I love this, but now your making me feel guilty about having a couple of half built DOS PCs collecting dust in the shed! I guess I've found my new years resolution! Thanks for making this though, I really appreciate how clear you've made things for building with modern hardware.
There are variants of these VIA C7 based boards that have parallel ports. One could concievably use an OPL2LPT (Adlib support over parallel) at the same time as the Aureal card to provide both good wave audio + FM.
I really see FM not that important for this machine. The games that run well on it, and benefit from the speed, they all support General MIDI, or use sample based music or CD Audio. It's a case of focusing on what works well, rather than worrying about the smaller slice of the pie that doesn't work optimally.
since mini-ITX cases and motherboards are usually a bit more costly I went for the slim micro-ATX route and a cheap Sound Blaster clone with a smaller PCB in order to fit inside the case
Great project, Phil. I thoroughly enjoyed this video. I used to have a few Dells and a Gateway that would all have functioned great as DOS machines but they're all gone now. Life happens. I particularly miss the beefy P3-800 I had on a Gateway board that was passively cooled. Used that with Win2k and 768MB RAM for some older software and it was absolutely solid. Have a great Christmas Phil. :)
Just compared the results with my Pentium 3 and for the cost of a full midi tower I'm getting between 28% and 139% higher performance. The most extreme difference is in Chris's 3D, with 548 fps without and 833 fps with fastVID. The smallest gap is in DOOM, with 160 fps without and 175 fps with fastVID. Still this mini build is awesome. And will persuade alot of those who think retro gaming on actual hardware takes up too much space.
Nice build, at least a very nice idea to make a dos machine out of an itx based computer. Even if it failed the general purpose because some major titles won't run, performance in NFS and Duke3d was very awesome! These were some of the games I played to death back in the times.. :D
For the optical drive to close correctly in these pc cases, you need to remove that little shield on the front of the disc tray, where it says stuff like "DVD ROM", "Compact disc". It is attached to the tray with couple of latches and easily removed.
Its interesting that you and the '8 bit guy' seem to take opposite sides of the same coin to reach the same goal. Although I like your approach better. I'd like you to bring out a video showing how you trouble shooted and solved many computer problems relating to software in your various projects.
Yeah that is my only worry. Afaik the board itself supports the later versions of the Core2 cpus. So that in mind the support for Win98 might not be optimal. It does however support both DDR2 and DDR3 so effectivly I could put in a Pentium 4 s775 on to it since it does support the 800Fsb. I have a regular atx board with a P4 533 and it does run Win98 just fine but it's based on the s478. When I get around to I'll share.
I managed to make a W98 rig running a Pentium D and a PCI-E GPU and it's all working dandy. But I can assure you it wasn't a simple task as driver support was near non-existent and I had to really dig for workarounds, solutions and even modified drivers just to get the chipset and GPU to work. Haven't had the time to test DOS support yet but I'm pretty sure everything will work WAY too fast.
Maybe a Xp based machine would be the optimal for that generation. Í do have some more boards with older gens. Issue with those though is that they use liquid capacitors. I have recapped two and they are working fine. My idea with s775s is they mostly have solid caps. So longevity is a given. Right now I have a oem mb with a the Pentium 4 533 cpu and its in good condition. I'll run it until it fails. Then ill might put in the 775 mb. Sadly though it doesnt have a agp port. So no voodoo cards :/
Nice little system, I seem to recall that shuttle did a socket 462 system, that should work well with windows 98, it had one AGP and one PCI, I wonder how hard to find they are these days...
The problem you're experiencing (17:45) is do to having both HDD and cd drive on the same cable/idea channel. I would recommend creating ISO of the games, and using virtual CD.
I don't know if anyone suggested it. I had same problem with cdrom in a similar case. The fix was to remove the plate from the cdrom tray. They are sometimes removeable and later on you can place it back on if you remove drive or new case. I remember working on an PC many years ago and the manufacturer removed the plate so the case trap door would open and shut. When I swapped out drive with the panel on tray it stucked like yours did in video. Hope that helps.
Excellent example of using older hardware appropriately. I must admit I am surprised at how well the C7 runs. The graphics seem very smooth and glitch free. The audio is as I expected due to the Aureal Vortex 2, such an excellent card. I wasn't too certain how well the integrated video would perform but the proof of your pudding is very tasty indeed. All round a 9.9 out of 10.
Hey Phil, if you still have that case and optical drive, see if the front of the drive tray can be removed sometime. If it can, it'll probably clear the drive flap without it. I'm sure you've otherwise taken this system apart and used all of its parts in multiple other builds since-at least that Vortex 2, given that you can't have a pile of those laying around. They were kind of uncommon the moment Creative killed A3D because EAX was nowhere near A3D's level for several years afterward.
@@philscomputerlab It's not obvious that those things can be removed. I just saw that you had an update video on that machine as well-glad you were able to improve upon it because these things are still not hard to find at a fair price. If they had SB-Link, they'd go from pretty good to absolutely amazing little DOS machines.
This mini itx Dos machine is awesome project :D Took the small space and looks very good, congratulation Phil for very smart idea and have a Merry Christmas for you :)))
This is a fantastic idea for them motherboards I never thought of doing this with them although I have seen them a few times on Ebay :) With the passive cooling I bet it is a relief not to have fans spooling up and such too! :)
Super nice! My dream project would be something small like a retroPIE, with native DOS support, a good built in scaler, good sound compatibility and FM, and some sort of on the fly speed adjustment so you could play those really early games without any issues. Someone please kickstart this lol.
AGREED! : D That would be totally rad, man! Something like... "The DosBox Classic" - it could be called. It's actually quite possible as well, there are multiple x86 single board computers and "compute sticks" on the market at this time - Intel does some really cool stuff here as well, affordable. The trickiest part is getting the system to use a BIOS - since that's what's needed for something like Freedos - Gaming Fork. (hypothetical fork of freedos, specifically for game-compatibility)
@@predabot__6778 The trickiest part would be the graphics. The most popular single board computers have proprietary closed source drivers. All of them would have to run emulators with all the problems off still incorrect handling.
@@@llothar68 Damn - you're probably right there... Could it be possible to use a more open/documented external graphics chip, which would plug into I/O? It wouldn't have to be as advanced as other chipsets - just enough to run DOS-games. I imagine there must be a well-documented mobile chipset which could be made to run on x86 then, yes?
@@predabot__6778 There is even an open source chip/card en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Graphics_Project but its still a lot of money for a tiny market and then you don't own the rights to the old games and will never get it for reasonable prices. There are so many reasons why this makes no sense - unless you are Nintendo, Atari or Sega who can produce a retro console easily and have the marketing power of their brand name.
That is one awesome build. I would follow it up by testing out slow down utilities for games like Wing Commander. I've gotten Descent working pretty well on a 933MHz P3 and the Throttle utility on a VIA board. Maybe a comparison of those utilities and this box for a future vid?
