The 400 MHz K6-3+ (ATZ) 1.6V is easy to find on Ebay and works well with up to ~2.2V with a good heatsink + fan.
it clocks to at least 550 MHz with less than 2.0V and often 600 MHz or more with 2.0V+

When it comes to memory even 256 MB is enough, a single 256 MB stick PC133 would be my choice.

HDDs can be jumpered to limit size.

You might be better off connecting the speaker pins to the sound card. It should sound better than a cheap piezoelectric speaker.

You could try adding a heatsink to the Matrox

Btw as long as the MOBO has the connector (ISA or SATA), any optical drive should work

Hi Agent of the BSoD!

I'll try to comment on your build 😀

Motherboard: Great board. Yes shields can be used from other boards no worries

Graphics: Can't go wrong with S3. For DOS games very compatible and fast

V2 SLI: Might be pushing it with a SS7 system. I would lean towards a single card to be honest

CPU: Bit more voltage doesn't matter. Just make sure the cooler is ok with a working fan. Some boards only go down to 2.1 V and that 1.6V chip takes it easily

RAM: It either works or it doesn't 🤣 512 is the limit for W98

Sound + Roland MT-32: Nice! Audacian has a MPU interface but can't remember if it works on the external joystick port. SoftMPU will give you compatibility with intelligent mode games.

PC Speaker: I use either a cheap piezo speaker or route a cable to the Sound Card. Make sure you mute the spekaer input in the mixer when not in use as the cable acts as an antenna and picks up "Computer thinking sounds".

HDD / Storage: So many options. For Windows 98SE I use modern SATA drives, set the capacity to something smaller and use SATA to IDE adapters. But if you got smallish IDE drives lying around go for it. Don't use CF, they are great for DOS but struggle with Windows.

ODD/FDD: If you play games with CD Audio tracks make sure it has a connector at the back. Floppy Emulator is awesome and cheap. I got one in my desktop and retro PC

PSU: Go with something new. More reliable.

Case: Totally up to you 🤣

Do K6 draw a lot of power from 5V/3.3V? If so, you'll need to handpick the PSU. I know my 650W brand new PSU delivers less amps on the 5V line than a no-brand 200W PSU I just got from a (new) cheap local-brand case.

Skyscraper wrote:

When it comes to memory even 256 MB is enough, a single 256 MB stick PC133 would be my choice.

Forgot that my current Win98 rig also is using 256MB total. 🤣 The only thing that bothers me here is that the specs state PC100, not PC133. I've read that most motherboards will take PC133 just fine in place of PC100, but some Via MVP3 boards do not, which mine is one of. I've read mixed results of PC133 on this board, so I'm thinking of saving any possible trouble and just getting PC100.

alexanrs wrote:

You could try adding a heatsink to the Matrox

I was thinking about that. The seller provided some heatsinks but they don't seem to be ones I could use for this. And my other concern for doing so is where I could attach them, as there's no convenient holes in the card to hook the heatsink into. I'm also going to test the card before I do any of that in the new build to see if it really was due to high FSB or not.

alexanrs wrote:

Btw as long as the MOBO has the connector (ISA or SATA), any optical drive should work

The motherboard has two IDE connectors and one floppy connector.

philscomputerlab wrote:

V2 SLI: Might be pushing it with a SS7 system. I would lean towards a single card to be honest

How so? I was planning on the two together for games like UT and Redguard to deliver some extra horsepower.

Skyscraper wrote:

The 400 MHz K6-3+ (ATZ) 1.6V is easy to find on Ebay and works well with up to ~2.2V with a good heatsink + fan.
it clocks to at least 550 MHz with less than 2.0V and often 600 MHz or more with 2.0V+

philscomputerlab wrote:

CPU: Bit more voltage doesn't matter. Just make sure the cooler is ok with a working fan. Some boards only go down to 2.1 V and that 1.6V chip takes it easily

Good to know, thanks!

alexanrs wrote:

You might be better off connecting the speaker pins to the sound card. It should sound better than a cheap piezoelectric speaker.

philscomputerlab wrote:

PC Speaker: I use either a cheap piezo speaker or route a cable to the Sound Card. Make sure you mute the spekaer input in the mixer when not in use as the cable acts as an antenna and picks up "Computer thinking sounds".

