That devide-overflow error was due to a "benchmark" that old Turbo Pascal programs did to determine how to get certain delays. What they did is: compute sin(something) multiple times. Say X times. And they measured how long that took (say Y milliseconds). Then they would divide X/Y to know how often they'd have to compute sin(something) to get 1 millisecond delay. Problem was - at about 350 MHz, that benchmark took 0 milliseconds and that caused a division by 0 error. There was some patch for Turbo Pascal programs that fixed this behavior.
Man. I must start crying, when I see Stunts and Prince of Persia. My first Gaming experience with 7years on christmas evening ....long ago, 30years now.... I´m old (Thanks for the vid)
You're right. I've contacted the thin client seller and all the upvotes to this comment get a special deal -- $54 thin client PC! :D Your purchases will now have the symmetry you desire. Still too disproportionate? Please tell us what is the optimal proportion and I will inform the seller of thin client PC. lol anyway $50 is not much for a sound card retro, new-retro or otherwise. I suppose your observation has context for anyone who never had a PC without onboard sound. To this day an aftermarket sound card is still the better quality choice. You can use that parallel OPL card in a 30 year spread of PCs so its not tied to just this extremely affordable thin client. Speaking specifically of that adlib/sound blaster OPL sound, a lot of the sound cards featuring that chip go for at least $50. And none of the newer sound cards are capable of it. You can do emulation. But if all we wanted to do was emulate, we wouldn't need either this thin client or the parallel sound card. We could just run DOSBox on our regular PCs or a raspberry Pi. :P
Sf2590 yes, I know that. That’s the whole “gotcha” of his shtick. That’s why I’m attacking along the lines of it being too disproportionate for him. 54 cents is too disproportionate to 9 cents, apparently. Additionally, regardless of numbers, there’s this this thing called context. A parallel port sound card is going to cost you, regardless of how good a deal you get on the host PC. When that crosses a line for anyone, they can use DOSbox or buy a proportionately more expensive PC if they wish to feel wrapped in the warm arms of proportionality. But nobody is actually trying to buy anything here. Just dealing out cheap gotchas over the internet with disingenuous interest. :)
It's an Indycar, a March Porsche. Porsche tried to conquer Indycar and most of all the Indianapolis 500 after McLaren's switch to Honda in F1 left Porsche with no financier of their F1 engine. Stunts is an awesome game, I still play it from time to time.
Nice !! I love VIA CPUs, even though back in the day they were bought mainly for their low power draw, now they are really good for DOS sensitive games and more options is always better :D even though I still love the Pentium MMX, you showed really well its versatility with your 136 in 1 retro CPU video :)
Interesting idea. A cool little PC. I also want a small form factor DOS machine so I have bought a Pentium III 400Mhz laptop and gutted it. Without the battery, keyboard, PCMCIA slots, and LCD screen it is actually very compact. It even has a built in OPL3 MIDI sound chip. My next task is to see if I can get CD Audio out of it, obviously many games in the Pentium DOS era had background music on CD. The laptop only cost me £23 plus £7 postage. Although I did get lucky. It was listed as spares or repair and described as not working. But it did actually work fine.
We still use HP thin clients like that at work. They're not really good for modern internet, but they're good enough for the ancient programs that keeps the mine working. Maybe I should ask IT if I can have a couple of them if they get replaced....
I love the thin client videos! For $150 I picked up a HP T730 Thin Client with a AMD RX-427BB w/R7 graphics, USB 3.0, gigabit LAN, dual-band WiFi & Bluetooth upgraded to 16GB RAM, 256GB SATA M. 2, AMD Radeon RX 550 4GB, and windows 10 Pro. Runs DOSbox, and steam games very well and it's silent.
Phil, you can use a program called mo'slo to limit the processor speed in dos in a more controlled manner. This program has been around since 1990. Good luck!
You should look into the Neoware CA2 thin client. It's also a C3 processor, but it has an ISA/PCI riser. I have a couple of them and they make fantastic little retro gaming machines. I put an ALS100 Plus sound card in mine with a Dreamblaster S2 on the wavetable header. If you don't have one, I'd be willing to send you one for the cost of shipping.
DOS always had the ability to support optical drives. They all came with their own external drivers. Usually a 5 minute process to install. AliExpress sells external USB external DVD’s. I use them on service calls all the time (especially these days in the age of flash drives). Finding a DOS driver for one would definitely be a challenge. :)
Hey Phils...this is the best option available for building a retro pc, and It is the more affordable option I´ve seen since those hp thin client are very very cheap on my country...after seen this I am sure I will grab one of these. Thanks so much for sharing.
@PhilsComputerLab have you try the Wyse V90LE Client? It´s the one I have and it looks promising and sure it is for a retro pc...if you can review it I would be gratefull with you.
Hey Phil, I was wondering if you've heard before of the eXoDOS project. It's basically one person bundling DOS games (no scene rips, only proper dumps) and pre-configuring them for use with various versions of DOSBox so the average user doesn't have to worry about specific quirks of games or different CPU speeds messing things up. I find it to be a really nice alternative for a dedicated DOS PC. It also prevents you from needing more specific hardware, since it comes with pre-configured MT-32 support, SB, AdLib, GUS, it even has some support for Voodoo 2 emulation so you can play certain early 3D DOS games more easily
While I haven't heard of this project, it sounds great! I have used the DOSBox ECE project, that works great, has MT-32 and Sound Fonts and all of that as well. The community is so amazing with what people manage to put together...
@@philscomputerlab eXoDOS uses a mix of DOSBox SVN, Daum and ECE if I recall correctly, depending on what's most compatible with a specific game. I believe V4.0 of the project put the total number of games around the 7000 mark
I have used exodos DOS games. Some games don't have their copy protection cracked. For example, secret of the silver blades has copy protection that you can't skip and the game files don't include a crack or lookup table for it.
Thank you for the great video, I just received two of these thin clients and was able to install DOS, I can't wait to get my OPL3LPT, should be coming any day now. Thank you for the great content!!
