mothergoose729 wrote:Hello all,
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Hello all,
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Super Socket 7 Board with a Via Apollo chipset
K6 2+ or K6 III CPU
256mb of 512mb of PC 100 or PC 133 memory
Note that Win98SE has problems with >512MB of RAM, and EMM386.EXE also hits issues with too much. I'd suggest 128MB, max 256MB for Win98SE.
Vodoo 3 2000/3000 graphics
That's going to be a significant part of the price of the system. But if you want GLide, it's the way to go. Note that if the Voodoo3 options are limited or vastly expensive, the unloved Voodoo Banshee basically does the same, if somewhat slower, and is generally the cheapest 3DFx card. The Voodoo4 is much rarer, but also underappreciated to the point of sometimes being cheaper than a Voodoo3.
Sound Blaster 16 sound card
There are huge numbers of different versions of SB16, from high-end (but buggy) early models to low-end crap later ones. There's a sweet spot in the middle with good quality components and no bugs, but those cards can be hard to find and seriously expensive as everyone is looking for them specifically.
Tbh I'd say you'd be better off with a decent quality SB clone. Exactly what would work and what's available is another matter, but I have good experiences with the Aztech AZT2316a (non-PnP) and AZT2320 (PnP) based cards. They have real Yamaha OPL3 synths built in and are completely hardware compatible with the SBPro 2.0. In the US they seem to command a premium but here in EU they are seen as cheap crap so can be picked up for very little indeed.
I have two main goals - the first is maximum compatibility with DOS games in particular, and my second is the most possible performance I can squeeze out for early windows games. I am also interested in windows 3.1 games. I plan to run windows 98SE set to boot to DOS by default and I'll be using setmul to emulate the 386,486, and pentium speed profiles.
Sounds like a plan. DOS means you need hardware compatibility (unless you want big, ugly, buggy TSRs, which no-one does).
When it comes to sound, what I really care about it compatibility. The greatest intersection of DOS and windows games. I am interested in midi, but I am not yet planning on getting something like an external roland. What sound card would you guys recommend? What is readily available on ebay and affordable?
Firstly, your location is very relevant here. As I already mentioned, there's a big difference in availability and price of a lot of things between US and EU. Secondly, shipping can be prohibitively expensive.
Secondly, ebay is generally rather expensive, if not extortionatly overpriced. amibay.com is a much better option, by and for enthousiasts, with about 2/3 of sellers in EU and 1/3 in US, and if you're in the US, vcfed.org's marketplace is good too. That's not to say you should ignore eBay - sometimes you find good deals, sometimes you find stuff simply unavailable elsewhere. But you have to be VERY aware of what you are exactly looking at and what things are worth.
As well as those international sites, there are local ones that are the best source for big lots of unsorted cards. Given you're new to the game, that's not the best place to start, but that is where you get by far the best deals if you can recognize the cherries in a big pile of crap.
I am also interested in different video cards. I know that the AGP on socket 7 boards aren't great, so if I want to go with AGP I really need to stick to Vodoo cards, and sense I don't want to hastle with a 2D and 3D accellerator I plan to use a Vodoo 3. I know that later Geforce cards are also compatible though, and offer much better performance. They are also much, much cheaper on ebay. How would a FX5XXX or a Geforce 4 PCI card pair with this system? Are there any glide games that wont' also work with openGL? How does all that work?
The compatibility issues can be reduced to three categories.
First up is purely electrical. Only the very oldest boards (FIC-PA2013 was already mentioned) have issues there - and some later cards with universal keying that still blow up if run on a 3.3V-only slot (so stick with period AGP 2x cards).
Secondly you get the flakey support of advanced AGP features by early chipsets. That's why people recommend Voodoo: 3dfx didn't use any of those. This is mainly an issue with ALi Aladdin V chipsets. However, the issues get mixed up with driver problems and I would be very interested to re-test some early AGP cards with an Aladdin V board today. It wouldn't surprise me if it was almost all driver problems...
Thirdly you have the drivers. Early AGP chipset drivers were crap and riddled with incompatibilities. Via eventually managed to sort most of that out in their later chipset drivers, ALi also made great improvements (and SiS probably did too, but given the low sales and other issues with the 5591 chipset nobody really bothered to look).
Basically So7+AGP is a two-horse race. Either go for Via MVP3 or ALi Aladdin V. The other two chipsets with AGP (Via VP3 and SiS 5591) can't reliably reach 100MHz operation so are not recmmended. Aladdin V is definitely the better performing of the two, and can be clocked higher. If you want maximum performance on the So7 platform, go for Aladdin V, in particular for the Asus P5A(-B) motherboard. However, you don't want max performance but max flexibility looking downwards. Then it's a complete waste to go for an Aladdin V. Plus the MVP3 gives you more options with cache and clocks to play with. And there are vastly more boards with it available. Just don't assume that because the chipset offers all these settings, any given board will give you access to them. I personally found DFI's MVP3-boards to be the best in terms of flexibility and stability, but as with anything else retro, beggars can't be choosers and you need to make do with what is available at an acceptable price.
One site to check:
http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm
This lists boards with official and unofficial AMD K6+ (K6-2+ and K6-3+) CPU support. I'd recommend trying to get one of the boards listed here, both for maximum flexibility in terms of CPU, but also because that guarantees a modern BIOS with large HDD support and no Y2K issues.
Finally, if you want to clock down regularly, consider how you want to do it. If you want to do it from BIOS (i.e. no messing around with jumpers), choose a board where FSB and multiplier settings are done in BIOS, not with jumpers or dipswitches. However you may prefer (as I do) to make some external switches for the computer, letting you quickly do the relevant settings (possibly even on-the-fly). In that case you actively need jumpers, as the switches need somewhere to connect to. That's why I chose a Tekram P5MVP-A4 for my setup to do pretty much the same you are trying: K6+ support (+ big HDDs), nice clean ATX layout (so no need to find a decent AT case+PSU) and jumpers galore for me to fit to my switches. Not that it was the only option, but it was the first one I found for a good price (EUR 35) when I was looking.