Thanks man! That's awesome.

philscomputerlab wrote:

How to install ISA Plug and Play Sound Blaster in Windows 9x MS-DOS Mode

Holy crap, how could I miss that one? Thanks for doing that extra video about installing a PnP SB card the "proper" way (i.e. 95DOSAPP+CTCMBBS instead of getting the SBBASIC DOS drivers and forcing them to install via SETVER), I really appreciate that.

Honestly, I didn't expect it to be that complicated. Apparently I never read the README which comes with the 95DOSAPP package. So I've got to hand it to you: Doing it the "improper" way (as described in http://youtu.be/Y6HzttM6wS0) might actually be easier for a newbie...

🤣 No worries!

It seems that Creative really didn't want users mucking around in MS-DOS mode much. Which is odd as their cards work flawlessly.

I tried the AWE 64 installation CD and even that doesn't "go all the way". While it does install CTCM in MD-DOS mode, it doesn't install AWEUTIL.EXE leaving the user to complete the rest.

Creative really should have just patched their DOS Installer, it would have made things a lot easier.

Another option would be just providing a compressed archive with a batch file to run. But I know that many don't like that and want all the lines in AUTOEXEC.BAT just like CREATIVE wanted it 🤣

At least the readme is written well and allows anyone to re-create everything, it's just quite a bit of work 😀

Massive video! This was a 9 GB file upload and took 2 or 2 days 😵

But the Quality is mint! Please make sure you watch it at least at 720p60 or even better 1080p60. The smooth game play is really nice to watch.

This is Unreal Gold (from the Anthology CD) on a custom built Pentium III 1.1 GHz with a AGP 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 and Turtle Beach Montego II with Aureal Vortex 2 chip in A3D 2.0 headphone mode.

The video shows around 48 minutes of game play. The game is played at 1024 x 768 resolutions with some 3dfx driver settings applied to make this old Glide game look a bit nicer. Details are all in the beginning of the video.

Enjoy!

Unreal on a Retro PC 3dfx Voodoo 5 Aureal A3D 60 fps

In this video I am reviewing EZ-Drive Dynamic Drive Overlay software which breaks the 504 MiB hard drive BIOS limitation of very old computers.

This is the Western Digital version, which can be downloaded free and legal and, as it turns out, works with Seagate as well as Compact Flash drives and is not limited to just Western Digital drives.

I am using various drives such as a 20 and 80 GB IDE drive, 4 GB Compact Flash Drive and SATA drive with a SATA to IDE adapter.

The goal is to have four 2 GB partitions (8 GB total storage which is the maximum of MS-DOS 6.22) on a computer that can only access 504 MiB by default.

EZ-Drive Dynamic Drive Overlay Review and Tutorial

Was itching to do this one and many have requested it!

It's a review and tutorial of the GOTEK USB Floppy Emulator!

Since I started using them at the beginning of 2013, I haven't encountered a single glitch, bug or issue and can highly recommend them. You can purchase them for around A$ 25 on eBay.

The software that came with my units was disappointing and I recommend using this software here from German company ipcas.

Link for downloading the USB Emulator software: http://www.ipcas.com/support/usb-floppy-emula … n-download.html

Link to the page on my website to download the sheet for labelling 100 floppies: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/gotek-usb-flo … -simulator.html

philscomputerlab wrote:

It's a review and tutorial of the GOTEK USB Floppy Emulator!

Glad to see that one.
Thanks Phil.

I bought two of those based on the first video you made and I can confirm that everything Phil said about it is true. It's an excellent little device. I particularly like the rejectful software bundle it comes with (which doesn't work) and the broken English manual.

Spent some time with my 386 gear. Always enjoy doing that.

