Nice build. I have never seen a full copper tower like that. I imagine that's quite heavy?

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-06-15, 17:05:

Impulse Tracker 2.14: The software works but somehow the screen is streched partly outside of my physical monitor. I think roughly the lower fourth of the screen is outside of it. Other than that it works fine, and this might be an issue with the monitor? But on two other retro systems, this does not occur with the same monitor, so it might also be a driver issue.

Almost certainly an issue with the monitor not liking the display mode than impulse tracker uses. 640x400/720x400@70hz is one of the least supported display modes on modern screens.

NeoG_ wrote on Yesterday, 00:02:

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-06-15, 17:05:

Impulse Tracker 2.14: The software works but somehow the screen is streched partly outside of my physical monitor. I think roughly the lower fourth of the screen is outside of it. Other than that it works fine, and this might be an issue with the monitor? But on two other retro systems, this does not occur with the same monitor, so it might also be a driver issue.

Almost certainly an issue with the monitor not liking the display mode than impulse tracker uses. 640x400/720x400@70hz is one of the least supported display modes on modern screens.

But it worked on several other systems, using the same software and the same screen, so I guess it's probably related to the graphics card (or more likely its driver) instead.

NorsteinB wrote on Yesterday, 04:15:

But it worked on several other systems, using the same software and the same screen, so I guess it's probably related to the graphics card (or more likely its driver) instead.

Can you confirm with another game that uses the 640x400@70hz display mode - For example Descent 2. If yes it means that you are right it is the GPU messing up. It may not have a native modeline for 400 lines 70hz and be doing some kind of 60hz conversion that is messing with the picture. What resolution does the monitor think it's receiving?

NeoG_ wrote on Yesterday, 04:27:

Can you confirm with another game that uses the 640x400@70hz display mode - For example Descent 2. If yes it means that you are right it is the GPU messing up. It may not have a native modeline for 400 lines 70hz and be doing some kind of 60hz conversion that is messing with the picture. What resolution does the monitor think it's receiving?

Descent 2 DOS mode: Video looks fine, main menu looks fine, attract mode only consists of a black screen flashing red or blue from time to time, loading screen looks extremely pixelated and the colors are so f***ed up you can hardly make up it seems to say "DESCENT", then the explanation of enemies looks fine again, then the game itself is like the attract mode: I hear the music, I see a black screen, pressing space bar makes the screen slowly flash red for a second I guess, but otherwise absolutely nothing visible.

Descent 2 Windows mode: everything looks fine I guess

I had a hunch it might be different when the display is connected via VGA, since IIRC that is how I connected the previous systems.
Alas, it makes no difference.

Attached are pictures of the current state, the last one is from a different build using the same Windows 98 SE installation and Impulse Tracker 2.14 on the same monitor.

Another issue: Final Fantasy VII only detects a "Primary Display Device" and has no other rendering options then "Software Renderer". On my other system, it detected my video adapters properly (Geforce 4 Ti and dual Voodoo²s).
Maybe I need to install another Geforce driver. But I somehow doubt a later driver fixes issues with legacy games like that.
Should I try an older card like the Geforce 3 Ti 200 instead? But I'd kinda miss the whole giant copper thingy on the current one.

Swapping a Geforce 3 Ti 200 in and installing Nvidia driver 21.83 fixed the issues with Impulse Tracker and Descent 2 in DOS mode.

Issue with FFVII not properly detecting the card and only offering software rendering sadly persists. Weirdly enough, like with the FX 5900 XT before, it says "Pass" to all graphics features checked.

Another issue popped up, though. 3DMark 2001SE (formerly 9200 points, now 4355) reproducably crashes after the second lobby test finishes. Disabling the Nature test that immediately follows solves that, but overall I feel like stability has definitely decreased.
Since the 9200 points were a relatively low score for the FX 5900 XT, most likely mainly due to the RAM. I know the CPU is "just" an AMD Athlon XP 2000+, but with a 3400+ it scores twice that, and the bench really shouldn't scale 1:1 with the CPU.

I'm awfully close to transplanting that Zalman VF-1000 to a Geforce 4 series card next, since sadly I have no FX 5600 (which should work with older drives than the FX 5900 XT and consume a lot less power, but still run circles around an FX 5200 or 5500). Also the GF3 Ti 200 I own does not have a DVI output, restricting me to the inferior VGA.
Urg. Let's see what I've got left in my boxes of cards.

NorsteinB wrote on Yesterday, 10:31:

Issue with FFVII not properly detecting the card and only offering software rendering sadly persists. Weirdly enough, like with the FX 5900 XT before, it says "Pass" to all graphics features checked.

Installing the official patch 1.02 should fix that.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on Yesterday, 10:40:

Installing the official patch 1.02 should fix that.

