It sure is a nice thing to have, I'd love to find one and build a system around it. It's a curiosity.

To bad it's pretty much unobtanium where I live...

The Compaq Presario 2200 was kinda neat with the integrated speakers and "subwoofer" in the case...

douglar wrote on 2025-02-14, 15:56:

Does anyone have a MediaGX based computer that they like?

Seems like an acquired taste.

Sure! It's the heart of the Surfstation JNT that I use as my main computer in the ham shack.
It runs MS-DOS 6.22, has a network card, SB16, IDE port added etc.
I use it to run GeoWorks Ensemble, Windows 3.1 (256c SVGA drivers) and to run my ham software.
The STS+ orbit prediction, too, so I can see passes of the ISS.

Here's a picture of it:
Re: Anything else besides games on your retro PC? How old are You?

Videos..
STS+
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d2KabcXL4O0

UI-View
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tzyQyCRyeWE
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7BLD1qIZQos

Marble Cooking
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eCfG5hTRc5U
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=11A9YZyuguA

GEOS
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A0_Ziif3DEQ

Jo22 wrote on 2025-02-14, 20:43:

Sure! It's the heart of the Surfstation JNT that I use as my main computer in the ham shack. It runs MS-DOS 6.22, has a network […]
Show full quote

douglar wrote on 2025-02-14, 15:56:

Does anyone have a MediaGX based computer that they like?

Seems like an acquired taste.

Sure! It's the heart of the Surfstation JNT that I use as my main computer in the ham shack.
It runs MS-DOS 6.22, has a network card, SB16, IDE port added etc.
I use it to run GeoWorks Ensemble, Windows 3.1 (256c SVGA drivers) and to run my ham software.
The STS+ orbit prediction, too, so I can see passes of the ISS.

Quite a beautiful monitor and setup.

Many Bothans wrote on 2025-02-14, 20:26:

The Compaq Presario 2200 was kinda neat with the integrated speakers and "subwoofer" in the case...

Oh yeah... I have one.

Quite a peculiar machine. One of the first "all in one" solutions. With integrated audio and video.

There's a lot of compatiblity problems on DOS and performance leaves a lot to be desired (no MMX). Due to the design of the chipset, the video card works at an ISA video card speed, which makes it suitable only for slow paced games. For expansion there's only one very inaccessible 8-bit ISA slot =)

It has great speakers and sounds great on Windows but... the SB-Legacy compatible mode outputs low quality sound. It appears to be 8-bit, but I'm not sure what it is called. So there goes another possible redeeming quality.

Overall it's nice to have it because it's a part of history, it has a nice case and speakers but with DOS games it sounds harsh.

I will try to overclock it in the future one day, just for fun.

Many Bothans wrote on 2025-02-14, 20:26:

The Compaq Presario 2200 was kinda neat with the integrated speakers and "subwoofer" in the case...

Any idea what that power adapter is?

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/fic-pgx-2000

Last week built a system around the ECS P5GX-M motherboard with a MediaGXm-300GP CPU.

At least, the board is very similar to the P5GX-M and came with a modular embedded BIOS, unfortunately with very few modules installed. So to get a usable system I flashed it with P5GX-M BIOS which works.

One idiosyncratic feature is that the board doesn't do soft power on - despite there being a power switch header the system immediately powers on when power cable is attached. The power button does work - press 5 sec and the system stops - and restarts immediately when you let go.

I installed DOS 7.1 on a 16GB DoM and played around a bit. The SB16 hardware emulation is impressive. Haven't been able to get MPU401 to work though...

tauro wrote on 2025-02-14, 20:50:

Due to the design of the chipset, the video card works at an ISA video card speed, which makes it suitable only for slow paced games. For expansion there's only one very inaccessible 8-bit ISA slot =)

That’s unfortunate. Is this how all Media GX processors work?

douglar wrote on 2025-02-14, 21:53:

tauro wrote on 2025-02-14, 20:50:

Due to the design of the chipset, the video card works at an ISA video card speed, which makes it suitable only for slow paced games. For expansion there's only one very inaccessible 8-bit ISA slot =)

That’s unfortunate. Is this how all Media GX processors work?

I don't think so, as later Cyrix GX chipsets/processors support the PCI bus (they support MMX instructions too), so you can use your own video card to get a decent Pentium-tier system.

dionb wrote on 2025-02-14, 21:31:

I installed DOS 7.1 on a 16GB DoM and played around a bit. The SB16 hardware emulation is impressive. Haven't been able to get MPU401 to work though...

