Sounds like a plan!

The SB Pro 2 can just be disabled in Windows. And the PCI Vortex 2 won't show up in DOS 😀

Phil,

What would be the best way to route the audio? I plan to hook the DVD's analog audio out to the SB Pro 2 and the DVD's digital audio out (2-pin S/PDIF) to the Vortex 2, so that takes care of having CD audio for games that require it in DOS, such as Quake, and in Windows 98. Now to connect to the headphones/speakers. If I route the line-out of the Vortex 2 to the line-in of the SB Pro 2, then if I disable the SB Pro 2 in Windows I would lose the audio going through the SB Pro 2 right? Does this require an external mixer to make it work correctly? I could use a Y-Adapter from both outputs but I fear that would not be wise having voltage from one output being present on the output of the other card. Ok a lot of uninformed questions but I have never dealt with multiple sound cards and a search didn't net me any good results.

Well, unlike PnP cards, the SB Pro 2 does route the PC Speaker through during POST, meaning it doesn't need to be initialised. But I'm not sure about the line-in.

Cheaper than an audio mixer would be a simple audio switch like I use to hook up 4 MIDI modules to the mixer. On eBay search for AV switch rather than audio switch.

Hybrid machines are always a compromise... Any really old games you will be playing that could cause issues with the Vortex 2?

You know how we all have dumb ideas sometimes? Well, this may be the best damn dumb idea I ever had. Take an ISA or PCI prototype board, mount x-number of 1/8" stereo jacks on it, use a op-amp mixing circuit with set-and-forget mixing (on-board trim pots) to get the levels fairly close, and include a headphone buffer amp for good measure. Hell even toss in an external volume control. Ok, I will probably never build it it but why not? I mean you got the +12V, -12V and ground sitting right there.

Ok, back to reality. Thanks Phil, I will try to play around soon and see what happens.

Oh to answer your other question, I am not sure. I will probably try a lot of older games that I never got to play. I am even adding a Hi-Fi 2-1/4" PC speaker or Simcity, that tiny motherboard beeper just isn't cutting it hehe.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/SELECTOR-3-PORTS-V … =item338714ac5e

Not sure what price this will show up on your end, but to Australia it's less than 4 bucks shipped 😀

I got a few of those. Connect your devices and then switch between them. Easy solution.

Sounds good. Some things I'd consider:

The K6-2+ at 400MHz=6*66MHz is slower than at 4*100MHz, and it can probably be overclocked a bit with FSB100. Not relevant for most of the games you want to play, but for Thief 2 a PII 400 is recommended.
Obviously not possible with an Intel chipset. Since you already seem to have the mainboard I'd use it and worry later.

For the video card a GF2MX might be a better choice. Better compatibility in early Direct3D games as I understand, lower power consumption than a M64, higher performance in case it matters for some of the later games, hardware T&L might help the CPU with later games (Thief 2 seems to use DirectX 7 so that might apply).

I have a K6-3+ in the AT version of your board (TXP4) and now run it at 6x75Mhz=450Mhz. I've run this board/chip combo for an extended period at both 66Mhz and 75Mhz and see no difference in stability, it's rock solid.

If you have only one graphics card I'd go for a Voodoo3 PCI. You can run a Voodoo1 alongside for DOS games.
Check out my TXP4 build thread for some more ideas: Maxed-out Socket 7 AT build (TX, K6-3+, PS/2, USB, SSD, LS120, GUS, XR385, 3DFX, PowerVR, S3D)

bjt,

That's a nice build, similar to what I am doing, I will take more time later to read the entire thread. I am using a brand new Seasonic 300-Watt ATX PSU for its quality. I want to keep it on a 66-MHz FSB so i can do 133-MHz. I'll see how it does with Thief 2 which will be the max game I plan to run on this box. I will have a faster Windows 98 box if there is anything newer I want to play. I may build a Windows XP system to handle most/all of the 2000's. I do not want to go with a Voodoo3 in this box because I want to play/try a lot of the older stuff that may have issues running on a Vodoo3 with a LCD monitor. I really do not have the room for a CRT monitor in the space for this box, it also rules out a desktop case.

I am going to start with just using a S3 Savage4 Pro PCI video card and see how it goes. It has excellent old DOS support and I am pretty sure it will handle Thief 2. I will explore Nvidia cards if the need arises.

So the current plan is to get Windows 98 SE installed on a single 64GB partition with 64MB RAM, Savage4 Pro video card, Vortex 2 sound card and nothing else. Get Thief 2 installed, play the crap out of it and see if I need to make adjustments anywhere then setup a boot to DOS 7.10 option, install Sound Blaster Pro 2, Voodoo 1 and see how that goes.

I think this card will be enough for what I am doing Diamond Stealth III S530 S3 Savage4 Pro 8MB PCI. I plan to add a heatsink to it just because. I am not interested in Hi-Res video. 640x480 and 800x600 is the most I will be going for these old games. I even like the way Quake looks in DOS software mode at 320x240 and as long as I have 30+ FPS I am good.

OK so after some reading if I want to support DirectX 7.0 and ALL lower versions then I would want to go with GeForce2 based card. That sound about right?

This is interesting

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/DirectX_Versions

squareguy wrote:

This is interesting

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/DirectX_Versions

Nice find!

When it comes to graphics cards I can only recommend to do it game by game. There are just too many variables. Same goes for the driver. Go with a driver that is a little bit newer than the game you're playing.

The Matrox G400 has beautiful image quality but I'm not sure if I would 100% trust their drivers. But then a few games from that era supported EMBM and the Matrox card shines.

Phil,

So with my intentions of playing as many DOS games as possible and the early Windows games up to Thief 2: The Metal Age and after looking at Valves dev page.... which card would you try, a Geforce 4MX card?

Edit: Thief 2 uses Direct X 7.0

idspispopd,

Thanks for your insight on Thief 2. An excerpt from the Valve dev site "DirectX 7-class graphics cards include the Nvidia GeForce 256, 2, 2MX and 4MX cards and the ATI Radeon 7xxx series."

So basically any of these you mean?

GF4 MX sounds fine. You got to start somewhere and these cards are cheap as chips 😀

I found a MX400, 32MB, PCI card but it's a Jaton and I am not sure how good they are.... We shall see how it does.

GF2MX is older than GF4MX which enables you to use older drivers which *may* have better compatibility with older games. GF2MX is more than fast enough for 800x600, it can do more than 50 fps in Q3 at 1024x768x32.
I wouldn't worry too much about Jaton, even if the image quality is worse than with other brands you probably won't notice at 800x600. There are probably a lot of brands which are no better. If you are really worried about image quality you could look for a card with DVI output, although it's probably hard enough to find a PCI one. (IMO that's probably the biggest advantage of having an AGP slot today, cards newer than eg. S3 Virge/Voodoo1 are much more common is AGP versions, even starting with Rage Pro or Riva 128.)

I understand why you want to use 66MHz FSB, I'd just prefer to have higher FSB available as an option, even if you can't switch on the fly. But of course with a K6-2+ it does make less of an impact than with other CPUs.

There are Super Socket 7 boards with FSB options in the BIOS.

The prices I have seen for most SS7 motherboards are scary. I'll just stick with PCI.