Wolf3D has an option for digitized (sampled) sound through the PC speaker. It would be interesting to hear how the rendition of it would sound on this machine though the headphone port.
👍👍👍 It's amazing how you find these bargains and give to these machines a second life! Your instructions to configure the PC are very valuable too, as always... good job! Thank you very much!
Neoware CA2, I was able to upgrade it to a PIII Tualatin 1.4GHz (the Korean modded one on eBay) by just adding a small fan and it has an ISA slot and better DOS compatibility.
Some of the thin client models of that era had an expansion option to add a pci port for use with a wireless card. That would be a great way to add a sound blaster and joystick port
Really interesting!! You can also try building a covox speech thing for the parallel port, many games support it, though it's more for wav support than for music.
Wow nostalgia,my childhood till 8-9 years old then came the PSX/PS One, in stunts when you pick an opponent they have funny Animations, and you can build your tracks too, in Prince of persia if you pass the first level without picking the sword you gain it at lvl 2,great memories.
Since this looks to be a decent little basic unit and a 32-bit system, it will allow me to run old software and equipment alike that my other systems won't. Thanks for putting this out there. The only drawback is, it didn't cost me $9 US dollars, but it was less than $27 which isn't too bad for a PC with nostalgic-style abilities. It comes with a keyboard & mouse, power cords, software CD, and a stand.
This is awesome, I making myself a vid on actual pc gaming on the thin client t630, is an unknown territory and this just shows they are more than meets the eye and are incredibly cheap
@@philscomputerlab sempai noticed me @_@, but yeah I have it running Windows 10 and that one is 4 cores apu with r7 gpu. Is pretty amazing though and so far there is not much about gaming on thin clients
@@MasterDrood I believe I used the 620 Plus which has PCIe slot and installed a GT 1030. It was quite capable, but the CPU was a bit of a bottleneck. Still, if you can get a good price, it's a really well rounded machine.
@@philscomputerlab that t630 is 2.0 boost to 2.2 4 cores it doesn't have pcie natively but I will be making a frankenstein usin an m.2 adapter. I'll reach you out once is done so you can take a look
Well, just bought one. Thank you! I dont mind playing with PC Speakers, thats how I did when I was young. Maybe a followup video on the inside of the pc and expansion options like HDD, PCI, RAM, etc? THANK YOU PHIL
@@MarkTheMorose As I read, you are right. Maybe an HDD upgrade. We'll see it when it arrives. Also, I think Win98 could be installed with working sound. Nice
Thank you for the great video, I was stumped on why the OPL3LPT was not working on Monkey Island and the game crashed when I tried to open it. Using the setmul utility fixed the problem and now I can here adlib music instead of the PC speaker! Thank you!!!!!!!
Good idea of itx based DOS-PC. Actually I have a little valley itx mainboard with celeron 220 processor, but it seems I must bent it right to make it work. Simply, it can not run placed on non flat surface, its not stable and randomly restarts. At least, worked with PCI SB live! card with pure dos. Too bad for that BGA.
That's really cool. Thanks for sharing. Nice to know you don't have to buy bulky annoying craptastic super old 90s beige boxes and you can have a tiny little low power DOS machine. I bet it's very efficient in terms of power.
I love playing old dos, win3.x/95/98 games on my Samsung Galaxy Note 9 in DeX mode connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Plays everything I throw at it without issues.
You serious? eBay is swamped with these ex-business computers and thin clients. Just found some sweet offers of HP t510s, would definitely buy one if the shipping cost wasn't expensive (I'm from Hong Kong)
I use something similar to this as a smart box for my dad's TV so he can watch Netflix, TH-cam etc. without splashing out on a new TV. It's a later variant that has HDMI, but still cost less than $30. Really useful little things.
I've ended up buying a few thin clients. Inspired by Phil's videos: an HPT610, a (so far) non-working T5730, and a Wyse CX0. Plus a Dell/Wyse Z90D7 (similar spec. to the HPT610), a Teco TR3760B, and a Neoware CA21. The Neoware is interesting. It has an internal PSU so only needs a standard mains lead, and has an 800MHz VIA CPU, VIA CN700 chipset (hopefully supported by Windows 98, and possibly DOS), and has SODIMM and 44-pin IDE connectors. Mine was set to 400MHz CPU speed, but loading the optimal BIOS settings cured that.
@@OverTallman Thanks; I tried it just now, and while the CMOS battery was indeed dead, replacing it didn't help. I think the thin client has been damaged somehow; maybe a 19v power supply got plugged in instead of a 12v supply, and fried something. I can't see any damage, but I tried a spare CPU and SODIMM. Symptoms: the LED on any supply plugged in flickers on and off, in time with a very quiet 'ticking' sound from the thin client, 2-3 times a second. :(
Man i still have some dos games.Just for nostalgia sake.I would love to see older hardware.I can remember back in the day i had a 386sx x2 it had 2 cpu's and 32mb of ram(could only read 24mb back then)It ran with my friends 486 dx 2 in games.
I actually did something similar. I found someone selling Wyse R90lw thin clients for about $15 each a couple years ago. They were running the embedded standard 2009 version of XP, so they were well suited to run old software that doesn't play nicely with newer versions of Windows. I had an old pc dedicated to that, but it and its components were all close to two decades old, so I figured I needed to get something a tad newer to run my ancient software.
@@cyberman7348 go check your local dump then the electronics dump area. I have like 6 old 486 and 386 dos machines that i grabbed from there all working and that was from 1 summer. Some places wont let you take them but if you do just talk to the people there and "say" your going to bring back anything unused and recycle them back to that area if they stop you and ask what your doing.
