Great to see your not camera shy anymore mate, I think it’s a really positive decision after all these years to talk to your audience direct. At the end of the day people will always support you, but putting yourself in the videos really connects with your viewers on another level. Well done pal, good on you! 👍
@@symol30872 Yeah, I was watching this video, and I was trying to remember if I'd ever seen him in a video before(his face I mean, not just hands/arms), and I wasn't sure if I hadn't seen him in a video before, or If I had and there was just something different about him.
@@adamschackart6859 i imagined a skinny, lanky Australian dude with long blonde frizzy hair. wait... that's just techyescity but without a haircut lmao
Feels great to finally put a face to the voice after all these years! Well met, Phil. :) I grew up on Commodores and later the Amiga. Stuck with them until sometime in 1992 when I managed to get a brand new 486 system thanks to work. I used that for many years playing DOS games, and most of the time I had a Tseng ET4000 which was later upgraded to an ATI Mach-something (I think it was a Mach64 but I kind of forgot). Sound was provided by the original SB16 which cost a bloody fortune I recall. :) Anyways, had that throughout the 90s. Early Windows never did it for me so I more or less skipped that stuff until late into the Win 98 era. Didn't move to Windows full-time until Windows 2000 came out. Now that was a nice Windows, finally. Anyway! Very nice system you put together here, I sure could use something similar. The only working retro-PC I have now is a Core 2 Duo-rig that I use for XP gaming, but I really could use something older like this. I'm getting the itch to play Master of Orion again, hehe.. One of my all-time favorites. I know it works in DOSBox but as you know, that's not the same thing. Keep it up brother, been a loyal fan for many years now - here's hoping for many more years to come. :)
Thanks for sharing! Yes Retro PC Gaming is a really fun hobby. With DOS there are actually many options, even modern stuff like AMD Socket 754/939 and Pentium 4 can work well. I want to test LGA 775 with DOS, but sound is the main challenge...
@@philscomputerlab Great video a what a beauty game on the screen (Indy IV)! I laughed a bit, reading that AMD Socket 754/939 and P4 are still considered "modern stuff"! 😅😅 Keep it up with these gems video, please! Cheers, M
My first PC was a Packard Bell 486sx running at 33Mhz with a whooping 4 MB of RAM that couldn't even run Doom... so I was beyond thrilled when I got my second PC - a Gateway 2000 with a Pentium 2 400Mhz that came with 32MB RAM , which I upgraded to 64MB and added a 3dfx Voodoo 2. The first PC I built completely for myself was an AMD Athlon 64 with a Radeon 9800 Pro and a Sound Blaster Audigy. Love your channel Phil, always brings up good memories.
This video felt like the most personal video you've made on your channel, and I really like it for that. Getting to know the real Phil and why all this means so much to you. Really great! I have a SS7 Baby AT board I just recently got, and so far I've just been playing with a K6-2+, but it supports Pentium MMX and I've been curious to try it out, and this video gives a good reason for doing so.
The K6 CPUs are very interesting and the later ones can be quite a bit faster, depending on the software. It's what I used for a while until SETMUL utility supported the extra CPU options for the MMX. That's when I made the switch as I rather have more control over the slower speeds.
u're making me regret not lookin' into those Sound Blaster hardware alot earlier than i discovered ur channel even though i did picked up a Sound Blaster Live second hand
Great to see you in person Phil, i subscribed to your channel many years ago because you put so much passion with platforms i loved like the socket 7 and your contribution to the community is stunning!
Out of all the retro pc channels on UA-cam, yours is by far the best. I have learned so much over the years and I keep learning something new every-time you put out new content. You have such a genuine personality and way of doing things. Thank you, Phil for the hard work and dedication. And now your quality and presentation is even that much crisper and professional. 👍🏻😎👍🏻
I'm a caveman and kept using a 486 up to the year 2000 and embarrassingly enough got my first sound card that same year (was using pc speaker all that time and programmed great tunes myself with BASIC). The card was an ISA-slot ESS Crystal Sound whatever model, nothing new nor crazy but for me it was the revolution. Had to buy speakers also for the first time, it felt weird having those in the desk. I couldn't believe that my programs and games could produce nature-like sounds. I remember using a windows sound recorder to save and edit wavs, it was an awful grinding experience but I remember it very fondly, kind of like a toddler playing with one of those "match the shape" toys.
