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Assembling a machine for DOS/Win3x

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Reply 20 of 33, by Tetrium

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MrKsoft wrote:

It's a bit difficult as a semi-poor high school student 😜 I can afford little things, a $5 CompactFlash adapter here, a $10 sound card there... but the motherboards seem to be a bit pricier than that. (Cheapest Socket 7 board I saw was $10 but it was a crap OEM board that didn't have any ISA slots and needed a riser card for PCI, and that just won't work. Most seem to be around $30+shipping. If I can't source one of those, my other choice is a 486 board but then we get into trouble since I'd have to pick up all new parts for it, like RAM, processor, etc.)
Unless someone has a board similar to this one (that is, Socket 7, ATX, with 3 ISA slots) that they'd offer me at a reasonable price. Or at least if I could be pointed towards something good.

Jorpho has a sale going on this forum including a SS7 board that almost matches your specs. He lives in NA also so shipping should be cheap.
Hardware Crap I want to get rid of

Dunno if he binned it already so better be quick.
Even if it's not what you want (because it has only 2 ISA slots instead of 3) it's a great board as it's SS7 and thus very flexible 😉
The board is the AX59 PRO

Reply 21 of 33, by hargcore

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MrKsoft - Can't you just replace the dodgy cap? Surely thats the "cheapest" solution (if it doesn't work after it will have only cost a couple of quid).

Just make sure to get caps with the same capacitance/voltage

I'm just building my first retro machine and have been getting stung price wise so I know how you feel but the guys here are definetly right if patience is used you can build a machine for a very good price.

It's just I want everything now!

Reply 22 of 33, by swaaye

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The voltage is a maximum rating. Just make sure you get one with at least the same voltage specified, the same capacitance and then be completely sure that you align the polarity properly (or poof). Get a few of the same cap in case you mess them up when trying to solder them in.

Assuming you want to mess with this.

Reply 23 of 33, by MrKsoft

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hargcore wrote:
MrKsoft - Can't you just replace the dodgy cap? Surely thats the "cheapest" solution (if it doesn't work after it will have only […]
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MrKsoft - Can't you just replace the dodgy cap? Surely thats the "cheapest" solution (if it doesn't work after it will have only cost a couple of quid).

Just make sure to get caps with the same capacitance/voltage

I'm just building my first retro machine and have been getting stung price wise so I know how you feel but the guys here are definetly right if patience is used you can build a machine for a very good price.

It's just I want everything now!

Well, yeah, I'd prefer just replacing the cap. I have a friend with soldering equipment and skills so we're going to work on it whenever I get a free night.

In the meantime I'm going to try the recommendation of moving it back to the case where it worked. I said before that the power supply was the same, but I lied-- I forgot that I hadn't switched it like I was going to. I'm wondering if it might react better to the stock Gateway PSU as well as the stock case wiring. To me, it makes no sense, but it might work.

Reply 25 of 33, by MrKsoft

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Okay, so it turned out all I had to do was clean off the area around the leaked capacitor using some alcohol and cotton swabs.
Now it POSTs fine and I even got it to boot off some floppy disks. I'll probably still replace the cap at some point because I doubt it's good to leave it dead even if it's not affecting the computer's operation.

Now onwards to installing more parts, installing DOS, and all that jazz.

Wafflenet OPL Archive - Preserving MS-DOS music in a unified format!

Reply 26 of 33, by manbearpig

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Hello, I came across this thread doing win3.x searches. I just wanted to let you know that what you think is a leaking capacitor is actually a crystal. The board shows that it oscillates at 32.768 Khz. These should be relatively easy to find. It seems to have a standard load capacitance of 12.5pF, but there may be variations on this. If you remove it there may or may not be markings on it, but if it does it most likely just shows the speed it oscillates at.

http://ca.digikey.com/1/1/432011-crystal-32-7 … -32-768khz.html

If you're worried about getting the load capacitance right, check this link out.

http://www.instructables.com/id/MSP430-Based- … -load-Capacita/

Never seen one do anything like that, but if it wasn't working I'm sure the board wouldn't work as it acts as a clock for some of the circuitry, in this case I'm not sure of the specifics. Since it is working I wouldn't go through the trouble to fix it. As people have mentioned, boards are cheap. And if it does fail, it probably wouldn't take anything out with it.

Good Luck.

Reply 27 of 33, by Yushatak

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I apologize, but while I read the first (lengthy) post, I did not feel like reading the rest. With that said some of what I say may end up redundant or possibly unrelated at this point.

Anywho:
I'm just two years older than you so my DOS experiences I'm sure are pretty similar (with a few more titles on the early side than you).

