Riding an old glory, K6-2 in AT case

[Yorus]

I'm opening this thread to show you my progress on a small retro computer project that I had in mind, and which, after a alignment of the stars (free time, desire and the possibility of finding cheap components) I will finally carry out.

What do I want to achieve?

What I want to do is have a computer, apart from the main one on which I usually work, that allows me to have all those old glories, games and programs installed, with which I entertained myself in the 1990s, when I started with PCs.

I know there are many other options, such as DosBox, which is great for MS-Dos games but for me has a couple of problems:

1. The 1990s was also the time of the transition to Windows 95 and 98SE, and unfortunately virtualization has turned its back on almost any Windows below Windows XP, except for the case of MS-Dos.
2. It would mean having something more installed on the modern PC, so every time I want to format or make changes I will have to take into account all those emulators and what hangs from them. I prefer to have a mini-tower ready to plug in and go, because right now I've got into this, but what about in the future? Well, I'll leave it stored like the Spectrum and turn it on when I feel like it again.

So how will it be then?

The idea is to be able to use all those games (mainly, but not only) prior to XP, so I have to look for a machine that allows running MS-Dos 6.22 and Windows 98SE. The problem is to what extent I can reconcile both eras, because I may find myself lacking power for some 3D games in Windows 98SE, or having too much for others in MS-Dos, but consulting with the people at Zona de Pruebas, I have come to the conclusion that the most versatile option is to go for a computer with the following characteristics:

• AT or microATX socket Super 7 motherboard, to be able to use a K6-2 500 or similar, or to improve compatibility with MS-Dos a K6 200 or a Pentium 100. The choice of these micros is not highly considered, they were just the ones I had at the time ;-).
• Micro K6-2 500 for what was said before. I think it will give me the necessary power for the most powerful games and perhaps by playing with the cache or the throttling I can avoid compatibility problems with Dos.
• ISA Sound Blaster AWE32 or AWE64 sound card for maximum compatibility in MS-Dos. If I had problems in Windows I could also put a Sound Blaster Live! that I already have.
• As for the graphics, I'm not sure, I'll try with several that I have until I see which one has the best power/compatibility reality. I would put a Voodoo Banshee to remember old times, but I remember that for games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein it was short. Maybe another Voodoo or something from Nvida, we'll see.

Let's get to work

Between components that I have on hand and others that I am still looking for on eBay, MilAnuncios or Wallapop, I already have a slight idea of where the shots will go. If everything goes well, I will soon start to materialize these ideas.

[Yorus]

Chosen motherboard and at home

I already have the motherboard at home, and after different wanderings the chosen one is a Shuttle Hot-591P, if my memory does not fail me the same motherboard model that I already had in a similar configuration.

Contrary to what it may seem this configuration is going to be more economical and practical for me than one based on microATX, since motherboard + 64Mb SDRAM + K6-2 500 + heatsink have cost me only 18€, shipping included. And I must say that everything has come in an impeccable state and configured. Anyway I did not have trouble finding the motherboard manual to confirm the configuration.

Setting the scene

And here we have the motherboard!

One of the good things it has is the ATX connector in addition to the AT, so I can test that everything is correct before having the case.

One of the problems could be finding an AT keyboard, but precisely I have this at home to be able to use a PS/2 keyboard:

And what else is needed?, well, for now to test with a graphics card I would have enough, but look what I have three:

SIS 6326 AGP.
ATI Radeon 7000.
Geforce FX 5200.

For now I have tested the first two. The FX5200 is untested, recovering from a recent capacitor operation, will it work?, we will see in a next chapter. I do not know how well they will be in terms of compatibility, but since they have been donated to me the first thing is to test them before spending money on any other.

Starting engines!

Well, with all that material ready, a 15″ TFT monitor that I was also given and that has a certain old-fashioned look (yes, I know that the right thing would be a CRT, but I do not want to be left without half a table), an IBM keyboard from the house and a power supply that I bought a long time ago for an Athlon XP project that I abandoned, we are already ready for the first test.

And as I said, everything is perfect and I can already go for the next component that I have reserved in a trusted store… the AT case.

[Yorus]

It's the tower's turn

As I mentioned in the previous post, I had already taken a look at a complete AT case, with power supply and for about €24 for the public, but as I have connections it cost me €12. The case is unused, with all the screws and everything in an unopened bag:

As you can see, it doesn't look bad. Now it's time to mount the board...

