RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-02-11, 20:39:

Is this out of your price range?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/126922438857

I am not affiliated with this seller, but they seem to have a good rating

Oh i saw this one, and a couple others I think that had that same odd super dark bottom. I looked into it and some peeps had reported in the past getting fake CPUs 🤣, i.e. some sellers had painted over and stamped a better SKU. That and my mind initially though, why is it so dark? It looks like it's cooked almost xD like ... was it overheating or something? 😜

It is otherwise NOT out of my price range I just wans't happy with it's condition, unless you all think it's fine and I'm being paranoid? 😜

furyanwolf wrote on 2025-02-11, 20:28:

Thank you ALL again for your time and in depth replies! ^_^ […]
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Thank you ALL again for your time and in depth replies! 😄

I have taken some time since the last post to dive deeper into the yet unresolved topics, studied all your detailed replies and as of now here is where my initial queries stand (ordered by resolution status):

1. GPU: RESOLVED - nVidia Riva 128
3. RAM: RESOLVED - will stick with 32MB - 64MB EDO RAM
5. HEAT: RESOLVED - any socket 7 heatsink with good fan

4. OS: TENTATIVE - leaning towards Windows 95, think it will be a better experience for me overall having a familiar-ish UI. Still open to Windows 3.1 if necessary but highly likely to be Win95 at this point.
6. PSU: TENTATIVE - decided I will opt for NEW PSU with AT adapters, been reading too many stories of near or full blown disasters with old AT PSU stock. Just need to better understand power button mechanics for AT cases and I should be good to go
7. CPU: OPEN TO - a Pentium 233 MMX may be harder to acquire than anticipated, would a 200MMX fulfill the same easy downclock functions as the 233? What about a 166 MMX?

Finally, the real meat and potatoes of my reply:
2. SOUND: TENTATIVE - Options below:

• PREFERRED - Yamaha A151-A00 featuring a 71x OPL3-SAx chip
• OPEN TO - Creative Sound Blaster 16 CT2940 WITH an OPL3 chip on board
• OPEN TO - OPTi 82C930 by "Pro-Multimedia"

Thank you all again for the dense and in depth sound card discussion, props to dionb for that crash course into what some of these terms really mean. I've since stumbled onto THIS lovely site and tried to gain an even better understanding of all this sound wild west. Between what I've learnt and what the market currently has available at a reasonable price at this exact moment in time, I've come up with the list above. There IS also a Creative AWE64 Gold floating about but it's a bit too rich for my blood right now.

So, my reasoning for preferring the Yamaha card is that it seems to be the least problematic of the available bunch and also features the best OPL3 chip, being a 71x rather and the 289 on the Sound Blaster. I'm also honestly still confused on whether this particular Sound Blaster model would have that "hanging bug" I've read about and also the sentiment I've gathered seems to be that the Yamaha puts out cleaner overall sound than this Sound Blaster? The OPTi 930 is really just there as an alternative right now.

All that said, I would love to know what you all think about these 3 specific options, what would YOU choose out of these 3 and if it's not the Yamaha, then why? 😜 I tend to have an itchy/impulsive shopping trigger finger so I may or may not purchase one in the meantime if my heart settles but I would still love to know what you all think! 😄 Thanks!

The Yamaha is a great choice and will likely be your best choice. Don't worry about the "7x9" vs "289" thing. Those numbers aren't related to each other. What matters is that they are both authentic OPL3 chips.

You will encounter some version of the hanging note bug on any ISA Sound Blaster card. If you aren't interested in MIDI at all then it doesn't matter. But if you want to leave the MIDI door open, the Yamaha will be your best choice.

As for the Opti, I don't have any personal experience with it, but I believe it's supposed to decent. And it shouldn't have the hanging note bug either.

