My other Videos about the topic: Which Graphics Card to pick for your Retro PC: th-cam.com/video/yH_IXsvyZ1c/w-d-xo.html Modifying the CPU Clockspeed: th-cam.com/video/cY_GKqkE3rg/w-d-xo.html The journey through time is still being worked on :)
Thanks a lot! Yeah, Noctua is definitely my go-to for cooling solutions :D What would have been really great is a PCI Slot cooling option, but I only found and bought a single one, and that was terrible unfortunately (much too loud and fan couldnt be replaced)
Mad respect for this lots-of-PCs-in-one-approach. Personally I am going in completely the opposite direction with dozens of separate machines, so it's nice and relaxing to watch all the hoops I won't have to jump through and the nifty solutions for them. :P
Haha, yeah I have heard of people basically having a PC for every 2 years of games, so that everything is time accurate, and surely, in lots of cases you do avoid issues. Especially the Voodoo 3 was actually a total pain to work with. Most stuff can be made so that it works, but it's lots of work and troubleshooding and "modern knowledge" and options you wouldn't have had back then. More on that in the next video :D
Yeah, by the time the PCs were that powerful, "Desktop PCs" were already rather unpopular. I think their time was mostly in the late 90s, popularized by the original IBM PCs for example. It's kinda funny though that this specific case, which was made in the early 90s, and which I bought on ebay, was used in a company which back in the day, already put a AMD K6 into it.
This was great and nice to see your build. I've wanted to build a DOS pc for a long time, but it's difficult to decide what era to go with! I think I'll work on a windows 98 PC first before getting into the can of worms that is DOS!
Thanks! Yeah, that's reasonable. Also consider using a Mister FPGA for DOS, which you could then maybe also use to solve the C64 problem :D I think a PC with high performance components fom around the years 2002-2004 should yield pretty much the best results for most games, except of DOS and ofc the early 3dfx stuff. Also instead of swapping between DOS and WIN98 as I did, you could swap between WIN98 and XP if that should ever be necessary. Though I am not sure if a SD-Card would still offer optimal speed for that era, but ofc there are also alternatives. :)
Yeah, exactly. I tried to make that point at 8:05 showing all the games of 2000 which still don't use more than 128MB. But going below 128MB also doesn't make much sense. Ofc you don't lose much when playing a game from 1997. But you also don't gain anything.
Oh, that's because I am using 2 SD Cards. One card for DOS: 16GB capacity, but as DOS only handles 8GB drive and 2GB partitions, that's how its set up. The Second SD ist for Windows. That one is 128gb, with full 128gb used as a single partition.
This has been interesting - there are a number of useful tools that you have brought up. I am curious to know if you have tested the difference between external cache enabled and external cache disabled in conjunction with the CPU? I found that it did make a difference, although I have not modified my bus speed down to 60MHz and as such, I cannot directly compare (yet).
Heyho! Yeah, you can see a list at 33:20 where I did list a couple of settings where just the external cache is different. You basically need to keep in Mind that the K6 2+ CPU has it's own L2 Cache. That means that the external Cache becomes L3 basically. But as soon as you disable one cache of the CPU it moves "up" and as it's slower as the integreated L1/L2 cache, the CPU also becomes slower if it needs to use the External Cache as L1/L2. So disabling "just" the external cache does almost nothing. But Disabling L1, L2 and then also disabling the external cache halves the effective speed and makes a massive difference.
The Soundcard chart you mean is probably this (not created by myself): docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1o0_u-MyIOJFaPZ0MdAPcj-ff7MI4YXLim3GuobVNvaY/edit?gid=1663779470#gid=1663779470 The Doc for graphics cards compatibility is here (also not created by myself): gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/ The chart for Graphics cards I created myself and can be downloaded here: drive.google.com/file/d/1GJ8BmQLn-9C_42d01oscZXvkOjX-aJoy/view
Are you familiar with 86box? Gives far more options for tinkering than DOSBox does and emulates more accurately in my experience. I use 86box to have 486 and early Pentium machines with several DOS and Windows 3.11,95 and 98 configurations, even with a 3D Voodoo card.
Oh, interesting. But no, not familiar with it. I only tried around with different DosBox releases. PCem might already yield better results than DosBox, but I didnt tinker around with that either. In fact I didnt even know of it until I was already deep into getting all parts together (a bit later there was also a Linus Tech Tips video on PCem). Seems like 86 is based on PCem, so I don't doubt it will give better results. But personally, I rather stick to the original now.
![Dungeoncrawler Highlights - Game Jam March 2024 [EN] by Kordanor](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1M1ZDBolWZ0/mqdefault.jpg)
![King Arthur: Knights Tale - Review after 300h, including all* Expansions [EN] by Kordanor](/img/n.gif)
My other Videos about the topic:
Which Graphics Card to pick for your Retro PC: th-cam.com/video/yH_IXsvyZ1c/w-d-xo.html
Modifying the CPU Clockspeed: th-cam.com/video/cY_GKqkE3rg/w-d-xo.html
The journey through time is still being worked on :)
Best TH-cam channel for this type of content out there! ❤
Haha, thanks a lot! :D
Nice video. I enjoy the amount of detail
Thanks a lot! Did my best to also make this video helpful for people interested in building their own machine. :)
Great video! Very imformative and thumbs up for the Noctua cooling solutions (I'm using similar). Would love to see more builds in the future :)
Thanks a lot! Yeah, Noctua is definitely my go-to for cooling solutions :D
What would have been really great is a PCI Slot cooling option, but I only found and bought a single one, and that was terrible unfortunately (much too loud and fan couldnt be replaced)
Mad respect for this lots-of-PCs-in-one-approach. Personally I am going in completely the opposite direction with dozens of separate machines, so it's nice and relaxing to watch all the hoops I won't have to jump through and the nifty solutions for them. :P
Haha, yeah I have heard of people basically having a PC for every 2 years of games, so that everything is time accurate, and surely, in lots of cases you do avoid issues. Especially the Voodoo 3 was actually a total pain to work with. Most stuff can be made so that it works, but it's lots of work and troubleshooding and "modern knowledge" and options you wouldn't have had back then. More on that in the next video :D
@@KordanorsGamingLair Well I also need to justify my gigantic hardware piles, somehow. XD
Awesome project! Underrated video! Keep up the good work!
Thanks a lot! Much appreciated! :)
this quite similar to the first case I ever had, but far more powerfull.
Yeah, by the time the PCs were that powerful, "Desktop PCs" were already rather unpopular. I think their time was mostly in the late 90s, popularized by the original IBM PCs for example. It's kinda funny though that this specific case, which was made in the early 90s, and which I bought on ebay, was used in a company which back in the day, already put a AMD K6 into it.
This was great and nice to see your build. I've wanted to build a DOS pc for a long time, but it's difficult to decide what era to go with! I think I'll work on a windows 98 PC first before getting into the can of worms that is DOS!
Thanks! Yeah, that's reasonable. Also consider using a Mister FPGA for DOS, which you could then maybe also use to solve the C64 problem :D
I think a PC with high performance components fom around the years 2002-2004 should yield pretty much the best results for most games, except of DOS and ofc the early 3dfx stuff. Also instead of swapping between DOS and WIN98 as I did, you could swap between WIN98 and XP if that should ever be necessary. Though I am not sure if a SD-Card would still offer optimal speed for that era, but ofc there are also alternatives. :)
128mb of ram is quite a large amount for back in the 1997/98 days. Most high end PC shipped with 32MB in 1997 and 64MB in 1998.
Yeah, exactly. I tried to make that point at 8:05 showing all the games of 2000 which still don't use more than 128MB. But going below 128MB also doesn't make much sense. Ofc you don't lose much when playing a game from 1997. But you also don't gain anything.
You first did make 8gb size and partitions and later made again up to 120gb, why you used two times fdisk and format?
Oh, that's because I am using 2 SD Cards. One card for DOS: 16GB capacity, but as DOS only handles 8GB drive and 2GB partitions, that's how its set up. The Second SD ist for Windows. That one is 128gb, with full 128gb used as a single partition.
This has been interesting - there are a number of useful tools that you have brought up. I am curious to know if you have tested the difference between external cache enabled and external cache disabled in conjunction with the CPU? I found that it did make a difference, although I have not modified my bus speed down to 60MHz and as such, I cannot directly compare (yet).
Heyho! Yeah, you can see a list at 33:20 where I did list a couple of settings where just the external cache is different. You basically need to keep in Mind that the K6 2+ CPU has it's own L2 Cache. That means that the external Cache becomes L3 basically. But as soon as you disable one cache of the CPU it moves "up" and as it's slower as the integreated L1/L2 cache, the CPU also becomes slower if it needs to use the External Cache as L1/L2. So disabling "just" the external cache does almost nothing. But Disabling L1, L2 and then also disabling the external cache halves the effective speed and makes a massive difference.
Hi, can you share your sound card excel doc (even if its in CSV) and also the video card one. Very useful tools.
The Soundcard chart you mean is probably this (not created by myself): docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1o0_u-MyIOJFaPZ0MdAPcj-ff7MI4YXLim3GuobVNvaY/edit?gid=1663779470#gid=1663779470
The Doc for graphics cards compatibility is here (also not created by myself): gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/
The chart for Graphics cards I created myself and can be downloaded here: drive.google.com/file/d/1GJ8BmQLn-9C_42d01oscZXvkOjX-aJoy/view
Are you familiar with 86box? Gives far more options for tinkering than DOSBox does and emulates more accurately in my experience. I use 86box to have 486 and early Pentium machines with several DOS and Windows 3.11,95 and 98 configurations, even with a 3D Voodoo card.
Oh, interesting. But no, not familiar with it. I only tried around with different DosBox releases. PCem might already yield better results than DosBox, but I didnt tinker around with that either. In fact I didnt even know of it until I was already deep into getting all parts together (a bit later there was also a Linus Tech Tips video on PCem). Seems like 86 is based on PCem, so I don't doubt it will give better results. But personally, I rather stick to the original now.
86Box is great! It is based on PCem, but this fork focus on emulation accuracy instead of speed.