Windows 98 Gaming PC: The Beige Build

almoststew1990 · 8 Mar 2017 at 20:21

Hmm...

1) I only have one floppy drive, but it is configured as a 3.5" 1.44mb drive in the bios (Bios doesn't mention a B drive).
2)the red is on the power connector side (not that I knew it has to be that way around!)
3)the cable does have a twisted few pins before the end connector. I was using that end connector for the floppy drive A: ...

...Having tried it with the floppy connector half way down the cable, it still comes up with the error boo

almoststew1990 · 8 Mar 2017 at 20:41

I had a google and it is red stripe towards the power connector. I think I'll just use a CD as I have two cd drives, I'll need to grab a CD from work tomorrow. Thanks for your help!

almoststew1990 · 8 Mar 2017 at 20:57

I've flipped the cable and the light stays illuminated on the drive. I'm using a relatively late G31M3 V2 S775 motherboard to write the disks.

I've noticed that the floppy cable can fit into the motherboard the other way up, it was partially obscured by the GPU. I'll give it one last try...

That's nuts, it worked! Now the right click menu is nearly instantaneous and when I open A I see an empty floppy disk with 1.38mb of pure storage power! Very strange that Windows sees a floppy drive with the cable the wrong way up :/

almoststew1990 · 9 Mar 2017 at 12:32

Last night I got Windows installing after quite a bit of faffing with partitioning and formatting drives, followed by the CD re-writer drive not supporting basic generic drivers so the "drive was not ready" whenever I tried to run setup. As a last ditch I tried the DVD drive, which worked yay! I got Windows mostly installed last night but turned off my PC at one of the 'please restart' points. This morning It completed yay:

I tried to copy over some drivers using a USB stick and I need drivers for that, boo! I'll copy the USB stick drivers (and as many other drivers as I can) from a CD tonight when I get back home.

almoststew1990 · 9 Mar 2017 at 19:46

The next problem...

I installed drivers for the TNT2. Version 71.84, which seem to be fairly readily available from the various sources including the NVidia archive. However, when I try to launch 3DMark 99, it comes up saying I need to install a 3D Accelerator that can run DX6. In DXDiag, under the display tab, it lists my device as a "TNT2/TNT2 Pro" and says "DirectDraw: Acceleration Enabled" but "Direct3D: No Acceleration Available". It also lists my GPU as only having 2.5mb of total memory when it is the 16mb version!

Could this also be a bios AGP setting somewhere? I've installed the 440BX Chipset drivers.

I got the USB drivers working at least so I can shuttle drivers back and forth

...Edit- if I restart and run DXDIAG it says I have Direct3D acceleration, but when I run 3DMark 99 it then flickers the screen and nothing... I then run DXDIAG and it says no 3D acceleration

Edit edit- this also happens if I just 'test' the Direct3d in DXdiag

almoststew1990 · 9 Mar 2017 at 20:11

It says I have 6.1 installed (3DMark 99 offered to install it, but it was already installed). I've tried downloading earlier drivers from the Nvidia Archive website but for some reason the earlier I get "access denied messages" when I try to download anything.

almoststew1990 · 9 Mar 2017 at 20:25

Thanks very much that's very useful!

almoststew1990 · 9 Mar 2017 at 23:13

Success finally after doing a manual install method

No Control Panel but I suppose that could be installed separately if I was bothered. Ended up using version 4.12.01.0618, many iterations after the drivers used by reviewers so hopefully improved performance over the reviews!

Now onto some games

Enjoying the Quake 2 and 3 demo!

almoststew1990 · 10 Mar 2017 at 21:10

I was brave today and updated the bios, which meant learning how to format bootable floppies from DOS and copy command :cool:

Now I can put the PIII 550 in

But first... some benchmarks... (the quake benchmarking is strange... does it play

PII 450MHz:
Quake 2 (Demo 1) 640*480: 54.3fps
Quake 2 (Demo 1) 1024*768: 50.3fps
Quake 3 (Demo 1) 640*480: 46.8fps
Quake 3 (Demo 1) 1024*768: 44.5fps
3DMark 1999 PC: 3759
3DMark 1999 CPU: 4247
3DMark 2000: 1619

Here is a video of me playing Quake 3, whilst I change CPU

almoststew1990 · 11 Mar 2017 at 16:54

I've got a new problem now

Sometimes, after a few hours of the PC being on, the computer will crash with a black screen with tiny green bars along the top. It will then reoccur after a few minutes.

This has happened mostly when I am trying to install something, but occasionally when a game is loading up. At first I thought it was something to do the graphics drivers but I uninstalled them and it still crashed (although with this error message this time)

Any ideas what this could be? RAM? The Hard drive passed a full HDTune test before it was used

almoststew1990 · 11 Mar 2017 at 17:26

I've put the memory in again and it still did it. I don't think its the temps as the case is open at the moment (but i dont have a CPU or GPU temp anyway- the motherboard temp doesnt seem to go over 30c).

I then tried each of the sticks of RAM and it turns out one doesn't work or doesn't play ncie with the other two (i notice now that it is "PC100 - 322- 620" whereas the other two are "PC100 - 222 - 620" if that makes a difference). It seems to be working now!

almoststew1990 · 13 Mar 2017 at 09:16

Yeah, with the two same sticks only I've had no problems for at least 24h! I tried using my 4200ti for better performance in later games but the drivers won't properly install so I don't get proper 3d acceleration. So back to the TNT2 (which needs a manual driver install in device manager) I go!