Actually, Throttle works best with VIA chipsets. According to the website, it works with the Via 596, 596B, 686, 8231, 8233, 8233A, 8235, 8237 (I think they are all southbridges). I've used it with both a 440BX and a VIA 133A (596B southbridge) motherboard and with VIA it gives twice as many choices of speeds. 440BX = 8, VIA = 16. You can get the utility here: www.oldskool.org/pc/throttle/DOS/. It is not perfect and the description of each speed level is really just for kicks but I've gotten Descent to work well and One Must Fall sorta-ok on a 933MHz P3. The developer also has a Windows version and something called SlowDOS I have yet to try.
I have a dual Pentium 3 1.4 setup that I use for Windows 98 and Windows XP. All works great but I really want to use real DOS for late era DOS games. I only have PCI available and have tried using a Sound Blaster Live, Sound Blaster Audigy and Sound Blaster PCI 128. all have DOS drivers but so far I have had no luck. Now I am considering the vortex 2 after how easy you made the setup look!
I have a dual tualatin as well! If you're having trouble with the DOS drivers there's usually three reasons in my experience: 1. You're using the WDM drivers instead of the VxD drivers. For the Audigy cards you need to do registry tweaking to get the VxD drivers installed (gist.github.com/anpage/b2cb735faf27bba08165edc86a1bb94c). The Live should just work. No experience with the 128. 2. The "Restart to MS-DOS" option has a tendency to not work right (apps freeze on startup, TSRs not working right, etc). In my setups I've been turning off BootGUI in msdos.sys to start directly into DOS and improve compatibility dramatically. (I believe Phil's easy DOS package does a reboot for this reason as well.) Once you do that you can still use the win command to boot into the desktop no problem. You just can't drop from Windows to DOS without doing a full reboot. 3. If you haven't gone into the BIOS and reserved IRQ 7 for legacy devices then odds are some other device is going to take it and the TSR will fail to initialize. Best to also disable the parallel (normally IRQ 7) and serial ports if you're not using them so those IRQs can be used for PCI devices. If you need the parallel port then you'd probably have to reserve IRQ 5 for the Sound Blaster instead.
Since you built a computer with "modern parts" for reliablity, I also have some suggestions to make to you and your TH-cam channel community. It's better to use fanless power supplies because they have no moving parts, cases with excellent ventilation by using holes not fans, and figure out a way to make an SSD run through the IDE connector. As far as I know, most "flash memory card" IDE hard disks are worthless and unreliable, and the same for most people's old IDE mechanical drives. By the way, for those who have a ventilator on their DOS Retro Gaming PC's processor, there is a way to modify the CPU's cooler with a massive passive heatsink like in the motherboard in this video.
Nice idea, but I would try to find an Intel, or AMD board with an AGP/PCI-e slot for a GPU as the driver sets are better, which could also lend itself to being not only a Windows 98SE/Dos 7.11 machine, but an XP era machine in one small package.
Such multi OS builds are an exercise of compromise, and they usually end up being average at everything. With a single expansion slot, you are limited.
Hi All. I guess this is a good set up for recreating a win95 etc based machine due to the final speed of the system. Turning of the cache or wait-state just slowed it to a crawl, probably sloe to the original XT-AT like you mentioned, i only have maybe under 10 games from pre 386 era that were designed to run as fast as possible at the time ie to the max 4mhz. I guess your 3 in 1 retro machine from last year is still the way to go to configure to suit a certain HP of PC I did not notice any links to the mother board seller
Now I have to build yet another retro system after seeing you play "Epic Pinball" I have been running a lot of my old pc games under dosbox but there is no support for Vsync and Epic Pinball really need that. Like always great video.
It boggles my mind that major basics, like refresh rate, tearing and all of that, is not handled properly by emulators. Monitors can be overclocked to 75 Hz, there is Free Sync and G-Sync, but it seems they emulators aren't taking advantage of this. I would buy a Free Sync monitor if there was a benefit with emulation and it would give silky smooth scrolling.
Holy crap, that sound card is blasting through Epic Pinball and Duki Nuki 3D! Also, would anybody please tell me what that Castlevania-looking game before Epic Pinball was? Also, the (pirate-themed?) LucasArts game.
can you supply links to the model motherboard/case you used? not necessarily links to purchase them, but the product pages from the manufacturer? Thanks, have a happy new year, (and whatever holidays you celebrate)
I'm more demanding from a DOS Retro Gaming PC so I will probably get a motherboard with more slots, including ISA Legacy slots, so that I can install an AGP Graphics Card and many different PCI/ISA Soundcards in the same system so I can try other sound configurations. I hope having this many cards will not cause them to hardware conflict, but if so, there is still the theoretical possibility to disable them in some BIOSes, Windows device manager, or uninstalling the drivers outright. By the way, could you please make a video where you show how the different soundcard hardware sounds? For instance, I noticed you installed a "wavetable board" in this video, and I'm wondering what would have happened with the sound if you had not installed it. I know from experience that different old audio cards also emulate sound differenty, sometimes wrongly, but because some people grew up with even wrongly emulated sound, it has nostalgia value to them.
I'm curious! So, disabling L1 cache pretty much brought the computer down to an unusable level. However, did you try something more conventional like Moslo? Have you had any luck with other TSR programs?
I see you have chosen Aureal Vortex2 again. Any particular reason why you prefer it over SB-live? On all my retro computers where I cannot use ISA card I have SB-live, cause it usually works fine and its DOS SB emulation emulates SB16, so it sounds generally better in the modern DOS titles, but the OPL music... well that would be a nice test to do. The only big negative to SB live and its emulation is that its EMM386 based, and modern chipsets do not support that and it will hang or BSOD during boot. From my testing, On Intel, it works fine on everything up to 875 chipset (and yes this includes the Core2 i865 boards), on SIS chipsets (which I like they perform way better than VIA and offer universal AGP4x on 478 Intel) its very Vendor specific. ECS P6S5A, MSI 645 ultra and Asus P4S333 basically all use SIS645 chipset, but on ECS - no go. On MSI works but only if you disable ACPI in bios, and on Asus it works fine all the time. On AMD K7 platform, KT333 is fine, both Asus and MSI versions and more modern I did not touch cause VIA really, the next VIA I tried was Asrock dual VSTA that weird combo board and there it did not work at all. Also, all Nforce chipset, not working. There are also the older SB64 and SB128 ensoniq audio PCI based cards, but chances of those working is even smaller and they emulate only SB PRO. Is the emulation on Aureal Vortex also EMM386 based or does it work even on modern machines where EMM fails? I have tons of live cards here but 0 aureals, must get one really.
The Aureal has a wavetable header that works in DOS. So you get very good General MIDI. And yea, it doesn't require EMS. But it's always a compromise. Every PCI sound card has some sort of flaw...
How does it handle games/demos that utilize stuff like the 15BPP VESA modes? I know games like X-Men: Children of the Atom are pickier about being able to run 15BPP than I am with food. I know I can get it to work on my Shuttle with a GeForce 6800 by using utilities called "VBE15BPP" and "VESAFIX".
I haven't used the Live! in DOS yet, and I don't think I have an OPL3 PCI card. But a real OPL3, for sure that would be awesome. Though seeing that this machine is fast, most games that run on it will have General MIDI support...
A great project! Last weekend I dug up a Compaq Deskpro with a 600 MHz Pentium III and 64 MB of RAM from the attic. It need some love and cleaning and of course a dash of MX-4. What PCI sound card would you recommend for it? Somehow the beige aesthetic hits all the right notes for me and I want to put a good card for DOS gaming.
PhilsComputerLab the Compaq motherboard has only PCI with a riser, it's a SFF case. I've got a MSI BX-Master with an ISA slot on my first ever rig from back in the day, but I have to rebuild it in a new case.
Or look for a SB Live, those are PCI and offer compatibility for DOS. And still sold for reasonable prices. more exotic and pricey would be a SB 64 PCI. Those exist, but are quite rare. I got a SB 1280PCI, (based on the Ensoniq chips) a nice and cheap card for WIndows, but the DOS sound is emulated via a driver and takes extra memory, Also the FM synthesis is suboptimal. But they are cheap and got SB Pro support. Ofocurse the Vortex is nice. Maybe go for somthing exotic like a Covox or this new Adlib for the parallel port.
Thanks! :) I found a dirt cheap SB Live and I think I'm going to go that route, since the Vortex seems a little pricey at this point. The SB Live is under 10 USD.
I'd like to ask if you had a go at the AC97 onboard audio? I'm working on a similar project, got a free pickup: Duron 800 system with the SIS 740 chipset... no video card, 2 PCI slots, the thing is too slow for anything Windows 98, but the SIS integrated graphics works great in DOS I'm already familiar setting up a Creative AudioPCI sound card with DOS and it works great, especially with Soundscape emulation from the Ensoniq drivers... just wondering if the AC97 audio has anything to offer?
I almost thought this channel would become the RandomgaminginHD "clone", while modern budget systems are interesting there are many channels already covering them, so I'll be glad if you will continue making some videos about hardware from 2005 and older.
Yes, I know that and I understand you. I just wanted to say my opinion on this. It's great that you do modern budget gaming videos, I just don't want this great channel to become monotonous.
"Hard disk drives connect to a motherboard using either a Serial Advanced Technology Attachment connector or an Integrated Drive Electronics connector. SATA drives are newer than IDE, so older operating systems such as Windows XP, for example, won't recognize the technology without additional drivers. You can, however, use the Basic Input/Output System -- your computer's configuration program -- to alter how the computer emulates SATA devices. If you need to use an older operating system to access legacy hardware or software for your business, switch the SATA mode to IDE to allow the operating system to recognize the hard drive." What do you think about this? Do you think there exists a motherboard with SATA connectors that has both a BIOS that can configure to emulated IDE and an onboard soundcard (not PCI or ISA) that works extremely well in DOS? That could be the ultimate "modern" DOS Retro Gaming PC.
That's a really nice, sleek build fella, nice one. I've no experience or idea when it comes to installing DOS and Windows 98, so even with your really simple sort of walkthrough about 9:13, you lost me 😅 Loved seeing the retro Prince Of Persia and original Tomb Raider 😊🥰
Azza PT-5IVL, but the manual does not come with the bios warning codes, and the standard AWARD system BIOS told me that is CPU overheating, but the CPU is cold during the beeping secuence (one high-pitched beep each second).
How do you copy from USB thumb drive ? I spend a lot of time yesterday to try to get Win98SE to get universal usb drivers and nothing worked. I can't get the USB running.
Phil I'm new to taking retro PCs somewhat seriously and I have a question, will the FX 5200 bottleneck a 333 MHz P2? (I know that it's a much newer low-end GPU but I didn't find any time accurate gpus at decent prices)
I have a question; I got my Win98SE machine going, but I started getting a generic "Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer." message at boot after the first "Windows 98 is starting" loading screen. It started shortly after having installed the Win98SE Native USB storage driver. Only thing I did after installing was to copy over a wallpaper that I made, transferred over from a USB stick. The system is as follows: Motherboard: ASUS P4SD-LA (USB 1.1 (x2), 2.0 (x2), VGA, Ethernet, IEEE 1394 (x1), PS/2 (Mouse and Keyboard)) CPU: Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.4GHz RAM: 512MB DDR PC-2700 (256 MB x2) GPU: Nvidia GeForce FX 5500 256MB Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! CT4870 PSU: Corsair C600 600W (What I had on hand) Chassis: Antec Sonata Proto (Not _exactly_ relevant lol) OS: Microsoft Windows 98 SE ODD: 24x DVD-R/RW CD-R/RW HDD: 40GB (Boot), 160GB (ISOs & Storage) The machine will have a 3.5" floppy drive after Christmas. Any thoughts as to the cause of this? Memory checks out in POST, and _was_ original to the system.
ChozoSR388 I'd start with uninstalling the USB drivers just to rule them out, if you still get the problem then I'd run a tool for monitoring SMART status for your hard drive to make sure it's not dying (assuming it supports it) and if that checks out then run memtest86 for at least 2 passes to check that the RAM is good. My intuition says it's either dodgy drivers or bad RAM, but without testing it's impossible to say definitively.
Robinthefox88 You were dead on about the drivers; as soon as I uninstalled them and rebooted, SE booted up no problem. I wonder what the issue was...they were the ones that I got off of Phil's site. Strange.
ChozoSR388 Those drivers, if they're the ones that I've used before do have some incompatibilities and bugs, and due to their age there's no fixes for the problems they have, so it doesn't really surprise me that you ran into issues with them. I'm glad you found the issue and was able to fix it though, as it can be a right royal pain to fix Win98 sometimes :) I'd take a look at using a PCI USB card if you can fit one, especially if you can get one that has native Win98 drivers, as that would be a much better solution.
Robinthefox88 Yeah, I think that's what I'm gonna do...chuck the modem, and get a USB PCI card I am going to still have to reinstall Win98SE though...after removing the drivers, it tries to install them all again upon restart. Gods, I FORGOT WHAt a pain Win98SE was lol
Grrr how I would love to have another PCI soundcard with decent DOS compatibility (screw Creative and their EMM386-dependant, crash prone, DOS drivers), the AU8830 boards aren't exactly cheap. :( FM sounds alright with the Dreamblaster though, right? Have you experienced any incompatibilities (hanging note, DMA clicking, etc.) with the card? Really nice build!
The DreamBlaster doesn't do FM, it's for General MIDI , which most of the newer DOS games support quite well :) Check this video for examples of what the FM sound slike: th-cam.com/video/3FJCnswIJiw/w-d-xo.html
Ah right, of course! I'm too green when it comes to wavetable header usage - my only experience with MIDI solutions have been MPU-401 external stuff. :) Disregarding the noobish question, have you noticed any issues with the card on the platform? Sounds like it's performing like it should - but game compatibility (and especially sound) in DOS is treacherous ground, would be great to know if it's relatively universally compatible. ^^ Great video though, dunno if I should thank you or curse you for giving me a metric shitton of ideas for retro rigs all the time! Merry Christmas, Phil!
So in general, I don't recommend PCI sound cards for DOS. Go ISA if you care about DOS sound. With PCI, it's more a case of "Well, be happy that you even get sound" :D
Hehe, don't I know it... my current goal (been all fall) is to build an all-in-one, as good as possible, retro rig. Currently I'm fighting an Intel 815E chipset, and lord knows it's fighting back, lol! I've already tried two VIA 694T boards (for their ISA slots), one was doa and the other burned a trace for some strange reason - now it's a game of "find a PCI card that works", and so far - it's not looking good. Basically only got the AU8830 left to test, if I can find one that doesn't go for at least 50€, I might try it out. :-)
wow even nfs1 worked, that normally is bugged with alott of gpu`s, now am using a old ibm aptiva with Riva128 that works with the game and music on SE version of the game :D
yes i remember from your video :D it works awsome with nfs se, and nfs2 se,nfs4 seems to lagg. i have not yet tried other dos games thoe :) it`s RIVA128zx cpu: P3 450Mhz and 384mb, windows 98 now but probly re install it to win98se. configured on a work bench it got idea from your older videos :D i have thinking about change to GForce2 maby youst so that i can get NFS 1-4 work but i have noticed that nfs1/Nfs1se is often picky on gpu`s. :) I realy loved you mini dos Computer :D
so I finally found this mobo available in my country, the model says it's an MSI MS-7199 C/pro tho'... I've been looking for it since your windows 98 mini itx video, do you believe the mobo will work?, it looks the exact same as yours
PhilsComputerLab I decided not to buy it, as I was scrambling around my stored pc parts and found another mini itx mobo perfectly compatible with windows 98, a compurer from Aopen the XC cube, pretty weird machine, it's got one of those optic ports for sound and an AGP port at 8x speed, compatible with both IDE and SATA
How do you make The need for speed look so good, i run in under dos box on a 1080p monitor but in a scaled 4:3 aspect ratio and the graphics are way too blocky and nowhere near as good as in this video
Why not go with a yamaha ymf pci card instead? Since you are playing a lot of OPL based games you can have proper sounding titles instead with that card. They are cheaper to get as well, aureal cards have really gone up in price these last few years sadly.
just search for yamaha ymf on ebay. I use the Aopen Aw744L II myself and there is a somewhat steady supply of brand new ones. It's pci, has true OPL3 and proper dos drivers, best yet it has XG midi support for the few windows games that can use it like FFVII. For at least here in the US they are vastly cheaper than most aureal cards, though id certainly suggest anyone that can afford it to get both.
striderx777 Lol can you believe it, I had a look in my PCI sound card container, and found this generic cheap China sound card in a box. The crappiest looking card, but has the 744 chipset!
No, the C7 is from VIA's Centaur division. Before being bought by Via they developed the WinChip and WinChip 2 processors for IDT. VIA also bought Cyrix, but most engineers apparently already had left Cyrix at that time and their follow-up design for the 6x86MX/MII was not ready to ship, so instead VIA shipped a Centaur-design as "Cyrix III"-processor, later iterations being coined "C3" and then "C7".
well that processor overclocks like crasy. It is easy to get to 1,2ghz. And if you use a riser card with to pci slots you could use a voodoo3 pci with a sound card, or voodoo2 SLI
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I found a P4 Shuttle PC Im Restoring with a Lil Updated Flavor.
Nice Job! That Multi Button for your TestBench Looks Sweet!
I love this, but now your making me feel guilty about having a couple of half built DOS PCs collecting dust in the shed! I guess I've found my new years resolution! Thanks for making this though, I really appreciate how clear you've made things for building with modern hardware.
It really is a cool hobby :D But beware, it can really be an addiction :D If you just want to play a few DOS games, do checkout DOSBox first.
There are variants of these VIA C7 based boards that have parallel ports. One could concievably use an OPL2LPT (Adlib support over parallel) at the same time as the Aureal card to provide both good wave audio + FM.
I really see FM not that important for this machine. The games that run well on it, and benefit from the speed, they all support General MIDI, or use sample based music or CD Audio. It's a case of focusing on what works well, rather than worrying about the smaller slice of the pie that doesn't work optimally.
since mini-ITX cases and motherboards are usually a bit more costly I went for the slim micro-ATX route and a cheap Sound Blaster clone with a smaller PCB in order to fit inside the case
I didn't know ITX boards existed in 2003. Nice.
QuantumBraced via was the designer of itx standard so yea they had itx mobos way earlier than before.
Great project, Phil. I thoroughly enjoyed this video. I used to have a few Dells and a Gateway that would all have functioned great as DOS machines but they're all gone now. Life happens. I particularly miss the beefy P3-800 I had on a Gateway board that was passively cooled. Used that with Win2k and 768MB RAM for some older software and it was absolutely solid. Have a great Christmas Phil. :)
Thanks!
I’ve had a hard time finding ITX boards with older CPUs these days at least on eBay in the US.
Phil now you just made me wanna get a shuttle PC..
Just compared the results with my Pentium 3 and for the cost of a full midi tower I'm getting between 28% and 139% higher performance.
The most extreme difference is in Chris's 3D, with 548 fps without and 833 fps with fastVID.
The smallest gap is in DOOM, with 160 fps without and 175 fps with fastVID.
Still this mini build is awesome. And will persuade alot of those who think retro gaming on actual hardware takes up too much space.
Nice build, at least a very nice idea to make a dos machine out of an itx based computer.
Even if it failed the general purpose because some major titles won't run, performance in NFS and Duke3d was very awesome! These were some of the games I played to death back in the times.. :D
Very cool build. If the board supports APM you could try changing the CPU multiplier with fdapm (from FreeDOS) or DOS Throttle.
For the optical drive to close correctly in these pc cases, you need to remove that little shield on the front of the disc tray, where it says stuff like "DVD ROM", "Compact disc". It is attached to the tray with couple of latches and easily removed.
Yea there is a follow up video to this build, and that's one of the improvements we applied :) You always learn something new.
Oh, okay. Haven't got to second video yet, just recently subscribed, awesome channel, thank you.
Its interesting that you and the '8 bit guy' seem to take opposite sides of the same coin to reach the same goal. Although I like your approach better. I'd like you to bring out a video showing how you trouble shooted and solved many computer problems relating to software in your various projects.
I'd really like to make a retro PC like this- very simple and effective. Good video, as usual!
Finally a DOS / Win 98 machine I could actually afford! Great video!
I bought a itx board with s775 socket. New in box. Going to make a itx build aswell for dos/win98 gaming.
Very nice! Keen to hear how you go with 98 though.
Yeah that is my only worry. Afaik the board itself supports the later versions of the Core2 cpus. So that in mind the support for Win98 might not be optimal. It does however support both DDR2 and DDR3 so effectivly I could put in a Pentium 4 s775 on to it since it does support the 800Fsb. I have a regular atx board with a P4 533 and it does run Win98 just fine but it's based on the s478. When I get around to I'll share.
I managed to make a W98 rig running a Pentium D and a PCI-E GPU and it's all working dandy. But I can assure you it wasn't a simple task as driver support was near non-existent and I had to really dig for workarounds, solutions and even modified drivers just to get the chipset and GPU to work. Haven't had the time to test DOS support yet but I'm pretty sure everything will work WAY too fast.
Maybe a Xp based machine would be the optimal for that generation. Í do have some more boards with older gens. Issue with those though is that they use liquid capacitors. I have recapped two and they are working fine. My idea with s775s is they mostly have solid caps. So longevity is a given. Right now I have a oem mb with a the Pentium 4 533 cpu and its in good condition. I'll run it until it fails. Then ill might put in the 775 mb. Sadly though it doesnt have a agp port. So no voodoo cards :/
Nice little system, I seem to recall that shuttle did a socket 462 system, that should work well with windows 98, it had one AGP and one PCI, I wonder how hard to find they are these days...
Guess it depends on the sales back then and how many kept them around. So I guess they are not that easy to get.
The problem you're experiencing (17:45) is do to having both HDD and cd drive on the same cable/idea channel. I would recommend creating ISO of the games, and using virtual CD.
I don't know if anyone suggested it. I had same problem with cdrom in a similar case. The fix was to remove the plate from the cdrom tray. They are sometimes removeable and later on you can place it back on if you remove drive or new case. I remember working on an PC many years ago and the manufacturer removed the plate so the case trap door would open and shut. When I swapped out drive with the panel on tray it stucked like yours did in video. Hope that helps.
Yup, I got a few comments and addressed it in the next video, or one of the following ones :)
Excellent example of using older hardware appropriately. I must admit I am surprised at how well the C7 runs. The graphics seem very smooth and glitch free. The audio is as I expected due to the Aureal Vortex 2, such an excellent card. I wasn't too certain how well the integrated video would perform but the proof of your pudding is very tasty indeed. All round a 9.9 out of 10.
Nice built! You might be careful with the hard drive, if I recall correctly IBM hard drives from the era had the reputation to be quite unreliable.
Hey Phil, if you still have that case and optical drive, see if the front of the drive tray can be removed sometime. If it can, it'll probably clear the drive flap without it. I'm sure you've otherwise taken this system apart and used all of its parts in multiple other builds since-at least that Vortex 2, given that you can't have a pile of those laying around. They were kind of uncommon the moment Creative killed A3D because EAX was nowhere near A3D's level for several years afterward.
Yea I figured it out since then :D Always humbling when you run into something really basic yet confusing at first 😂
@@philscomputerlab It's not obvious that those things can be removed. I just saw that you had an update video on that machine as well-glad you were able to improve upon it because these things are still not hard to find at a fair price. If they had SB-Link, they'd go from pretty good to absolutely amazing little DOS machines.
Nice case. I love those mini-ITX!
I used to always want a Shuttle barebones kit back in the day. I have one now though. :)
Oh, those Shuttle builds. Still remember them. They where the hot shit for LAN parties in the P4/A XP era.
another awesome video... fortunately a pci working soundcard under dos!
A CF or SD adapter would be another option for storage... unless you want authentic hard disk sounds
This mini itx Dos machine is awesome project :D Took the small space and looks very good, congratulation Phil for very smart idea and have a Merry Christmas for you :)))
Michal M Thank you, same to you :)
This is a fantastic idea for them motherboards I never thought of doing this with them although I have seen them a few times on Ebay :) With the passive cooling I bet it is a relief not to have fans spooling up and such too! :)
Super nice!
My dream project would be something small like a retroPIE, with native DOS support, a good built in scaler, good sound compatibility and FM, and some sort of on the fly speed adjustment so you could play those really early games without any issues. Someone please kickstart this lol.
AGREED! : D That would be totally rad, man! Something like... "The DosBox Classic" - it could be called. It's actually quite possible as well, there are multiple x86 single board computers and "compute sticks" on the market at this time - Intel does some really cool stuff here as well, affordable. The trickiest part is getting the system to use a BIOS - since that's what's needed for something like Freedos - Gaming Fork. (hypothetical fork of freedos, specifically for game-compatibility)
@@predabot__6778 The trickiest part would be the graphics. The most popular single board computers have proprietary closed source drivers. All of them would have to run emulators with all the problems off still incorrect handling.
@@@llothar68 Damn - you're probably right there... Could it be possible to use a more open/documented external graphics chip, which would plug into I/O? It wouldn't have to be as advanced as other chipsets - just enough to run DOS-games. I imagine there must be a well-documented mobile chipset which could be made to run on x86 then, yes?
@@predabot__6778 There is even an open source chip/card en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Graphics_Project but its still a lot of money for a tiny market and then you don't own the rights to the old games and will never get it for reasonable prices. There are so many reasons why this makes no sense - unless you are Nintendo, Atari or Sega who can produce a retro console easily and have the marketing power of their brand name.
Really nice build, I really love it when you do DOS builds.
Thanks!
Those mini-itx power supplies can be very noisy, you need a fanless picopsu! (cheap clone, if you are like me)
gabest4 reading your comment I got image of muffler mod on a Honda civic.
Kevin Hernandez fucking ricers REEEEEEEEE
Maaan, need for speed 1, i loved it playing it back in distant past... great video, as always!!
Great video, I've been wanting to build a retro system, this gives me all the info I need
That is one awesome build. I would follow it up by testing out slow down utilities for games like Wing Commander. I've gotten Descent working pretty well on a 933MHz P3 and the Throttle utility on a VIA board. Maybe a comparison of those utilities and this box for a future vid?
Does this work with all VIA chipset? It might come in handy for another project I have in mind.
Actually, Throttle works best with VIA chipsets. According to the website, it works with the Via 596, 596B, 686, 8231, 8233, 8233A, 8235, 8237 (I think they are all southbridges). I've used it with both a 440BX and a VIA 133A (596B southbridge) motherboard and with VIA it gives twice as many choices of speeds. 440BX = 8, VIA = 16. You can get the utility here: www.oldskool.org/pc/throttle/DOS/. It is not perfect and the description of each speed level is really just for kicks but I've gotten Descent to work well and One Must Fall sorta-ok on a 933MHz P3. The developer also has a Windows version and something called SlowDOS I have yet to try.
GiSWiG Looks like the chipset I have in mind is supported :)
Cool. Sure you got something interesting up your sleeve.
Ok I'm running some benchmarks now. It has an option to throttle, but leave L1 Cache turned on.
I have a dual Pentium 3 1.4 setup that I use for Windows 98 and Windows XP. All works great but I really want to use real DOS for late era DOS games. I only have PCI available and have tried using a Sound Blaster Live, Sound Blaster Audigy and Sound Blaster PCI 128. all have DOS drivers but so far I have had no luck. Now I am considering the vortex 2 after how easy you made the setup look!
I have a dual tualatin as well! If you're having trouble with the DOS drivers there's usually three reasons in my experience: 1. You're using the WDM drivers instead of the VxD drivers. For the Audigy cards you need to do registry tweaking to get the VxD drivers installed (gist.github.com/anpage/b2cb735faf27bba08165edc86a1bb94c). The Live should just work. No experience with the 128.
2. The "Restart to MS-DOS" option has a tendency to not work right (apps freeze on startup, TSRs not working right, etc). In my setups I've been turning off BootGUI in msdos.sys to start directly into DOS and improve compatibility dramatically. (I believe Phil's easy DOS package does a reboot for this reason as well.) Once you do that you can still use the win command to boot into the desktop no problem. You just can't drop from Windows to DOS without doing a full reboot.
