New 486 PC

[cabbage]

HercTNT: I just gotta pop in and recommend The Incredible Machine for your girls. I played the hell out of that as a kid at school! It's a lot of fun and encourages you to think outside the box.

[roflmao]

HercTNT: I just gotta pop in and recommend The Incredible Machine for your girls. I played the hell out of that as a kid at school! It's a lot of fun and encourages you to think outside the box.

YES!  That game is awesome!

[BlueBMW]

Now granted... I started on Civilzation at about age 7 so.... how old are your daughters?

[HercTNT]

6 and 10. They are not into puzzle type games all that much. drawing games and platformers are what they mostly play although my youngest tries her hand at simcity. i know they made one of the catz or dogz type games for dos. they love that to, and i have not found em yet. still working on it. Professor, what are your thoughts on qemm 97 to free up memory dos programs. i really dont want to use a boot disk to get some of the games running. the idea is to make the games usable by kids. I tried teaching my oldest some dos commands earlier and that did not go so well.

[BlueBMW]

The fact that you tried to teach your kids anything DOS related makes me so happy.  I dont think kids these days appreciate pre GUI computing.  Now I sound like an old fart (at the ripe old age of 28!)

[HercTNT]

my girls like retro gaming and retro computing. They play dos games, classic gameboys and such all the time. But you have to admit, teaching them dos is alittle extreme. Their is no real reason for them or any other kid to learn it other than nostalgia. its not gonna stop me from trying though. My youngest gets sick often, i backlit a gameboy color so she can play tamagotchi at night when she cant sleep.

[roflmao]

But you have to admit, teaching them dos is alittle extreme. Their is no real reason for them or any other kid to learn it other than nostalgia. its not gonna stop me from trying though.

I'm glad you're still trying.  I still find reasons to use DOS these days, though folks not as nerdy as me probably would never need it.

Just in the past month I discovered ffmpeg, an awesome open source, command line video conversion utility that I built a series of batch files for, based on the type of video I was converting from and converting to.  I do a lot of video production and use Premiere CS5 for editing.  Unfortunately, Premiere is pretty picky as to the formats it's natively accepts.  Thanks to ffmpeg and my batch files, I haven't come across a video source file I haven't been able to convert to a format that Premiere happily works with.

So to make a short story long, there are still plenty of uses for DOS these days, in niche markets.

[PCEngineHell]

Professor, what are your thoughts on qemm 97 to free up memory dos programs. i really dont want to use a boot disk to get some of the games running. the idea is to make the games usable by kids. I tried teaching my oldest some dos commands earlier and that did not go so well.

I've read good things about it before, but I have not needed to use it myself. Memmaker is all I have ever needed for Dos 6.22, and as for Dos mode outside of Win 95/98, well I just use my autoexec and config.sys files I keep handy. Honestly you have nothing to lose but time, so you might as well give it a shot.

[HercTNT]

will do, for whatever reason i cant seem to get my memory usage down. windows is not loading the device drivers in high memory despite using the load high command. after loading the cdrom driver and mscdex from your auto and config i was down below 540k. its not your configs, its windows. I put localloadHigh=1 in my 386enh section of my win.ini. i thought that was supposed to fix most of those problems for legacy applications?  i'm doing something wrong somewhere.

on a good note i finally got joe&mac for dos running. it looks alot more like the arcade version of the game then the snes one. very cool.

[PCEngineHell]

will do, for whatever reason i cant seem to get my memory usage down. windows is not loading the device drivers in high memory despite using the load high command. after loading the cdrom driver and mscdex from your auto and config i was down below 540k. its not your configs, its windows. I put localloadHigh=1 in my 386enh section of my win.ini. i thought that was supposed to fix most of those problems for legacy applications?  i'm doing something wrong somewhere.

on a good note i finally got joe&mac for dos running. it looks alot more like the arcade version of the game then the snes one. very cool.

Try QEMM 97 then and see what happens. I've honestly never had it down that low before except on default files where I have not adjusted anything. Yours is being stubborn it sounds like. Worse comes to worse, reinstall Windows and try again. It could be something in the install got botched. Also, are you using the original Creative AWE32 install cd to install the card?

[HercTNT]

yes i found an original cd. it added some stuff that i'm not sure needs to be thier. i'm also going to take on the tseng labs and replace it with the rage pro. i found dos vesa drivers for the rage and it will no doubt fix the graphics issues i have with some games. If i were not trying to make most of the kids games playable from windows i doubt i would be having any problems. I dont know how to write batch files though, or i would just make custom configs.

[BlueBMW]

What about setting up a dos menu that automatically loads various games?

I can get you the exact syntax but it involves using  [menu]  but you can customize autoexec and config for each game if need be.

[HercTNT]

I appreciate the offer, but it looks like it wont be needed. qemm 97 is close to being god like. every program that did not run before now does. Every program that had to be run in dos mode, now runs in windows. Qemm also speeds up windows warm boot time, loads rom into high memory, and improves disk cache. I just spent an hour and a half testing it and could not find any problems. I also replaced the tseng labs et6000 with the rage pro. more games work due to no more conflicts with the tseng, but the rage has its own issues. I'm gonna get an s3 card and fix that problem once and for all. The super vga speed on the tseng is unreal, but in standard vga the rage and s3's are just as fast. My 486 is not quick enough to run games in Svga anyways.

Keep those ideas for good games coming. i'm enjoying setting this thing up.

[BigusSchmuck]

Herc, created a for sale for all of our printers at work, did check to see if we had an old color dot matrix printer but its like completely dead so all we got are the ribbons for it. Anyway:
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=11860.0

[SNKNostalgia]

Yeah I see their site is having issues, redirecting you on the download links. Well, hit me up if you want, I have a decent archive of drivers amassed, so I might have what you need.

/driverarchivesize.png

I found the Catalyst drivers on Cnet of all places, lol.

Do you have ATI Multimedia 8.9? I assume that is the last version I should get, unless the 9.0 versions are fine. Still, I read something about problems with 9.15, etc... Not entirely sure about all of it though. Also, I forgot what it is for, but there is also WDM 6.14.10.6240 listed.

[PCEngineHell]

http://drivers.softpedia.com/progDownload/ATI-Multimedia-Center-89-Download-2611.html

See if thats what you need.

[SNKNostalgia]

Cool, got all the drivers I need. Now I have a nice project to re-install the whole computer with the most up to date drivers and see how this thing runs all the old DOS games.

BTW, I had to look it up and I am gonna assume I don't need the WDM drivers since it isn't a video capture card anyways.

[PCEngineHell]

No you shouldn't unless you are using a AIW. Honestly I'd say you don't even need ATI Multimedia Center, unless you plan to do more then just game on the thing.

[BlueBMW]

I appreciate the offer, but it looks like it wont be needed. qemm 97 is close to being god like. every program that did not run before now does. Every program that had to be run in dos mode, now runs in windows. Qemm also speeds up windows warm boot time, loads rom into high memory, and improves disk cache. I just spent an hour and a half testing it and could not find any problems. I also replaced the tseng labs et6000 with the rage pro. more games work due to no more conflicts with the tseng, but the rage has its own issues. I'm gonna get an s3 card and fix that problem once and for all. The super vga speed on the tseng is unreal, but in standard vga the rage and s3's are just as fast. My 486 is not quick enough to run games in Svga anyways.

Keep those ideas for good games coming. i'm enjoying setting this thing up.

I found an extra Trident S3 card (or maybe two of them) when digging through some old PC stuff.  I'm out of town til Thursday, but when I get back I'll find out what models they are exactly and shoot you some pics.  I know one was 2mb for sure.... not sure on the other.  I think one was ISA and the other PCI.

[HercTNT]

Blue, that would be great. let me know what they are. I would appreciate it. here is a terrible pic of my 486 in its temporary home.

[HercTNT]

Just an update, I found out my 486 will do 160mhz with almost no issues. when running in windows some drivers crash including the sound and ide drivers. if i run in dos all games work without issue.  Can this be related to not enough voltage to the cpu, or is it simply that windows does not like running on a 40mhz pci bus. Anyone that has fooled around with overclocking a 486 please chime in. Also, what are the long term ramifications for overclocking older hardware. I"m familair with the new stuff, but the old stuff i have no idea.

[RegalSin]

You need the limitations of the version of windows you are using. All Windows run slow on most computers of thier release year.

Like I have my 98 running on a 2ghz proccessor, and it is lighting fast, but if I was to load something like Vista, or Seven, I am sure their would be slowdowns.

However the dos programs are very picky about hardware. They run in DOS mode, 100% of the time, but I have to enable sound, mouse drivers first. Simular to the way some PSX games request an analoug stick controller.

