Brings back memories. Trying to resist typing old man stories, but I do recall one. I think those machines usually had around a 500Mb HDD size limit. I recall I somehow ended up with a Promise controller card which had it's own BIOS on card that, theoretically, could hand up to four 8.4Gb HDD's. IIRC, the biggest drive I ever had on it was a 1.6Gb.
The PCNet-II card is one of the "Lance" NIC's. Good compatibility. They were used in a lot of older 32bit SUN Microsystems workstations, some SGI's and a lot of other systems.
If I recall correctly from my Windows 3.1 networking days, a network card with BNC coax connections needs to have a terminator on it. I am almost positive that is what caused the hang on windows bootup. I don't think there is anything wrong with that network card. (Only 1.5 years late on my comment)
DX4-100, my childhood computer but in intel version. im rebuild it recently except my mainboard, it s good retro system and now my gate between my modern computer and my old rigs with 5.25 disk. nice video again!
Awesome video! I had very similar issues with my restoration of a DTK 386DX/40. I went through several sets of creative / vibra 16 s drivers attempting to solve intermittent sound. In my case it was no driver, it was an IRQ conflict which I still have not been able to figure out what was taking its IRQ. Anyhow, problem solved. :) Keep up the fantastic work and looking forward to the next video !!
How I remember Grand Prix 2. The good old days of the V10 engine. I had the same issues as you on my DX4 100 and only got it to run properly when I got a Pentium MMX but by then I was bored with it! :-) Interesting to see the set up issues and the solutions. Cheers.
my dear god, such nice nostalgic memories .. my firs ever PC was a 486 DX-4 100Mhz .. If i knew back then, how much would it mean today, to have him by my side, i would never give him away .... may he rest in peace ..
You can pick them up on eBay for $250-$500. I just sold an AST DX2/66 Bravo myself. They're getting harder to come by though, but I think for the next ~5 years they shouldn't be complete unicorns.
For GP2 you can press "O" to display the CPU usage. If that is over 100% constantly, you should turn the graphics down. And with Alt+D you can cycle through the different detail levels. I always tested in Monaco at the back of the grid. If any F1 game I had over the years runs fine there, it will run fine everywhere else. Even with the added rain/water and thus spray effects in later games.
Back in the day, I took my 486 DX4/100 chip out to try in another PC. That motherboard had the ability to run at 40MHz, instead of the usual 33MHz. Well, I intentionally left the motherboard at 40 MHz, so when the chip tripled the base clock, I had the worlds first 486 DX4/120. No fanfare as there was no way of showing the world on-line in those days. I did not run it for long for fear of burning out my chip which was only used for this experiment. But it did run faster on my casual benchmarks. If I knew a dang thing about heat sinks back then, I probably could have safely ran it like that on a newer motherboard and had the worlds' fastest PC... for a while.
Dragon Lore was probably the 3rd big box game I bought back in end of 1994 or early 95. I was 12-13 then. It blew my mind back then but looking at it now I can't believe how goofy it looks. Haha. It's also hilarious how folks would run the game with a much faster cd drive speed and make the cutscenes even goofier.
The hangup is not a problem, and is normal / expected. Make sure DHCP is configured and you set a DNS server in Windows. The hang is the TCP/IP stack waiting for the network to be ready.
I do love these retro builds as parts are getting harder and harder to find now days. I wounder if you replaced your processor with the AMD 5x86-133 with the 16KB Write Back Cache or an Over Clock to 160 Mhz due to Write Back being faster than the 8 KB Write Thru Cache on your DX 4 100Mhz how much of a performance gain you would get. Again love the retro builds, still trying to get all the parts for mine. Its nice to see that their are computer people that still appreciate this order hardware and don't just give it a dumpster dive. Thank you again.
That would be a great test, but unfortunately I don't have one of those I think ... I did pick up a great early Pentium 66Mhz the other day from around the same period (mid 1994) that I want to compare it to.
@@RetroSpector78 I was wondering, before you gave that case away did you happen to try that AMD 5x86 133 chip with and without the overclock to 160. If so, what were the results?
Clint Thompson I didn’t know it could run at 160. That would have been really fast for a cheap price. I had a K6-2 350 running at 400. It was great for games, and far cheaper than the PIII 400!
Great tip about the Vibra drivers. I have a HP XU Pentium Pro 150 that has the vibra chipset on board. I disabled it and put a SB pro clone in its place with a GM daughterboard and haven't looked back. Were I to do it again...or sell it off, I will now know how to get the Vibra drivers to be stable.
Hmm, since nobody mentions it, Id say that for games that require a lot of conventional memory whilst having mouse support, or insist on weird memory combination (EMS + XMS), you could use the Qemm386 tools. It was VERY efficient. Nice vid anyway. And loved Dragon Lore back in the day ;-)
Amazing how much people have forgotten about DOS. You didn't know WHY the sound blaster didn't work at first. The second I saw you using a card without IRQ jumpers on it, I said out loud "It's a plug and play card! Load the driver first!" which is what you eventually did. The world before plug and play was a lot more manual. Jumpers jumpers jumpers!
Talk about a blast from the past. Not so much about 486es etc, but that case. I hade that exact model as my first one at my second job in like 1997! Probably had a 486 in it as well. Probably upgraded it to a P75 or somesuch shortly after, as it was a computer sales and services business type of thing I worked at. Also... the Vibra 16 could definitely be a reasonable upgrade at the time, when they came along, as well as the 12x CD-ROM. Around 1995 4x was becoming the standard. 12x a few years later. Mmyes, I know a Mitsumi CD-ROM from the time, when I see it. A very distinct design of the tray. Also, the boxes the drives came in, works perfectly as 3.25" floppy boxes. Fits about 186 or 189 floppies in them. I think I have some eight or ten of said boxes, with floppies, somewhere. Ehem. I should image them at some point.
I use the SBBASIC.EXE (Phil's computer lab has it for download) for any PNP or jumperless Creative card. It has worked for me on everything from 286 machines to Pentium II machines. One file. For the CDROM, I use BTC CDROM drivers (I can pass them on to you if you'd like) - the best drivers I've ever used in over 20 years, but by far the WORST CDROMS themselves (ejects spinning disks, noisy, tray is cheap, etc). Nice build. It has inspired me to make a tribute video to my Siemens-Nixdorf 486.
I had windows 3.11 networked PCs in my household when I was a child. We used similar network network cards like your first one with the BNC style connector. If the BMC connector was left open (not terminated or connected to another PC) windows would always freeze at start up. Did you try putting a terminator on the connector?
Yes also remembered that and had one of those T component with 2 terminators on it attached to the nic but it kept hanging. Did have plans to try and setup such a bnc network as I have some very old 8 bit bnc cards so I might revisit it someday.
My first PC was an AMD 486DX4-100 with 16 M RAM (upgraded later to 48 M), 1.2 G HDD, S3 Virge, a noname sound card with an OPTi 82C931 chip. And, of course, Windows 95... PS, this configuration must run Doom and DOOM 2 perfectly.
Not bad for starting point with this system RetroSpector. Do you have plans for upgrade revisit? Maybe more upgrades with with cool looking legacy system? example: More ram, better video card, higher clocked processor? Thanks again for the video!
I've found Sound Blaster cards to be annoying because you need exactly the right drivers for your card. Sometimes drivers for earlier (or later) models may work, but very often you have many weird problems, specially with the PNP models.
The Windows error you are getting is probably coming from the DOS real-mode redirector already running. Windows is trying to load the protected mode driver for the card (VXD). Just disable the DOS-based network. You'll still have a network in a DOS box on Windows. You only need the DOS redirector for a strictly MS-DOS real-mode machine.
On my list of many things still left todo. I did play around with the nic’s packet driver and the mTCP software (www.brutman.com/mTCP/) and that also worked great
Nice videos. I recently rebuilt my 90s 5x86 system and used the same video card I had been using years before, as it is the fastest DOS performance card available for VESA. Find a card based on the Tseng ET4000/W32p with 2MB video memory. If you find a 1MB board, you can most likely upgrade it yourself. 2MB doubles the RAM bandwidth. This will in some cases more than double the frame rate you are getting with that Trident, trust me. Check eBay.
15 years ago, in 2005/6, I had a (then) quite old Athlon 64 3500+ I think and before that I had a Pentium 4 2.8c @ 3.5/3.6GHz with 2GB RAM running XP. If you had a motherboard that didn’t support plug n pray 🙏 15 years ago then I’d imagine you didn’t have to get much done on your setup or you found parts at the tip and built it from retro parts?
With the wobbling picture im getting seasick... Networks were a pita back then, especially if the BNC-Cable was not properly connected or some secretarys stood on them with the spike heels. Spent many hours in troubleshooting.
Yeah ... same here. Lost a couple of hours debugging an issue here and turned out to be a faulty bnc terminator plug. Not sure where the wobbling came from. My apologies for that. Got a capturing device now so new videos shouldn’t have that issue anymore.
No idea ... made in taiwan but no idea what company. The person who has it now has an entire collection of cases just like this. So was happy to pass it on to him.
If you are interested, a while ago I bought a tower of the City Desk brand that was imported from Portugal (It is a computer assembly company of Portuguese origin) with a similar design with the same turbo display, I imagine it comes from the same manufacturer.
yep..we went to shops just to look at all those boxes of soundBlasters,vodoo's,network cards. it was kinda magic. Computers magazines was more intertainig then porn..
i use pctcp from ftp software only need a packetdriver for the network card and you have tcp/ip work under dos and windows 3.1 , i use ftp to transfer file beetween linux (pi as ftp server) an windows vetusware.com/download/PCTCP%20Network%20Software%20version%204.1%20for%20DOS%20PCTCP%20Network%20Software%20version%204.1%20for%20DOS/?id=8687
Huh; that formula 1 game was not impressive at all. This is a PC that can run descent and system shock but struggles with a game that looks like it could be running on amiga 500.
![486DX4-100 MHz Benchmark Battle [ Intel, Cyrix, AMD, TI, ST]](/img/n.gif)
Divebombing into the first corner of Spa just like Max Verstappen. Classy.
He should have watched my video before he went to Spa instead of spending all that time in the simulator :)
@@RetroSpector78 great video can it play vcd mpeg1? I know it can play 320 mp3 stereo as dx4 is powerful
Seeing the intro to Grand Prix 2 gave me an istant nostalgiagasm.
Brings back memories. Trying to resist typing old man stories, but I do recall one. I think those machines usually had around a 500Mb HDD size limit. I recall I somehow ended up with a Promise controller card which had it's own BIOS on card that, theoretically, could hand up to four 8.4Gb HDD's. IIRC, the biggest drive I ever had on it was a 1.6Gb.
Thank you for the video, took me back to when I had my 486DX4 100 & Doom.
Glad you enjoyed it
Great video, I even love hearing the computer revving up during Dragon Lore, it takes me back in time.
The PCNet-II card is one of the "Lance" NIC's. Good compatibility. They were used in a lot of older 32bit SUN Microsystems workstations, some SGI's and a lot of other systems.
Un bon flashback dans les 90' ! Merci
If I recall correctly from my Windows 3.1 networking days, a network card with BNC coax connections needs to have a terminator on it. I am almost positive that is what caused the hang on windows bootup. I don't think there is anything wrong with that network card. (Only 1.5 years late on my comment)
I miss that Microprose logo loading. Microprose was one of my favorite developers (Gunship/Gunship 2000 probably my fave Microprose games).
DX4-100, my childhood computer but in intel version. im rebuild it recently except my mainboard, it s good retro system and now my gate between my modern computer and my old rigs with 5.25 disk. nice video again!
Awesome video! I had very similar issues with my restoration of a DTK 386DX/40. I went through several sets of creative / vibra 16 s drivers attempting to solve intermittent sound. In my case it was no driver, it was an IRQ conflict which I still have not been able to figure out what was taking its IRQ. Anyhow, problem solved. :) Keep up the fantastic work and looking forward to the next video !!
How I remember Grand Prix 2. The good old days of the V10 engine. I had the same issues as you on my DX4 100 and only got it to run properly when I got a Pentium MMX but by then I was bored with it! :-) Interesting to see the set up issues and the solutions. Cheers.
my dear god, such nice nostalgic memories ..
my firs ever PC was a 486 DX-4 100Mhz ..