Does your SB16 emulation output high quality audio?
How would compare your experience with this system to a regular Pentium MMX system?
Any problems installing Windows or with other software?
On the Presario 2200 installing Windows 98 is not easy. And according to my notes many DOS programs crash, including Speedsys. I'll have to dust it off and re-check everything.

douglar wrote on 2025-02-14, 21:11:

Many Bothans wrote on 2025-02-14, 20:26:

The Compaq Presario 2200 was kinda neat with the integrated speakers and "subwoofer" in the case...

Any idea what that power adapter is?

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/fic-pgx-2000

It's a proprietary Compaq® PSU. Not sure how common it is. I could check the voltages if you need it.

tauro wrote on 2025-02-14, 22:18:

It's a proprietary Compaq® PSU. Not sure how common it is. I could check the voltages if you need it.

Please, that would be great. I know someone who has an old compaq board with no PS. We will make make an ATX20-->MGX adapter and I'll get the info to retro web.

douglar wrote on 2025-02-15, 13:51:

tauro wrote on 2025-02-14, 22:18:

It's a proprietary Compaq® PSU. Not sure how common it is. I could check the voltages if you need it.

Please, that would be great. I know someone who has an old compaq board with no PS. We will make make an ATX20-->MGX adapter and I'll get the info to retro web.

Sure!

5v
5v
12v
-12v
GND
GND

To create your adapter you could use a regular AT connector and trim it a bit so that it fits. The distance between the pins is the same. Even the order of the pins is identical to P8, except that I'm not sure if "Power good" (orange 5v) is exactly the same as the regular 5v (red).

tauro wrote on 2025-02-15, 21:25:

To create your adapter you could use a regular AT connector and trim it a bit so that it fits. The distance between the pins is the same. Even the order of the pins is identical to P8, except that I'm not sure if "Power good" (orange 5v) is exactly the same as the regular 5v (red).

Thanks. Is there an external power switch or does the motherboard pass a power-on signal back somehow? Any idea about the front panel?

The PSU has a switch on the back, next to the power plug. Once you flip the switch the computer comes on automatically. That's not something that you can disable AFAIK.

There's a ribbon cable that goes into a front panel. On the other end there's a small PCB with 3 buttons and two (actually three) LEDs.

The computer lacks an on/off button. When you turn it off via APM, the front LED turns orange. You can turn it back on by pressing the "Suspend SW".

If you press this button while the computer is on, it puts the system to sleep. Once you press it again, it returns to its previous state. So it's pretty useless to me. And by the way, while suspended, the PSU is still working (all the voltages are present). I'm not very confident about this old PSU so when I power it off I do it from the physical PSU switch, so I don't use this suspend button at all.

And there is no reset!

Here's the FP

11. Black  - Power LED
22. Brown  - Suspend LED (orange)
33. Red    - HDD LED
44. Orange - Vol up SW
55. Yellow - Vol down SW
66. Green  - Suspend/Power On SW
77. Blue   - GND

I measured the LEDs and there's 2v.

I will do more tests with this thing when I find the time and try to improve performance. It's quite strange. Doom 27.5 FPS and Quake 20.4 FPS... There's a bottleneck somewhere or some other strange limitation that escapes my understanding.

tauro wrote on 2025-02-17, 08:06:

I will do more tests with this thing when I find the time and try to improve performance. It's quite strange. Doom 27.5 FPS and Quake 20.4 FPS... There's a bottleneck somewhere or some other strange limitation that escapes my understanding.

Try FastDoom. I’ve seen this mentioned with other MediaGX systems - the video chipset in certain modes is slow, Maybe ModeX?

BinaryDemon wrote on 2025-02-17, 08:33:

Try FastDoom. I’ve seen this mentioned with other MediaGX systems - the video chipset in certain modes is slow, Maybe ModeX?

I just tried and I don't see any improvements other than that it gets faster when I disable the textures "Visplane/Sky". I tried all the CPU renderers (there's no specific MediaGX option).
The CPU is not that bad, especially for 1997, but the chipset/video card is quite weak. That would also explain why Quake can get to 20 FPS. Maybe a hacker with talent and patience can figure out how to improve the performance of this hardware.

