First post, by Mondodimotori
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Hello there, in an attempt to escape my troubles with late AGP cards, I decided to get out of my comfort zone and get a computer that is (slightly) older than anything I ever used growing up. I started my PC adventures on a cheap 462 board and another 370 board, thus a Slot 1 system is nothing I ever had my hands on before.
So... What did I get? For the price of 30 € I got myself a:
- QDI P6I440BX/B1S, with Intel 440BX chipset and BIOS revision 1.1SLR (from November 1998). 4 PCI slots and 3 ISA slots, capacitors mostly fine (maybe a couple of them near the CPU are not entirely flat, something I'll take care in the future)
- Mendocino Celeron 333mhz
- 64 MB of EDO ram
- Trident Blade 3D 9880 turbo AGP
Now, since I alredy have a couple 9x systems ready (a 462 with Athlon XP 2500+ and a 370 with a P3 1000), I was thinking about turning this system into a very early 9x system or direclty a late DOS system to play mostly 3D accelerated DOS games and, maybe, some non speed sensitive 2D games. What do I need to get for this plan to come to fruition?
Currently I had my eyes on the following upgrades:
- The CPU: I feel this Mendocino Celeron is plenty fast for my goals but... If I ever feel the need to slow it down to play speed sensitive DOS games, it doesn't leave me much options. The motherboard actually has some decent settings for the CPU, with a "Jumper emulation" mode that let me chose freely both the FSB and multiplier of the CPU. Except... The CPU happily ignores any settings that changes the default 5X multiplier. If I bump up the FSB, I see the increase in clocks, but 66mhz FSB is the bare minimum, and lowering the multiplier doesn't achieve anything.
Except from disabling the L2 cache to achieve slower operations, is there any Slot 1 CPU that would respond to changes in the multiplier?
Because the board can happily set me with a 66mhz FSB and a 2X multiplier, and I was reading that early Pentium 2s from 1997 do come with an unlocked multiplier. Would they be a good option? And which models exactly? Considering that I wouldn't even need a BIOS update to use them, since my BIOS is from late 1998 alredy.
Or there are better options to slow down the CPU? Or should I just stick with disabling the L2 cache and call it a day, since I don't really plan to play lots of speed sensitive games? - The GPU: Probably the easiest part: I have an history of love/hate relationship with the Trident Blade 3D, since it was the IGP in my first ever desktop PC that I used all the way up to 2009 (and young me insisted in playing games on it), but from what I read it's mediocre both in 9x 3D acceleration and DOS gaming. Thus I peeled my eyes for two options: A cheap one and a not so cheap one.
The cheap one is a GeForce 2 MX400, hopefully one with a 128bit bus (apparently not easy to spot, since some cards with 8 memory chips on them are still 64bit only) or, if truly desperate, a TNT2 M64 (alredy got one, but has fuzzy VGA output, and they are plentifull on ebay for dirty cheap).
The not so cheap one is the obvious: A 3dfx card, either a Voodoo Banshee or a Voodoo 3 2000, which should be plenty fast for 3D DOS acceleration.
On the side I plan to get a card for 2D games like an S3 Virge/GX2 or S3 Trio 64 on the PCI bus, also plenty cheap online. Maybe I'm even able to install both PCI and AGP at the same time? - The RAM: I don't feel I need more than 64MB, even if it's EDO. But in the offchance I should feel limited, I alredy have some PC100 and PC133 kits ranging from 64mb, 128mb and 256mb around.
- The sound card: Probably the hardest part since I was never really interested in dedicated sound cards before, just getting an X-Fi PCI for my XP retro rig. But I still managed to make myself a short list by lurking old threads here on the forum.
I'm currently looking at several ISA options, since I don't really need them for 3D sound acceleration, but only good compatibility and clean output (as clean as one can reasonably get).
And it gets confusing pretty fast with the options I found, which are:OPTi 82C930A / 82C929A / 82C928 / 82C931; CMI8330A; Compaq ES1868; Terratec Promedia Soundbooster 16 3D; AudioDrive ES1868F; Crystal CX4235; Soundblaster Vibra 16C (CT4180)
As you can read, there are many options, and all of them I can get for reasonably cheap were I live, and as I said I'm extremely confused by the variety. What do you think is the best compromise of DOS compatibility and good audio output among all of those? Considering I won't go with very old DOS games, mostly 3D accelerated games and some 2D game of the "transition to 3D" period. - And the OS... I was thinking playing it safe with 98SE buuuut, I alredy have a system that is perfect for 98SE (the Pentium 3 1000 on 370, it has one ISA slot), and I was thinking about something older, so... Does Windows 95 or straight up MSDOS 6.22 make sense?
Well, I guess that's that. What are your opinions on my planned build? Different CPU? Different GPU? Maybe one of those Sound Cards is actually more than decent for my plans or a stand out I should seriously consider?
I'll try to be consistent this time and, while I acquire parts, I will post updates, since I'll probably move one attempt after another with a platform I'm not familiar with at all. On the list of things to get there's also a "new" floppy drive and another IDE CD drive, since I just discovered that my "working" IDE CD drive is actually "spinning but not reading".
Here are some pictures of the system on it's current test bench, were it'll proably sit until I gathered all the needed parts:
