The ULTIMATE retro build for DOS / Windows 3 / Windows 98 / Windows XP
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Is it possible to build a retro rig that would work flawlessly in DOS, Windows 3.11, Windows 98 and Windows XP? Well, I tried to build one.
Parts list:
Motherboard - DFI G7S620-N
CPU - Pentium D Extreme Edition 965 3.73GHz
VGA - Ati X850 XT PE
3D Accelerator - 2x Creative 3D Blaster 3DFX Voodoo 2
RAM - 4x 1GB
Sound Card 1 - Ensoniq Soundscape S-2000
Sound Card 2 - Creative AWE32 CT3900
Sound Card 3 / MIDI Module 1 - Roland SC-D70
MIDI Module 2 - Yamaha MU2000
MIDI Module 3 - Roland MT-32
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Great video covering a huge range of topics 😊
The thing you're missing is a Windows XP/98 sound card for either EAX or A3D. It will support a ton of EAX games from Windows 98 to XP. It makes a huge difference in how games sound in Windows, and was a huge part of the experience back in the day just like a 3DFX Voodoo card. Also, I believe there are at least a few fast cards for the AGP slot that will work better for you, but I don't recall what they are. Worth looking into.
Important point! SB Live! on PCI has DOS emulation and EAX 2.0 support. For the last EAX 5.0 you will need X-Fi but no DOS emulation.
@@stanisawborsa2784SB Live! is a surprisingly nice DOS solution for GM games, too bad you can't selectively enable it as a wavetable card alongside something with proper FM. EAX 2.0 is quite limited too, so personally I'd aim for something Audigy + an ISA card if I really wanted to build a hybrid XP/98 machine.
I have an X-Fi in my XP build, but you're not really going to be playing EAX 5.0/4.0 games with AGP and SDRAM. Not that there are that many of them in the first place, for 5.0 all I can think of right now are Battlefield 2 and 2142.
On a side note, I do recommend building crazy XP machines with EAX and multiple GPUs while you still can. It's so much cheaper than 90s stuff, and as a bonus compatibility with 9x games is excellent too.
I second that. a pci soundcard is an absolute must here
@@stanisawborsa2784 I was trying to respond that the Live is a surprisingly nice GM card for dos, but annoying to work with if you wanted to have it alongside a real ISA card for FM. I might go for Audigy to get EAX 3.0 if I really wanted to make hybrid build like this, and have a dedicated ISA card for all dos duties.
There was some more too, but apparently the YT gods don't even let me talk about retro PCs now. I shan't provoke their anger again.
I'm apparently not allowed to reply to a comment about old sound cards anymore. What the heck is going on?
You’ve managed to have a configuration that’s very difficult to come by, use it for 3 to 4 computing generations within the Microsoft Spectrum, and even got it to work pretty much flawlessly.
Hats off to you, good sir.
You might’ve gotten a Voodoo (1) card and a Voodoo 4500/5x00 (PCI) to work in this build, next to the ATI Radeon X850 XT-PE. You’d be able to play DOS games with voodoo acceleration, have the best Voodoo compatibility under Windows 98 and XP, and have enough power to run the heavier DirectX games too.
As for sound: holy moly!
If you’re still struggling with the idea to put more ISA sound cards in there - as the Gravis would make it complete - you might be able to source an ISA splitter and stick the whole in a case with 11 expansion slots. That way, you could even add an Aureal Vortex 2 to the mix for A3D. :D
Thanks for the awesome video. I had a blast seeing this! :D
You should share an HDD image so we can enjoy all you hard work.
Good idea. I'll create an image and share it here.
This would be so nice to have
I have seen many "ultimate" retro PC builds on TH-cam but I think this is the first time I have seen a true ULTIMATE retro PC build. There are just too many hard to find or unobtanium parts in this build. It also requires extraordinary knowhow to make all these parts and OSs to work together.
Excellent video and sound and games!
This build is amazing. I can see the attraction. But, for me, I think it is better to have a separate build for XP and Win98/DOS that caters to the strengths of each. Their needs are just too different to make a no-compromise build. Though separate builds do take more space. I did get quite a few useful tips from your video though. So thanks for that. But, for an all-in-one solution, yours is the best I have seen. By far.
I think my favorite was "Quest for Glory Hole". Ahh, the memories...
Lol this Name 😂
This is just in a whole different level. Congratulations.