I built a similar machine a couple of years ago out of mostly NOS parts where I could. I used a modernish NOS 2008 Cooler Master ATX case, an NOS Chaintech 6ESA0 ATX motherboard with the 440EX chipset and onboard Yamaha sound. No one seems to want the 66mhz limited chipsets on the Slot 1 boards, so it was quite reasonable on eBay (although the seller has since sold out.) I paired the board with a 233 MHz PII, 128MB of SDRAM and a PCI SATA1 card. Video is provided by an AGP S3 Trio with composite out that I've owned since the Mid 1990's. It's set up to triple boot MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 2k from the native IDE drive and Windows 98SE from a 40gb SATA drive . The onboard Yamaha sound gives decent Soundblaster compatibility plus native OPL3. The BIOS allows me to downclock the CPU to 133 mhz and disable the CPU cache for older games. I've added a USB hub internally to allow most of the front case I/O to be hooked up, but the board doesn't have AC97 headers, so front mic and headphones aren't working. I've got a DVD drive and a CD-RW hooked up to the second native IDE channel. I've also got a 5.25 and 3.5" floppies installed on the floppy line. Power is supplied by an NOS ATX supply that has a -5V line. It was fairly difficult to find. The case is pretty packed, but future plans are the installation of a GOTEK (although I dislike them, it's hard to argue with the ease of use) Possibly convert the "modern" partition from Windows 2k to XP (Again, I prefer 2K, but its hard to argue with 15 years of XP driver support) and the addition of an LS-120 drive to allow me to keep the option of booting from a 3.5' floppy with an added GOTEK. I've got a Super Socket 7 ATX board waiting to build into a stupidly modern case with glass sides. I was going to use a K6-III that I've had for a few years sitting around, but I might just consider using a plain-jane Pentium MMX.
Excellent video and so good to finally put a face to the voice, brings back so many memories, I'm currently going through all my stuff, I have a lot of Pentium stuff from this era and picking what to use to build a machine.
Really nice to have a (smiling) face to put to the voice! Like you, I started with a Commodore64, then moved on to a 386/25 with a whopping 1MB of RAM in highschool, early 90's. A while later, a friend's father gave me a 486 DX2/66 with 16MB of RAM, which was light years beyond our little 386. In that 486 I had a Gravis UltraSound Classic with the 1MB memory expansion that I purchased off another friend's brother, as he was looking to upgrade to the GUS PnP. Around this time I had gotten into music tracking, and the GUS was *the* card to have for that - shoutout to Marc Schallehn (MAS of Prophecy) for UltraTracker, which took full advantage of the GUS. In 1997 I got a Pentium 233MMX with 32MB, an AWE64 Gold, and later upgraded from an ATI card to a Voodoo3 2000 PCI. I used this system for a solid five years before upgrading to a Socket462 Athlon Thunderbird 750 on an Abit KT7A-RAID. And here I am, almost twenty years later enjoying your videos, which give me those warm fuzzy feelings as I also kick myself repeatedly for having just discarded all that old hardware than I'm now buying second hand all over again (mostly the expensive AWE64 and a lucky find Voodoo3 3000 AGP in a not well described eBay purchase). Thanks for the videos Phil, I really enjoy everything you put out.
It's my dream to build a home lab (I'm a network engineer) into a rack, but I also want to put in a retro PC using some kind of rackmount case. First I thought I would have to modify an ATX case to fit an AT or baby AT motherboard, then I got the idea of buying a smaller form factor PC and putting it on a shelf. But now I see the answer is obvious, just find an ATX socket 7 motherboard and use a standard ATX rackmount case. Now I just need to find one for a reasonable price ... oh yeah, and buy an apartment large enough for a rack! 😄 In terms of your build, I think you've done a good job covering all the bases. If you couldn't find a board with AGP, then a PCI card would probably be fine, you'd just need to use the VGA input of your screen (or use an older model with a VGA input). Unless you can find one with DVI, but I guess that would be pretty rare. I personally prefer the genuine OPL sound over the CQM/CT1978 sound. _[Insert why don't we have both meme here]_ Technically it's possible to have _two_ sound cards in one system, however I'm not sure how that would work in practice if you're using PNP cards. Obviously older non-PNP cards allow you to manually set the midi I/O port, IRQ and DMA, which would allow you to avoid conflicting with a PNP card like the AWE64. But I think the Adlib port is hard wired to I/O port 388/389h, so I'm not sure how that works with two cards in the system. I would probably just use a SB16 card (with OPL3) and a Sound Canvas/MT32.