It did indeed!

And I swapped in a PNY Geforce 4 Ti 4600, which kept the issues with Descent 2 and Impulse Tracker solved, but added a DVI port and brought my 3DMark 2001SE score back up to 87xx points, which is so close to the 9200 of the externally powered FX 5900 XT that I think this will stay inside for its so far best mix of compatibility, stability and performance. It seems to be near the upper limit of my other components anyway, so it looks like a great fit.

Will probably transplant the Zalman cooler, though. I'm a bit scared the Ti 4600 might otherwise just randomly die some time. Its factory cooler looks way too small.

Next issue: Pinball Fantasies/Dreams/Dreams2/Illusions go into a black screen immediately. In the MS-DOS command within Windows, I can still CRT+ALT+ESC my way to the Task Manager and kill the process. In the real DOS mode, I need to hard reset. I tried selecting "No sound" in SETSOUND.EXE to exclude it being a sound issue, but to no avail.
The CPU might be too fast, but I wasn't able to find a setting via SETMUL where this does not occur.

Sad, I really love Pinball games for DOS!

Pinball Fantasies is one of those games that uses non-standard display timing, it may not be possible to get working on that combination of LCD and GPU natively. It uses a fallback EGA timing mode (360x350 in a 640x350 frame) and some tricks to bypass the EGA 16 colour limit.

The game does have the option to switch to 320x200 which would work, but you need to be able to see the game to access the settings and change the display to low resolution. I'm not sure if there is a command line option to open straight into the low resolution mode.

NeoG_ wrote on Yesterday, 13:34:

Pinball Fantasies is one of those games that uses non-standard display timing, it may not be possible to get working on that combination of LCD and GPU natively. It uses a fallback EGA timing mode (360x350 in a 640x350 frame) and some tricks to bypass the EGA 16 colour limit.

The game does have the option to switch to 320x200 which would work, but you need to be able to see the game to access the settings and change the display to low resolution. I'm not sure if there is a command line option to open straight into the low resolution mode.

Hm, but it's all four of those, and I don't hear any sound, and am unable to quit the game - so I'm pretty sure it's more than just the game not being displayed, but rather not actually running.

Nice build; the hardware still feels in the spirit of a Windows 98 rig. Quite interested in your Socket 462 cooler; I've never seen a big copper tower like that. I am still deliberating on what to fit to my Athlon, as the Startechs are not ideal for what I want to do.

Had to Google the PNY GF4 card, but I'm quite surprised how small the cooler is too. I have an ASUS V8460 Ultra Deluxe with the big copper assembly on it; it has been fine for years and still serves in my Precision 410 (albeit with servicing the cooler). I did spot that ASUS did have a variant of the card with a smaller cooler with the same clock speeds, so I'm not sure what the logic was from ASUS for the bigger cooler, besides appearance on their premium model? Can't say I've tried overclocking it either!

NorsteinB wrote on Yesterday, 13:54:

NeoG_ wrote on Yesterday, 13:34:

Pinball Fantasies is one of those games that uses non-standard display timing, it may not be possible to get working on that combination of LCD and GPU natively. It uses a fallback EGA timing mode (360x350 in a 640x350 frame) and some tricks to bypass the EGA 16 colour limit.

The game does have the option to switch to 320x200 which would work, but you need to be able to see the game to access the settings and change the display to low resolution. I'm not sure if there is a command line option to open straight into the low resolution mode.

Hm, but it's all four of those, and I don't hear any sound, and am unable to quit the game - so I'm pretty sure it's more than just the game not being displayed, but rather not actually running.

I guess we can do the same thing you did with Descent II - Try another game that uses mode 10h EGA and see if it exhibits the same behaviour; Sim City (1989) is probably the easiest to get your hands on.
comprehensive list of EGA mode 10h games?

geordiepingu wrote on Today, 05:37:

Nice build; the hardware still feels in the spirit of a Windows 98 rig. Quite interested in your Socket 462 cooler; I've never seen a big copper tower like that. I am still deliberating on what to fit to my Athlon, as the Startechs are not ideal for what I want to do.

Thank you, the Thermaltake Tower 112 is from back in the day, but there were other big copper coolers of the time. I have this Aerocool HT-101 in the picture below in another rig on an XP 2500+ Barton, there is also the Revoltec Avalanche II that I had in 2003 or 2004, a literal gold plated copper tower consisting of a single fat heatpipe with lamellae around it, sorting one or two 60 or 80 mm fans (it came without the fans but that's what you could mount) and of course the omnipresent Zalman CNPS 7000 CU. There is also a modern chinese reproduction called ICE cooler, they can still be found NOS with a bit of luck.