The Gene Machine
18:39 > SB AWE32 - FM Synthesis
19:21 > SB AWE32 - Internal Wavetable Synthesis
20:06 > Yamaha MU2000
20:53 > Roland MT - 32
Quest for Glory IV
21:33 > Roland MT - 32
23:37 > Yamaha MU2000
TFX
24:35 > Roland MT - 32
Love just how much it's so underwhelming ... until that wavetable kicks ibn, and then it's like somone used a magic sponge on the inside on your ears! Thanks for doing this video Karl!
What an epic build.
The problem you are facing with the ATi HD and the Geforce 6/7 series cards is the fact they use PCI-e bridge chips to work in AGP slots. I've only ever got them to work correctly in winXP and above. Your choice of AGP card was a solid one. Always look for non bridge chip ones.
If you use dos 7.1 CDU you can have one large fat32 partition getting arround the whole 2gb issue
There are PCI express graphics cards that will work in windows 98 - Geforce 6600GT is one.
That’s an awesome pc would love one like it for retro gaming. Well done!
wow, this really was a roller coaster of good memories, thanks for this amazing video !!!
I built up a Shuttle XPC with Pentium M 750 using a IDE to SD adapter, but skipped anything in Software from 2004 onwards; DOS & 98 run like a charme, XP has a few stutters at times, but overall I like my small package; nice guide, a few tips will come in handy to iron out minor hickups
i love both of those // and more in the background ... very good NITR0 approved.
Great project and lots of good information. Many thanks! Did I miss how speed sensitive games were handled? Cheers!
Bloody hell..... I knew I forgot something. So no, you didn't miss it :) But I usually use either CPUSPD or MOSLO.
This is kinda hybrid-retro, i mean this computer is build with 10 years different aged parts just wow
Now THIS is a real retro powerhouse.
Awesome video!
Very nice, makes me want to tinker with some of my builds. IMO, splitting it up into 2 or 3 systems keeps the hardware choices sane, as everything except the fancy sound cards/synths are much cheaper, and you don't need to juggle 3 operating systems on one drive.
My 'all in one' build is a K6-III+ 550 / voodoo 3 / aureal vortex 2 / ALS100 / SC-55
and windows XP build is a 2600K / 780ti / X-fi titanium
An amazing build, very inspirative :) Although I don't exactly fancy such all-rounders because you always need to sacrifice something and it will never be 100% correct in all cases, you gave a lot of good infos there. And I like the "because I can" approach 😀
My approach is to have a few period-correct builds with everything that went into them, apart from disks and screen. And a Gotek floppy emulator :-) And fans - I really hate too much noise so I replaced all those cheap terrible screaming fans with Noctuas, BeQuiet's, or NoiseBlockers first thing :)
But I'm also considering sort of an ultimate build for everything from DOS to WinXP. But in my case, I chose to go for Socket370 generation as you can get it more compatible, and the components are much more available (and cheaper). For it, I got Via C3 Ezra and Nehemiah processors, especially for their unparalleled scalability down to the equivalent of a slow 386, which is really important for running the speed sensitive games from the era. I would like to see in more detail how you handle those in this build.
As for the graphics, I've never been much of a fan of 3D accelerator cards - in their heyday, they were finnicky to set up right and get working properly, much too expensive, and once they got affordable, you could as well buy a decent AGP card with similar 3D capabilities.
Reagarding sound - I don't have the room nor the money for all those original Roland devices, even if it would be amazing, so for now I'm pretty much satisfied with my small assortment of ISA and PCI soundcards, and my Orpheus II, to which I connect a Serdaco DreamBlaster X2GS-SE wavetable module with licensed Roland SC-55 sound banks :) It sounds as close to the original SC-55 as you can imagine ;)
And as far as multiboot goes, in my eyes, the Windows' attempt at boot management was as incapable as it gets, and pretty much useless, so I've always used LILO. It is amazingly configurable and caters to any needs you may have in such environments. I'm even keeping DOS, Win95 and Win98 on separate partitions, having configured LILO to switch them so that none of the systems can see any of the others :) It just requires another partition with Linux (which may be small and in the extended partition area, not primary, so it doesn't get in the way of anything), but nowadays, it is a breeze to get a period-correct install ISO of e.g. Slackware. And a bit of studying is needed to get the lilo.conf right (and maybe occasional starting of Linux from DOS/Win using loadlin, when you screw the config up, or when windows screws your boot record). Done this a few times when setting up my retro builds recently :)
Anyway, thank you for a great deal of good info, you gave me some inspirations for my own builds as well :)
the ultimate dos gaming machine, for as long as you want to keep it period correct, can cost you an arm, a leg, a kidney and your first born.
lucky enough to have built mine from bits i collected, but check the price of an Abit BP-6, Matrox Millenium 2, voodoo 2 12mb sli, AWE64 and you quickly reach the cost of a modern pc :/
last piece i'd like to get is a 24" high refresh rate (preferably trinitron) CRT, but i would have to kiss my corneas good bye for this one so heh ...