I love your focus on sound. Sound is such an important aspect of old games, and you touched on every reason you needed the hardware you have accurately. Austria, UK, and Austraila? You get around, man.
@@philscomputerlab Oh AWE a AWE64 as much as I love classic Soundblaster opl/fm I would jump at thr chance to hear AWE again. my grandfather's XP machine had a 64 gold card, man playing songs on youtube was a blast on it
@@JohnSmith-xq1pz I remember at the time in the late 90s, musicians using the AWE64 having to manually adjust the audio tracks inside Cubase, so that each one started playing slightly after the previous to make them all play in sync. Later Soundblasters had better technology doing away with the need to adjust track delays / processing latency. However it was a great cheap entry level card for beginners, and those on a tight budget.
Pentium MMX... never even heard of it until now. You're showing your age boio 😅😝 Cheers for the backstory about you and your brother playing old games. And those old games are definitely harder than today's ones. Even starting them was something of a learning curve. DOS = conveniently inconvenient LOL. The layout of that Gigabyte case looks uncanny of the Coolermaster Elite 330. That case was used for my first games computer back in 2009. I reiterate, I got into computers VERY late. But better late than never hey. I had an Athlon X2 7750, 4GB DDR2 RAM, a 9400GT(I know, not a video card for any proper games haha), and a Sound Blaster Audigy 7.1, running on Windows Vista. Great PC and video fella 👍
I have so many retro computers but my favorites would have to be my PMMX 233, 64MB EDO, 2MB S3Trio 64v2, 4MB Diamond Voodoo 1, ESS Audiodrive 1868, 40GB HDD system, and my P3 1.4, 512MB SDR, 64MB Voodoo 5 AGP, Sound Blaster Live 5.1, 64GB SD to IDE system. They span my childhood PC gaming experiences from throughout the 90s.
Very nice to see a face to the voice. Very envious of your sound set up - amazing. I've always liked the Awe 32 sound cards. Creative make really good cards. Keep the videos coming, love the content.
Hi and Greetings from Germany. I just finished Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlanis on my 486, last week. So nice to see it on your screen :-D For DOS gaming I'm using two computers. The first one is the mentioned 486 @ 160 MHz and Sound Blaster Pro 2.0. My first PC was a 486 and I played Keen4, Doom, Heretic, Duke3D and SimCity2000 . Then I have a machine for later games. And sure this has to be a Socket7 System with K6.2+ @600 MHz, Matrox + Voodoo2, SD AWE32 + Roland SC55. Back in the days I missed that era of late DOS 3D and early Windows 3D games completely. Because I jumped straight to a Pentium III 900 MHz and to UT99. Regarding MIDI: This topic was quite new for me and I learned a lot in your videos. Without your channel I guess I wouldn't have the Sound Canvas hooked to the AWE32 :-D MIDI Music has a special charm. So it is the same thing for me like Vinyl for regular music. Who loves DOS Games needs MIDI.
Like many who grew up in the 1980s, we started with a Commodore 64, then moved to an Amiga 1000 (with the 512k expansion) in mid-1986. Really wish I had kept these machines. We used the A1000 for nearly 9 years before moving to a Pentium 75/Windows 95 machine (specifically, an IBM Aptiva M-series), which I upgraded several times before building my own Socket 7 platform (AMD K6-3 450) in 1999 as I entered my freshman year of college. I still have this machine, and have built my own PCs ever since. After watching your video on Pentium 4 machines for retro gaming, I built 2 LGA775 machines based on the Pentium 4 520 (2.8 GHz). They dual-boot Windows 98SE/XP and work perfectly. They're fast enough to handle the games that ran like a slide show in the late 1990s (i.e., Flight: Unlimited), and give me a liquid-smooth experience with games like Need for Speed 4 (and I might add that network play with these machines is really fun). But I can also slow the machines down with DOSBox in Windows XP for speed-sensitive games like Wing Commander, etc. Using nGlide with ATI Radeon X800 series GPUs, legacy 3dfx support is very good for games that need it in Windows 98SE. The SoundBlaster Live! (with the Audigy2 ZS drivers you suggest in another video) provides a superb, cost-effective MIDI solution, allowing me to use my favorite soundfonts. Excellent video!
