DudeFace wrote on 2024-10-24, 07:08:

the original intellimouse is probably my favourite, i also had a PS/2 one but the cable broke and i threw it out years ago, i like the extra buttons that let you go back and forth through web pages or windows, they do new ones but they dont look the same.

I got lucky and found used IntelliMouse in a server room, they very quickly came home!

I have to say this community on Vogons is great, and I am so pleased I made this first post. All of you are so willing to chip in ideas and advice.

I think the general consensus that some of my builds are too close together, is possibly right. It's given me some food for thought for sure.

The main period I gamed heavily though was 1995 to 2005. A period in which progress was rapid. I think this is why my builds are quite centred on that era. Though I do have fond memories of my time playing on my 286 PC.

I have never owned a 386 or 486 PC. Though I did, of course, play some games on them at friend's houses. I went straight from my 286 PC to a Pentium 120Mhz. What an upgrade that was! It was just before Windows 95 came out, so I initially started on Windows 3.11 and MS DOS 6.22 and a Soundblaster 16. I feel like I missed out on the classic 386/486 games though. So I definitely want to be able to play them.

My family too went from a 286 to a Pentium (in our case a 75MHz Packard Bell w/ Windows 3.11). What a massive upgrade that was!

I'm also using a KVM for my 3 PC setup so PS/2 was a must. I totally understand why you want to keep it simple.

Maybe have a look at OEM 386 and 486 systems. They won't be ATX of course but most will have PS/2 ports for mouse and keyboard. Dell (interestingly not every model), Packard Bell and Compaq especially from what I've seen. Pre built systems are also way cheaper than buying separate parts when it comes to the 386-486 era. Usually all you have to do is add a sound card and maybe a different HDD solution and you're good to go. That's for earlier DOS stuff anyway. Disabling cache and I can play anything (that I have interest in anyway including wing commander) on a 133MHz 486.

You'll have to patch a few DOS games to run on a CPU over 200MHz (Jazz Jackrabbit comes to mind) but with various slow down utilities and batch files to make it easy, you'll probably be able to run pretty much whatever you want pre 1996 on that machine. Funny but all the games you mentioned like Duke 1 &2, Sim City, Wolf 3D etc. will run completely fine on a PMMX without showdown utilities. Watch out for Duke 2. It's buggy! Runs fine in Windows but can be tricky in DOS. You may need to patch it if using a real SB16 (ADPCM bug). Back in the day that only ever worked for me in DOS on clone cards.

Limiting myself to 3 computers meant heavily researching and playing around with game patches. As mentioned by someone else, PCGamingWiki is an amazing resource. I've solved the need for more than 3 computers pretty much solely by researching patches on this site.

The only games I have trouble with are Theme Hospital (only the windows version as it locks up on anything PII or faster but is fine in DOS) and Black & White (I bought this game when it was a year or so old and to this day have yet to see it run on any computer without messed up graphics).

Edit: typo

b_riera wrote on 2024-10-25, 18:13:

Limiting myself to 3 computers meant heavily researching and playing around with game patches. As mentioned by someone else, PCGamingWiki is an amazing resource. I've solved the need for more than 3 computers pretty much solely by researching patches on this site.

Edit: typo

I don’t know how you did that. Nice work. I ended up with 20 machines to cover 1987 to 2010. All connected with multiple KVMs.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-23, 17:56:

I haven't heard of that method of slowing a PC.

Thank you for reading and responding to my whole post even though you were mostly way ahead of me! I appreciate it.

ICD/ICE is two small executables: Internal Cache Disable/Internal Cache Enable. For my 486-66 it’s enough to get sound working correctly on things like Microprose F1GP and Secret of Monkey Island where ordinarily I’d have to remember to hit the turbo button before launching. Sysinfo reckons it presents like a 20MHz 386 after running ICD.

On its own that’s still a bit fiddly for me so I will use a batch file:
Rename Monkey.exe to Monk1.exe
Create batch file named Monkey.bat
Batch file reads:
ICD.exe
Monk1.exe -r
ICE.exe

…so that all I have to do is type “Monkey” instead of manually slowing the machine and remembering the MT-32 modifier.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-23, 17:56:

I'd be interested to know more. My intention right now is to use DB15 extension cables and make a panel that has one socket for each PC with gameport. I can then plug my joystick/wheel/gamepad into the PC I want to use it with via that panel.