Phantasmagoria... Dude that was disgustingly disturbing...
Wasn't it? :)
Great video with some ideas I'll probably borrow for my own build. Dark Earth is also a real blast from the past; I'd almost forgotten that game. However, I'd argue that you can't have an 'ultimate' Windows 98-era retro build without Aureal A3D support. The positional audio in games like Thief 2 and Heretic II with A3D and 4.1 surround speakers, is to this day, some of the best positional audio I've ever heard...could almost play with my eyes closed.
Thanks to Creative monopoly and abusive practices 3D audio has improved little or even nothing as far as I know.
Best wishes.
@@ajax700There have been a few post-Aureal non-Creative attempts to do justice to positional audio in games, some of which even work pretty well (TrueAudio in Lichdom: Battlemage gave me some short lived hope). But yes, Creative did set things back considerably when they spent more than a decade pushing the inferior EAX after killing A3D (and Sensaura shortly after). That's mostly academic when it comes to a 20th century retro build though.
Not for me, I'm more of a hifi stereo guy, so the surround and such doesn't work for me :)
Very nice build. I believe a radeon X series that you have and a geforce 6 series are the best you can get for such setups. Bare in mind though these do have some missing features, so a lot of people go with geforce 4 or FX instead. As others said, one thing missing in my opinion is a pci soundcard. That will seriously bump up sound quality and make a HUGE difference for your windows 9x/xp or future 7 sets. An Aureal Vortex 2 for A3D or a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS for EAX are absolute musts in such builds IMO. Also, why don't you use a voodoo 3 instead of 2 voodoo 2s? you'll get same performance and 1 free pci slot that you can use for a soundcard for example. For 98 memory issue, I highly recommend R.Loew's patch. Lastly, have you installed 3dfx drivers for windows 3.11 or any svga extender in dos? / I assume you already did with 98/xp
There is way shorter ways on doing this. Do not need dos 6.22 at all. Can set a shortcut in windows 98 SE to boot to dos mode with its own config.sys and Autoexec.bat config and put what DOS drivers you want for all sound cards, Mouse drivers and CDROM drivers for DOS. And windows 98SE can run 98% of windows 3.1 games since its backward compatible. I have my Compaq computer Pentium II set up this way and dual booting with windows 2K
The ultimate experience I don't know but the most expensive regarding todays prices for sure 😃
That's sort of part of the ultimate experience :)
@@KITR-UK Indeed 😂👍
Cool video. Might play around with my P4 system to see what will work. Out of my head I don't remember what board it has.
Especially want to try out SATA SSDs for Win98SE even if I might stay with my CF to IDE adapter. Should also create a DVD with all the different operating systems.
I discovered that DFI motherboard a few months ago and have been working on my own ultimate multi-OS build with one. I'm surprised they aren't more popular in the retro community for this purpose. Regarding the 4th PCI slot shared with the ISA slot, it actually runs on the secondary PCI bus so it's not as functional as the other PCI slots. I tried installing an Audigy sound card in that slot and Windows wouldn't recognize it. It did work with a Diamond Monster Sound, but couldn't use all the features like MPU-401 or the game port. So you might be better off using a pair of ISA cards and foregoing that 4th PCI slot.
Care to share the configuration of your ultimate build?
@@KITR-UK Sure. CPU is a Pentium 4 HT 651 (3.4 GHz) with 2 GB DDR-400 RAM. Video cards are a GeForce4 4200 Ti and Voodoo2. Sound cards include an Audigy 2 ZS, Diamond Monster Sound MX300, and Orpheus II with a Yucutan FX wavetable daughtercard. For storage I'm using two SSD drives (250 GB and 128 GB). PSU is a Seasonic Focus GX-650 and the case is a Fractal Designs Define R5. Plus a DVD-RW drive and 3.5" floppy drive.
eh! fun times!
... yeah that boot manager thing setup. I do Plop Boot Manager or SmrtBootManager in the MBR and then Partition setup done in windows 10-11-ish (for partition alignment) and use set active flag to bounce between OS's and Setups! like manually setup a new partition and set active and windows will probably see that particular partition as C: regardless of any other partitions with or without OS's on them which will be labeled other drive letters. nice and easy!
then try, Windows ME and FreeDOS with kernel swapping fun with Grub4DOS installed in the partition!
edit:
Pentium D is weird it produces a lot of heat but also has an extremely low crash temp. You got to really keep it cool.