3. If you haven't gone into the BIOS and reserved IRQ 7 for legacy devices then odds are some other device is going to take it and the TSR will fail to initialize. Best to also disable the parallel (normally IRQ 7) and serial ports if you're not using them so those IRQs can be used for PCI devices. If you need the parallel port then you'd probably have to reserve IRQ 5 for the Sound Blaster instead.
Blzut3 I have been using wdm so I'll give that a shot!
Blzut3 It works flawlessly now! Thanks so much!
Since you built a computer with "modern parts" for reliablity, I also have some suggestions to make to you and your TH-cam channel community. It's better to use fanless power supplies because they have no moving parts, cases with excellent ventilation by using holes not fans, and figure out a way to make an SSD run through the IDE connector. As far as I know, most "flash memory card" IDE hard disks are worthless and unreliable, and the same for most people's old IDE mechanical drives. By the way, for those who have a ventilator on their DOS Retro Gaming PC's processor, there is a way to modify the CPU's cooler with a massive passive heatsink like in the motherboard in this video.
Nice idea, but I would try to find an Intel, or AMD board with an AGP/PCI-e slot for a GPU as the driver sets are better, which could also lend itself to being not only a Windows 98SE/Dos 7.11 machine, but an XP era machine in one small package.
Such multi OS builds are an exercise of compromise, and they usually end up being average at everything. With a single expansion slot, you are limited.
I'd highly recommend Total Commander. better than two tiled explorer windows
Great vídeo. One nice comparison is via c7 vs intel atom cpu and gpu.
never heard of fastvid before, that's cool!
Yea it gives a massive boost, especially at higher resolutions!
"CentaurHauls". I like it.
Hi All. I guess this is a good set up for recreating a win95 etc based machine due to the final speed of the system.
Turning of the cache or wait-state just slowed it to a crawl, probably sloe to the original XT-AT like you mentioned, i only have maybe under 10 games from pre 386 era that were designed to run as fast as possible at the time ie to the max 4mhz.
I guess your 3 in 1 retro machine from last year is still the way to go to configure to suit a certain HP of PC
I did not notice any links to the mother board seller
There are no links, I got that board ages ago.
Have a good Christmas mate, wishing you all the best for 2018!
PierreVonStaines Thanks, you also :D
Also a good wish from me, and many retro videos in 2018! :)
You can find 128 mb sticks of ddr2 but there really rare and mostly found in early ddr2 desktops built for windows 2000
I really enjoy your videos Phil. Keep up the good work.
Nice build. Looks great. Too bad you can't slow it down to do proper 386/486 emulation.
Now I have to build yet another retro system after seeing you play "Epic Pinball" I have been running a lot of my old pc games under dosbox but there is no support for Vsync and Epic Pinball really need that. Like always great video.
It boggles my mind that major basics, like refresh rate, tearing and all of that, is not handled properly by emulators. Monitors can be overclocked to 75 Hz, there is Free Sync and G-Sync, but it seems they emulators aren't taking advantage of this. I would buy a Free Sync monitor if there was a benefit with emulation and it would give silky smooth scrolling.
I use those remote switches on any pc i have.
One suggestion Phil, could you record PC audio directly from line out while you game? Thanks!
I specifically wanted to capture the sound form the speakers.
I bit older Motherboard with a real LPT would be a killer. OPL2LPT, Covox, DSS-Support, Tandy-Emulation...
Unclip the front bezel on the actual CD ROM tray and then the tray won't jam on the case flap!
i have a hard time trusting power supplies, I would of never trusted that one enough! great build tho
Holy crap, that sound card is blasting through Epic Pinball and Duki Nuki 3D!
Also, would anybody please tell me what that Castlevania-looking game before Epic Pinball was? Also, the (pirate-themed?) LucasArts game.
Monkey Island is the pirate game, the platformer is Gods :)
That's pretty cool! I can't imagine I'd ever take it anywhere though. : P
can you supply links to the model motherboard/case you used? not necessarily links to purchase them, but the product pages from the manufacturer?
Thanks, have a happy new year, (and whatever holidays you celebrate)
I'm more demanding from a DOS Retro Gaming PC so I will probably get a motherboard with more slots, including ISA Legacy slots, so that I can install an AGP Graphics Card and many different PCI/ISA Soundcards in the same system so I can try other sound configurations. I hope having this many cards will not cause them to hardware conflict, but if so, there is still the theoretical possibility to disable them in some BIOSes, Windows device manager, or uninstalling the drivers outright. By the way, could you please make a video where you show how the different soundcard hardware sounds? For instance, I noticed you installed a "wavetable board" in this video, and I'm wondering what would have happened with the sound if you had not installed it. I know from experience that different old audio cards also emulate sound differenty, sometimes wrongly, but because some people grew up with even wrongly emulated sound, it has nostalgia value to them.
I'm curious! So, disabling L1 cache pretty much brought the computer down to an unusable level. However, did you try something more conventional like Moslo? Have you had any luck with other TSR programs?
Great video phil.
Nice machine, C7 is pretty fast.
Would you recommend getting AU8820-based sound card for Win98/DOS? Any major drawbacks compared to Vortex 2?
I would only get the Vortex 2 to be honest.
I see you have chosen Aureal Vortex2 again. Any particular reason why you prefer it over SB-live? On all my retro computers where I cannot use ISA card I have SB-live, cause it usually works fine and its DOS SB emulation emulates SB16, so it sounds generally better in the modern DOS titles, but the OPL music... well that would be a nice test to do. The only big negative to SB live and its emulation is that its EMM386 based, and modern chipsets do not support that and it will hang or BSOD during boot.
From my testing, On Intel, it works fine on everything up to 875 chipset (and yes this includes the Core2 i865 boards), on SIS chipsets (which I like they perform way better than VIA and offer universal AGP4x on 478 Intel) its very Vendor specific. ECS P6S5A, MSI 645 ultra and Asus P4S333 basically all use SIS645 chipset, but on ECS - no go. On MSI works but only if you disable ACPI in bios, and on Asus it works fine all the time. On AMD K7 platform, KT333 is fine, both Asus and MSI versions and more modern I did not touch cause VIA really, the next VIA I tried was Asrock dual VSTA that weird combo board and there it did not work at all. Also, all Nforce chipset, not working. There are also the older SB64 and SB128 ensoniq audio PCI based cards, but chances of those working is even smaller and they emulate only SB PRO.
Is the emulation on Aureal Vortex also EMM386 based or does it work even on modern machines where EMM fails? I have tons of live cards here but 0 aureals, must get one really.
The Aureal has a wavetable header that works in DOS. So you get very good General MIDI. And yea, it doesn't require EMS. But it's always a compromise. Every PCI sound card has some sort of flaw...
How does it handle games/demos that utilize stuff like the 15BPP VESA modes? I know games like X-Men: Children of the Atom are pickier about being able to run 15BPP than I am with food. I know I can get it to work on my Shuttle with a GeForce 6800 by using utilities called "VBE15BPP" and "VESAFIX".