EDIT: I should also mention that the Yamaha and Opti will operate as "Sound Blaster Pro compatible", while the CT2940 will be a proper SB16 in supported games. You'd probably need to decide if it matters to you. My personal feeling is that it can make for nicer sound, but you might need headphones to really care about the difference.

furyanwolf wrote on 2025-02-11, 20:44:

Oh i saw this one, and a couple others I think that had that same odd super dark bottom. I looked into it and some peeps had reported in the past getting fake CPUs 🤣, i.e. some sellers had painted over and stamped a better SKU. That and my mind initially though, why is it so dark? It looks like it's cooked almost xD like ... was it overheating or something? 😜

It is otherwise NOT out of my price range I just wans't happy with it's condition, unless you all think it's fine and I'm being paranoid? 😜

The seller does accept returns. So little risk, unless you think it may kill your motherboard. The seller description does say its been stress tested and works.

I think little point in stamping markings for a different SKU. I believe most Pentium MMX CPUs can only be run at the rated multiplier or lower. I don't think higher multipliers work. Maybe someone can confirm that though. I am no expert.

Make sure your motherboard can supply the lower 2.8v that MMX CPUs require.

furyanwolf wrote on 2025-02-11, 20:28:

4. OS: TENTATIVE - leaning towards Windows 95, think it will be a better experience for me overall having a familiar-ish UI. Still open to Windows 3.1 if necessary but highly likely to be Win95 at this point.

What are you doing for storage? If you are going with the ubiquitous CF cards, that makes it easy to try different OSes.

I'd probably recommend starting with 98SE. A Pentium MMX is perhaps a tad bit on the slow side for 98SE, but especially if you are too young to have had personal experience with the older OSes, starting with the newest possible OS may lower the learning curve a bit.

DOS/Win3.11 is... interesting. Speaking as someone who hadn't touched DOS since Aug. 24, 1995 and just started trying to build a DOS box in the last couple of months, in some ways, it's like riding a bike, you never really forget how to work a config.sys and an autoexec.bat. Or how resolutions and video drivers are one and the same in Win3.11, unlike in every other newer OS. But if you never learned in your youth... that'll be one hell of a learning curve. We live in a world where basically Windows 95 (and to a lesser extent the 5.x versions of NT and the early versions of OS X) pretty much defined what an OS for a PC is for the past 30 years. Going pre-Win95 is... going to be very, very different.

furyanwolf wrote on 2025-02-11, 20:28:

7. CPU: OPEN TO - a Pentium 233 MMX may be harder to acquire than anticipated, would a 200MMX fulfill the same easy downclock functions as the 233? What about a 166 MMX?

A Pentium 200 MMX will be fine. AFAIK it supports everything the 233 does, just runs at a slightly slower clock speed.

MMX chips are a bit faster, but even still upgrading from a non mmx to a mmx at the same clock speed feels a bit pointless.
If you get the 200MMX at least your also upgrading clock speed as well! Keeping in mind this is more focused on dos and you'll also have a P3 for Win9x. I think either the MMX 200 or 233 are good choices.

out of the sound cards, your reasoning is 100% spot on.
Hanging note bugs are only a concern if using an external midi device or daughterboard and easy work around exists (use a 2nd sound card)
All ISA soundcards are noisy but also sound in dos era games are also low quality. It's hardly a deal breaker.
Main reason to not choose the SB16 is price.

Okay, so, I've fallen even deeper down the sound card rabbit hole xD aaaand, I've tottaly narrowed down to TWO cards below. The Sound Blaster and OPTi 930 have completely fallen off and a new contender has entered into the FINALS! I will 100% be getting one of these two cards shortly-ish, just a matter of some final digging. The final contenders are:

• Yamaha Audician 32 Plus (A151-A00) featuring the 71x OPL3-SAx chip
• Pine Technology PT230x featuring the ESS ES1868 AudioDrive chip

Both have the same compatibilities and neither supports SB 16 but I can live with that for now given the cleaner audio they both provide. The final question now is, do I want to give in to the monkey in my head going "OPL3! OPL3! OPL3! OPL3!" or do I take a chance on the also loved ESS card which I should mention I can get at almost half the price of the Yamaha. Currently checking out some audio samples from both on YouTube and I must say I am quite impressed with the ESS chip, I often even prefer the sound of it, just that my "go with the crowd" mentality is pulling hard towards the OPL3 card lmao xD

In any case, I'll be deciding shortly on this final point but any last minute opinions or personal preferences/comments on these options are still welcomed 😜

furyanwolf wrote on 2025-02-12, 12:28:

In any case, I'll be deciding shortly on this final point but any last minute opinions or personal preferences/comments on these options are still welcomed 😜

I have those cards, and they are both very good.