@@Funboringness go check your local dump then the electronics dump area , youll eventually run across one. I found 6 in a 4 months span, but I also checked every week sometimes twice
@@kyles8524 Where on earth do you live? I haven't seen any cool nostalgy rising hardware for...Ages. Oldest hardware I've seen have been about P2/P3 era that can occasionally be seen somewhere. Something like old PS/2 is wet dream here. I was seriously disappointed to hear that one friends parent had tossed C128 desktop to trash years ago. Hardware I knew that was really uncommon to see anywhere. I haven't even seen Amiga 500 for sale for about three years and that was very, very common computer.
You are right. Although I'm figuring out if we need the big box at all given the new hardware we can use nowadays: I think the old-school monitor and keyboard are essential.
I want to see you try setting up EMS on all these thin clients, especially ones with PS/2 ports and a serial port. Especially if you can get DOS with EMS onto a WYSE Sx0.
@@philscomputerlab Afaik the never revisions of the C-Media chips don't contain the sound blaster compatibility. And yeah, totally forgot about those two, the ESS is probably the best for sound blaster support
Watching while playing with my retro pc thin client with a ymf724 PCI sound card. Thin client is a boundless adds 5700 (a distant cousin yet oddly similar to the wortmann terra thin client.)
You'd have had a hard time transferring data. Other than the parallel port there aren't many things to use with most other PCs of the era. Unless you also include the USB floppy drive.
Hey Phil, love your content! Especially the stuff on older Xeons and DOS gaming. How compatible with dos 6.22 is an Optiplex 755? I have one laying around
If you were curious, I just benchmarked the T5740 I've been working on, and it hits 134 FPS on Quake and 211 on the PC Player Bench, so both about 30% higher. The Yamaha ymf724 sound card works great in here too (with some configuration mods). Commander Keen 4 even plays with no screen jitter. Only downside is no video driver support for Win98.
On the hardware side, had to use a PCI riser (the expansion kit comes with both a PCI-E and a PCI riser). On the software side, had to use DSDMA and also limit the ram visible to DOS in the config file as anything over 512MB crashes it. Also note it worked on IRQ 5 without having to also run the YMFIRQ utility. I can post exact system configuration file contents that I used (config.sys and autoexec.bat) if you want them.
@@retro-computing-gaming Thanks for the tip. I found the expansion on Amazon and bought one. Hope it all works out. There might be a video, but not any time soon, likely in 2020...
Ok, so these configurations are for a XP/98 Dual install (with 98 being kind of broken of course), and changing boot.ini's entry for Windows 98 to DOS and modding the MSDOS.SYS file to force Win98 directly into a command prompt (DOS). You will also need to download Himemx and umbpci (from FreeDOS). You will also of course have to install the DOS drivers for the yamaha card. Config.sys: Device=c:\Windows\Himemx.exe /MAX=64000 Device=c:\Windows\umbpci.sys Device=c:\Windows\emm386.exe /NOEMS Autoexec.bat: SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4 copy C:\DS-XG\DOS4GW>EXE \ chcp 437 C:\DS-XG\SETUPDS.EXE /S C:\DS-XG\DSDMA.EXE del \DOS4GW.EXE MSDOS.SYS: WinDir=C:\Windows WinBootDir=c:\Windows HostWinBootDrv-C [Optios] BootMulti=0 BootGUI=0 DoubleBuffer=1 AutoScan=1 WinVer=4.10.2222 One last note - Windows 98 won't boot (may cause DOS problems too, I'm not sure) unless in the BIOS, you set both Serial ports to IRQ4 and Parallel to IRQ5 (you'll get a Windows Protection error otherwise).
I have the hp t610 plus and was thinking of using it as a windows 98/dos machine and was wondering if the parellel port audio device wud benefit a setup like that? Ive had loads of problems with audio drivers on every 98/dos machine I've tried to put together. Also: if u havent played Frederick pohls gateway before it's an awesome game and wud love to see it featured in a future dos/98 video!
You mention the lack of an optical drive... But can you get DOS to recognize an external USB optical drive on this ?... Does the mobo BIOS mention USB optical boot support ? Or how about an ISO image burnt to a USB flash stick formatted as optical disc ?
Very nice project. I have the same model. I installed a 4gb dom and installed windows 98. I could install the sound drivers, vinyl_v700b, but no luck with video drivers. Silver lining is that I have sound in dos games running from windows 98 through sound emulation.
hey phil :) I've got a setup with a e5-2689, x79 machinist board and 1866 mhz quad channel but im hitting only 977 cb in cinebench r15. Do you think that is normal?
But can it run Red dead Redemption 2? On a serious note, i looked at these pcs a few months ago to for a windows 98 project, The lack of a cdrom didn't work for me though. I'm happy to see it in action.
I got a HP DC7900 Ultra Slim for free a couple of years ago. Core 2 Duo E8400, 4GB DDR2 (2x2) and a 160GB SATA drive. It works but it's not stable as I have a power supply that isn't 135 watts. I'm going to pick up a suitable power supply and also upgrade it to a Core 2 Quad and turn it into a retro emulator.
Looks like it would be great for RPG's since no gameport. Did I spy a CRT in the Facebook link to this? Don't believe I have seen you use one before. Nice.
Hi again Phil, another update - I got an external USB CD working with this TC. It needs the Panasonic USBASPI.SYS and USBCD.SYS drivers installing on the boot floppy in config.sys to make it work.
@@philscomputerlab Yes, under plain MS-DOS 6.22 and DRDOS 7.03. I'll post the url in the next comment where you can find a copy of the original article and the drivers...
Man I wish there was a DOS Daemon Tools for DOS. The lack of optical drive is a big downside. Would one work here natively? I think a cool thing to do with one of these is to use Windows 98 and an external Sound Blaster like an Extigy or what ever the Audigy version was and see how things work out. You could then use Daemon Tools to load ISO for both DOS and Windows games, which is what I do with my retro boxes. This HP thin client looks just about the size of my Extigy and the color scheme matches. You could stack them for nice looking setup. The Extigy also has optional feet to stand on its side.
