First post, by jheronimus
- Rank
- Oldbie
Hi, all
Finally got around to completing this build — my first EGA rig, but also my first pre-486 computer (I only started gaming in 1996).
A while ago I managed to get my hands on a Videoton machine with a EGA screen. Unfortunately, the PSU in that case was dead, and I couldn't make the MFM/FDD controller work properly. So I decided to simply move the motherboard to a different case and start from scratch. The specs are:
Intel 286@12 MHz + Intel 287@6Mhz;
1MB of RAM onboard;
Prisma EGAMAX 860 with 256 KB of RAM;
Goldstar Prime 2-based IDE multi I/O;
SoundCommander EX — an 8 bit SoundBlaster 2.0 (according to AIDA16) clone of some sort. This card would probably be more useful in a XT build, but I just wanted to try it.
Wester Digital 420MB HDD
Genius J-12 joystick
The BIOS doesn't allow setting the HDD geometry manually, so I've set up the HDD as a 127MB (still, three times bigger than the original MFM drive). After that I've installed DOS 6.22 and Norton Commander 5.51 (my standard setup).
Questions
1. The SoundCommander EX does work without any drivers, as evident by Silpheed's AdLib mode. Still, I'd like to find the driver disks for it. So far, I've only managed to get the first disk that has some software — not the drivers. Does anyone have any info on this card?
2. I also have this Oak OTIVGA EGA/VGA combo card (the yellow one on the photo). Any reason to use it instead of the Prisma card?
3. Any reason to use an earlier DOS version, aside from "period-correctness"?
Games
Now, the big question — what would you recommend for this machine? I want to try stuff that is designed for EGA (I have other machines for VGA games), but still supports at least AdLib for sound — because I really can't stand PC speaker music (and never could, sorry). So far I'm planning to try Ultima I and some text adventures, but none of that are really EGA/AdLib titles.