If i knew back then, how much would it mean today, to have him by my side, i would never give him away .... may he rest in peace ..
You can pick them up on eBay for $250-$500. I just sold an AST DX2/66 Bravo myself. They're getting harder to come by though, but I think for the next ~5 years they shouldn't be complete unicorns.
The memories. Thank you :)
Great video and happy to see you get a childhood favourite game up and running again - enjoy!
Spa ofc. My favorite too.. Really nice chassis.
For GP2 you can press "O" to display the CPU usage. If that is over 100% constantly, you should turn the graphics down.
And with Alt+D you can cycle through the different detail levels.
I always tested in Monaco at the back of the grid.
If any F1 game I had over the years runs fine there, it will run fine everywhere else.
Even with the added rain/water and thus spray effects in later games.
Back in the day, I took my 486 DX4/100 chip out to try in another PC. That motherboard had the ability to run at 40MHz, instead of the usual 33MHz. Well, I intentionally left the motherboard at 40 MHz, so when the chip tripled the base clock, I had the worlds first 486 DX4/120. No fanfare as there was no way of showing the world on-line in those days. I did not run it for long for fear of burning out my chip which was only used for this experiment. But it did run faster on my casual benchmarks. If I knew a dang thing about heat sinks back then, I probably could have safely ran it like that on a newer motherboard and had the worlds' fastest PC... for a while.
Dragon Lore was probably the 3rd big box game I bought back in end of 1994 or early 95. I was 12-13 then. It blew my mind back then but looking at it now I can't believe how goofy it looks. Haha. It's also hilarious how folks would run the game with a much faster cd drive speed and make the cutscenes even goofier.
The hangup is not a problem, and is normal / expected. Make sure DHCP is configured and you set a DNS server in Windows. The hang is the TCP/IP stack waiting for the network to be ready.
I do love these retro builds as parts are getting harder and harder to find now days. I wounder if you replaced your processor with the AMD 5x86-133 with the 16KB Write Back Cache or an Over Clock to 160 Mhz due to Write Back being faster than the 8 KB Write Thru Cache on your DX 4 100Mhz how much of a performance gain you would get. Again love the retro builds, still trying to get all the parts for mine. Its nice to see that their are computer people that still appreciate this order hardware and don't just give it a dumpster dive. Thank you again.
That would be a great test, but unfortunately I don't have one of those I think ... I did pick up a great early Pentium 66Mhz the other day from around the same period (mid 1994) that I want to compare it to.
Turns out I did have the 5x86-133 ! :) will add it to my todo list.
@@RetroSpector78 I was wondering, before you gave that case away did you happen to try that AMD 5x86 133 chip with and without the overclock to 160. If so, what were the results?
Clint Thompson not yet, but have another mainboard from the same period to try it. Definitely on my list for a future video.
Clint Thompson I didn’t know it could run at 160. That would have been really fast for a cheap price. I had a K6-2 350 running at 400. It was great for games, and far cheaper than the PIII 400!
"Dragon Lore" Hmm, where do I know that from?
> He boots it up
Oh no...
Great tip about the Vibra drivers. I have a HP XU Pentium Pro 150 that has the vibra chipset on board. I disabled it and put a SB pro clone in its place with a GM daughterboard and haven't looked back. Were I to do it again...or sell it off, I will now know how to get the Vibra drivers to be stable.
Hmm, since nobody mentions it, Id say that for games that require a lot of conventional memory whilst having mouse support, or insist on weird memory combination (EMS + XMS), you could use the Qemm386 tools. It was VERY efficient. Nice vid anyway. And loved Dragon Lore back in the day ;-)
Amazing how much people have forgotten about DOS. You didn't know WHY the sound blaster didn't work at first. The second I saw you using a card without IRQ jumpers on it, I said out loud "It's a plug and play card! Load the driver first!" which is what you eventually did. The world before plug and play was a lot more manual. Jumpers jumpers jumpers!