Yea there is one, but it only does ISO files, no BIN / CUE, so nothing with CD Audio works. It's part of the FreeDOS tools. I should do a video on this actually at some point.
@@philscomputerlab Lack of BIN/CUE is a bummer but even having ISO is quite cool. A lot of the Sierra adventure games use CDs for video with audio in resource files, however, they are easy to get working without CD.
These thin clients are also perfect personal web servers to run 24/7 because of low power consumption (6-10W) and fanless cooling. I use Dell Wyse from 2015 with N2807 / 4GB RAM / 16GB SSD connected to router as DMZ host with CentOS 7 installed and Let's Encrypt HTTPS website configured It can be used as file or print server, torrent downloader, much more powerful than any 300$ router. Can possibly be upgraded to 8GB RAM and mSata Half SSD up to 1 TB to become VM host for light tasks!
Nine bucks isn't too bad for a dedicated gaming computer 😂. Unlike that sound device, but it's all about personal preferences. To be honest, when I was young, I wasn't a huge fan of the primitive vintage gaming sounds. However I must admit I'm becoming more and more of a "nostalgia victim" ☺️. Sometimes I miss those lost features, you know. Luckily for me now there's quite a few options out there. As always thanks for the video, Phil 😉👍!
I can't remember without watching the entire video again 😅 I didn't do any further work with this machine to be honest. I feel it is more suited for DOS gaming anyway.
a friend of mine just gave me an intel NUC, I know they're not thin clients, but I love the tiny form factor, I'd love to see what you could do with one of those
Great vid I just skimmed through your vids and hit subscribe. One thing tough, you can find lots of DOS gaming builds, you can find Win98 and WinXP gaming builds but there's no Win95 and from my memory some 95 games didn't work on 98 like fragile alliance, sooooo pretty pretty pleeeeeeeaaaaseeee could you make win95 gaming battle station? Thin client would be best but anything that has 3d acceleration with win95 drivers fast enough for gaming I'd be interested in!
Hey phil, love your work, but its a bit misleading to say it was $9 + shipping. when shipping cost your more then the pc, for a total $23 (9+13). as shipping is definitely part of the cost of the unit. Thanks again for the video, and keep up the good work.
Your Channel is gold. Everybody is like Rdr2 this and that, and you my friend are playing Golden Axe
Haha, great comment :D
Golden Axe is a solid game though
To be perfectly fair Golden Axe is probably a lot less buggy and frustrating than Grand Theft Equine 2.
RDR2 is actually a really fun game though. But it is a bit overhyped.
That devide-overflow error was due to a "benchmark" that old Turbo Pascal programs did to determine how to get certain delays. What they did is: compute sin(something) multiple times. Say X times. And they measured how long that took (say Y milliseconds). Then they would divide X/Y to know how often they'd have to compute sin(something) to get 1 millisecond delay. Problem was - at about 350 MHz, that benchmark took 0 milliseconds and that caused a division by 0 error. There was some patch for Turbo Pascal programs that fixed this behavior.
Or if you had the source code and Turbo Pascal you could install updated CRT unit and cure the problem.
You got reference for that?
Man. I must start crying, when I see Stunts and Prince of Persia. My first Gaming experience with 7years on christmas evening ....long ago, 30years now.... I´m old (Thanks for the vid)
So a "sound card" for the machine costs almost 6 times more than the machine itself. Cool.
Haha, yes, it's a very specialised item that's for sure :)
So it goes. If I ever decide to buy a Gravis Ultrasound, it'd cost me many times more than the machine I'd put it in.
You're right. I've contacted the thin client seller and all the upvotes to this comment get a special deal -- $54 thin client PC! :D Your purchases will now have the symmetry you desire. Still too disproportionate? Please tell us what is the optimal proportion and I will inform the seller of thin client PC. lol
anyway
$50 is not much for a sound card retro, new-retro or otherwise. I suppose your observation has context for anyone who never had a PC without onboard sound. To this day an aftermarket sound card is still the better quality choice. You can use that parallel OPL card in a 30 year spread of PCs so its not tied to just this extremely affordable thin client.
Speaking specifically of that adlib/sound blaster OPL sound, a lot of the sound cards featuring that chip go for at least $50. And none of the newer sound cards are capable of it. You can do emulation. But if all we wanted to do was emulate, we wouldn't need either this thin client or the parallel sound card. We could just run DOSBox on our regular PCs or a raspberry Pi. :P
@@directionlessstudios7210 He is talking about comparison, not about amount. 54cents cost 6 times more than 9cents.
:P
Sf2590 yes, I know that. That’s the whole “gotcha” of his shtick. That’s why I’m attacking along the lines of it being too disproportionate for him. 54 cents is too disproportionate to 9 cents, apparently.
Additionally, regardless of numbers, there’s this this thing called context. A parallel port sound card is going to cost you, regardless of how good a deal you get on the host PC.
When that crosses a line for anyone, they can use DOSbox or buy a proportionately more expensive PC if they wish to feel wrapped in the warm arms of proportionality.
But nobody is actually trying to buy anything here. Just dealing out cheap gotchas over the internet with disingenuous interest. :)
Oh that glorious PC speaker sound! Brings a tear to my eye.
Yes PSU
I'm always happy to see more Dos related videos from time to time. Those are absolutely my favorite. Keep it up Phil!
Thanks man!
Stunts was the BEST game! Wow what memories! Making your own tracks was so amazing for the time, and that F1 car had the best grip!
It's an Indycar, a March Porsche. Porsche tried to conquer Indycar and most of all the Indianapolis 500 after McLaren's switch to Honda in F1 left Porsche with no financier of their F1 engine.
Stunts is an awesome game, I still play it from time to time.
@@armorgeddon Good knowledge ;)
Haha thanks! I've been following motorsports since the late 80s & along the way gathered a lot of geeky knowledge about it.
Thanks for the video and the various resources in your webpage. You have enabled me to re-live my childhood memories.
Nice !! I love VIA CPUs, even though back in the day they were bought mainly for their low power draw, now they are really good for DOS sensitive games and more options is always better :D even though I still love the Pentium MMX, you showed really well its versatility with your 136 in 1 retro CPU video :)
Interesting idea. A cool little PC. I also want a small form factor DOS machine so I have bought a Pentium III 400Mhz laptop and gutted it. Without the battery, keyboard, PCMCIA slots, and LCD screen it is actually very compact. It even has a built in OPL3 MIDI sound chip. My next task is to see if I can get CD Audio out of it, obviously many games in the Pentium DOS era had background music on CD. The laptop only cost me £23 plus £7 postage. Although I did get lucky. It was listed as spares or repair and described as not working. But it did actually work fine.
We still use HP thin clients like that at work. They're not really good for modern internet, but they're good enough for the ancient programs that keeps the mine working.
Maybe I should ask IT if I can have a couple of them if they get replaced....
I love the thin client videos! For $150 I picked up a HP T730 Thin Client with a AMD RX-427BB w/R7 graphics, USB 3.0, gigabit LAN, dual-band WiFi & Bluetooth upgraded to 16GB RAM, 256GB SATA M. 2, AMD Radeon RX 550 4GB, and windows 10 Pro. Runs DOSbox, and steam games very well and it's silent.
Phil, you can use a program called mo'slo to limit the processor speed in dos in a more controlled manner. This program has been around since 1990. Good luck!
You should look into the Neoware CA2 thin client.
It's also a C3 processor, but it has an ISA/PCI riser. I have a couple of them and they make fantastic little retro gaming machines. I put an ALS100 Plus sound card in mine with a Dreamblaster S2 on the wavetable header.
If you don't have one, I'd be willing to send you one for the cost of shipping.
Awesome video once again! Please make more of these retro PC videos they're great! :D
DOS always had the ability to support optical drives. They all came with their own external drivers. Usually a 5 minute process to install. AliExpress sells external USB external DVD’s. I use them on service calls all the time (especially these days in the age of flash drives). Finding a DOS driver for one would definitely be a challenge. :)
Hey Phils...this is the best option available for building a retro pc, and It is the more affordable option I´ve seen since those hp thin client are very very cheap on my country...after seen this I am sure I will grab one of these. Thanks so much for sharing.
@PhilsComputerLab have you try the Wyse V90LE Client? It´s the one I have and it looks promising and sure it is for a retro pc...if you can review it I would be gratefull with you.
Nice find man! A few bucks for some old DOS goodness :)
brings back my childhood
Hey Phil, I was wondering if you've heard before of the eXoDOS project. It's basically one person bundling DOS games (no scene rips, only proper dumps) and pre-configuring them for use with various versions of DOSBox so the average user doesn't have to worry about specific quirks of games or different CPU speeds messing things up. I find it to be a really nice alternative for a dedicated DOS PC. It also prevents you from needing more specific hardware, since it comes with pre-configured MT-32 support, SB, AdLib, GUS, it even has some support for Voodoo 2 emulation so you can play certain early 3D DOS games more easily
While I haven't heard of this project, it sounds great! I have used the DOSBox ECE project, that works great, has MT-32 and Sound Fonts and all of that as well. The community is so amazing with what people manage to put together...
@@philscomputerlab eXoDOS uses a mix of DOSBox SVN, Daum and ECE if I recall correctly, depending on what's most compatible with a specific game. I believe V4.0 of the project put the total number of games around the 7000 mark
I have used exodos DOS games. Some games don't have their copy protection cracked. For example, secret of the silver blades has copy protection that you can't skip and the game files don't include a crack or lookup table for it.
Thank you for the great video, I just received two of these thin clients and was able to install DOS, I can't wait to get my OPL3LPT, should be coming any day now. Thank you for the great content!!
Wolf3D has an option for digitized (sampled) sound through the PC speaker. It would be interesting to hear how the rendition of it would sound on this machine though the headphone port.
👍👍👍 It's amazing how you find these bargains and give to these machines a second life! Your instructions to configure the PC are very valuable too, as always... good job! Thank you very much!
next a windows 95 gaming pc? command and conquer, starcraft, half life...
commander keen here we come
@@Technocrat. Commander Keen is still obtainable on Steam and on 3D Realms websites, except Keen 6 since it's stuck in copyright limbo.
98 and now we're talking
You are definitely my favorite hardware channel
Thank you!
oh yessss i remember these games just supported u bro
2007: when RAM size is double the storage of the unit.
It’s a thin client. They typically load software over the network or just act as a Remote Desktop client. Nothing special about 2007 in this regard.
This is just what I was looking for. Not for gaming but I program in QB often for fun. This will be a perfect solution! Thank you!
Neoware CA2, I was able to upgrade it to a PIII Tualatin 1.4GHz (the Korean modded one on eBay) by just adding a small fan and it has an ISA slot and better DOS compatibility.
I have a HP Thin Client running Windows NT 4.0 and windows 2000.
Some of the thin client models of that era had an expansion option to add a pci port for use with a wireless card. That would be a great way to add a sound blaster and joystick port
Yup, we looked at such machines in previous videos!
Really interesting!! You can also try building a covox speech thing for the parallel port, many games support it, though it's more for wav support than for music.
Yes you can do that! That Serdaco shop also sells COVOX clones, but the OPL3 Adlib device is so much better IMO. Way more games support Adlib.
The small size is a nice advantage too!
More love for the t5530!!! I couldn't hit the like button hard enough.
Yea it's a great little machine :D
careful not to break your screen
@@philscomputerlab may I ask if it would OK also for a Win98 retro-pc? Also to get sound. Thank you!
@@alessioscandy I'm not sure, I didn't try Windows 98 or ME with this machine. It all depends on the drivers, if they are available for that OS.
Wow nostalgia,my childhood till 8-9 years old then came the PSX/PS One, in stunts when you pick an opponent they have funny Animations, and you can build your tracks too, in Prince of persia if you pass the first level without picking the sword you gain it at lvl 2,great memories.