DudeFace wrote on 2024-10-23, 22:31:

does it look something like this. 🤣

The attachment Multi Gameport.jpg is no longer available

Unfortunately I don’t have an all-in-one solution though I’m sure that would be possible with a bit of free time to design a PCB and do a lot of soldering! At least this way requires no plugging or unplugging to work, which is a priority for me.

I have a Joyswitch (link for example only) to choose which joystick I want to use, and a basic data switch
box to select which PC receives the signal.

Has to be set before powering on the PC obviously, but in combination with the KVM it even works with keyboard passthrough flight sticks like the F-16 FLCS/F-22. I’m afraid the rest is just a lot of DA-15 cables, and having enough room to keep the controllers plugged in.

Cyfrifiadur wrote on 2024-10-26, 10:52:

Unfortunately I don’t have an all-in-one solution though I’m sure that would be possible with a bit of free time to design a PCB […]
Show full quote

Unfortunately I don’t have an all-in-one solution though I’m sure that would be possible with a bit of free time to design a PCB and do a lot of soldering! At least this way requires no plugging or unplugging to work, which is a priority for me.

I have a Joyswitch (link for example only) to choose which joystick I want to use, and a basic data switch
box to select which PC receives the signal.

Has to be set before powering on the PC obviously, but in combination with the KVM it even works with keyboard passthrough flight sticks like the F-16 FLCS/F-22. I’m afraid the rest is just a lot of DA-15 cables, and having enough room to keep the controllers plugged in.

Nice! didnt know those switch boxes exist for DB15, thats definitely the way to go, better than chaining a bunch of cables together. 🤣, i like the design of that kentek switch its identical to the old KVM's i used to use at work, which is a must for an old 80s/90s setup.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-25, 05:53:

You can get adapters for the keyboard but, as far as I know, there are no ISA or PCI cards available that offer PS/2 mouse that will work in DOS. Though, as MisterMister says there are some KVMs that can convert PS/2 mouse to talk to serial PC.

There are also KVMs with both serial and PS2, although I think they route to either one or the other (e.g. you'd need two mice hooked up to use both options).

Also, I have seen very few 386 systems or motherboards for sale. Those I have seen are very expensive and often are missing connectors, cache or RAM.

Also I think a 386 is fixed at whatever speed you buy it. As you need to replace a crystal to change clock speed? The Pentium MMX at least offers me the ability to improve performance on the command line by enabling some of its performance features.

I was thinking more along the line of a 486, since they can usually drop to 386 speeds via turbo button and/or L1 cache disabling. You're right though than 386 processors are typically fixed speed and dependent on crystal swapping (depending on the mb).

One thing that does worry me though is I have seen some people report that a slowed down Pentium MMX is not a consistent speed. For instance in Wing Commander it may run OK mostly but speed up too much when there's less enemies? Is that true?

Speed sensitive games can have variable speeds depending on what is going on in the game. If the game is trying to process too many things at once (rendering sprites, etc.), it can cause the entire game to run slower than normal.

This was common back then with speed sensitive games.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-24, 20:05:

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-23, 17:56:

I am wondering if I should skip the Geforce 6800 build and instead use that MicroATX case for a pseudo 386 PC using a Pentium MMX thats got all caches disabled. The motherboard I have is baby AT. But I have an adapter to allow usage of an ATX PSU with it. The motherboard has header pins for PS/2 mouse, so I'd have to make up something to attach to that header. Looks like it will fit in the case if I do some custom mounts. I will be able to use 1 PCI video card and up to 3 ISA cards.

I've just ordered an ISA video card (Trident) to try with this baby AT motherboard. It has a Pentium MMX 166Mhz CPU in it. The motherboard jumpers from the looks of it may allow me to run it as low as 75Mhz. I wonder how slow it can go!

Well, the 200MHz MMX I'm running ATM doesn't go under 2.5x multiplier, so running FSB at 50 MHz, the lowest clock I get is 125 MHz (well, according to BIOS at least, haven't actually tested more than that). But it could easily be an MMX thing, that no lower multiplier is implemented, as it is what the slowest (non-embedded) MMX CPU, the 166 MHz uses.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-27, 22:38:

There are also KVMs with both serial and PS2, although I think they route to either one or the other (e.g. you'd need two mice hooked up to use both options).

Not sure I fancy that. Serial mice will more than likely be ball mice rather the optical. I hate those type of mice. Just so inaccurate and unrealiable.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-27, 22:38:

I was thinking more along the line of a 486, since they can usually drop to 386 speeds via turbo button and/or L1 cache disabling.