Hello Phil! Do you think that a real OPL3 PCI card (Yamaha) or a sound blaster live should sound better than the aureal vortex? Great project! Thanks!
I haven't used the Live! in DOS yet, and I don't think I have an OPL3 PCI card. But a real OPL3, for sure that would be awesome. Though seeing that this machine is fast, most games that run on it will have General MIDI support...
A great project! Last weekend I dug up a Compaq Deskpro with a 600 MHz Pentium III and 64 MB of RAM from the attic. It need some love and cleaning and of course a dash of MX-4. What PCI sound card would you recommend for it? Somehow the beige aesthetic hits all the right notes for me and I want to put a good card for DOS gaming.
I wouldn't use PCI, check if your machine has ISA slots!
PhilsComputerLab the Compaq motherboard has only PCI with a riser, it's a SFF case. I've got a MSI BX-Master with an ISA slot on my first ever rig from back in the day, but I have to rebuild it in a new case.
Oh I see. Well the Vortex 2 is a great DOS PCI card. I haven't checked out other models really. I'm doing mostly ISA sound card review at the moment.
Or look for a SB Live, those are PCI and offer compatibility for DOS. And still sold for reasonable prices.
more exotic and pricey would be a SB 64 PCI. Those exist, but are quite rare.
I got a SB 1280PCI, (based on the Ensoniq chips) a nice and cheap card for WIndows, but the DOS sound is emulated via a driver and takes extra memory, Also the FM synthesis is suboptimal. But they are cheap and got SB Pro support.
Ofocurse the Vortex is nice. Maybe go for somthing exotic like a Covox or this new Adlib for the parallel port.
Thanks! :) I found a dirt cheap SB Live and I think I'm going to go that route, since the Vortex seems a little pricey at this point. The SB Live is under 10 USD.
I'd like to ask if you had a go at the AC97 onboard audio?
I'm working on a similar project, got a free pickup: Duron 800 system with the SIS 740 chipset... no video card, 2 PCI slots, the thing is too slow for anything Windows 98, but the SIS integrated graphics works great in DOS
I'm already familiar setting up a Creative AudioPCI sound card with DOS and it works great, especially with Soundscape emulation from the Ensoniq drivers... just wondering if the AC97 audio has anything to offer?
For DOS? Usually there is some support from within Windows (MS-DOS Prompt), but not in pure DOS.
I almost thought this channel would become the RandomgaminginHD "clone", while modern budget systems are interesting there are many channels already covering them, so I'll be glad if you will continue making some videos about hardware from 2005 and older.
Look, I'll make whatever videos I feel like making. If you like what I do, that's awesome, if not, that's ok also.
Yes, I know that and I understand you. I just wanted to say my opinion on this. It's great that you do modern budget gaming videos, I just don't want this great channel to become monotonous.
"Hard disk drives connect to a motherboard using either a Serial Advanced Technology Attachment connector or an Integrated Drive Electronics connector. SATA drives are newer than IDE, so older operating systems such as Windows XP, for example, won't recognize the technology without additional drivers. You can, however, use the Basic Input/Output System -- your computer's configuration program -- to alter how the computer emulates SATA devices. If you need to use an older operating system to access legacy hardware or software for your business, switch the SATA mode to IDE to allow the operating system to recognize the hard drive."
What do you think about this? Do you think there exists a motherboard with SATA connectors that has both a BIOS that can configure to emulated IDE and an onboard soundcard (not PCI or ISA) that works extremely well in DOS? That could be the ultimate "modern" DOS Retro Gaming PC.
That's a really nice, sleek build fella, nice one. I've no experience or idea when it comes to installing DOS and Windows 98, so even with your really simple sort of walkthrough about 9:13, you lost me 😅
Loved seeing the retro Prince Of Persia and original Tomb Raider 😊🥰
pentium 3, 468 dx 66, 386 dx 40 with 80387, some sweat point of dos games.
do you use a original win98se? and i need the driver for the usb sticks :)
Amazing dude, that's simply incredible, looks so good!!! (another point, you know the pc speaker beep codes of a socket 7 mobo?)
They depend on the BIOS, you can just google them :)
Azza PT-5IVL, but the manual does not come with the bios warning codes, and the standard AWARD system BIOS told me that is CPU overheating, but the CPU is cold during the beeping secuence (one high-pitched beep each second).
This PC is too modern for DOS :)
you are gonna be my economical ruin! I have already built 3 retro gaming PCs and now I just want to build this one! xD
Great video!
How do you copy from USB thumb drive ? I spend a lot of time yesterday to try to get Win98SE to get universal usb drivers and nothing worked. I can't get the USB running.
I have that sound card :)
Nice!
Just wondering: You do a lot of computer builds, what do you do with them after the video? Do you keep them? Give them to friends? Sell?
I only keep parts. So this one will get dismantled soon, and off onto the next project :)
Hahaha Lemmings, classic!
where did you get the Big power button
Phil I'm new to taking retro PCs somewhat seriously and I have a question, will the FX 5200 bottleneck a 333 MHz P2? (I know that it's a much newer low-end GPU but I didn't find any time accurate gpus at decent prices)
TheMalvage Yes it will, but that's OK
I have the same microsoft basic mouse,
it just broke today
I have a question; I got my Win98SE machine going, but I started getting a generic "Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer." message at boot after the first "Windows 98 is starting" loading screen. It started shortly after having installed the Win98SE Native USB storage driver. Only thing I did after installing was to copy over a wallpaper that I made, transferred over from a USB stick.
The system is as follows:
Motherboard: ASUS P4SD-LA (USB 1.1 (x2), 2.0 (x2), VGA, Ethernet, IEEE 1394 (x1), PS/2 (Mouse and Keyboard))
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.4GHz
RAM: 512MB DDR PC-2700 (256 MB x2)
GPU: Nvidia GeForce FX 5500 256MB
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! CT4870
PSU: Corsair C600 600W (What I had on hand)
Chassis: Antec Sonata Proto (Not _exactly_ relevant lol)
OS: Microsoft Windows 98 SE
ODD: 24x DVD-R/RW CD-R/RW
HDD: 40GB (Boot), 160GB (ISOs & Storage)
The machine will have a 3.5" floppy drive after Christmas.
Any thoughts as to the cause of this? Memory checks out in POST, and _was_ original to the system.
ChozoSR388 I'd start with uninstalling the USB drivers just to rule them out, if you still get the problem then I'd run a tool for monitoring SMART status for your hard drive to make sure it's not dying (assuming it supports it) and if that checks out then run memtest86 for at least 2 passes to check that the RAM is good.
My intuition says it's either dodgy drivers or bad RAM, but without testing it's impossible to say definitively.
Robinthefox88 You were dead on about the drivers; as soon as I uninstalled them and rebooted, SE booted up no problem. I wonder what the issue was...they were the ones that I got off of Phil's site. Strange.
ChozoSR388 Those drivers, if they're the ones that I've used before do have some incompatibilities and bugs, and due to their age there's no fixes for the problems they have, so it doesn't really surprise me that you ran into issues with them.