As expected, everything fits perfectly. I put in the SiS graphics card, connect the keyboard, power supply and monitor and this is the result:

Everything perfect!. The power supply, which obviously is what I was most concerned about, works perfectly. It might be a bit noisy, but you have to keep in mind that PCs from the 90s and early 2000s were not usually very quiet.

To be continued...

[Yorus]

One more toy...

Apart from testing the case I bought a couple of days ago, I also went to get an ISA sound card, specifically a Sound Blaster AWE64 (€5):

It will take me time to test it because I need to have an operating system already installed, but I might try it with a Linux live CD if I can expand the RAM enough.

... and more material to test

I still need several essentials to complete the equipment. I have a couple of hard drives that I first have to test, as I don't know what problems I might encounter, especially with MS-Dos, but they are around 40/80Gb, but the ones that are definitely working are a floppy drive and an optical drive. The CD burner is a LiteOn that has gone through my computers, my sister's and my work for tests, but it has returned home:

More wood!, of course more RAM, which will come later in Windows 98SE but I'm not sure how it will affect MS-Dos. Those 4 modules plus the two mounted on the board will allow me to do tests:

And this is already R&D totally...

A PCI USB card to see if I can use especially USB mouse and keyboard, as although the board supports it I don't have an external bracket. I do have an RS232 bracket, but in this case what I don't have is a mouse. I'll have to try:

And another possible "upgrade", an ATA100 IDE controller that I also don't know how it will behave in the scenarios I need, but it far exceeds the ATA33 controller integrated on the board. If compatibility is not a problem it will allow me to make better use of my hard drives, which without being the best, their performance exceeds the ATA33 specifications:

Just add that all this material hasn't cost me a cent ;D

[Yorus]

First round of component tests

Well, as I mentioned in the previous entry, I have several components that could come in handy for bringing this computer to life. I'll tell you how it went:

RAM

In this case, it went perfect. Two of the 256Mb RAM modules work perfectly and pass the MemTest. It should be noted that these are PC133 modules and the motherboard is prepared for PC100 at most, but they simply adapt to 100Mhz without problems. This way, I already have 512Mb of RAM, perfect for Windows 98se but we'll see if MS-Dos causes problems or not.

USB card

I haven't had any luck with this. I know the card works, because I tested it on a modern computer with Windows 7, but the problem is that on this motherboard it doesn't allow me to use a USB keyboard from the start, and I've checked the BIOS, so it's not suitable for me.

And besides, looking into this, I was able to see that it's not recommended to use USB mice in MS-Dos, because there are usually many problems to find the correct driver if one is even available.

Alternative?, either get a PS/2 bracket compatible with my motherboard or a serial bracket (easier to find) and a serial mouse of the ones that Retrocables sells:

Personally, I like this option, it's simpler and even cheaper, since I haven't found a way to get a PS/2 bracket for less than €15 including shipping.

IDE controller

This has also been a success, at least for now. I can boot from the optical drive connected to this controller and the programs from Hiren’s Boot that only work in IDE mode perfectly see the content of the hard drive connected. And this is going to be very useful especially in Windows 98se, since we go from 33MByte/s to 100MByte/s as a limit. The disk I plan to use doesn't reach 100MByte/s, but it will probably exceed 60MByte/s, so the performance gain will be huge.

[Yorus]

And with this last entry I catch up. As you can see everything is presented in a somewhat strange and haphazard way, and it's because I had started putting this on a blog before putting it here, so now it's been a case of copy/paste with the relevant modifications. From now on and if you participate in the branch it will be more colloquial, and as I mentioned above this is going to be a long time coming...

Progress to date

Well, not much more, I have already ordered the mouse from Retrocables and a forum member from H2M is going to donate the serial and parallel extenders for the back of the board. If they arrive this week I will be able to start doing things.

Greetings, parish!

[Fassou]

Round of applause, and I got a seat

A project that many old-school gamers have thought about, but with more class by pulling off several new components.

The chosen motherboard is a great choice :sisi:, it had countless BIOS versions, supporting more modern components, and thinking about my K6-2@350 where I plugged in my first AGP card, an nVIDIA Riva TNT with 16Mb (which I still have), makes me well up :llorar:

Congratulations on the project

[hAyO]

Great work Yorus, you're going to make me take my old Pentium MMX out of the closet and do something like that, although I'll have to get myself a decent PCI graphics card for the time. I remember I had it with Windows 2000 Pro, and a S3Trio64 V2 of 1MB and it will run a bit short.