Hmm, didn't even know you could do that. It just outputs like regular sound to your speakers?

philscomputerlab wrote:

ODD/FDD: If you play games with CD Audio tracks make sure it has a connector at the back. Floppy Emulator is awesome and cheap. I got one in my desktop and retro PC

Got it. I do play games with CD audio so this is a must.

philscomputerlab wrote:

PSU: Go with something new. More reliable.

I'm just questioning the amount of power I need for this build, because I honestly don't know.

Well SLI will allow you to run 1024 x 768 but a much faster processor is needed to really allow it to distance itself from a single card. You can check out my 60 page paper on this topic: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/voodoo-2-and- … ng-project.html

Any modern PSU should do the trick. I had anything from 350W to 600W in use.

Ah, I see. There is still a minor increase, and since I already have both of the cards, I might as well. And 1024x768 is always nice if the game doesn't lag too much from it.

As far as the heatsink on the M3d - you can just adhere it to the chip. You can buy actual "thermal adhesive" but that stuff is expensive and nasty to mix. What I've done in the past is just put superglue on a corner or two, and then use a tackier TIM on the sink (AS5 will work in a pinch, but Ceramique (the original CPU ripper) is better). I've heard of folks mixing superglue into AS5 or similar, but it's nothing I've ever tried, so I don't know how it ages. Alternately buy adhesive heatsinks (they'll have sticky thermal tape on them) and just stick those on; as long as you don't move the thing around too much it should stay in place just fine. Also the "finger to the device" method is a bad idea for observing temperatures for two reasons:

1) You can hurt yourself. 😢
2) A lot of these devices can withstand temperatures that would hurt you (especially true of modern hardware), so it isn't the most accurate gauge. 😵

I'm not saying your card isn't overheating, just saying as more general PC building/repair advice, use a thermometer or some other measurement implement that isn't your bare skin. 😊

Memory wise, does the chipset have a cachable limit under the board's maximum memory limit? (I don't know older VIA chipsets very well so I don't know if this is a problem or not; I know it's a consideration on Intel chipsets though) If so, treat that limit as your "real" limit. I think anything from 64-256MB should be more than good enough for this, and I'd agree with going PC100 if you're at all worried about compatibility (in theory it should downclock 133 to 100 if it doesn't support 133, but I've seen various boards over the years refuse to do this). If 512MB will work with the board/chipset/etc, that's your limit for Win98, and is probably pretty cheap (I have no idea what SDRAM costs these days) - I'd say go for it. It's totally ridiculous but who cares if it works and is cheap. 🤣

Power wise, I agree with Phil - get something new and quality. You should pay some attention to the 5V rail, but you don't need 40A+ as you aren't building an Athlon rocketship or anything. 🤣

Hard-drive and optical drive wise, "they" do not make parallel ATA drives any more, so you either need adapters for SATA drives, or to find used PATA drives (I guess SCSI would also be an option if you got your hands on a controller).

SDRAM is really cheap from what I've found.

For the memory, what I know is that each slot can hold up to 256MB, so it can go up to 768MB in total, which confuses me now. Was there an OS back then that was able to utilize the full 768MB, or was it a while before one came out to be able to do so?

As for a cacheable limit, I have no idea, as I haven't heard of that before.

Adapters will probably be the best bet for the drives. Any in particular that are recommended?

For the PSU, I just thought I'd run this by you guys first just to be cautious. Was looking into getting this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16817151119
I wasn't looking at the watts when I was deciding between them, besides limiting it to 600W, and this one looks nice. Just making sure the brand and such are reliable, which it looks like it is. Just don't want to accidentally damage anything. 🤣

Agent of the BSoD wrote:

SDRAM is really cheap from what I've found.