The ESS 1868F supports ADPCM and has a low-pass filter enabled by default in SBPro mode. It uses ESFM instead of real OPL3, but I personally don't mind that, as it sounds very close to my ears. You can also get 16-bit audio from that card in DOS games which support its native AudioDrive mode, but those aren't that common. You can modify certain DOS games for a bit more compatibility with this, but that takes some effort.

The YMF71x has genuine OPL3 in its core, doesn't support ADPCM and doesn't have a low-pass filter enabled by default. You can mod this filter back in by replacing a few SMD capacitors, but that takes some moderate soldering skills. This card supports 16-bit audio via Windows Sound System (WSS) which works just fine in DOS, despite its name. This is a bit more widely supported by games than the ESS AudioDrive mode, so there's that.

The OPTi 82C930 is pretty decent too, but both of the aforementioned cards are probably better choices. You can read my full review of that card here: OPTi 82C930 review

furyanwolf wrote on 2025-02-12, 12:28:

Both have the same compatibilities and neither supports SB 16 but I can live with that for now given the cleaner audio they both provide. The final question now is, do I want to give in to the monkey in my head going "OPL3! OPL3! OPL3! OPL3!" or do I take a chance on the also loved ESS card which I should mention I can get at almost half the price of the Yamaha. Currently checking out some audio samples from both on YouTube and I must say I am quite impressed with the ESS chip, I often even prefer the sound of it, just that my "go with the crowd" mentality is pulling hard towards the OPL3 card lmao xD

In any case, I'll be deciding shortly on this final point but any last minute opinions or personal preferences/comments on these options are still welcomed 😜

While I haven't used the specific Pine Technology you have listed, I have used other cards based on the ESS chips. In my experience ESFM sounds virtually identical to Yamaha's OPL3. I don't think you can go wrong either way.

Both cards also have wavetable daughterboard connectors, which will be nice to have if you decide to add a daugherboard for General MIDI playback.

Nice project you have here, a p166 is great and basically can handle any late era 3d cpu-intensive dos game very well. I was checking out this 1996 article on the ultimate gaming PC recently and their suggested specs for the ultimate rig were a p166, 16MB ram and a soundblaster 16. There was not much coming out for dos in the remainder of the 90s so this cpu is definitely adequate. https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/com … w_to_build_the/

As others have said, you will run into some early games running too fast, but we're talking primarily stuff from the 1980s and maybe into 1990 and 1991, and while cool in their own way, based on what you're used to, I think you may find that with a few exceptions, many of these early games are very rudimentary and will not capture your interest for a long time. You won't be able to play Bouncing Babies, but coming from things like Quake 3, I have a feeling you probably wouldn't spend more than a minute playing rudimentary games like this anyway. Overall, the vast majority of dos games coming out in the 90s will run at the correct speed on the 166 so I don't think there is an urgent need to get an mmx to have the easier slow down capability.

You don't really need a 3d accelerator. There's a few late era dos games that support those, mainly through the glide API, but the majority of dos 3d games did not.

I forget if you mentioned a cdrom drive, but having a working drive will make for a good experience. There are many dos games with CD audio soundtracks and I don't think there is a good way to run those from an iso on your hard drive with a system of this era. There are programs that will emulate CD drives that could run on this system, even for dos, but in this era, there was a hardware cable connection directly between the CD drive and the sound card such that CD audio did not have to be processed by the CPU, and no dos CD drive emulators emulate this capability, and even such emulators for Windows 9x/XP/me like daemon tools, seem to have issues with playing back the CD audio for dos games.