Personally, I never was a fan of Plug and Pray. ;)
Talk about a blast from the past. Not so much about 486es etc, but that case. I hade that exact model as my first one at my second job in like 1997! Probably had a 486 in it as well. Probably upgraded it to a P75 or somesuch shortly after, as it was a computer sales and services business type of thing I worked at.
Also... the Vibra 16 could definitely be a reasonable upgrade at the time, when they came along, as well as the 12x CD-ROM. Around 1995 4x was becoming the standard. 12x a few years later.
Mmyes, I know a Mitsumi CD-ROM from the time, when I see it. A very distinct design of the tray. Also, the boxes the drives came in, works perfectly as 3.25" floppy boxes. Fits about 186 or 189 floppies in them. I think I have some eight or ten of said boxes, with floppies, somewhere. Ehem. I should image them at some point.
I've played so many hours at Grand Prix 2! I still have the burnt cd copy at home...
I use the SBBASIC.EXE (Phil's computer lab has it for download) for any PNP or jumperless Creative card. It has worked for me on everything from 286 machines to Pentium II machines. One file.
For the CDROM, I use BTC CDROM drivers (I can pass them on to you if you'd like) - the best drivers I've ever used in over 20 years, but by far the WORST CDROMS themselves (ejects spinning disks, noisy, tray is cheap, etc).
Nice build. It has inspired me to make a tribute video to my Siemens-Nixdorf 486.
I had windows 3.11 networked PCs in my household when I was a child. We used similar network network cards like your first one with the BNC style connector. If the BMC connector was left open (not terminated or connected to another PC) windows would always freeze at start up. Did you try putting a terminator on the connector?
Yes also remembered that and had one of those T component with 2 terminators on it attached to the nic but it kept hanging. Did have plans to try and setup such a bnc network as I have some very old 8 bit bnc cards so I might revisit it someday.
In the last video it looked like you could populate the video card with memory modules. Maybe give that a shot?
My first PC was an AMD 486DX4-100 with 16 M RAM (upgraded later to 48 M), 1.2 G HDD, S3 Virge, a noname sound card with an OPTi 82C931 chip. And, of course, Windows 95...
PS, this configuration must run Doom and DOOM 2 perfectly.
Not bad for starting point with this system RetroSpector. Do you have plans for upgrade revisit? Maybe more upgrades with with cool looking legacy system? example: More ram, better video card, higher clocked processor? Thanks again for the video!
4:15 Cool GUI :)!
pun one 5.25" floppy to the system :)
That Mitsumi drive brings back memories
mitsumi and nec
I've found Sound Blaster cards to be annoying because you need exactly the right drivers for your card. Sometimes drivers for earlier (or later) models may work, but very often you have many weird problems, specially with the PNP models.
Beautifull 486 ♡♡♡♡
always see pcnet in vmware and virtualbox as a virtual nic, and now see the real one
Hope you enjoyed it !
The Windows error you are getting is probably coming from the DOS real-mode redirector already running. Windows is trying to load the protected mode driver for the card (VXD). Just disable the DOS-based network. You'll still have a network in a DOS box on Windows. You only need the DOS redirector for a strictly MS-DOS real-mode machine.
You can access samba file servers with that nic under 3.11 by installing the 32bit TCP/IP stack in Windows 3.11 :)
On my list of many things still left todo. I did play around with the nic’s packet driver and the mTCP software (www.brutman.com/mTCP/) and that also worked great
i have the exact same case, branded citydesk p120office (it had a p120, now a p200mmx)
Why didn't you try changing the IRQ and/or the address? Possibly could have fixed your windows startup problem.
Nice videos. I recently rebuilt my 90s 5x86 system and used the same video card I had been using years before, as it is the fastest DOS performance card available for VESA. Find a card based on the Tseng ET4000/W32p with 2MB video memory. If you find a 1MB board, you can most likely upgrade it yourself. 2MB doubles the RAM bandwidth. This will in some cases more than double the frame rate you are getting with that Trident, trust me. Check eBay.
Thx .... been looking for a reasonably priced Tseng for a while now but nothing popped up yet.
@@RetroSpector78 The Tseng ET6000 with 4 or 6MB RAM will also work fine in such a machine, although they are even harder to come by.