What a awesome video.. and the games crack me up.. lol.
That's an interesting accent you have there, I can't put my finger on it but it sounds a mix of South African, some kind of England accent and some other European country all mixed together.
The BCDEdit tool and the Windows Vista+ bootloader is a nice add to this kind of setup. I've done some crazy multi boots (everything from 98 to 10) with an Athlon64 system.
Also, watch the heat on the voodoo2.
Is there not a better Linux boot up for this?
@@Jimfowler82You bet there is ;) With such multi-boot setups, I've always used LILO as my boot manager (came with most linux distros back then) and it served me flawlessly for....dare I say decades :) You just need to study a bit and write a good config that fits your particular setup and needs.
It is still doing its job perfectly in my old PC builds :)
@@Beus38 that’s it I couldn’t remember the name of the boot manager. Lilo last in last out ? Sure I used that 25+ years ago. Even when I duel boot now I’m happier to have the Linux boot manager,
If you have loads of windows distro I think it would work good for this.
@@Jimfowler82 As far as I can tell, the name was just a short for LInux LOader :) And yes, even today, I still use linux boot managers everywhere I move (and need multiboot, which is almost in all my computers). After LILO got unfortunately deprecated by the advent of the UEFI, I unwillingly had to move to grub.
@@Jimfowler82But I have actually always kinda disliked grub for its unnecessary internal complexity and far-from-straightforward way of configuring it to my needs. It is like windows - good for ordinary users without any knowledge, works well out of the box, but as soon as I want anything done my way, I'm just getting obstacles over obstacles. It cannot even do simple things like changing partition types the way LILO could.
My all-arounder: Abit KT7A (ISA-slot) + Athlon XP-M (multiplier can be set from DOS) + GF5900XT & Voodoo2 + SB Audigy2 (WinXP) + Vortex2 (98SE) + Orpheus II (DOS). SDR memory bandwith is the problem, no matter how high you clock the CPU, it's just don't help. Far Cry 1 is playable but gets slow here and there even at 148FSB.
You made me curious, so I installed Far Cry and this is couple of minutes of gameplay in 1920x1080, max details: th-cam.com/video/dOGnmVjl1zg/w-d-xo.html
Oh gosh , sounds are different of every sound driver. 😊😊😊
Exciting...upt ill the point i looked up the board on ebay to see a $470 price tag lol. Props on the buld though!
The board is not one of the cheapest, that's for sure :)
Use a PCI riser cable! Im sure they exist!!! you can slot it between the 2 cards easily!
Only way I would improve on this would be with a Voodoo 5 for the ultimate in Glide support and for older 3D games the FSAA
That music clip from the game is the base tune from the Sherlock show, surely.
Great project. "Ultimate" is pushing it but great experiment non the less.
Next time, I'll try to come up with something even more ultimate :)
When did my old trash become fancy “retro” ? More importantly does that mean I’m so old that I’m myself fashionably retro ?
I had a Windows 98 Retrobox that had 1GB RAM (A PIII Talautin) No issues running 98SE, no hacks/patches needed.
In DOS you can use SoftMPU to get around the UART / IntelligentMode issue.
And in Windows 9x, you're better off with a SB Live or Audigy which supports EAX , heck even an Aureal Vortex with A3D would be preferable under 9x.
As for Windows 3.x , you need a much older graphics card to get any support for hi-res graphics. There's a patch for some std. VESA driver, but that only gives you 256 colours, and 3.x actually supports up to 24-bit (or at least 16-bit). A Riva 128 or TNT with the Riva 128 drivers will work. But those cards are not the best for 9X.
Not really, SoftMPU doesn't work for all games and it's unreliable, that's why I used the S-2000 which works with every single one.
have same board. it can work with c2d (with pin mod, some volt mod), up to x6800 so you can get an ultimate performance, get you bios updated to c2d version (from vogons), and you're good.
Interloper motherboards are told to have incredible Core i support while having ISA slot. Are they really worth anything?
10:59 I would try Acronis OS Selector 5.0. Also I like its look and feel. It's like programmers took competition with Norton Utilities and won. So I just like to have it installed on retro systems, virtual and physical ones.
Also, I think, PC-DOS would also be compatible. In my childhood I used PC-DOS. Quite compatible, and I still install it on retro.
Sweet retro set up. How much did this roughly cost?
Well, about £2500.
What thermal paste are you using?
Checked the description but couldn't see it listed
It's this one: tinyurl.com/22cx79rf
I use it mainly for transistors in amplifiers but it's excellent for CPUs as well.