Yes, I guess you are right. I don't have any experience with 486 PCs to know how well that works.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-27, 22:38:

Speed sensitive games can have variable speeds depending on what is going on in the game. If the game is trying to process too many things at once (rendering sprites, etc.), it can cause the entire game to run slower than normal.

This was common back then with speed sensitive games.

Fair enough

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-10-28, 07:05:

Well, the 200MHz MMX I'm running ATM doesn't go under 2.5x multiplier, so running FSB at 50 MHz, the lowest clock I get is 125 MHz (well, according to BIOS at least, haven't actually tested more than that). But it could easily be an MMX thing, that no lower multiplier is implemented, as it is what the slowest (non-embedded) MMX CPU, the 166 MHz uses.

I have had a play around. I am able to run the 166Mhx MMX CPU with 2X multiplier, and 50Mhz bus speed. This results in 100Mhz frequency. When combined with a Trident ISA video card and 8Mb of EDO RAM, and disabling CPU performance features & caches it seems to be performing about 70% the speed of a 386 25Mhz, and can scale up to about about 486 33Mhz speed.

About the kvm, the Belkin Pro I have allows me to use PS2 or even certain USB mouse w/ adapter and converts to serial for the PC. Both serial and PS2 are available for each PC. No ball mice required.

For flexible retro PC, motherboard and bios features are important. This is one reason certain MB are sought after. Installing a switch for different jumper options is a solution that I have used.

The idea of using OEM PC. I started with some OEM PCs they are easier to find at good price as mentioned above. Sometimes they have limitations in the BIOS and expandability same issue they had in their day. Eventually I replaced OEM with custom PCs. To get good parts for custom PCs at reasonable cost takes some patience I have done those over several years.

In my setup I have one input that I use for rotation so that more PCs can be swapped in easily as desired. This is my solution for having more PCs than I can attach at one time.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-28, 09:55:

Not sure I fancy that. Serial mice will more than likely be ball mice rather the optical. I hate those type of mice. Just so inaccurate and unrealiable.

Oohh mice. I'll talk about mice.

• With early mouse designs (<= 1995) the rollers were 3-4mm made of white low adhesion plastic. They had a high tolerance for dirt and were super easy to clean. (barely an inconvenience ?). Later designs (talking about you IntelliMouse 96!) commonly had those narrow black roller bars that were ~1.5mm wide. They felt dirty almost immediately and the dirt was hard to spot, hard to remove. I can understand the dislike there.
• If you use a mechanical mouse, hard to underestimate how important a clean mouse pad is. Dirty mouse pad = dirty mouse.
• Track balls collect much less dirt and can free up space on a crowded desk. The Microsoft Intellimouse Trackball has wide rollers and has a good sized ball. I understand that track balls are not enjoyed by all in every application though.
• If you ever want to add a PS/2 mouse to a legacy computer, mod'ing the keyboard controller works for some Native PS/2 mouse implementation for 386/486 boards using the keyboard controller
• This card worked best for me Another PS/2 Mouse ISA (ISA8) card adapter . Neat & tight and no jitter issues, but it was never cheap and is not entirely available these days.
• There are a few different external serial to PS/2 or USB adapters. They have varying degrees of awkwardness & prices. Some have reported jitter issues when paired with some KVM switches.
• Someday I hope to see a compact 8 bit card with a type A USB port that provides solid serial mouse emulation without a lot of tweaking. We are not there yet.
• In the meantime, I've been astounded by how many Windows 9x and CUA92 keyboard shortcuts I've recalled in the past 3 years purely from muscle memory.

mistermister wrote on 2024-10-28, 12:58:

About the kvm, the Belkin Pro I have allows me to use PS2 or even certain USB mouse w/ adapter and converts to serial for the PC. Both serial and PS2 are available for each PC. No ball mice required.

Interesting. For the moment, I don't think I need the serial mouse functionality, as ideally I want to avoid having 386 and 486 PCs. I just don't have the space. I think to be fully covered for games it would probably need a couple of 386 and a couple of 486. The slowing down of the Pentium MMX seems to be the most space-efficient approach.

mistermister wrote on 2024-10-28, 12:58:

For flexible retro PC, motherboard and bios features are important. This is one reason certain MB are sought after. Installing a switch for different jumper options is a solution that I have used.

The idea of using OEM PC. I started with some OEM PCs they are easier to find at good price as mentioned above. Sometimes they have limitations in the BIOS and expandability same issue they had in their day. Eventually I replaced OEM with custom PCs. To get good parts for custom PCs at reasonable cost takes some patience I have done those over several years.