I'm from a country in europe called romania. I'm sure you never heard of it but i can assure you that you have at least 1 fan here.all over the planet people apreciate your work. We salute you.keep up the good work.
Hi Phil! My "Time-Machine" is an Intel 486 DX4/100 with 64MB RAM on an Asus VL/I-486SV2GX4 Motherboard. I have mixed also old Hardware and modern components. The Case is a little bit show and shine. It has a side Window and an UV-Light. Some of the old ISA Cards and RAM modules glow in UV-Light. That looks awesome ;-) A GoTek as well as a DVD drive is also installed and for the HDD I use an IDE-CF Adapter. (I dont wanted loud Harddrives in this system) this "Time-Machine" is very silent. ;-) For sound I use the SB16 CT2290. (I bought it from Hartlauer back the Days 1996). It was a complete Package in a big Box with CD-ROM Drive, Speakers and a fat Software-Package from Microsoft. (MS-Works, MS-Publisher, Encarta...etc) All of the old components where back the days my daily PC. And I am also proud that it is a VLB System. On this project I have done some Soldering. (added a PS2/Mouse Port) and updated the BIOS for more compatibility. (UV EPROM)! Greetings, EyeKeyFun Viele Grüße aus dem Burgenland. :-D ;-)
I have the best of both worlds. My 486 rig (upgraded to AMD 5x86 133MHz) has an ESS688 and Sound Blaster AWE64 installed. The ESS688 has a real Yamaha OPL3 chip, so that covers most Adlib and OPL3 compatible sound generation. The AWE64 serves the wavetable sounds. I have a small patch cable going from the Line-out of the AWE64 to the line-in of my ESS688 so I can have sound coming from one output. The ESS 688 is on standard 220/5/1 address, while the AWE64 installed automatically on 240/7/3, and the AWE64 wavetable answers at the default 330H/620H addresses. The 240/7/3 is not really needed anyway, as digital sounds come from the ESS688 anyway. The operating system I chose for it is Windows 95 C OSR 2.5, which has a really good compatibility with General MIDI and AWE64, and the operating system itself services General MIDI compatible calls to DOS apps, so surprisingly even games without specific AWE compatibility can play MIDI sound tracks through the AWE. And everything "just works" running under Windows 95, which, given my past experience, was a pleasant change. But of course, I can boot to DOS any time if needed.
Great to finally put a face to the voice, Phil! Loved the video. Your time machine videos were very helpful to me over the years when I started getting into retro PCs. 👍 My PC gaming journey started a little later than yours. I was more into NES/SNES in the early 90s, but did have an old monochrome IBM clone machine that I tinkered with on occasion and taught myself DOS with. It wasn't until about 1993 or so that I got really into PCs, with games like Wolf3D, Commander Keen and some of the Sierra classics. My best friend's Dad had a 486/33 and always had the latest games. In 1994 my family finally got a DX2/66 and I was thoroughly obsessed by that point 😀
Great video and nice setup! My favorite setup: Asus PVI-486SP3, Pentium 83Mhz Overdrive, VLB Tseng Et4000W32p, Creative AWE32 CT3980, and a real HDD with moving heads and spinning sound. Fav. games: Monkey Island, POP 1 & 2, all kind of flipper tables, Doom. 😉💪🏼
Hey Phil, nice to see a face to your videos! I have been running a similar build for a couple of years now as my main DOS gaming rig, even down to the FX5200 as a gpu. I found the FX5200 to have really good compatibility with DOS games even in Commander Keen and it can also play games like Duke3D in it's highest resolution which makes it really flexible. However, one thing to note that I learned just recently is the FX5200 will occupy a lot more upper memory than some other GPU's. Something like 30kb more which made a very significant difference in one of my builds. For example I was using a AG430HX motherboard which has integrated sound / graphics and has an upper limit of about 91k if I remember correctly. When using integrated graphics or adding a S3 Virge/DX, the upper memory limit drops to about 61k which is still probably enough. But the FX5200 seems to occupy twice the amount of upper memory which will drop the available upper limit to 31k. This means that when using LH on anything, even when using your Win98 Dos Utility, optical drivers will not be able to load out of conventional memory and it will be very difficult to run CD-ROM and loading a Sierra game for example. I struggled with this for a long time wondering why it was so difficult as I was unaware that the FX5200 was having this affect on upper memory. I discovered this by accident when working on my i430VX which does not have integrated gaphics, and actually has a larger upper memory limit out of the box. This is something I now keep in mind when choosing MB's and GPU's for my purely DOS gaming builds. Most the time there is plenty of upper memory, but I also like to play my games over etherDFS which also requires a large amount of drivers to be loaded into upper memory especially with packet drivers. I still keep my FX5200 ready and handy though as it is easy to swap out, and is nice to have on hand especially for later DOS games that utilize EMS.
Interesting! Did you try optimizing memory with MEMAKER or manually adding address spaces? Also, DOS 6.22 gives more memory than Windows 98 / DOS 7.1. Lots of little weird things with this hobby. Another good GPU is the Radeon 9200, over DVI it looks sharper but if you can, you should use VGA.
My first experience with a PC was a 486DX 33mhz at my friend's house when I was about 10 years old. My first PC was a few years later with a Cyrix P150+ and Windows 95. I love this era of computing ❤
I don´t have too many DOS games i remember because i was born too late (1999). But for this purpose i have my Compaq Armada 7770DMT which runs either DOS 7.1 + Windows XP or Windows 98 + Windows XP with two different hard drives. The laptop has a multibay and hdd bay. Removing the drive is super easy and you just slide the other drive-caddy inside. It´s meeting barely the minimum requirements to run Xp, but at least it gives me full USB 2.0 support for the PCMCIA card. Data transfer is simple this way and organizing folders, games and stuff much more hassle free. The hardware is perfectly compatible with DOS and the laptop form factor saves space. The 800x600 TFT screen is just great for games. Pentium MMX 233Mhz, 144MB RAM, 100Gb or 60GB or 20GB HDD (currently). 2D Graphics card with 2MB VRAM, 32bit colors within windows at native screen resolution.
Great choices Phil. I'm busy with a socket 5 AT Pentium 200 non mmx, 2 x 32mb simm ram, awe64gold, Creative voodoo2, all in a perspex case. Really enjoy your channel , yup, my first pc was an imb pc-xt !
Cool video and nice setup ! Born in 1986 I grow up with my dad's Atairi 520ST and Amiga 500 and my first computer was a 486 DX machine I think (with a matrox GPU !) then I got an AMD K6-2 with windows 98 wich from there I started building my own computers :) and I have a lot of cool memories from this period. Thanks to your videos I found my self motivated to rebuild a Windows XP machine recently and the next one will be a MS-Dos/Windows 98 for sure.
Phil, thx to Your MEGA positive appereance Your YTchannel is even better. GOOD CHOICE! You are a tremendous person in retro community and the fact that You spend so much time on Your work gives me to be Your solid fan. Thanks and keep up with this great work.
I grew up in the 90's. My first computer was a Packard Bell tower with a Pentium 233MMX running windows 95. I have fond memories of it running shareware versions of doom and duke3D. My retro PC consists of fast hardware that's able to run win98se natively.
Hey Phil, I'm glad you made this video-I've been here following most of the experiments and new things learned as you learn them, but summaries are useful now and then because the state of the art has changed over that long of a period of time. 😁 I started out trying to build something mostly period correct using the best combination of parts I could get my hands on affordably. Some of them are a bit mismatched and leave a little performance on the floor, like that I have a Voodoo 3 card which is a bit over-spec for a socket 7 machine … but I've got one, and the system I built can run some of those Glide-using Win98 games, so I'm absolutely going to take advantage of that. I certainly could pick up a Sound Blaster card, but as you say they're not known to be the best-sounding. They are just the default option. I picked up an ESS Audiodrive that sounds good and has very high compatibility while being extremely cheap because it was a low-cost, single-chip, mostly PnP device in its day. Its FM is definitely a Yamaha clone, but not a bad-sounding one. I've also got one of those genuine Yamaha OPL4 cards, but the PCM support is incompatible with a couple of specific games that I wanted support for. I'm not happy with the case I picked up. Got something in black since I figured it'd be easier to match, but it''s a period correct case and that means the front is actually beige plastic with a lame paint job. And it has all the fun of period era cases: Thick but very mild steel with lots of sharp edges, the distinctive ring of the U shaped metal cover, and the need to physically remove the hard drive cage to install 3.5 drives of any sort. I've been saying for years that I want to sort of rebuild the system as a reverse-sleeper, but I hadn't found the case for it. Partly I think because it doesn't exist. What I think I actually want to do is get TWO cases: A Pentium 4 era case and its "modernish" retool that ripped out the drive cages and added glass to the side-that sort of thing. That or I stick the whole thing in my Enthoo Pro which has ONE drive bay and find a spot to shove a 2.5" SATA toaster in the back. … Ahha! Yes, Star-Tech has one. (Star-Tech: If there's some BS that might exist, and you need it, they probably make it. See also Silverstone.)