I'm glad you found the issue and was able to fix it though, as it can be a right royal pain to fix Win98 sometimes :)
I'd take a look at using a PCI USB card if you can fit one, especially if you can get one that has native Win98 drivers, as that would be a much better solution.
Robinthefox88 Yeah, I think that's what I'm gonna do...chuck the modem, and get a USB PCI card I am going to still have to reinstall Win98SE though...after removing the drivers, it tries to install them all again upon restart. Gods, I FORGOT WHAt a pain Win98SE was lol
The specifications for Mini ITX...
Google.
Grrr how I would love to have another PCI soundcard with decent DOS compatibility (screw Creative and their EMM386-dependant, crash prone, DOS drivers), the AU8830 boards aren't exactly cheap. :(
FM sounds alright with the Dreamblaster though, right?
Have you experienced any incompatibilities (hanging note, DMA clicking, etc.) with the card? Really nice build!
The DreamBlaster doesn't do FM, it's for General MIDI , which most of the newer DOS games support quite well :) Check this video for examples of what the FM sound slike: th-cam.com/video/3FJCnswIJiw/w-d-xo.html
Ah right, of course! I'm too green when it comes to wavetable header usage - my only experience with MIDI solutions have been MPU-401 external stuff. :)
Disregarding the noobish question, have you noticed any issues with the card on the platform? Sounds like it's performing like it should - but game compatibility (and especially sound) in DOS is treacherous ground, would be great to know if it's relatively universally compatible. ^^
Great video though, dunno if I should thank you or curse you for giving me a metric shitton of ideas for retro rigs all the time! Merry Christmas, Phil!
So in general, I don't recommend PCI sound cards for DOS. Go ISA if you care about DOS sound. With PCI, it's more a case of "Well, be happy that you even get sound" :D
Hehe, don't I know it... my current goal (been all fall) is to build an all-in-one, as good as possible, retro rig. Currently I'm fighting an Intel 815E chipset, and lord knows it's fighting back, lol!
I've already tried two VIA 694T boards (for their ISA slots), one was doa and the other burned a trace for some strange reason - now it's a game of "find a PCI card that works", and so far - it's not looking good.
Basically only got the AU8830 left to test, if I can find one that doesn't go for at least 50€, I might try it out. :-)
Sounds to me that you could with a Slot 1 motherboard with the 440BX chipset.
How do you obtain DOS, Windows 98 and Windows XP for your projects? I'm really curious about it.
Windworldpc. XP though, I got legit licences :)
Thanks a lot, mate! :D
PhilsComputerLab how do you get legit winxp license??? I use windows xp black edition 2015 :)
Why not getting a Yamaha YMF7x4 sound card which has great compatibilty with DOS that features a real OPL3 instead of the A3D ?
Well, it's simple, I don't have one :D
It's not that expensive nonetheless
Deksor Oh believe me, it all adds up.
Where would you recommend shopping for a motherboard like this? Ebay?
Yes that's how I got mine.
Does the FM Synth sound a bit off or is it just me?
I did mention it :D Look here for more recordings: th-cam.com/video/3FJCnswIJiw/w-d-xo.html
nice computer can it do full screen for dos games ? i dont like black bars
Yes a bad idea ^v^
wow even nfs1 worked, that normally is bugged with alott of gpu`s, now am using a old ibm aptiva with Riva128 that works with the game and music on SE version of the game :D
RIVA 128 is actually a really decent DOS card!
yes i remember from your video :D it works awsome with nfs se, and nfs2 se,nfs4 seems to lagg. i have not yet tried other dos games thoe :)
it`s RIVA128zx cpu: P3 450Mhz and 384mb, windows 98 now but probly re install it to win98se. configured on a work bench it got idea from your older videos :D i have thinking about change to GForce2 maby youst so that i can get NFS 1-4 work but i have noticed that nfs1/Nfs1se is often picky on gpu`s. :) I realy loved you mini dos Computer :D
use Pentium MMX and downspeed utilty.
VIAs are painful to use with any OS.
so I finally found this mobo available in my country, the model says it's an MSI MS-7199 C/pro tho'... I've been looking for it since your windows 98 mini itx video, do you believe the mobo will work?, it looks the exact same as yours
I'm sure it's the same board, maybe a few details are different?
PhilsComputerLab I decided not to buy it, as I was scrambling around my stored pc parts and found another mini itx mobo perfectly compatible with windows 98, a compurer from Aopen the XC cube, pretty weird machine, it's got one of those optic ports for sound and an AGP port at 8x speed, compatible with both IDE and SATA
What can you do with a Motorola 68000 and a Yamaha YM32?
Can I Play Strike Commander With this machine?
I think that should run well.
How do you make The need for speed look so good, i run in under dos box on a 1080p monitor but in a scaled 4:3 aspect ratio and the graphics are way too blocky and nowhere near as good as in this video
Hmm, make sure you run it at 640x480, not the VGA mode.
450 is overkill! Couldn't you run that on a pico?
Hallo. Can you test a Voodoo 2 Card on this System?
I have already moved onto the next project, but if the card fits, then it will work just fine.
Why not go with a yamaha ymf pci card instead? Since you are playing a lot of OPL based games you can have proper sounding titles instead with that card. They are cheaper to get as well, aureal cards have really gone up in price these last few years sadly.
Can you link me one that would work well with this machine?
just search for yamaha ymf on ebay. I use the Aopen Aw744L II myself and there is a somewhat steady supply of brand new ones. It's pci, has true OPL3 and proper dos drivers, best yet it has XG midi support for the few windows games that can use it like FFVII. For at least here in the US they are vastly cheaper than most aureal cards, though id certainly suggest anyone that can afford it to get both.
striderx777 Lol can you believe it, I had a look in my PCI sound card container, and found this generic cheap China sound card in a box. The crappiest looking card, but has the 744 chipset!
Which case / manufacturer did you use for this build?
I think it was from Aywun. Not sure if they exist anymore though!
is there a reason you decided to not use the SATA... if my memory serves, windows 98 and Dos have SATA support
Why uses SATA?
newer devices would generally be easier to obtain, likely more reliable...also for space concerns a sata laptop drive would be much more compact
What DOS racing game was that at the end of the video?
Thanks
Hi where did you get that power switch again? Cheers
eBay.
cheers what was it called =) love the channel btw
I find 48fps with quake too slow for my taste. I think Via C7 + S3 card is really slow for late DOS games.
That is at 640x480 though. To be honest, if you enjoy Quake, I'd just play it under Windows with GLQuake.
PhilsComputerLab by the way what is the difference between glquake and other quake :D
GLQuake runs in Windows with nice OpenGL graphics. It's very smooth and looks nice.
No, the C7 is from VIA's Centaur division. Before being bought by Via they developed the WinChip and WinChip 2 processors for IDT. VIA also bought Cyrix, but most engineers apparently already had left Cyrix at that time and their follow-up design for the 6x86MX/MII was not ready to ship, so instead VIA shipped a Centaur-design as "Cyrix III"-processor, later iterations being coined "C3" and then "C7".
well that processor overclocks like crasy. It is easy to get to 1,2ghz. And if you use a riser card with to pci slots you could use a voodoo3 pci with a sound card, or voodoo2 SLI