You'll likely want a Sound Blaster 16 card - they're the most widely supported for sound support in any given game of that era, but I'm sure you knew that part already.

As for CPU, Quake will have trouble on anything 486 up through an Am5x86-133Mhz. If you're OK with crappy framerates then that's the minimum. If not, then a Pentium Overdrive 83Mhz would probably be the bottom of the barrel for Quake, though I haven't tested that yet.

I'd recommend 100Mhz Pentium or above, but once into this range faster can't hurt, so I'd max out your board if you don't want to hunt down overdrives or upgrade chips. The benefit to a faster chip is you could conceivably run Win95 or 98 with web browsing quite comfortably when you hit the 300Mhz zone, of course there's always Arachne. You can also run newer games, of course, on that same system with a faster CPU and the same other gear.

For motherboard, I'd recommend a Super Socket 7 system as they tend to be more versatile with voltages and bus speeds, but if you're happy at 133Mhz then this isn't really relevant for ya.

For video cards, focus on Quake. All of your earlier games will run on anything with the most basic VGA support, so all you need to worry about is a decent enough card to run Quake. CPU is more important than GPU for Quake in a Pentium box, so it likely won't be hard to find one that runs it OK. I'd go with pretty much anything PCI, because the bonus to bus speed will make a difference.

I'm becoming distracted, so excuse me if I missed something, but I think that covers pretty much everything..

Reply 28 of 33, by HunterZ

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I remember running Quake on my AMD 486DX4-120 and it performed poorly but was mostly playable. It was really one of the first games that pushed things into the Pentium era, just like Doom pushed things into the 386 era by being one of the early games that used a 32-bit only DOS extender.

I did install Slackware on that 486 for a Unix class in community college and ran 2 copies of Quake in different full-screen consoles (this was before people ran desktop GUIs in Linux). I then joined them to a LAN game and flipped back and forth to see each of my two guys starting at the other at only a few frames per second 😜

Reply 29 of 33, by swaaye

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I'd just build something with a 440BX chipset. They can run Windows 3.1 if you really want to deal with that OS (yuck). You can turn off the CPU caches if games run too fast. We have a thread around here discussing these things. It can be a very flexible retro machine.

Quake runs at like 10-15 fps on a 160 MHz 5x86. We had more tolerance for slideshows back then. I barely played the game until I get a Pentium II though.

Retro Quake benchies

Last edited by swaaye on 2010-10-26, 20:06. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 30 of 33, by HunterZ

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That site shows 11.6 FPS for a 486DX4-120 at 320x200. My machine probably averaged a little lower due to having a VLB video card instead of PCI, but not by much. Needless to say, it was low enough that Quake didn't make quite as huge an impact on me as it did on the rest of the gaming world 😜

Reply 31 of 33, by MrKsoft

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I've had my system set up for a while and it's working well. It's the Pentium setup, 133mhz, 16MB RAM, S3 Trio 64V+, and a Vibra-based Sound Blaster 16. Quake runs pretty well (not as smoothly as the P2/450 I first played it on, but definitely not bad) and I haven't had compatibility issues with any other games, except for Turrican 2 which is really picky but runs fine from a boot disk.

I have Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on it but I don't use it for too much-- my primary reason was that it was easy to set up networking for compared to raw DOS. I transfer over games by booting into Windows and using WS_FTP, as I run an FTP server inside my home network in order to move files around (a bit slower than flash drives, but definitely better than floppy disks and works on pretty much everything)

My next step is to do some upgrading for the future. 16 MB has been pretty useful, but I may swap it out for 64MB that I keep in my Power Macintosh 6100 (but originally came from this machine). Additionally I'm looking into MIDI solutions. I think right now what I might do is try hunting out a Sound Blaster 16 or compatible with a working wavetable connector, and then getting all my MIDI stuff using daughterboards. I was thinking of getting an SCC-1, but they're so expensive. Additionally, I'd like to explore MIDI fully, so getting something with the wavetable port would be great. Is it possible to get a non-Sound Blaster card with a wavetable connector (and thus no stuck notes) and use it just for MIDI, or will the Sound Blaster compatibility that it probably has interfere?

Wafflenet OPL Archive - Preserving MS-DOS music in a unified format!

Reply 32 of 33, by HunterZ

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You should be able to run 2 SB-compatible sound cards in the same machine by giving them each their own separate set of IRQ, DMA and port address settings.

Reply 33 of 33, by swaaye

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ESS ISA cards have wavetable connectors that work properly. The problem is that the cards are often too narrow to fit a typical DB without the DB hitting the mobo. Look up the SB16 CT1740 for the width you need.

It's too bad that they didn't design the small cards so that the DB is rotated 180 degrees.