@@philscomputerlab Unless you build a SCSI system … but that intrudes on free memory for some DOS games. SCSI was great when I ran OS/2 or Linux, but lousy for DOS and games.
Hey Phil, thank you for taking the time to explain all of these. One of the things I like most is your use of FX series cards, you have a lot of videos with them, here's to many more! 🏆🏆
Still rockin' my Leadtek WinFast A350XT TDH which is an FX5900XT bought in June 2004. I recently bought a replacement fan for it, and so its whisper quiet again and ready for another 18 years! 😂
@@EgoShredder I also have a 5900XT, from Gigabyte, and it's rocking inside a P4 build. I have an NV Silencer 3 prepared for it, but Gigabyte's cooler is very nice, cool and quiet!
The FX5200 is really a good choice for pretty old hardware because it's got just enough hardware to fully implement DX9, but it's not very good at it. It's not spectacular the older APIs its more suited for (DX7/DX8/OpenGL 1.x), but it can run those titles well enough to keep up with the hardware you'd want for a DOS machine. And, because it was still built with a notion that Win98 users might be buying it, it's still got pretty decent DOS support. Plus, the FX5200 was absolutely everywhere at the time it was a "current" card so there's a lot of them out there, but is widely considered to be A FLAMING PIECE OF CRAP by gamers trying to run the latest titles, so nobody wants the things. That makes them a cheap get for DOS/Win98 PCs which don't need anything better.
Great video! I wouldn't have thought of that FX card for video, and I like that you can swap hard drives easily. One system I've been playing a lot of titles on lately is a restored IBM Aptiva E2U with a K6-2 (333MHz). I added a SB32 and connected it to my Athlon XP system with a Yamaha SW1000XG as a MIDI Synth. It has been great! Did my first stream with it last night. My Pentium III has an AWE 64 Gold with a SC-55 and Yamaha SW1000XG, and my 486 has a MT-32. I've gotten most of these systems up and running thanks to your site/videos!
@@philscomputerlab I moved over to twitch a few months back. Had a lot of friends that stream there, so I went that route after experimenting with both. twitch.tv/mikboy018
Your DOS time machine is hands-down my favorite project and I took a strong liking to it from your 136-in-1 CPU video, so seeing this new video was a HUGE treat! In fact, it's what inspired me to pick up some retro hardware a couple of years ago so that I could get back into all the DOS gaming I grew up on as a little kid, and this project is such an ingenious way to have an authentic experience across multiple eras of DOS games without a massive hardware footprint. I've modeled my build heavily after yours, but with some differences and it's not quite final yet: - AWE64 Legacy and Gravis Ultrasound PnP Pro - Voodoo 3 3000 AGP (experimenting with this and a S3 Virge DX alongside a Voodoo 1) - Old school beige ATX tower complete with cone speaker for those *really* old DOS games that are still compatible - CRT monitor I don't have any MIDI modules yet, but I did manage to snag a license for Roland Sound Canvas VA before it migrated to Roland's cloud service, so I put that to use with your MIDI Emulator project. You have made it so easy to reexplore gaming on DOS and early Windows platforms with as little hardware as possible, and it has been a blast playing these games with the experience I wish I had those years ago. Thank you so much for your world class content!
I’m glad Steve Balmer has found something to do to keep himself occupied since leaving Microsoft. ;) Love the videos mate. I appreciate the Aussie availability/costing that comes with your content as well.
awesome vid, thanks for your efforts and sharing, your personality shines thru! pc magazines were essential to me also in those dark days before the modems...
