Windows 98 Gaming PC: The Beige Build

phatboy said:
Love this!

I found an original shuttle SV24 in a pile if stuff our old IT lead was going to throw in the skip. Plugged it in and it fired up first time! So asked if I could inherit it as its a bit of history really

https://www.shuttle.eu/_archive/older/en/sv24.htm

Have upgraded the cpu to a pentium 933mhz coppermine, 512mb ram along with a PCI fx5200 128mb which running voodoo emulation

Windows 98 has a driver to make xbox 360 pads work too! Been playing colin mcrae 1 on it lol

CEX have classic pc games for pennies literally. I bought a pile a while back

I desperately want a proper voodoo card for it but they go for so much money :(
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Oh, how much?

My god! http://www.ebay.com/itm/3dfx-Grafik...946189?hash=item283327ec0d:g:NbkAAOSwjqVZCM~u

I have this card. Think its in one of the Abit NF7-S Rev2.0 boxes.
 
I had always heard the TNT was better back then. That was why I jumped to GeForce 3 in 2001. Everyone was raving about GeForce 2 GTS was it? and the Ultra.
 
!bluetonic! said:
MS DOS sound is as follows:-

To get sound to work in pure MSDOS mode, as in cold boot into it, you need an ISA Sound card with MS DOS drivers.

I purchased an AZTech one. This needed help from VOGONS to find the correct drivers for the card. There is a silly number of cards and drivers can easily be mismatched and not work with your card.

If you boot into Windows 95/98, and run the game in a windowed DOS mode, then your sound card should work. Look in hardware to find the correct IRQ/DMA etc and use that with your game.

The 'rare' PCI card that does work in MSDOS is the Aureal 2 Vortex. They've gone up in price though, so keep your eye on the market for this card. Phil's Computing Lab seems to vouch for this card.

This is the AU8830 card, not the AU8820 which is the Vortext 1. Have a close look at the audio chip picture on auction sites.
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Indeed the Vortex 2 works in dos with working wavetable header which is rare for a PCI card under DOS. Unfortunately the Vortex 2 sounds pretty bad on its own without some sort of wavetable card to handle music.

I ran this particular combo for a while in one of my PCI only machines. Diamond Monster MX300 with Yamaha DB50XG add in card. Sounds awesome in games which use Midi.



Considering the OP has a board with ISA slots I would certainly look at going down the ISA path with something like a Yamaha based card like the Audician 32. If he is going down the PCI route, a Yamaha 724 with SB-Link is what i would look at.
 
phatboy said:
There you go -

http://www.redcl0ud.com/xbcd.html#download
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Thanks for that, I had found that page but I'm not having much luck with installing the drivers! I'll give it another go tonight I think.

In other news I have rage-bought a crap Compaq Socket 370 motherboard to finally upgrade the 450MHz PII to (hopefully) a 1+GHz Tualatin. Eventually anyway; I've got a 700MHz Coppermine to slot in when it arrives from my failed slotket adventure.

I say rage-bought because I missed out on a two nice ASUS boards; one went for a reasonable price but I was outbid by about 7p and the other went for £45 so I didn't bother. I've had my eye on this compaq board for a while and for £13 it's worth the risk of being crap. eBay seller's picture below:

zoqrIWH.jpg.png
It's from a Compaq Deskpro Workstation AP230, part number 187498-001. Details on it are limited and often contradictory but it's got an 815E chipset which allows for 133MHz FSB/RAM, uses SDRAM like I have already, AGP x4, PCI 2.2...

I'm a little nervous about the AGP slot as some pictures of the board and similar boards on the net show a random, small PCB inserted, not much bigger than the slot itself, with no outputs on it... Was AGP used for anything other than graphics cards?
 
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agw_01 said:
And to think, I used to throw stuff like that away :eek:

Thumbs up for the NF7-S btw. My first NF7-S died so I had a stint with a DFI Lanparty but soon ended up with another NF7-S. Great boards!
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Got two of those Abit NF7-S 2.0 in their boxes. Still in good nick. One had the north bridge fan replaced with those spiky blue heatsinks as the fan bearing died. Soundstorm. Those were the days. :D
 
cee-S-dee said:
Indeed the Vortex 2 works in dos with working wavetable header which is rare for a PCI card under DOS. Unfortunately the Vortex 2 sounds pretty bad on its own without some sort of wavetable card to handle music.

Considering the OP has a board with ISA slots I would certainly look at going down the ISA path with something like a Yamaha based card like the Audician 32. If he is going down the PCI route, a Yamaha 724 with SB-Link is what i would look at.
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And don't forget about the awesome Dreamblaster. I've got the S1 attached to my ISA Aztech card.

http://www.serdashop.com/waveblaster
 
Mmm! Aureal 3D. They were the days. :D



Surely Half - Life isn't as bad as this? I remember it looking better...
 
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ALXAndy said:
It was as bad as that aye. It's since been converted to Source, hence why you probably forgot how it really looked :)

Still got my original copy.
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To be honest the official Source version is crap. All Valve did was port the original models and textures into Source and not much else. So it still looks low-fi just with prettier lights and better sound.

That's the entire reason the Black Mesa project started up, but I lost interest in those guys after they kept messing about; 8 years for a personal project is fine, but after saying they'd never charge for it they ended up putting the thing on Steam for £15 but rather than using the revenue to hire staff and get it done they decided to mess about and redo stuff already released, and the missing Xen levels are as much Vapourware as Half Life 3. But the free release before they went paid was seriously impressive work.
 
Hi read all of this forum post it was a great read glad to seee its very recent so i'm here seek help from professionals like yourselves i'm a avid collector of consoles but i recently made the jump to retro pc unit, i have a vintage Fujisu Siemens computer rocking a Pentium 4 my only issue is i brought it knowing it wont turn on i got it for 30 pounds with monitor crt Hansol and keyboard and vintage roller ball mouse, (love it) when i connect the power i only see an 'solid orange light' could it be the PCU? and if anyone could direct me as i really want to bring this beautiful machine back to life.
 
This is the system
18814145_10212859235375971_3805834802683878077_n.jpg
 
Hi, welcome to the forums! it looks like you've got some great games lined up for that PC ;) If you're into this sort of this you might want to check out the recent thread about PC Gaming nostalgia. In terms of your PC...

The first thing I would do with a PC like this open it up, take it all apart and remove all the dust, put new thermal paste on CPU an CPU cooler. This way you can be sure all the wires are connected properly. I would assemble only a very basic setup at first- Motherboard, Power supply, CPU+cooler, 1 stick of RAM, graphics (using motherboard graphics if available) and try it out like that. No soundcards / hard drives etc connected to the motherboard.
  • It could be something as basic as resetting the bios (unplug the PC, remove the battery from the motherboard, wait 30 seconds and replace the battery)
  • Does the PC have integrated graphics as well as a graphics card? Try connecting using the opposite option to what you're using at the moment!
  • Do the fans spin? Connect one if you have one spare.
  • Do you get any beeps from the PC speaker?
If you get an orange light on the front, the power supply is unlikely to be completely dead. be aware that it is an old power supply and I would recommend getting a new power supply even if it appears to be working fine, due to its likely poor quality and age! Also be aware that Fujitsu Seimens (or however you spell that) may use a non standard power supply!
 
Thanks i have myself and a more experienced friend were going to take it all apart clean it and put it back together ill make a note of the PSU and order a replacement. but am looking forward to seeing whats in it ill update you with my findings :D

nothing happens just an orange light no fan spinning or anything currently.
 
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