How do you slow down the CPU in order to corect for speed issues (or even start) some old DOS titles? or properly initialize sound in games like DOTT, Highway Hunter, etc ??
I usually use moslo program, it works perfectly.
Incredible! Now please, sell it to me.
I wonder if windows me would work better with the unofficial video drivers.
Never understood Peoples love for the Voodoo2, sure it rendered some games better that a directx card but by 99 nothing ran a game as good as an Nvidia card and when the original Geforce launch I bought one and was not disappointed. Games ran faster, at 32bitr color depth instead of 16bit which is what glide was stuck at. Voodoo had very few tricks in my opinion and they fell apart quickly!
I also skipped the Voodoo 2. I did have a Voodoo 3 2000 briefly but fairly quickly swapped it for an nVidia card
What? No Half-Life or Myst? :P Great job!
Next time :)
Utter tech pron when you inserted all the hardware 😅
i assume you also fix the problems with games when the CPU speed is over 2.0GHz on windows 98?
and also the problems with DirectX as installing 9.0 causes some older DirectX games like The Need for Speed SE to not work.
Never had a problem with any game whatsoever under Windows 98.
Ultimate build with a LCD monitor...? 😮
Well, it was about the computer, not the monitor :)
With all this hardware U should call e-waste ben ^^ he would be happy to scrap all those ;-D
Can you make a parts list for this system?
Sure. It's in the description.
Thanks vary much great video . Awesome retro stuff
i would suggest windows me instead of 98, me has more hardware support and is really stable if fully updated also no need for dos since you already have dos!
It should also be noted that a full patch exists as of last year that fully restores DOS mode if one would really need it
Windows 95 and 98 need Dos 7
This is interesting, but I can not recommend this build for beginners. This are at least two very different configurations in one. The era before DirectX (Dos, 3dfx, ISA Soundcard) and with DirectX (Win98, Tnt2, Soundblaster Live). The PentiumD and the 850XT are nice, but not Retro. Windows 98 by the was contains Dos7 ans therefore good backwards compatibility for Dos games. Fantastic piece of research and work, but not my taste.
Your accent more of a crossover hybrid than these builds
How is he screen recording?
He's screen recording using OBS and Datapath VisionAV-HD.
I have Windows XP ONLY machine :)
You need to play with a CRT, much better!
Pentium D is not dual core, it’s dual CPU.
That accent mate... Understand the half of the video. :) great content tho
Why would you even? Because you've got too much free time (and too much money) on your hands
serves as a great topic for a retro gaming YT video
WHY!? You can emulate retro games with ease on todays technology.
Why? Because I wanted to :)
Emulation is different from retro hardware…
why not?
You can emulate everything, true. But is it the same experience? I'd argue it is far from that. And not only because the emulation is never 100% perfect in all scenarios, but also it feels vastly different.
I'd compare it to playing a racing game vs. driving a real car in a real race. A bit of an exaggeration, I admit, but you get the point.
Watching those retro builds and although I perfectly understand HW pron part of the fun and playing with all the tweaks and settings, I must say modern DOS emulation is miles more user-friendly than baremetal thing. And most of my Win XP games run fine on a modern versions of Windows and modern HW (apart of EAX part of the story). Which leaves relatively small portion of Win 98 games that still have issues and even there progress with emulation has been made, for example you can now emulate 3dfx cards even.
But nevertheless it was an excellent build idea and implementation in the video, thanks!
What kind of accent is that? I can barely understand him...
You need to listen to more non native english speakers......
I understood him fine even playing it at double speed. Perhaps you are the problem. Not him.
Probably eastern european living or with education in the British Isles.
This is one of those times when teaching English to ESOL learners comes in handy. For what it's worth, I thought it was Jason Statham doing a comedy generic European accent. Not really, but it's fun to imagine. 😁
I’m guessing polish living in south England/ London. Cause I had lots of polish mates who sounded the same.
dang FULLY STACKED!
You're hifi and speaker system is nuts :D Awesome video. I managed to get a hold of a orpheus ii sound card. It blew my mind when i heard the sound qualiry :)
I was actually thinking about getting Orpheus as well, however, is it still retro?
@@KITR-UKIn my view, it is. It is built around the original (new old stock chips) AMD InterWave, with addition of CS4237 and YMF262 for all-around compatibility, all of which are totally 90s tech. It even has a 72pin SIMM slot, which became extinct before the turn of the century. I did get hold of one, and it is really amazing once you set it up right - as a GUS PnP owner, like myself, it should not be a problem for you ;)
So yes, at least IMHO, it is well worth getting, and it can very much be considered retro without excuses.