Very helpful thanks Phil. The Rhine II network card also works, it needs the FETPKT
packet driver for Mtcp.
Got winblows 98SE running on this thing with all the drivers except usb2.0.
Since this looks to be a decent little basic unit and a 32-bit system, it will allow me to run old software and equipment alike that my other systems won't. Thanks for putting this out there. The only drawback is, it didn't cost me $9 US dollars, but it was less than $27 which isn't too bad for a PC with nostalgic-style abilities. It comes with a keyboard & mouse, power cords, software CD, and a stand.
This is awesome, I making myself a vid on actual pc gaming on the thin client t630, is an unknown territory and this just shows they are more than meets the eye and are incredibly cheap
Hmm I believe I worked with the 620. Has an AMD APU, quite capable and ran XP but can also run Windows 10.
@@philscomputerlab sempai noticed me @_@, but yeah I have it running Windows 10 and that one is 4 cores apu with r7 gpu. Is pretty amazing though and so far there is not much about gaming on thin clients
@@MasterDrood I believe I used the 620 Plus which has PCIe slot and installed a GT 1030. It was quite capable, but the CPU was a bit of a bottleneck. Still, if you can get a good price, it's a really well rounded machine.
@@philscomputerlab that t630 is 2.0 boost to 2.2 4 cores it doesn't have pcie natively but I will be making a frankenstein usin an m.2 adapter. I'll reach you out once is done so you can take a look
Well, just bought one. Thank you! I dont mind playing with PC Speakers, thats how I did when I was young. Maybe a followup video on the inside of the pc and expansion options like HDD, PCI, RAM, etc? THANK YOU PHIL
This model's not so good for updating.
@@MarkTheMorose As I read, you are right. Maybe an HDD upgrade. We'll see it when it arrives. Also, I think Win98 could be installed with working sound. Nice
Thank you for the great video, I was stumped on why the OPL3LPT was not working on Monkey Island and the game crashed when I tried to open it. Using the setmul utility fixed the problem and now I can here adlib music instead of the PC speaker! Thank you!!!!!!!
Good idea of itx based DOS-PC. Actually I have a little valley itx mainboard with celeron 220 processor, but it seems I must bent it right to make it work. Simply, it can not run placed on non flat surface, its not stable and randomly restarts. At least, worked with PCI SB live! card with pure dos. Too bad for that BGA.
Targeting the northern hemisphere with this, seeing as you said "wintertime" but it is not wintertime in the southern hemisphere in November
Yea good point :)
Good Design for ON A BUDGET ! Good Job!
Showcasing Battle Chess without an actual fight animation... blasphemy! 😄
I'll keep it in mind for next time :D
😊 yeah i was expecting at least one battle animation
I was fully expecting to see some pawn-knight jimmy-kicking goodness when this game came up, was disappoint
(I like the video and the client though!)
That's really cool. Thanks for sharing. Nice to know you don't have to buy bulky annoying craptastic super old 90s beige boxes and you can have a tiny little low power DOS machine. I bet it's very efficient in terms of power.
I love playing old dos, win3.x/95/98 games on my Samsung Galaxy Note 9 in DeX mode connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Plays everything I throw at it without issues.
Zero of these thin clients on eBay in the states. Good thing I have 5 different ones I bought previously because of Phil’s videos 👍
You serious? eBay is swamped with these ex-business computers and thin clients. Just found some sweet offers of HP t510s, would definitely buy one if the shipping cost wasn't expensive (I'm from Hong Kong)
Next video: $69 DOS Retro Gaming PC with the THICC Client
*Nice.*
I use something similar to this as a smart box for my dad's TV so he can watch Netflix, TH-cam etc. without splashing out on a new TV. It's a later variant that has HDMI, but still cost less than $30. Really useful little things.
I've ended up buying a few thin clients. Inspired by Phil's videos: an HPT610, a (so far) non-working T5730, and a Wyse CX0. Plus a Dell/Wyse Z90D7 (similar spec. to the HPT610), a Teco TR3760B, and a Neoware CA21. The Neoware is interesting. It has an internal PSU so only needs a standard mains lead, and has an 800MHz VIA CPU, VIA CN700 chipset (hopefully supported by Windows 98, and possibly DOS), and has SODIMM and 44-pin IDE connectors. Mine was set to 400MHz CPU speed, but loading the optimal BIOS settings cured that.
Try replacing the CMOS battery on your t5730 with a good one, it refuses to boot if the CMOS battery runs out of juice
@@OverTallman Thanks; I tried it just now, and while the CMOS battery was indeed dead, replacing it didn't help. I think the thin client has been damaged somehow; maybe a 19v power supply got plugged in instead of a 12v supply, and fried something. I can't see any damage, but I tried a spare CPU and SODIMM. Symptoms: the LED on any supply plugged in flickers on and off, in time with a very quiet 'ticking' sound from the thin client, 2-3 times a second. :(
@@MarkTheMorose Ah that sucks, and yeah HP used 19V on their later models with the same connector which can be confusing
@@OverTallman It was sold as 'not working', I was hoping it would be an easy/cheap fix!
i bought that two months ago by accident. woohoo!!!
It should be noted whatnots like the backpack CD-RW drive exist for parallel optical discs
Hello, can I install a win9x on HP T5530 (if I change the flash drive for much larger) ??
Man i still have some dos games.Just for nostalgia sake.I would love to see older hardware.I can remember back in the day i had a 386sx x2 it had 2 cpu's and 32mb of ram(could only read 24mb back then)It ran with my friends 486 dx 2 in games.
I actually did something similar. I found someone selling Wyse R90lw thin clients for about $15 each a couple years ago.
They were running the embedded standard 2009 version of XP, so they were well suited to run old software that doesn't play nicely with newer versions of Windows.