In windows I allways get memory errors, memory not enough, etc because windows is also using those resources up. On a 2ghz machine the DOS programs do not even see the speed, however some do see the speed, or maybe the speed is altered within the program, itself.

Windows back then was for office employees, and was resourcefull for saving white-out..... ( people who do not know a thing about computers, entering the workforce. ).

Your 486, could probably run most DOS programs, however I am sure a much later program would have problems.

The computer I had, used a list system, running windows 1-3.0 ( I forget which version. ). So when I wanted to use a dos program, I could just select from the list, at the same time I could boot into windows, and run whatever windows related program I wanted to run.

Voltage I believe, relates to hardware taking over jobs, of other hardware. Like something that, would not function like a power switch.
Try running some games in DOS, to see if any of them exibit behaviours
as with windows.

[BlueBMW]

Last old computer I overclocked was a dual cpu p1 100mhz.  I overclocked them to 120... ran maybe 6 or 7 months with linux then one of the cpus died.

[HercTNT]

Yea, i know that newer cpu's are far more tolerant. it's a shame as the overclock provided with with very noticable improvements, but i just dont think its worth it. I'm gonna have to accept that there are a handful of games that i just can't run, or run in svga mode. Joe and mac for example, cant run smooth with soundblaster sound turned on. with the overclock it runs perfect. The disk on module hard drive i have seems to have no problem with the 40mhz bus neither does the rage pro video. still i'm unsure of the strain on the rest of the system. its not a new board afterall.
Regal, I am running the software that was designed for the system. Windows runs plenty fast and perfect if i dont overclock, when i do it has some issues. No offense, but unless your aware of the overclocking aspect (the nature of my previous question), your advice does not make sense.

[PCEngineHell]

Yea, i know that newer cpu's are far more tolerant. it's a shame as the overclock provided with with very noticable improvements, but i just dont think its worth it. I'm gonna have to accept that there are a handful of games that i just can't run, or run in svga mode. Joe and mac for example, cant run smooth with soundblaster sound turned on. with the overclock it runs perfect. The disk on module hard drive i have seems to have no problem with the 40mhz bus neither does the rage pro video. still i'm unsure of the strain on the rest of the system. its not a new board afterall.

This is why I don't really want to mess with the 486 stuff. Just a tad too slow to run everything I'd want to run. You can get away with running games from 92 and prior fine, but seems like stuff started to get a bit too demanding at times from 93 on up.

[HercTNT]

yea, thier are plenty of dos games going up all the way to 98, but need some serious horse power to run for some of them. games like screamer, and build engine games like duke and blood are way to much for my machine in svga mode. in normal mode they run but look pretty crappy. worms 2 for example needs a pentium 90 and even an overclocked 486 comes just a hair short.

[PCEngineHell]

I think thats mainly why I don't have any issues selling Pentium 1 systems Ive built or restored. A lot of people wanting to play straight Dos games or early Win 95 stuff just want to skip over the 486 completely. Personally, I'd rather not sell anything that cant handle Doom or Duke 3D anyway, so that makes my life easier.

[PCEngineHell]

Herc, honestly you may want to go with a Socket 7 setup of some kind, either Pentium 1 or K6 cpu. I think it would solve all of your speed issues, and still keep it retro enough for you. If your case needs a AT style motherboard, there are plenty of AT Socket 7 boards out there.

Anyway, thought I'd chime in with info on this latest build I did. Been sitting on a ATI Rage Fury MAXX graphics card for a little while now. Really just had not had the time to do a build for it. Had always wanted to have one system dedicated to it, and another for the 3DFX Voodoo 5, the two best legacy Direct X dual GPU cards from that time period. Anyway, its up and going now. Pulled out my Gateway AMD Jabil Kadoka Slot A motherboard for the install. Probably one of the best Slot A boards I have ever owned. High quality parts onboard, and the board is pretty hard to get a hold of now, usually with a price tag over 80 bucks. 3D Mark 2k default score is just a tad over 4000 points on this build. This one will sit beside my Voodoo 5 Athlon XP 2400+ build.
Specs:
Gateway AMD Jabil Kadoka Slot A motherboard
Athlon 900 mhz cpu
Seagate 160gb harddrive
TDK CD Burner
512 megs PC 133 SDram
Rage Fury Maxx graphics card
SoundBlaster Pci 128 audio
Windows ME installed