I have a mediagx build, 266mhz, love it

I have a cyrix 5x86 120mhz and the mediagx is JUST double speed, is like have a 486 on steroids

The best video card i found for it, is a Ark 2000PV, even faster than fastest S3 or Cirrus. Never use onboard video or sound, is shit

I stand corrected!
Vanilla FDOOM is slow, FDOOMX is slow...

But FDM240R is quite fast. 35 FPS! with minor slowdowns (~31 FPS). Full detail. I get 34.1 FPS on DEMO3.

If there are any tweaks that you can think of, please share them.

theelf wrote on 2025-02-17, 08:57:

I have a mediagx build, 266mhz, love it

I have a cyrix 5x86 120mhz and the mediagx is JUST double speed, is like have a 486 on steroids

The best video card i found for it, is a Ark 2000PV, even faster than fastest S3 or Cirrus. Never use onboard video or sound, is shit

The question is that this board only has one 8-bit ISA slot for expansion...

I've been toying around with a MediaGX system for a couple weeks. I really wanted to like it, because it's built using a P5GX-M board, so I think of it as the closest thing you can get to a 486 system in a modern mATX standard. But yeah:

1) the FPU part is roughly equal to a Pentium with half the clock. So my GXm 266 is close to P133. That being said, you can get Quake to 30FPS.

I hoped it would inherit the software multiplier from Cyrix 5x86 (so I could slow down the system to a 386 or something), but nope.

At the same time there's no L2 cache to turn off, and Moslo has also been weird for me (/p3 makes the system crawl down to XT or low 286 speeds in Wing Commander)

I also tried upgrading to GX1 (which was the last one before they switched to AMD-based Geodes). A bit surprisingly every benchmark I ran was the same as on the GXm down to a decimal (both are 266 chips). It's simply a die-shrunk version of the same core.

I know you can kinda make the system running faster by enabling branch prediction through software, but haven't messed with this.

2) the video part sucks at Mode Y/X (Doom) and also has compatibility issues even with some text mode stuff — I'd get weird symbols in Norton Commander, for example. So I'm using a proper PCI card for this build

3) the uDMA drivers never really got fixed, there's a very particular procedure to install them without breaking the system

4) I guess the sound part is kinda impressive, but I have better soundcards than that. So in the end I'm not using built-in audio either. Also IIRC it has been reported to have issues with some memory configurations.

So in the end it manages to be both too slow and inflexible for a DOS gaming rig, the built-in components are kinda useless if you have any other cards in your collection. So I'm happy I got to play with it, but can't see myself really using it in the future.

jheronimus wrote on 2025-02-17, 09:09:

I've been toying around with a MediaGX system for a couple weeks. I really wanted to like it, because it's built using a P5GX-M […]
Show full quote

I've been toying around with a MediaGX system for a couple weeks. I really wanted to like it, because it's built using a P5GX-M board, so I think of it as the closest thing you can get to a 486 system in a modern mATX standard. But yeah:

1) the FPU part is roughly equal to a Pentium with half the clock. So my GXm 266 is close to P133. That being said, you can get Quake to 30FPS.

I hoped it would inherit the software multiplier from Cyrix 5x86 (so I could slow down the system to a 386 or something), but nope.

At the same time there's no L2 cache to turn off, and Moslo has also been weird for me (/p3 makes the system crawl down to XT or low 286 speeds in Wing Commander)

I also tried upgrading to GX1 (which was the last one before they switched to AMD-based Geodes). A bit surprisingly every benchmark I ran was the same as on the GXm down to a decimal (both are 266 chips). It's simply a die-shrunk version of the same core.

I know you can kinda make the system running faster by enabling branch prediction through software, but haven't messed with this.

2) the video part sucks at Mode Y/X (Doom) and also has compatibility issues even with some text mode stuff — I'd get weird symbols in Norton Commander, for example. So I'm using a proper PCI card for this build

3) the uDMA drivers never really got fixed, there's a very particular procedure to install them without breaking the system

4) I guess the sound part is kinda impressive, but I have better soundcards than that. So in the end I'm not using built-in audio either. Also IIRC it has been reported to have issues with some memory configurations.

So in the end it manages to be both too slow and inflexible for a DOS gaming rig, the built-in components are kinda useless if you have any other cards in your collection. So I'm happy I got to play with it, but can't see myself really using it in the future.

The FPU in my benchmarks is almost same as my cyrix 5x86. For example i can get 16fps in my quake test in 5x86@120 build and 34fps in the 266mmhz mediagxm