That's what I expected; it was nearly free some years ago and I expect that hasn't changed. 😀

For the memory, what I know is that each slot can hold up to 256MB, so it can go up to 768MB in total, which confuses me now. Was there an OS back then that was able to utilize the full 768MB, or was it a while before one came out to be able to do so?

Windows NT, Windows 2000, *nix, etc. Windows 9x has a 512MB limit though, which wasn't a big problem for most people in 1995-1998. However the bigger question is: do games from back then need so much RAM? And generally the answer is no. But it's cheap and plentiful so why not? 😎 🤣

And keep in mind, 768MB of memory years ago would've been extremely expensive. Give this a look for a more comprehensive record than I can recollect:
http://www.jcmit.com/memoryprice.htm

As for a cacheable limit, I have no idea, as I haven't heard of that before.

Just do a basic search like [board chipset] + cachable limit or similar. On a lot of Socket 7 Intel chipsets the limit is at 64MB, and memory over that will generally see decreased performance because it isn't cached. And like I said, this may not even be a problem with your board's VIA chipset - I just don't know enough about them to say one way or another, and it would be something I'd look up just to be on the safe side.

Some quick searching for "VIA MVP3 + cachable limit" returned this thread:
Super Socket 7: VIA MVP3 vs. ALi Aladdin V
And this article from Anand:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/72/19

Adapters will probably be the best bet for the drives. Any in particular that are recommended?

I've not used PATA<->SATA adapters (because I've had good luck finding PATA drives), but have asked about them in the past and been roughly told brand doesn't seem to matter much. I think StarTech makes one, and I've had good luck with other StarTech stuff in the past, so that's probably where I'd start. PATA drives shouldn't be too hard to find either, and you may have better compatibility with a PATA CD-ROM if you need CD audio outputs and whatnot. Also keep in mind that very modern SATA hard drives and optical drives use SATA power connectors, which may require adapters depending on what PSU you go with (if you end up with something older that doesn't have SATA power connectors, any modern unit should have SATA power).

For the PSU, I just thought I'd run this by you guys first just to be cautious. Was looking into getting this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16817151119
I wasn't looking at the watts when I was deciding between them, besides limiting it to 600W, and this one looks nice. Just making sure the brand and such are reliable, which it looks like it is. Just don't want to accidentally damage anything. 🤣

Aside from being massive overkill, the 5V rail is only 20A. You can get more with other units, like this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16817153023

Awww storage, always an interesting chapter 😀

I have used all sorts of storage solutions, CF cards, SATA PCI controller + modern SATA drives and SATA <> IDE adapters + modern SATA drives + changing capacity with SeaTools or Hitachi Feature Tool.

CF cards are fantastic for a pure DOS machines. SATA PCI adapters work well but they take up resources and I had lots of little fights with not getting it to boot and some DOS games not working for some reason. I have settled for using SATA <> IDE adapters + modern SATA drives + changing capacity with SeaTools or Hitachi Feature Tool.

Here is an image of my current SS7 Time Machine:

I muck around with my systems a LOT so it's important that I can just pull out drives, clone them, copy things onto them on my desktop through a USB SATA HDD dock:

At the back is a SATA <> IDE adapter:

I use this model. Should be easy to find on eBay:

Has a jumper for Master / Slave and works very well. I have used this with tons of boards and systems from old to new.

I use modern SATA drives ranging from 250 GB notebook drives to 2 TB desktop drives. I use SeaTools to limit the capacity. Although any capacity can be set I'm happy with 32 GB and use this across all drives for convenience sake (SeaTools has a 32 GB setting which makes my life easy).

As for PSUs, in my current SS7 Time Machine I use this one (came with the case):

On my three test benches I use these:

The board comes with 2MB cache. It seems for this amount, the cacheable limit would be 512MB, as it seems this chipset does have a limit when I looked it up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_VIA_chipsets

That PSU looks good, I'll probably use that instead.

SATA <-> IDE adapter is probably in order then. HDD size doesn't need to be that large for me, I can probably get away with something under 64GB easy. My old system is using 40GB and I've never used nearly that much.

Thanks for the pics! 😀

I finally got everything to come in, with the last thing arriving this past weekend.