Documented them and put it all up on my website. I took photos, screenshots of POST screen, BIOS screens. I created a new benchmark suite with batch file for 386 machines which includes 3D Bench, PC Player Benchmark, Landmark, Topbench and Norton System Info. Floppy image, CD image and instructions can be found here: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/phils-simple- … batch-file.html

The boards featured are:

FORCOM M396F: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/forcom-m396f.html

FOREX 386 / 486: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/forex-386--486.html

FX-3000: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/fx-3000.html

I compiled all the benchmark results in this table: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/386-dos-benchmarks.html

Was lots of work but quite pleased with the result 😀

philscomputerlab wrote:

Was itching to do this one and many have requested it!

It's a review and tutorial of the GOTEK USB Floppy Emulator!

What sort of camera do you use? See if it has a setting to freeze the white balance, then you won't get that phenomenon where the picture suddenly gets a blue-green tint now and then.

Also get a tripod, even a cheap one will do! 😀

New phone, didn't want to scratch it with the tripod mount. Might go back to the old one. It'll have to do...

Something fun and works surprisingly well:

Windows 95 on a 386DX 40 MHz

With 8 MB RAM, a Seagate 80 GB hard drive, CD-ROM and Seagate's Disk Manager I was able to create a single 80 GB FAT32 partition and install Windows 95 😀

Phil,

(Sorry to resurrect this topic, but I have a question.)
Regarding your "Cheap as chips Cooler mod for Voodoo 3 cards",

Why not use a 50mm (10mm thick) fan instead? You could even continue to use the zip-tie method of fastening the fan to the heatsink.

Also, have you been removing the heatsinks on your V3 cards and replacing the epoxy with real TIM? If so, what problems (if any) did you encounter?

I've replaced the old epoxy on all three of my V5 cards, but I've never done any of my V3s. I'd really like to fix them up, but I'm a bit concerned about potential difficulties.

As with all my videos, I just show "a" option, not "the" option 😀

Use whatever you have available. I happen to have 80 mm fans and cable ties.

No I never removed the cooler on the V3 and not planning on doing so. Is there a need to remove them?

philscomputerlab wrote:

No I never removed the cooler on the V3 and not planning on doing so. Is there a need to remove them?

I just figured that the blob of epoxy that 3dfx used as TIM is now going on 15+ years of age. Surely some ceramique or MX-4 would improve cooling performance. No? Not worth the risk?

Seeing how hot the cooler gets it seems to be doing a fine job 😀

I have heard of some killing their cards trying to remove the chip. So I'm not going to attempt it, these cares are not worth the risk IMO.

EDIT:

Added a nice little page about the Cyrix Cx486DLC processor. Only one of my boards worked with it so I took the opportunity and documented it. Lots of screenshots about installing the driver as well as benchmarks with L1 Cache enabled and disabled and compared to an AMD Am386DX-40:

http://www.philscomputerlab.com/cyrix-486dlc.html

Doom Music Gravis Ultrasound Plug and Play

Network Tutorial Windows 98

I used to use USB for transferring information to Windows 98 PCs, but after having tried networking, I'm not going back 😀

It works so well that I just had to make a video tutorial about it. In the video I'm showing you how to network a Windows 98 and Windows 8.1 machine. One both PCs I am creating a network share to access it from the other computers on the network.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Doom Music Gravis Ultrasound Plug and Play

another excellent vid 😊

I've started a new series of videos on my YouTube channel. The focus is on tweaking the DOSBox settings to improve how the game looks, sounds and plays.

Space Quest 1 and 2 GOG.com Tech Review Tweak Guide

Two more Tech Reviews and Tweak Guides of GOG.com games.

Tomb Raider is quite a poor release and doesn't work properly without tweaking.

Space Quest 3 GOG.com Tech Review Tweak Guide

- Tweaking config file for full screen image image correct aspect ratio
- Replacing Sound Blaster and MT32 driver to include "Where am I" speech
- Configuring the game for Munt MT-32 emulation

Tomb Raider GOG.com Tech Review and Tweak Guide

- Replacing 3dfx Glide renderer with nGlide
- Tweaking config file for full screen video