It's nice to note you speak with both Austrian and Aussie accent. My first ever computer was a Pentium 166 MMX in a Dell Optiplex Gn+ from 1997/8. I was an intern at a large multinational accounting firm. We just started computerisation. We used to have a computer room where there were 20 desktops shared by 200 staff, whilst waiting for new laptops for every staff over a 3 year period. One day, I noted our MIS took 4 units and were about to throw them in a dumpster at the back of our office. I asked for permission to take all 4 home and was OK'ed as all 4 were faulty in one form or another. I started disassemble each and learn the internals of a PC. Eventually, I figured which parts were faulty in each of the 4 and realised i could mix & match their parts to make 2 perfectly working units that's better than new. I turned one unit into a home modem dial-up server, fax server & file server. I gave the other unit to my sister's friend's nephew who needed a computer for his university studies. I used it until 2007 when the PATA HDD failed. I didn't replaced the PATA HDD since I have my own laptop by then. I'd kept it in storage and shortly after, left for another country to work. I would be retiring end of this year, and return to my childhood home. I remembered that Dell with the Pentium 166 MMX that started my knowledge in computers. I plan to make it run again and was researching in UA-cam when your video was recommended. I had also forgotten about the need to a PATA to SATA adapter as shown in your video. I would need one to connect SATA drives into those PATA interfaces. by the way, did you encounter any limitations to the size of SATA SSD ? I supposed the smallest sized 128GB SATA SSD should be OK. I believe any OS, programs and games from that era would still work in the DELL Optiplex Gn+ but not much use for anything connected and modern. I plan to try DSL and Puppy Linux to see how much more it can do.
Thanks for sharing your story! Even smaller than 128 would be recommended, these old machines have hardware as well as software capacity limitations. You could look into buying IDE to SD card adapter and using 32GB SD card instead.
@@philscomputerlab thanks. didn't know there's SD to IDE adapter as I can't get these in my locale. We do have IDE to SATA and SD to USB but not SD to IDE.
A very nice Machine Phil. My first was a Pentium 133 and Windows 95. Thanks for the info on the Roland and all the Videos you make I always learn something new from them.
It's good to see you in front of the camera Phil, it makes your videos more personal. Well done! With the Roland MPU-401/AT in this retro PC, an additional Waveblaster-type card should have gone in of course 🙂 as it is the perfect card for it. You provided some very good and practical tips for anyone looking to build a versatile DOS gaming PC. Maybe it's time for me too to build a Pentium MMX machine, as I have plenty of parts to do so. I just a suitable PC case. I have mostly been using Pentium II systems for DOS lately, although I don't run the very old DOS games on it. Keep up the good work Phil!
It's hard to find the one perfect MS-DOS/Windows 9x machine that can run the greatest games from the 1980s-1990s, including the early 3D accelerated games. Yes, there's DOSBox for modern machines, but the biggest problems lie with the early Windows 9x games and early 3D accelerated games that rely on ancient operating system/graphics/sound libraries (for games that haven't been rewritten and sold on digital distribution platforms). For me, this means several machines from the mid-1990s to about 2004, all networked together. This makes for great retro gaming LAN party experiences, and, with DOSBox SVN builds supporting NE2000 networking, it's easy for a modern PC to join a LAN party with older Windows 9x machines running IPX network gaming sessions (i.e., Doom 1/2, Duke Nukem 3D, Descent, etc.). As legacy hardware prices continue to climb, it would be really neat to see projects like "PCem" continue to improve.
Hi Phil, I'm really really surprised by how similar my setup is! I have a Socket 7 with a Pentium 200 MMX in which, of course, I use your 136 in 1 project :). My main focus is also MIDI, and that is the reason why I have a MPU-401AT card hooked to a MIDI splitter, which goes to my MT-32, SC-55, SC-88vl and Yamaha MU80 (all of them connected to my speakers through a mixer nearly identical to yours). The difference is that I use a Sound Blaster 16 (CT2290) instead of an AWE, and a S3 Virge with a Voodoo 1 for some 3dfx glory :D. What a great machines do we have!! :)
Nice to see your face Phil, and interesting to hear your stories! I've been watching your videos for a couple of years now and I just wanted to say that I like them a lot. Keep up the good work!
Great video! That is a great retro machine and thanks for sharing your story for why you chose the components! I'm starting to feel a little nostalgic...maybe I should pull my old PC out of the closet (not as old as your retro build). Would be like opening up a time capsule!