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[HercTNT]

That rage fury maxx sucks, i think you should give it to me;)  Dammit, two years ago to, i had a chance to buy a brand new rage fury maxx for $30 and i passed. I have always wanted to build a pc based around one as well. Yea, i know that socket 7 is the way to go, but i just dont have the money. I put my 486 together fairly cheap over many months. i still have an evil kyro agp card i wanted to build a system around and never got the chance. I like the 486, its runs well, it just cant run all the dos games i wanted. Mostly, the only games i cant run are the late 96 dos games and up. build games wont do svga, screamer wont do svga, stuff like redguard and any early 3d games are out of the question.

[BlueBMW]

Herc, here's one of the two video cards I found.  The other is still in the machine (its ISA)  This looks like it should be the better card....

/videocard-1.jpg

[spenoza]

Tridents are not much good for 3D, and they're not even really good at higher-resolution 2D, but I really like them for VGA.

[HercTNT]

Blue i really appreciate, but i no longer need it. a local friend of mine has an s3 card he is gonna give me. thank you for looking. I did not find out this news until a few hours ago.

[BlueBMW]

No problem

[Mishran]

Herc, honestly you may want to go with a Socket 7 setup of some kind, either Pentium 1 or K6 cpu. I think it would solve all of your speed issues, and still keep it retro enough for you. If your case needs a AT style motherboard, there are plenty of AT Socket 7 boards out there.

Anyway, thought I'd chime in with info on this latest build I did. Been sitting on a ATI Rage Fury MAXX graphics card for a little while now. Really just had not had the time to do a build for it. Had always wanted to have one system dedicated to it, and another for the 3DFX Voodoo 5, the two best legacy Direct X dual GPU cards from that time period. Anyway, its up and going now. Pulled out my Gateway AMD Jabil Kadoka Slot A motherboard for the install. Probably one of the best Slot A boards I have ever owned. High quality parts onboard, and the board is pretty hard to get a hold of now, usually with a price tag over 80 bucks. 3D Mark 2k default score is just a tad over 4000 points on this build. This one will sit beside my Voodoo 5 Athlon XP 2400+ build.
Specs:
Gateway AMD Jabil Kadoka Slot A motherboard
Athlon 900 mhz cpu
Seagate 160gb harddrive
TDK CD Burner
512 megs PC 133 SDram
Rage Fury Maxx graphics card
SoundBlaster Pci 128 audio
Windows ME installed

/DSCN5239.jpg

That looks similar to an Athlon (600MHz) tower I have. Would love to get my hands on a decent Voodoo card to play Ultima 9 on it. Damn game crashes every 5 minutes on Direct X.

[HercTNT]

I really like the clear blue plastic on the tdk cd rom.

[PCEngineHell]

Herc, I mean to ask, did you ever get to mess around any with the Evil Kyro card prior? I'd wanted one before, or a Kyro II, but have never got to own one. I've seen reviews prior where the Kyro II card when paired with a decent cpu didn't have too much of a issue handling Serious Sam or Max Payne, but in the end those cards got the shaft on most of the Direct X 8 generation of games.

[HercTNT]

Yes, i have owned two before. A powercolor evil Kyro and a hercules 4500 kyro2.  My first Kyro could play quake 3 at 800x600 with 4x anti aliasing turned on. That was a pretty impressive feat for a card of its generation. Keep in mind the kyro chipset has two major drawbacks: Antiscopic filtering is not possible, and overclocking the card by even 1mhz is practically impossible. Matching up a Kyro or even better a kyro2 to a socket a platform makes for some great gaming. the kyros image quality sans the Antiscopic filtering is excellent. I have had a 32meg kyro collecting dust for the last year. When i decided to build my 486 i cancelled my kyro project. let me know if you want to play around with it, i will send it your way.

[SuperPlay]

Herc, here's one of the two video cards I found.  The other is still in the machine (its ISA)  This looks like it should be the better card....

/videocard-1.jpg

Not seen one of these for a while.  The computer store that I worked at in the 90's sold these by the bucket load :@)

[fraggore]

LOL way does spring to mind.

you guys would be gutted if you know how many pc's i have helped to scrap over the years working in IT about a year ago we scraped a brand new bbc micro color monitor in the box never been used was a shame to see that go.
but if you enjoy it good luck in finding parts