Okay, it's done 😜 Thank you all for the feedback on the sound card! Also on additional CPU recommendations. I have now placed orders for the Yamaha Audician 32 Plus with the 71x OPL3-SAx chip aaand a Pentium 233 MMX that to improve on the 166 non-MMX coming with the board. Hopefully this combo with some downclocking will expand the library of games available as wide as possible 😄

I will likely also stick with Windows 95 I think. All that's left to do now is figure out storage as VivienM pointed out. I don't know how to tackle that just yet but I suspect I will take the path of least resistance. That and the power supply needs to be sorted out too 😜

Thanks again everyone for all the help! This should be a fun build! 😄

Full Specs of the "New" to me DOS Gaming PC as of right now:

• Asus P/I-P55T2P4 Rev 3.10 Socket 7 board
• Pentium MMX 233 Mhz
• nVidia Riva 128
• Yamaha Audician 32 Plus w/OPL3-SAx
• 64 MB EDO RAM (possibly reduced to 32 MB if compatibility becomes an issue)
• New ATX PSU w/AT adapters
• Undecided Storage Device
• Undecided CD Drive
• Undecided Floppy Drive(s)
• Windows 95

I think it's looking pretty neat 😄

System is shaping up really nice.

-There are tons of different storage options. First things first, make sure you get your BIOS up-to-date. With an updated BIOS your system can support up to 120GB drives. That gives you more choices. I like using SD-to-IDE or SATA-to-IDE adapters, but a lot of people also like to do CF-to-IDE adapters. Or just get an old HDD if you want all the proper sounds. Just don't be surprised if it dies on you. 😀

-CD drive just needs to be something that works and maybe looks nice in your case. You might not want the fastest possible drive because they can sound like a jet engine when they fully spin up. Can get quite distracting.

-A basic 3.5" floppy drive should be enough the get by. If you want to get into collecting physical games and using the disks, you'll want a 5.25" drive as well for the earlier DOS games. But if you don't care about actual disks, the most convenient option is a Gotek floppy emulator. They work great.

That's a nice system you're getting bit-by-bit.

It's looking less like a DOS system and more like a Win95 system, which doesn't have to be bad - and every one of the choices you've made pushing it in that direction still supports DOS fully (Riva128 has great VESA compatibility, Yamaha 7xx is great in DOS, P233MMX etc).

I saw a suggestion to go for Win98SE instead of Win95. Even though you can't seriously run Win98 games on this, there'e a lot of merit in that suggestion. Win98SE can run everything Win95 can and it's a significantly more modern OS. I'm not even talking about support for things like USB, but installing drivers is a lot less painful. IMHO the only downside is that Win98SE has a heavier footprint and you'll really want that 64MB of RAM, where dropping to 32MB is a viable option for Win95. Note that in DOS you can limit RAM in HIMEM.SYS anyway, it's just more effort than removing a few SIMMs.

As for storage, my preferred option for this era is DiskOnModule devices, basically an SSD in a plastic lump you stick onto your IDE connector. I find them more reliable than CF cards for OSs that write a lot to disk, and easier to use than real SSDs (plus much smaller, which is an advantage when talking of this kind of machine). The 40p PATA IDE versions were dirt cheap up to about a year ago but have shot up in price recently - but the 44p PATA versions (for mobile) are still very affordable; I picked up two 16GB ones recently for less than EUR 10 each. You just need an adapter to connect them to 40p IDE and a mini-MOLEX power connector. They can be found cheaply on eBay too.

In terms of floppy, unless you have a pile of physical floppies, I'd suggest either dropping this requirement, or adding a Gotek drive instead.

CD can be useful for audio and are cheap enough. You have a PATA system so go for a PATA drive. Plextor is the Rolls Royce of CD drives, but anything that works should be fine. Bear in mind most drives have a rubber drive belt that has probably started desintegrating. If so, it's a fairly easy (if fiddly) fix.

furyanwolf wrote on 2025-02-12, 14:06:

Full Specs of the "New" to me DOS Gaming PC as of right now: […]
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Full Specs of the "New" to me DOS Gaming PC as of right now:

• Asus P/I-P55T2P4 Rev 3.10 Socket 7 board
• Pentium MMX 233 Mhz
• nVidia Riva 128
• Yamaha Audician 32 Plus w/OPL3-SAx
• 64 MB EDO RAM (possibly reduced to 32 MB if compatibility becomes an issue)
• New ATX PSU w/AT adapters
• Undecided Storage Device
• Undecided CD Drive
• Undecided Floppy Drive(s)
• Windows 95

I think it's looking pretty neat 😄

That's shaping up nicely!

