Very nice system!

The Pentium MMX is quite the performer.

There is a cheap fix for the hanging note bug. It only happens if there is speech AND MIDI on the same card.

SO you just need to find another card for speech and you are set. This involves jumpering or configuring one card to non-standard resources, but leaving MIDI at 330. Do the opposite with the other card and then mix the audio.

and here I was expecting to see a pentium4 or dualcore DOS pc 😀
nice build!

Nice build, internal pic please 😀

Big FIC fan, I had a PA-2007 w/6x86 and a VA-503+ w/K6-3+ back in the day.

YMF-71x card is ideal for MPU only use. There are ready-made cables to attach a DB now (google "GPIO extension cable"). On my setup L and R were swapped, I'm unclear if this is the YMF card or the XR385. I modded the cable to swap the channels back.

Nice system! I like the Zip-drive.
I would also like a Zip-drive in my DOS 6.22 computer.
I only have one Zip-drive though and that kind of defeats the purpose.

I see that you and many other members use SCSI HDDs. in your Socket-7 systems.
Is there real benefits of using a SCSI HDD compared to lets say a 7200 RPM 8GB IDE disk?

keropi wrote:

and here I was expecting to see a pentium4 or dualcore DOS pc 😀
nice build!

in my mind when I think of DOS i generally think of the 486 era so i consider something like a 66mhz 486 "normal" speed wise for DOS. In my mind anything Pentium or after is "fast". for me personally 200mhz is about as fast as I would go.

I do have an extra ISA slot so I will defiantly look into a second card for MIDI. of course then I won't have any spare ISA slots left for a ultrasound. Ive been interested in trying a YMF-71x card so I may look into that

as for internal shots. I'll try to post later but i'm notorious for terrible cable management so really its just going to mostly look like a mess of ide, floppy, scsi cables.

Skyscraper wrote:

Nice system! I like the Zip-drive. I would also like a Zip-drive in my DOS 6.22 computer. I only have one Zip-drive though and […]
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Nice system! I like the Zip-drive.
I would also like a Zip-drive in my DOS 6.22 computer.
I only have one Zip-drive though and that kind of defeats the purpose.

I see that you and many other members use SCSI HDDs. in your Socket-7 systems.
Is there real benefits of using a SCSI HDD compared to lets say a 7200 RPM 8GB IDE disk?

I really like Zip drives so I try to include them on my older systems. its very easy to just grab files of the internet on my win 7 machine and USB zip drive and then transfer them to an old DOS PC via Zip

other then SCSI just kinda being cool. it gives you more options for peripherals. generally SCSI is seen as more reliable. Theres some debate on if its really any faster but I know it doesn't tax the CPU like IDE does since the SCSI controller does all the work in a faster machine I don't know if that's terribly noticeable though in my windows machines that use faster SCSI drives they do seem a little zippyer if that makes sense. you don't get the BIOS imposed size limitations from dos with it.

keropi wrote:

and here I was expecting to see a pentium4 or dualcore DOS pc 😀
nice build!

Does DOS recognize dual cores?

sliderider wrote:

keropi wrote:

and here I was expecting to see a pentium4 or dualcore DOS pc 😀
nice build!

Does DOS recognize dual cores?

I'm guessing it would work but not be able to take any advantage of the second CPU

Even win98 does not recognize them actually! 😉

GeorgeMan wrote:

Even win98 does not recognize them actually! 😉

yhea, your choices before XP pro are rather limited for duel CPU. Windows NT seems to be the most prevalent choice. I think maybe some Linux? BEos... i hear theres a version of OS/2 server that supports it. though thats all only duel cpu's I don't know if it does duel cores, i assume it treats then the same.

and none of those are really great gaming OS's though I wonder how well OS/2 server would work with DOS games.

I almost didn't want to but...

cable managment, my weakness

and as you can see I acually have 2 hard drives. forgot about the second IDE HDD I have connected as well as a slot fan just because.

