First post, by Tenorman
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I first learned about this idea when I asked about "Motherboard / CPU Combo With Most Speed Options" (Motherboard / CPU Combo With Most Speed Options).
After getting an answer, I started researching and working on this box. It's kind of a weird one, and that's intentional.
-Via C3 Ezra 866
-Gigabyte GA-6BXC Rev 2.0
-MSI MS-6905 Slocket Rev 2.0
-Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 Pro 32 MB PCI
-Diamond Monster Voodoo2 8MB PCI
-SoundBlaster 16 Value (CT277A)
-SPEA V7 Media FX (Ensoniq Soundscape S2000 2MB with a different sticker on it).
-3 x 128 MB PC100 RAM
-32 GB Compact Flash (Windows ME / Linux)
-4 GB Compact Flash (DOS / Win3.1)
-LG DVD / CD-RW Drive
-Realtec 10/100 PCI Ethernet Adapter
-Generic ATX Desktop Case
-Coolmax 300w Power Supply
Operating Systems:
This machine triple boots.
-Windows ME: Simply because I didn't use ME much in the day and booting MS-DOS mode isn't a concern because of the separate DOS 6 / Windows 3.1 drive.
-Ubuntu 10.04: It's handy to have a system with legacy ports and the Linux CLI tools around. 10.04 is the last Ubuntu release that supported i586 processors.
-DOS 6.22 / Windows 3.1
Things I had trouble with:
-I had to put both Windows ME and the Ubuntu /boot partition inside the first 8 GB of the drive in order for Grub to boot them. Sounds silly in hindsight, but it took me a while to figure this out. I ended up with the following partitioning scheme on the 32 GB compact fash.
6 GB Win ME C: (primary)
1 GB Linux /boot (primary)
10 GB Linux / (extended)
1 GB Linux swap (extended)
Allocate Rest to a primary FAT 32 partition
The DOS 6.22 install has the 4 GB CF card to itself with 2 x 2 GB partitions.
I am a big fan of Ensoniq Soundscapes, but it is annoying in this system.
-Windows ME will not detect this card automatically, and the drivers will not detect its settings correctly. Need to configure ports, IRQs, DMAs manually.
Two issues that I believe may be related:
-Cannot get the wave playback working in Windows ME. This isn't a big deal as I mainly use this card for the wavetable. I have Windows configured to play waves through the SB-16 and only use the Soundscape for MIDI.
-I haven't been able to find a pattern, but in DOS 6 the computer sometimes freezes on bootup when SSINIT.EXE is running and initializing the card. I assume there is some kind of resource conflict, but haven't been able to find it. I have the needed IRQs and DMAs reserved in the BIOS and have also tried different ones.
-On the plus side once it gets going, Final Fantasy VII in Windows sounds great as do all the DOS games that support wavetable.
The 3D Blaster Savage4 Pro is an "interesting" card to say the least. I picked it because it has good DOS compatibility, Windows 3.1 drivers, and at least some semblance of 3D acceleration for Windows 9x. The only drivers I have been able to get to work are the ones from the Nov 1999 update on Creative's site. S3's reference drivers blue-screen the computer, as do the drivers that came on the CD with the card. The Creative site also has a firmware update that is supposed to fix some issues that I applied. The DOS compatibility and games that use the Metal API (Unreal) are the highlights. Other things are hit or miss. I have the Voodoo2 installed both for Glide support and as a fallback for anything that doesn't like the Savage4.
The C3 866 that I have seems to run reliably up to around 1 Ghz, even on passive cooling. At 1100 Mhz, the machine will immediately crash. At 1060 Mhz, it will crash after about 20 min in a loop of 3DMark tests. 1000 Mhz seems pretty stable.
Performance:
-There were taken at 952 Mhz (112 x 8.5).
DOS
-3DBench 1c: 359.8
-Doom: 93.1 FPS
-Quake 640x40: 65.7 FPS
-Speedsys processor 496.6
Windows
3D Mark 200 (default settings) 993
SisSoft Sandra 99 Dhrystone 1636 / Whetstone 302
Unreal Tournament (800x600x16, high detail, Metal): Lower 50s FPS, haven't run actual benchmark
Quake 3 Demo 001 (800x600x16, high quality, OpenGL): 31.5 FPS
To Do:
-I only had PC100 memory and it will only run reliably up to 112 Mhz. I want to get some PC133 so I have all the speed adjustment options available.
-Need to get a CD-ROM audio cable that will work with SoundBlaster 16.
-See if I can figure out the Soundscape's resource conflict. Don't really care about this in Windows ME, but it is annoying to have my DOS boots sometimes hang during SSINIT.
[Compaq Presario 633 | DOS 6.22 / Win 3.1 | DX4 100 Overdrive | 28M RAM | SB16 CT2770A | SPEA Media FX (Soundscape S2000) ]
[GA-6BXC R2.0 | Win98SE | Via C3 Ezra 866 | 384M RAM | TNT2 32M | Voodoo2 8M | SB32 CT3670 | Ensoniq Soundscape Opus]