Yes, I've had this issue with a Compaq Deskpro PC that I bought. It has a Pentium MMX 233Mhz in it, and I thought I could use it with SETMUL for running older games. However, I can see no way in the BIOS (if you can even call it a BIOS - it seems to be based on Windows 3.x) to disable the motherboard cache. So the slowest it will go is about the speed of a 486 33mhz. Still not sure what to do with that PC now, as I can't use it for what I wanted it for. But, at the same time, I like the form-factor and the general look of it.

mistermister wrote on 2024-10-28, 12:58:

In my setup I have one input that I use for rotation so that more PCs can be swapped in easily as desired. This is my solution for having more PCs than I can attach at one time.

I guess that's similar reasoning to me having a test bench drawer. Though, thinking about it now, perhaps I could make that drawer just for storage, and route the inputs that were going to go there to come out to another nearby location. So I can plug in a standalone PC or test bench in an easier to access area. That means that any builds that I make, and want to keep, are better protected inside a case than they would be in a test bench that's stored on a shelf somewhere (I have several of those cheap open test-bench frames).

douglar wrote on 2024-10-28, 13:25:

Oohh mice. I'll talk about mice.

Wow. You certainly do know your stuff! As does everyone responding to this thread by the looks of it.

Ok. So, based on comments above I now have a revised list of machines to build. I've added a machine to cope specifically with older games that the Pentium MMX @ 300Mhz is too fast for. The new machine can be slowed to less than the speed of a 386 I think (Possibly as slow as a fast 286). I've removed one of the Win98 machines, and shifted around what GPUs are used, and the CPUs paired with them.

This is the updated list:

DOS 6.22/ Win3.11 (1985-1990) - Psuedo 386/25mhz-486/25mhz
(L2 Cache disabled. SETMUL to add further scaling options)
Pentium MMX – 166Mhz @100Mhz
8mb EDO RAM
ISA Trident 8900C 512mb
Sound Blaster Pro 2.0
Micro ATX Desktop PC

DOS 7 / Win95 (1990-1997)
(Can slow to the speed of a 486 by disabling caches and using SETMUL)
Pentium MMX – 233Mhz @300Mhz (Jan 1997) on Super-Socket 7 motherboard
64Mb PC100 SDRAM
AGP Riva 128 4mb (April 1997) + Voodoo 1 4mb (Oct 1996)
Soundblaster 16 CT2230
Horizontal ATX Desktop PC

DOS 7 / Early Win98 (1997-1999)
Slot 1 Pentium III – 550Mhz (Apr 1998)
128Mb PC100 RAM
TNT 2 (Oct 1999) + Voodoo 2 SLI (Feb 1998)
Sound Blaster 16 CT2290
Large Tower ATX Desktop PC

DOS / Late Win98 (1999-2001)
Socket 370 Pentium III – 1000Mhz (Oct 1999)
256Mb PC133 RAM
Geforce 2 GTS 32Mb (April 2000)
Sound Blaster 32 CT3670 (in DOS only) + Aureal Vortex 2 (In Windows Only)
Horizontal ATX Desktop PC

High End Win98 (2001-2003) / Early XP (2001-2003)
Pentium 4 – 3.4Ghz Cedarmill (Jan 2006)
512mb DDR RAM
Geforce 4600 (Feb 2002)
Sound Blaster Live
Micro ATX Desktop PC

Early WinXP (2001-2005)
Core 2 Duo E6600 (Jul 2006)
2Gb DDR RAM
Geforce 6800 128Mb (April 2004)
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Micro ATX Desktop PC

Late WinXP (2005-2010) / Windows Vista (2007-2009)
4Gb DDR2 RAM
Core 2 Quad QX9650 @3.8Ghz (Nov 2007)
Geforce 8800 GTS 512 (Dec 2007)
Auzentech Prelude 7.1 Sound Blaster X-FI
Large Tower ATX Desktop PC

As your "DOS 7 / Early Win98 (1997-1999)" build is the only one with a 3dfx card I think it needs a better soundcard for Windows.
Here is a list of the games you'll probably want to use the V2's with, some support A3D and/or EAX would be a shame to limit them to a SB16
List of Windows games which look best when using 3DFX Glide

A few comments / questions:

1) Why the overclock of the Pentium MMX 233 in the DOS 7 / Win95 (1990-1997) system? It seems a bit redundant given the overlap with the more powerful systems. It may also cause issues with some speed sensitive games (e.g. Runtime error 200).

2) I echo chinny22's comment about a better PCI sound card for the DOS 7 / Early Win98 (1997-1999) build under Windows 98.

3) I'd be a bit concerned about the 8800 GTS given 'bumpgate' and the reliability issues with cards of that era. I'd be tempted to get a card from a later series.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-10-30, 23:48:

As your "DOS 7 / Early Win98 (1997-1999)" build is the only one with a 3dfx card I think it needs a better soundcard for Windows.

Thanks. That's a good point. I have another Aureal Vortex 2 and several Live cards. Which would be better with the V2? I didn't add the Live until the high-end Windows 98/early XP machine, as I think that the Vortex 2 isn't as well supported in XP.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-31, 00:08:

A few comments / questions:

1) Why the overclock of the Pentium MMX 233 in the DOS 7 / Win95 (1990-1997) system? It seems a bit redundant given the overlap with the more powerful systems. It may also cause issues with some speed sensitive games (e.g. Runtime error 200).

I haven't encountered any speed issues yet that can't be resolved with SETMUL unless the title is pre-486 era. Any particular games you expect this to happen on? The primary reason for the overclock is that the Voodoo 1 and Riva 128 seem able to scale with the CPU. So I will get better framerates in those games with the overclock.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-31, 00:08:

2) I echo chinny22's comment about a better PCI sound card for the DOS 7 / Early Win98 (1997-1999) build under Windows 98.
Would you choose Live or Vortex 2?
3) I'd be a bit concerned about the 8800 GTS given 'bumpgate' and the reliability issues with cards of that era. I'd be tempted to get a card from a later series.

I have never heard of bumpgate! I assume I may as well use this GPU whilst it's working. It has an aftermarket Arctic Cooling heatsink on it. Not sure if that makes a difference. The next fastest GPU I have is a GTX 580. I think that's probably going to have compatability issues with some XP games and is overkill for the CPU. Do you agree? What GPU would you suggest?

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-31, 06:34:

I didn't add the Live until the high-end Windows 98/early XP machine, as I think that the Vortex 2 isn't as well supported in XP.

The SBLive was a bit outdated by the early WinXP era. You want an Audigy for that, since it supports EAX 3.0 while still having Win9x drivers as well.

Games started using EAX 3.0 in 2002, but the benefits of having 64 hardware voices on the Audigy (vs. 32 on the SBLive) can be noticeable even in some older titles.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-31, 06:41:

The SBLive was a bit outdated by the early WinXP era. You want an Audigy for that, since it supports EAX 3.0 while still having Win9x drivers as well.

Games started using EAX 3.0 in 2002, but the benefits of having 64 hardware voices on the Audigy (vs. 32 on the SBLive) can be noticeable even in some older titles.

Ah, yes. That makes sense. Thanks. I have several audigy cards. So I will put one in place of the SBLive then.

I am actually reconsidering now whether I should have a Pentium II machine in the mix in place of the test bench drawer.

I recently acquired (for free) a Gateway 2000 G6-233.

Specs:
Pentium II 233Mhz
Riva 128 4mb
Ensonic Audio PCI
64Mb RAM

If I were to add a Voodoo 1 to this machine, then I guess no need to overclock the Pentium MMX? In benchmarks this PII 233mhz is actually faster than the MMX @300mhz

Pentium MMX @ 300Mhz
3DMark 99: 491 3DMarks, 1933 CPU Marks
Unreal (Glide mode): 20fps

Pentium II @233Mhz
3DMark 99: 531 3D Marks, 2333 CPU Marks
Unreal (Glide mode): 25FPS

Though, neither is really good enough for playing Unreal TBH.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-31, 00:08:

3) I'd be a bit concerned about the 8800 GTS given 'bumpgate' and the reliability issues with cards of that era. I'd be tempted to get a card from a later series.

I've been looking into this bumpgate thing. I've seen posts on vogons implying that it's an issue from some 5000 series cards up until some 200 series cards. So it would seem that a 300 series card would be the oldest that's likely to be free from this issue? But, from what I see, it was most common on 7000/8000 series. Is that correct?

So, perhaps a 9800 GTX might be a good backup plan?

By the way, my 8800 GTS 512mb is one that I have had since it was new in 2008. The Arctic Cooling replacement heatsink has been on it the entire time. Its a fanless design, but I always had airflow going past it.

It's this model:

https://www.coolerguys.com/products/arctic-co … 3K8R-4YsWkDcuqJ