Yeah.. Those IRQs, DMAs and IO adresses.. reminds mee a 15 yrs back.. it's always nice to whatch your vids and stuff.. btw where are you from?
15 years ago, in 2005/6, I had a (then) quite old Athlon 64 3500+ I think and before that I had a Pentium 4 2.8c @ 3.5/3.6GHz with 2GB RAM running XP.
If you had a motherboard that didn’t support plug n pray 🙏 15 years ago then I’d imagine you didn’t have to get much done on your setup or you found parts at the tip and built it from retro parts?
shiiit..got goosebumps.
With the wobbling picture im getting seasick... Networks were a pita back then, especially if the BNC-Cable was not properly connected or some secretarys stood on them with the spike heels. Spent many hours in troubleshooting.
Yeah ... same here. Lost a couple of hours debugging an issue here and turned out to be a faulty bnc terminator plug. Not sure where the wobbling came from. My apologies for that. Got a capturing device now so new videos shouldn’t have that issue anymore.
my 486 dx2 66 was faster in Grand Prix. maybe this machine need a better graphics card. love your content. its like a time travel.
I have that Grand Prix 2 box too, though I think mine's English and not Dutch ;)
Try dawn patrol, that was horrible with the coneventional memory. Wanted sound, cdrom and mouse, and if I remember correctly 610k free mem.
what's the model of that case? it looks fantastic!
No idea ... made in taiwan but no idea what company. The person who has it now has an entire collection of cases just like this. So was happy to pass it on to him.
If you are interested, a while ago I bought a tower of the City Desk brand that was imported from Portugal (It is a computer assembly company of Portuguese origin) with a similar design with the same turbo display, I imagine it comes from the same manufacturer.
Why didn't you make the PC fast enough to play the racing game?
just use an IRQ above 9 for the network card, when system has both audio and network cards
And make sure there are no port conflicts either. 300 is the hard drive. 330 is the MIDI. 200 is the game port and 220 is the Sound Blaster.
why didn't you use windows 95? that's what I had on mine when I had a 100Mhz system...
Mooie pc volgens mij ook geschikt voor win 95
Zeker en vast. Leuk platform amd dx4.
OMG I forgot about memmaker, good times ;)
yep..we went to shops just to look at all those boxes of soundBlasters,vodoo's,network cards. it was kinda magic. Computers magazines was more intertainig then porn..
Have you Am5x86 160MHz CPU?
I had 486 sx 25, ibm ps/2 as first pc
IRQ Conflic?
sure it is
¿Woou DOS Memory-maker utilly successfully use?
I thought that thing was most useless thing, since the disk cache was slow, jejeje
Dude I have to have that PC any identification to look it up with?
Why is the screen shimmering, it is bothering my stomach.
waar woon je wel in belgie ?
OH YES !!!
I love all this stuff, I KNOW all this stuff, but the builds will always a 100% from me !
👍
486dx2 next step up is 486dx4 next step up is Am5-160-40mz. So on, a...
where did you buy that vibra 16 card
Came with a bunch of other retro cards I picked up recently. Don't have that many spare 16-bit soundblaster cards unfortunately
I thought grand prix needed ems/xms memory dos commands
i use pctcp from ftp software only need a packetdriver for the network card and you have tcp/ip work under dos and windows 3.1 , i use ftp to transfer file beetween linux (pi as ftp server)
an windows
vetusware.com/download/PCTCP%20Network%20Software%20version%204.1%20for%20DOS%20PCTCP%20Network%20Software%20version%204.1%20for%20DOS/?id=8687
Haven’t used that one. Did use mTCP with a packet driver and also worked great.
The Vibra16 cards are pure trash! I had nothing but problems with those cheap cards.
good old times. only appreciated by those who have experienced them. damn spoiled high-tech generation today.
My son prefers retro systems and games. He’s fascinated by them, and gets them up and running. Good kid.
Huh; that formula 1 game was not impressive at all. This is a PC that can run descent and system shock but struggles with a game that looks like it could be running on amiga 500.
Had Microprose GrandPrx (original) on an Atari ST540FM with 512KB of memory and it seemed to run okay 👍
again those ugly vibra sound cards they are so bad