For storage, since you are planning to go with Windows 95, I would suggest an SSD drive (SATA) with a SATA-to-IDE adapter. Windows 95 OSR2 supports a maximum partition size of 32 GB. So you could get a 120GB SSD (about the smallest size available) and then format it for 32 GB. That would be a lot of storage for a Windows 95 era PC, when hard drives were typically in the 2 to 4 GB range.

Any IDE CD-ROM drive should work. It depends on whether you want something newer and faster (and louder), versus older drives which while slower, also were a lot quieter. Whether you planned to use burned CDs is something to consider, since older CD-ROM drives may not be as compatible with CD-R or CD-RW discs.

For the floppy drive, if you want the authentic experience then a 1.44MB 3.5" drive and real 3.5" disks is the way to go. If you are fine with emulating floppy disks, then a Gotek is another good option. Or you could always do both. A 5.25" isn't needed for a system of this era. It was more common with 486 and earlier systems.

One reason I like having a real floppy drive is the start up seek sound. Even if I'm not using the drive for anything, that start up sound is important to me. 😁

furyanwolf wrote on 2025-02-12, 14:06:

Undecided Storage Device

If you go with an internal storage device (e.g. IDE hard drive, SSD via adapter, DOM etc.) you may also want to think about a network card as a means for getting data to that PC. From my experience, 3Com 3C905B cards work well enough for Socket 7 systems. But if you go for CF or SD cards and choose a front mounting adapter, you can just turn off your retro rig, pull out the card and put it into a USB 3.0 card reader on your main PC for file transfers.

There are pros and cons to both approaches, so you may want to do some research before making the decision.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-02-12, 20:02:

furyanwolf wrote on 2025-02-12, 14:06:

Undecided Storage Device

If you go with an internal storage device (e.g. IDE hard drive, SSD via adapter, DOM etc.) you may also want to think about a network card as a means for getting data to that PC. From my experience, 3Com 3C905B cards work well enough for Socket 7 systems. But if you go for CF or SD cards and choose a front mounting adapter, you can just turn off your retro rig, pull out the card and put it into a USB 3.0 card reader on your main PC for file transfers.

There are pros and cons to both approaches, so you may want to do some research before making the decision.

Be careful with recommending 3C90x cards for DOS systems, their packet drivers can be very buggy. There's no need to go for a PCI card here, a 3C509B ISA card would be a more reliable option.

dionb wrote on 2025-02-12, 20:21:

Be careful with recommending 3C90x cards for DOS systems, their packet drivers can be very buggy. There's no need to go for a PCI card here, a 3C509B ISA card would be a more reliable option.

I've had good experiences with the 905B cards specifically. Both in DOS 6.22 and Win95 OSR2.1. Though transfer speeds leave much to be desired on the latter. That said, I do remember having some issues with the 905C cards, so maybe they are less suitable for older Socket 7 systems. Intel PRO/100 cards should also be a solid choice from what I've heard, but I have never used one of those myself.

But I agree, an ISA 3Com card would work fine as well on such a system.

Graphics cards: S3 Trio64. Don't think about it, just go with it. It's the one for DOS.
Sound card: Sound Blaster 16, the non-PnP version.
RAM: 64MB is enough.
OS: I usually dual boot DOS+Win31 and Windows 95 on separate partitions using BOOTMGR from BTTR Software with this type of machine.
Heatsink: that one you posted is fine.
PSU: any AT PSU should be fine but if you want to be safer you can get an ATX to AT adapter and use a modern ATX power supply.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2025-02-12, 20:43:

Graphics cards: S3 Trio64. Don't think about it, just go with it. It's the one for DOS.

For a 1995-era system, maybe. For a 1997-era system (which is what OP is now going for), there are better options.