I had an old pc dedicated to that, but it and its components were all close to two decades old, so I figured I needed to get something a tad newer to run my ancient software.
cool but to make it nostalgic the computer needs to be big, yellow and discoloed from sunlight :) lol aka an old dos computer
@@cyberman7348 go check your local dump then the electronics dump area. I have like 6 old 486 and 386 dos machines that i grabbed from there all working and that was from 1 summer. Some places wont let you take them but if you do just talk to the people there and "say" your going to bring back anything unused and recycle them back to that area if they stop you and ask what your doing.
@@Funboringness go check your local dump then the electronics dump area , youll eventually run across one. I found 6 in a 4 months span, but I also checked every week sometimes twice
Ah, but they weren't yellow and discolored back in the day.
@@kyles8524 Where on earth do you live? I haven't seen any cool nostalgy rising hardware for...Ages. Oldest hardware I've seen have been about P2/P3 era that can occasionally be seen somewhere. Something like old PS/2 is wet dream here. I was seriously disappointed to hear that one friends parent had tossed C128 desktop to trash years ago. Hardware I knew that was really uncommon to see anywhere. I haven't even seen Amiga 500 for sale for about three years and that was very, very common computer.
You are right. Although I'm figuring out if we need the big box at all given the new hardware we can use nowadays: I think the old-school monitor and keyboard are essential.
I want to see you try setting up EMS on all these thin clients, especially ones with PS/2 ports and a serial port. Especially if you can get DOS with EMS onto a WYSE Sx0.
golden axe is very pc speaker intense. i love dos games
It's trying so hard!
Great project. Love it. I want the Parallel OPL! :D
You could probably use a c-media sound card if you get a thin client with a PCI slot
C-Media cards have been hit and miss in DOS for me. The two best cards are the Yamaha YMF and ESS-Solo 1, at least with my testings.
@@philscomputerlab Afaik the never revisions of the C-Media chips don't contain the sound blaster compatibility. And yeah, totally forgot about those two, the ESS is probably the best for sound blaster support
Watching while playing with my retro pc thin client with a ymf724 PCI sound card. Thin client is a boundless adds 5700 (a distant cousin yet oddly similar to the wortmann terra thin client.)
Nice combo!
Price like for Pi Zero
Great shot Phil
Now if I only had one of these puppies in the 80's 😀💯
If only. 2 big words.
You'd have had a hard time transferring data. Other than the parallel port there aren't many things to use with most other PCs of the era. Unless you also include the USB floppy drive.
@@retrogeek4372 I use 1980's technology. I believe a flux-capacitor can transfer more then just raw data. (GREAT SCOTT)
How will this do with DOS4G/GW titles? Also, Can I install DOS from USB with a thumb drive and RUFUS? Great video by the way!
I think Zany Golf killed my ears... Cool little machine though, thanks for showing it :)
Hey Phil, love your content! Especially the stuff on older Xeons and DOS gaming. How compatible with dos 6.22 is an Optiplex 755? I have one laying around
Nice to see some of those retro games. You should add the original PC version of Tetris and Captain Comic 4.
If you were curious, I just benchmarked the T5740 I've been working on, and it hits 134 FPS on Quake and 211 on the PC Player Bench, so both about 30% higher. The Yamaha ymf724 sound card works great in here too (with some configuration mods). Commander Keen 4 even plays with no screen jitter. Only downside is no video driver support for Win98.
Nice! How did you get the PCI card working in that machine?
On the hardware side, had to use a PCI riser (the expansion kit comes with both a PCI-E and a PCI riser). On the software side, had to use DSDMA and also limit the ram visible to DOS in the config file as anything over 512MB crashes it. Also note it worked on IRQ 5 without having to also run the YMFIRQ utility. I can post exact system configuration file contents that I used (config.sys and autoexec.bat) if you want them.
@@retro-computing-gaming Thanks for the tip. I found the expansion on Amazon and bought one. Hope it all works out. There might be a video, but not any time soon, likely in 2020...
@@retro-computing-gaming Yes, if you could please paste your startup files, that would be greatly appreciated.
Ok, so these configurations are for a XP/98 Dual install (with 98 being kind of broken of course), and changing boot.ini's entry for Windows 98 to DOS and modding the MSDOS.SYS file to force Win98 directly into a command prompt (DOS). You will also need to download Himemx and umbpci (from FreeDOS). You will also of course have to install the DOS drivers for the yamaha card.
Config.sys:
Device=c:\Windows\Himemx.exe /MAX=64000
Device=c:\Windows\umbpci.sys
Device=c:\Windows\emm386.exe /NOEMS
Autoexec.bat:
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4
copy C:\DS-XG\DOS4GW>EXE \
chcp 437
C:\DS-XG\SETUPDS.EXE /S
C:\DS-XG\DSDMA.EXE
del \DOS4GW.EXE
MSDOS.SYS:
WinDir=C:\Windows
WinBootDir=c:\Windows
HostWinBootDrv-C
[Optios]
BootMulti=0
BootGUI=0
DoubleBuffer=1
AutoScan=1
WinVer=4.10.2222
One last note - Windows 98 won't boot (may cause DOS problems too, I'm not sure) unless in the BIOS, you set both Serial ports to IRQ4 and Parallel to IRQ5 (you'll get a Windows Protection error otherwise).
I have the hp t610 plus and was thinking of using it as a windows 98/dos machine and was wondering if the parellel port audio device wud benefit a setup like that? Ive had loads of problems with audio drivers on every 98/dos machine I've tried to put together. Also: if u havent played Frederick pohls gateway before it's an awesome game and wud love to see it featured in a future dos/98 video!
That machine doesn't have all the 98 drivers, I used it with Windows XP though! But in DOS, yea the parallel port should work just fine.
RIP ears, hopefully no DOS games using the PC speaker in ear heaven.
From the seller's standpoint is it worth the hassle to sell this PC for 9 dollars?
He could have dozens or hundreds of them. Probably the price will go up with the Phil Factor anyway!
Great video as always!