Best regards!

[Yorus]

Thanks guys!. At the beginning of summer I always wanted to do something like this, but I didn't want to have more junk and the return to full-time work in September took away my desire. I don't know if I will use it much, honestly I don't think so, but the most entertaining part in the end is assembling and configuring everything.

[Sylver]

Evil plugged in, that box is a marvel, having it brand new at this point is a success that is hardly repeatable :eoh:
You don't know how lucky you are

Congratulations on the project, I follow it closely and I join as a possible participant in others like it, which won't be for old material…

Best regards!

[amd125]

Very good project. I have never thought of building something similar, that time was special for me because I was poorer than a rat :ugly: and I could never have a decent PC, I was always using old second-hand PCs. Congratulations on what you have achieved.

[Yorus]

Thanks again, let's see if new things start arriving and I continue, besides, with this heat it's very tiring.

Sylver, if there are no new news yet, there must be 7 more boxes like this. Another thing is the price, but they are for sale to the public.

[Tecnho]

How great I love these threads already tell me how it is returning to wolfenstein thanks for the time I have been playing counter strike for a few days using simulator

[cobito]

I have always wanted to revive my old PCs, if only for the pleasure of seeing them work. I have most of the parts stored in boxes. Recently, I dusted off a portable Pentium 2, installed Windows 98 and Half Life. And the truth is that for a decent graphics, it worked pretty well. The only problem is that Windows 98 does not have a tool to connect the wifi and I cannot connect to any network.

As soon as I have time, I will give it some attention and take photos and videos.

[Yorus]

Thanks! :sisi:

Cobito, I remember your thread, but I have no idea how to solve that. I'll keep my 98SE separate from the network, I don't want to risk anything sneaking in there and it will probably give me more problems than benefits. Anyway, if I needed it occasionally, I have a realtek network card around that were very popular, I don't remember if it was the 8139 or something like that, but it was precisely the one I used at the time.

To transfer programs, I think I'll end up using a pendrive, although I'm missing the extender for the board's USB, but I can always use the PCI USB card if I find the drivers. I would transfer everything from MS-Dos from Windows 98SE. Another possibility is to use an IDE/Compact Flash adapter and use a CF I have around. I've seen that there are adapters that go to the back of the computer (bracket) so you don't have to open the case to get the CF out. But well, these are musings and I will probably use USB (I have a generic driver for external drives already tested) or a rewritable CD, I still use optical drives, hehe.

[Yorus]

Some small changes. From now on I will only post the process here in the forum. By the way, the images are now hosted on TinyPic instead of on Wordpress.

[Yorus]

This is going drop by drop. This morning the H2M forum member told me he had just sent me the port extenders, but at mid-morning I received the mouse:

It's curious to see the drivers on a floppy disk like in the old days, and even more so that it comes with a kind of hard plastic mat. We'll see how it goes:

The belly of the beast…

And to take advantage of the shipping costs, I decided to get this little toy, cheaper than on Steam and compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac:

[hAyO]

In the end I took it out of the closet, and the surprise is that it started up on the first try!!!

AT Tower, AT motherboard with VIA chipset, Pentium MMX 166Mhz, 64Mb SDRAM, S3Trio V2 1MB, HDD 10Gb, Windows 98SE, and SoundBlaster 128PCI.

[Yorus]

That team is good for playing old glories :sisi:.

If you were to use it for MS-Dos, an ISA sound card would be better, preferably a genuine Sound Blaster Pro, 16, AWE32 or AWE64, not cloned ones. For playing with 3D, something more powerful can be used, but it is more than good for the Windows 95 era.

How cool it is to take a machine with decades on its circuits and it works without problems, right?

[hAyO]

The thing is that from a course I did, they gave me a 10Gb hard drive at most, I thought I had Windows 2000 installed, I'm talking about the year mmm 2010 I think it was the last time I touched it, and I thought I had that, I started up and it turns out that I installed Windows 98SE xD and I'm missing drivers and stuff. Not for gaming but if I can find a 4mb graphics card even if it's not too bad for me to support the native resolution of the monitor (1280x1024), since it's the 17" one. And for gaming I would use emulators, at home we practically haven't used MS-DOS, we entered Windows 95 OSR2, and we only used the startup disk to install the system.

The truth is that it has surprised me pleasantly, the best part is that I have a socket7 motherboard lying around that I'm not sure if it will work and I could try with some processor I have around.