I really do love this motherboard though. never had any issues with it.

soviet conscript wrote:

I almost didn't want to but... […]
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I almost didn't want to but...

cable managment, my weakness

and as you can see I acually have 2 hard drives. forgot about the second IDE HDD I have connected as well as a slot fan just because.

I really do love this motherboard though. never had any issues with it.

Whoa, you use loose wires instead of a flatcable? Does that even work without data corruption?

I've never had a issue with it

68-pin SCSI cables often look like that. In my experience these are better than the "flat ribbon"-type cables because they are more flexible and their connectors don't tend to fall off the drives as easily. SCSI signalling is far more robust than ATA, so data corruption is not a problem.

I do have an old sb16 that's old enough to not have the hanging midi bug. What do you guys think about an eventual sb16+midi daughterboard paired with a ultrasound. I know the early sb16s are considered to be very noisy but I don't know how distracting that may be game wise. I'm sure its not as annoying as the hanging notes. Are there any games that support the awe32 but not general midi?

soviet conscript wrote:

I almost didn't want to but... […]
Show full quote

I almost didn't want to but...

cable managment, my weakness

and as you can see I acually have 2 hard drives. forgot about the second IDE HDD I have connected as well as a slot fan just because.

I really do love this motherboard though. never had any issues with it.

Two words...ROUND CABLES

yhea...but that costs more money. as long as its not causing overheating issues which i have never encountered is it really necessary that it looks good inside a case that no one other then me will ever see?

also I think i remember something about round cables being more prone to causeing interference or corruption or some such thing

Nice build....that FIC board with all that cache is awesome.

I was wondering about your choice to go with a 200MMX.

I have been looking around VOGONS and see that a lot of people tend to go with the P200 over a P166. I have heard that some dos games don't like the 200MHz speed of that CPU and the fastest P1 one should use (for compatibility reasons) is a P166. Have you had any issues with any programs or games (besides the obvious ones like Wing Commander and older dos games) by going with 200MHz over something slower?

Also, I have to ask for my information...is there a turbo button header on your motherboard? I am always on the lookout for Socket 7 boards that have turbo switch headers that are changable "on the fly".

retrofanatic wrote:

Nice build....that FIC board with all that cache is awesome. […]
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Nice build....that FIC board with all that cache is awesome.

I was wondering about your choice to go with a 200MMX.

I have been looking around VOGONS and see that a lot of people tend to go with the P200 over a P166. I have heard that some dos games don't like the 200MHz speed of that CPU and the fastest P1 one should use (for compatibility reasons) is a P166. Have you had any issues with any programs or games (besides the obvious ones like Wing Commander and older dos games) by going with 200MHz over something slower?

Also, I have to ask for my information...is there a turbo button header on your motherboard? I am always on the lookout for Socket 7 boards that have turbo switch headers that are changable "on the fly".

no turbo button on mine. I personally have never seen a turbo button on a SS7 board so I'm assuming their fairly uncommon.

I went with a 200mhz mainly because I already had a 66mhz 486 and 133mhz 5x86 for DOS gaming (and recently built a 133mhz Pentium DOS machine to) so I basically only use this machine for late DOS games that could use the muscle. If I only had one ss7 DOS machine i probably would scale it back to a 133mhz Pentium since there are games that will have speed issues but then if its having issues on a 200mhz Pentium its quite possible that it would also have speed issues on a 133mhz.

of course as someone is sure to point out you can always go with 200mhz just to have the power and use slowdown software for games that have speed issues. Personally I don't ever use the stuff cause i'm eccentric like that and I have the space for a billion different setups and enjoy building a billion setups for every PC gaming era.

My experience is that a Pentium 200 mmx normally does not trigger the Borland Pascal thingy while a Pentium 233 mmx trigger the bug in most cases.
Perhaps it depends on the chipset and memory speed aswell.