You mention the lack of an optical drive... But can you get DOS to recognize an external USB optical drive on this ?... Does the mobo BIOS mention USB optical boot support ?
Or how about an ISO image burnt to a USB flash stick formatted as optical disc ?
Very nice project. I have the same model. I installed a 4gb dom and installed windows 98. I could install the sound drivers, vinyl_v700b, but no luck with video drivers. Silver lining is that I have sound in dos games running from windows 98 through sound emulation.
hey phil :) I've got a setup with a e5-2689, x79 machinist board and 1866 mhz quad channel but im hitting only 977 cb in cinebench r15. Do you think that is normal?
But can it run Red dead Redemption 2? On a serious note, i looked at these pcs a few months ago to for a windows 98 project, The lack of a cdrom didn't work for me though. I'm happy to see it in action.
My life is complete. I can die happy now :-)
I got a HP DC7900 Ultra Slim for free a couple of years ago. Core 2 Duo E8400, 4GB DDR2 (2x2) and a 160GB SATA drive. It works but it's not stable as I have a power supply that isn't 135 watts. I'm going to pick up a suitable power supply and also upgrade it to a Core 2 Quad and turn it into a retro emulator.
Looks like it would be great for RPG's since no gameport. Did I spy a CRT in the Facebook link to this? Don't believe I have seen you use one before. Nice.
Yea it's my only CRT! Rescued it from a local business years ago. I only use it on occasions.
Hi again Phil, another update - I got an external USB CD working with this TC. It needs the Panasonic USBASPI.SYS and USBCD.SYS drivers installing on the boot floppy in config.sys to make it work.
Under DOS???
@@philscomputerlab Yes, under plain MS-DOS 6.22 and DRDOS 7.03. I'll post the url in the next comment where you can find a copy of the original article and the drivers...
Looks like YT hid my link. Try a Google search for "dos-usb pcxt-micro miracle driver" and it should be the first hit.
Man I wish there was a DOS Daemon Tools for DOS. The lack of optical drive is a big downside. Would one work here natively?
I think a cool thing to do with one of these is to use Windows 98 and an external Sound Blaster like an Extigy or what ever the Audigy version was and see how things work out. You could then use Daemon Tools to load ISO for both DOS and Windows games, which is what I do with my retro boxes. This HP thin client looks just about the size of my Extigy and the color scheme matches. You could stack them for nice looking setup. The Extigy also has optional feet to stand on its side.
Yea there is one, but it only does ISO files, no BIN / CUE, so nothing with CD Audio works. It's part of the FreeDOS tools. I should do a video on this actually at some point.
@@philscomputerlab Lack of BIN/CUE is a bummer but even having ISO is quite cool. A lot of the Sierra adventure games use CDs for video with audio in resource files, however, they are easy to get working without CD.
These thin clients are also perfect personal web servers to run 24/7 because of low power consumption (6-10W) and fanless cooling.
I use Dell Wyse from 2015 with N2807 / 4GB RAM / 16GB SSD connected to router as DMZ host with CentOS 7 installed and Let's Encrypt HTTPS website configured
It can be used as file or print server, torrent downloader, much more powerful than any 300$ router. Can possibly be upgraded to 8GB RAM and mSata Half SSD up to 1 TB to become VM host for light tasks!
Yes agreed!
dBASE III+, Quattro Pro, Lotus 1-2-3, and Wordstar for DOS, please Phil! :)
sweet jesus please not lotus 1-2-3!
Great video. I think I will try this!
Nine bucks isn't too bad for a dedicated gaming computer 😂. Unlike that sound device, but it's all about personal preferences. To be honest, when I was young, I wasn't a huge fan of the primitive vintage gaming sounds. However I must admit I'm becoming more and more of a "nostalgia victim" ☺️. Sometimes I miss those lost features, you know. Luckily for me now there's quite a few options out there.
As always thanks for the video, Phil 😉👍!
I bundled a bunch of DOS floppy games together it's about 230 games and can all by run from one launcher.
QQ: does it run jason storm in space chase? This game locks up on the hp t5710 (too fast?).
Not sure, not familiar with that game.
Hello! I found the resources you uploaded, so thanks. Did you manage to get the 3d hardware acceleration work in 98 for the IGP?
I can't remember without watching the entire video again 😅 I didn't do any further work with this machine to be honest. I feel it is more suited for DOS gaming anyway.
Wow battle chess.
Nice Phil, Niiiiiiice
This is that miniature pc that used to be my dream computer cause it was so small.
a friend of mine just gave me an intel NUC, I know they're not thin clients, but I love the tiny form factor, I'd love to see what you could do with one of those
How about improve this PC using some typical ITX mobo? Does it possible?
Great vid I just skimmed through your vids and hit subscribe. One thing tough, you can find lots of DOS gaming builds, you can find Win98 and WinXP gaming builds but there's no Win95 and from my memory some 95 games didn't work on 98 like fragile alliance, sooooo pretty pretty pleeeeeeeaaaaseeee could you make win95 gaming battle station? Thin client would be best but anything that has 3d acceleration with win95 drivers fast enough for gaming I'd be interested in!
Hmm I'm sure I've done one in the past, but yea, could make for another video!
@@philscomputerlab wow thank you! :)
Hey phil, love your work, but its a bit misleading to say it was $9 + shipping. when shipping cost your more then the pc, for a total $23 (9+13). as shipping is definitely part of the cost of the unit.
Thanks again for the video, and keep up the good work.
Every youtuber does this. It's misleading for sure.
This is a great retro gaming pc. Could you please list the drivers you used? Thank you so much again!!!
I cannot, if these details aren't in the video then I simply don't remember the details I'm afraid...
Very nice video! What do you prefer T5730 or this T5530?
Хорошая задумка: использовать тонкий клиент в качестве ДОС-машины.
A little fun with dosbox configuration and I got old PC with Norton Commander 5.0 and bunch of great games from 'archive' webpage. For free :))
That nostalgia
😍