OP delivers. Here's some pics of the parts and the build.

Now, with that, there's some extra notes I want to make here. Firstly, the Matrox m3D is behaving much better in this system, with no artifacts showing up. However, there is a lot of screen tearing all over the place (only able to test it with Tomb Raider) and pretty much demands single buffered mode as double buffered makes the tearing much more noticeable. Chip still gets hot, but it seems to tolerate it.

As mentioned in the pics, I think I need to replace the GX/2. I thought that maybe the high brightness was an issue with my other system, but it seems it's with the card itself, and it looks really bad the darker the screen colors are.

The Voodoo 2s are being a little weird as well, though as Phil stated, having two for this build provides little benefit. I'm thinking of putting these back in my other system for now and getting an original Voodoo instead, which would be nice for compatibility in the long run. By weird, I mean that the control panel options kinda detect the SLI, with the resolution only going up to 640x480. I tested them with the Redguard demo, and while it works at 1024x768, it can be quite slow. I'd definitely need a more powerful system for these. Can't say I wasn't warned though. 🤣

The MT-32 also seems to behave oddly in DOS mode. I use the gameport, which works perfectly in Windows and DOS boxes. However, in real mode DOS, the instruments it plays are wrong, making the music sound really weird, and the line-in port either works or doesn't. (only way I can hear the synth and system sound at the same time) Might just be something I need to tinker with more.

Overall, this system is great. I initially had some issues with getting it to detect the HDD, but it's been smooth sailing after that.

That's an excellent build! Really enjoyed seeing your pictures and comments. You planned it thoroughly, impressive.

I have an S3 AGP card that also has this bright image. PCI cards are fine though.

With V2, make sure you try these late V2 drivers, FastVoodoo2 V4.6 from http://www.falconfly.de/voodoo2.htm

They should work quite well but in general you might need to try out a few. Also get one of the V2 tools to access V-sync and refresh controls. Sometimes it switches to 75 Hz modes.

With the Roland MT-32. Try a game that is a bit newer and known to work with fast computers. Or go into the BIOS, disable L1 and L2 cache (don't boot to Windows it will take forever 🤣) and try it again. You PC will act like a 386 computer now.

You might also find running the chip at 66 x 2 = 133 MHz more compatible for this.

What games do you use to test the MT-32 in DOS or Windows DOS session?

Upon checking out the system today, I noticed that the Voodoo 2 drivers are working properly now, and Redguard demo is a little smoother as a result. Not sure why they didn't kick in properly before. (even more amusing, when they weren't working right, the system info screen displayed correctly, and now that they're working, it's messed up looking like it always is) I'll probably put the FastVoodoo2 drivers on it later.

I do have some of those utilities for the Voodoos on my other system, just haven't loaded them on this system yet.

I turned off both L1 and L2 caches and the MT-32 still misbehaves (this is only in real mode DOS, a DOS window is fine every time). I've been testing with Monkey Island 1, just listening to the intro music. Interestingly, after the caches were disabled, the music was perfect for one run, and every attempt after that results in it picking the wrong instruments, even after system reboot, and with and without MT-32 reboots. I haven't gotten the line-in to work in real mode DOS anymore, but I was thinking of getting a mixer anyway some time down the road. Too bad the MT-32 doesn't have audio-in connectors like my SC-8820 does. 🤣

Seems the answer all along was using SoftMPU. I'm able to get the line-in to work too with using the Audician's drivers by simply loading setupsa.exe.

Now I just need to look for a 2D graphics card replacement for the GX/2. I know this question has been asked a billion times so I'll just search online for some info and look for what would be best for me.

Nicely done solving these issues on your own 😀

That's all part of the process, well done.

Yes there are so many graphics options. Matrox cards are popular companions with V2 SLI systems because of their fantastic image quality.

Yeah, I've been reading that about them as well. I've also read good things about the S3 Trio64 series cards, and nVidia cards, among some others that I've also heard good remarks. I'm just trying to narrow down pros and cons of each. I don't particularly care if it's AGP or PCI either.