I've been playing Balder's Gate, which I've never played before, not sure what I think of it yet...

almoststew1990 · 13 Mar 2017 at 20:40

I can't get the PIII to work :/ all the fans spin up like it did when the coppermine CPU was used, but no POST or beeps. The CPU is stone cold too, so I know it isn't doing anything. It doesn't fit as snugly in the motherboard retention clips as the Pentium II, which is a really nice *snap* into place. Any ideas? I've got the jumpers set up correctly and I've reset the CMOS...

In the mean time I have overclocked my PII 450 to 504MHz and gained 6FPS in Quake 3!!!!

almoststew1990 · 14 Mar 2017 at 23:20

cee-S-dee said:
Have you considered trying a S370 CPU in a 'Sloket'?

I have thought about it, especially as it seems my CPU is a big bottleneck even for my TNT2, but going the slocket route would add a lot of complicated, which I don't really want at the moment as I am unable to get a officially supported CPU to work!!) I would need a decent slocket that change FSB speeds and control voltage to down to 1.8 etc, and no doubt i'll get one that isn't supported or something. I might go that route eventually, as it is the only way to get to 700+MHz on my early P2B. I'm basing all this on this guide: http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/p2b_procupgrade_faq.html

almoststew1990 · 15 Mar 2017 at 21:11

slight update, the 112MHz FSB (504MHz clock speed) overclock isn't stable... i'm assuming because of overheating. My ~~bodge~~ thorough engineering solution is mounting a fan like this:

Games like Driver and No One Lives forever run noticeably smoother at 500MHz (I think it is minimums rather than average frame rate that is improved most of all) so I'd like to keep the overclock!

almoststew1990 · 17 Mar 2017 at 19:12

LePhuronn said:
*looks over at my dual socket 370 1GHz P3 board with 128MB SDRAM and wonders if it still works*

Loving this project!

To be honest right now I wish I'd gone for a more simple Socket 370 build so it would be easy to put a faster CPU in! My Pentium II is really quite lacking even for games that I thought would be fine (eg recommending a 300MHz cpu...)

almoststew1990 · 21 Mar 2017 at 07:13

Over the weekend I manned up and bought a Slocket adaptor thing and a 700MHz / 100FSB / 1.75v Pentium III. I made sure I got one with voltage and fsb control. The good news is I can use the cooler from the 478 motherboard that came with the case, which is huge in comparison to the S370 heatsinks. I might try it without the fan once it is up and running. Also bought some games, having a good time playing Sea Dogs and Descent 3.

almoststew1990 · 24 Mar 2017 at 22:00

Armageus said:
Looking forward to seeing it, although sorry the PIII 500 didn't work on your board

No worries, I knew it was a 19 year old processor when I bought it and it could be my board still!

The CPU has arrived, looks CPU-y (but the pins look good):

It turns out my S478 cooler can't be mounted onto a S370 so I bought a small cooler for it (i.e. not too heavy as it will be mounted sideways!)

Also expanded my game collection to include Descent 3 (which is great) Worms World Party (which is also great) Delta Force 2 (which runs at less than 10fps but could be good) and Sea Dogs (which is good!). My next step is trying to get the PC online in a convenient way (i.e. 'sharing' a connection with my Windows 10 PC).

(it's quite hard to take a picture whilst doing doing something more interesting like getting into a fight!)

almoststew1990 · 27 Mar 2017 at 19:15

The project has life again! I have now received the cooler, CPU and slocket. Shameless repost from Vogons:

I chose this slocket because a) it has lots of jumpers to set various frequencies and voltages and b) there isn't much choice of slockets on ebay UK. I have a Coppermine PIII 700MHz / 256k / 1.75 volts. How would I set this on the slocket and motherboard?

1) White Sliders

I assume the white sliders in blue box control the voltage, with the different settings seen in table in the second image? I understand (http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger ... e_faq.html) these chips are quite happy over-volting. I chose a relatively high voltage chip to minimise this potential problem.

2) Jumpers

What are the five jumpers for? What does the Auto / Manual 'option' refer to?

3) Top Right settings

At the top right of the board as seen in image 2 it lists three options

1. Dual CPU M/B
2. Over Clock
3. VCore Selectable

I can see the nearby jumper to set whether overclocking is available (I assume some kind of multiplier lock protection?) But I'm not sure where the slider / jumper is to inform the board as to whether I am running two cpus, and that I would like to manually adjust the voltage!

I've set my multiplier to 7x on the motherboard (even though it shouldn't make a difference as it's multi locked I think?)

I don't want to just mess around with it to find the right setting because i'd like to avoid accidently putting 2.4v through it!

almoststew1990 · 29 Apr 2017 at 22:39

A little update on this; I've been building myself up (read: convincing myself to throw more money down the drain) to swapping in a Socket 370 Tualatin motherboard, the first step of which was getting 133MHz RAM. I might try overclocking again to see if the RAM was causing the problems as it evidently wasn't the CPU cooling.

I also swapped my C-Media CMI8738 basic soundcard for a Soundblaster Live! SB0200. This turned out to be a very stripped down DELL OEM version, and no drivers could recognise it as a SBL! card. So a member here kindly send me a legit SBL! SB0100 for cost of postage, which was picked up no trouble by the drivers and offers much better sound quality.

I am also playing around with MS-DOS, which I haven't done for 20 years or so and playing the shareware version of Wolfenstien and Doom but not having much luck getting DOS drivers for sound...