nostalgia part covered.

Of course, this led me down another rabbit hole of pieces and parts and everything, but settled on getting an Asus P/I-P55T2P4 as the base, which I think is going to be perfect with one exception. Who in their right mind ever thought it was a smart idea to embed the CMOS battery inside a soldered on RTC chip. What the heck? Anyways, more parts on their way, and keeping my fingers crossed that that battery somehow still has some life or I can learn how to solder/desolder chips real quick. 😀

Here's the current plan. Assuming I get through the CMOS battery saga and don't slag the motherboard at least.

Mobo: Asus P/I-P55T2P4 Rev 3.1 - Socket 7
CPU: AMD K6-233
RAM: 256MB (4x64MB) 60ns EDO RAM
GPU: PCI Dell/Nvidia Riva TNT2 M64 16MB (180-P0002-0000-B01)
Audio: Creative Labs Soundblaster SB16 / CT2800 Vibra 16S ISA
HDD: Still up in the air, going to try to use a HP 120GB SSD with a SATA/IDE Adapter, but if that doesn't work, have a CF/IDE Adapter and will pick up a 60-120MB Industrial CF
PSU: 200W AT
OS: Win 98SE

Anyone see any glaring issues with the build? Will I run into any major issues with W98SE and DOS/Win3.1 games? Any other thoughts? 😀

The only feedback I'd have, is to have extremely modest expectations of it's 3D capabilities. You're going to be CPU bound on almost everything you play that's more advanced than Quake 2. The drivers for the TNT2 will probably be choking on the CPU. Aside from that it's very similar to my P233/Riva 128 build, right down to the CT2800. It's a fantastic DOS machine, and a fantastic machine for 2D windows games, or when I have the odd desire to play Quake 2 or Shogo exactly the same way I played it back in the day, at 15-30 fps.

Funnily enough, I actually have that exact same motherboard. I'd ordered a second CT2800 with an IDE port on it, and got it by accident instead. Life was busy, I never actually opened the package for a few months, and by then it was way too late to rectify the situation. Let me know what you think of it, because I haven't tried mine out yet at all, or even know if it works.

Edit: I almost forgot! When I was doing some cursory research on the P55T2P4, I discovered I had scads of undocumented jumper settings. You can apparently overclock the fuck out of it. I found two pages, Tom's Hardware, which unfortunately seems to be missing most of the tables the article refers to, and this random site which has the tables.

Yeah, most of the games I want to play are really up through 95-96 timeframe. While I'll certainly try some of the later stuff like XWing, Starcraft, MechWarrior 3, I'm not expecting much, so I'm not too worried. If I really get anxious about those others, I could spin something up with a Celeron 700 or I even have some AM2 AMD's sitting around that would be good.

In regards to your comment about the motherboard, when you say you didn't open the package, was that for the Motherboard or the 2nd CT2800? Really a bit worried about the whole CMOS/RTC soldering mess. 😀

MeatballB wrote on 2024-09-26, 14:16:

Yeah, most of the games I want to play are really up through 95-96 timeframe. While I'll certainly try some of the later stuff like XWing, Starcraft, MechWarrior 3, I'm not expecting much, so I'm not too worried. If I really get anxious about those others, I could spin something up with a Celeron 700 or I even have some AM2 AMD's sitting around that would be good.

In regards to your comment about the motherboard, when you say you didn't open the package, was that for the Motherboard or the 2nd CT2800? Really a bit worried about the whole CMOS/RTC soldering mess. 😀

So I ordered a CT2800, received a large package I didn't open for months, and then when I finally opened it, it was a P55T2P4 motherboard instead. I've never tried to see if it works, but I suspect if I ever do, I'll be replacing the RTC. Not something I'm especially worried about.

Don't try overclocking a K6-233 unless it's the 2.4 Volt version though. The 2.9-3.2 Volt versions are near the top of power limits already and run warm, overclocking will seem to work for one speed grade with a huge heatsink until it doesn't when you explode the voltage regulators. The 2.4V might go up two or three speed grades and not kill anything until you are trying to use volts to push through 350ish, which it won't, they needed a redesign to make 400 reliably.

Also might want to tone down the RAM to just 128Mb, which I think the default cache size handles. Otherwise unless you get lucky with the board it can cost a bundle to put more cache on.