We had a 486 DX/50 in the household. Had some sort of Cirrus Logic SVGA capable card and a soundblaster clone. It came with 4MB Ram but we later upgraded to 8MB. However I had a C128 myself (only ever used it in C64 mode, though) and absolutely loved it. I actually finished Giana Sisters at least once back in the days but I also played Zak McKracken on it and many other games.
I've been following your guide for the 136-in-1 with a Pentium MMX 233 and thanks to that, I've put together a really enjoyable system myself - a Socket 7 board with options for a FSB as low as 50MHz, which at 2x leaves my system at 100MHz, and then in the other direction I've even been successfully overclocking the CPU to 250MHz with a 75MHz FSB at 3.5x. Running at 100MHz and disabling the L2 cache and disabling everything with Setmul, I can get as low as 8.6 on 3DBenchmark and easily run something as slow as Day of the Tentacle, then on the other end, putting the Voodoo 1 I've put in there to good use and running games as late as Unreal. I've also put in two ISA sound cards - a Sound Blaster 16, which provides the 16-bit digital sample playback but also has an OPL3, then a Sound Blaster Pro clone with a non-buggy MPU-401 interface for the MIDI. I have Windows 95 on it as that's the Windows version I experienced first, and after installing the USB supplements and getting the networking set up, it's been a dream to work with, and I'm not really missing any conveniences that come with Windows 98 like people like to make out! Most DOS games may be before my time, though there were still a few I grew up with that do seem to have some speed-sensitivity, and experiencing those and my childhood Windows software again has been wonderful. Thanks Phil! Also interesting that you're using USB keyboard and mouse - I found them to have quite a delay when trying them out before, but I'll give them another try. I also actually originally put an FX 5200 into this system, as I had one spare and wanted a nice 1280x1024 desktop, and it's certainly nifty to get DVI/HDMI out on a DOS machine! I've since switched to the S3 Virge/DX that I got bundled in with my Voodoo 1, since that felt more fitting for the time, but it's nice to see I'm not the only one to try that. Now, if only we could find a way to get digital audio output (of all sound) within pure DOS! (even if it involved sending the audio to another card within the PC, such as how a SB Live! can work with DOS games under Windows) Thanks for all the videos, research and playing around, Phil!
You know... I have a similar-era machine. P200MMX, S3 Trio, Voodoo 1, AWE64. I built it with the greatest compatibility in mind but had the power to run late-era DOS games. I hadn't used it much lately and was considering selling it off. Was thinking of using my 486SX laptop for the older games and using my Win98 rig for the few late-era DOS games that I do still play from time to time but watching this video changed my mind. I'll keep it around :) there's just so much that it's capable of doing and I'm just not going to get the same experience on another machine. I do need to figure out a good way to capture VGA though, mainly because I have everything routed through a 4 port KVM that only does VGA. It would allow me to capture all my retro machines rather than just this one. To answer your question though - my first x86 PC was a Sharp 286 laptop around 1990-1992. I was only like 6-8 years old but I could write a few simplistic BASIC programs with it. Got a 386 later on then went up from there.
My first pc was a 486dx4, I had it when my brother bought a pentium 100, it was old when I got it. The 486 had no sound, no cd rom. Then I bought a "multimedia kit" as they were called, with cdrom and sound card. The oldest pc games I started with as a kid, as far as I can remember, were: Wolfenstein 3D, IndyCar Racing. Later I was able to get Doom, Terminal Velocity, Wacky Wheels, Sim City 2000, The Need for Speed, Duke Nukem 3D. That's when this pc started to be slow and I was able to acquire a pentium 200, I remember games like Quake, Screamer 2, Theme Hospital.
I use a 2004 eMac and a real MT32, very versatile combination. OS9, X, DOSBox, ScummVM, source ports, Amiga etc... My favorite game is Frontier right now, great video!
Nice video Phil. I've forgotten more DOS than I can remember so thats not happening any more. It's Slot 1 stuff that always get my interest the most . My pet is a dual slot 1 running 900mhz P3s , maxed ram at 1gb, Maxtor 7200rpm x4 on a Highpoint 100 Raid card and a Geforce 2 gts. 2 other rigs running slot 1 and voodoos. Win XP Shuttle rig with a 2600 Athlon and FX5700 Ultra. Various other things kicking around. It's more the playing around with the hardware combinations and , as you said, getting the ideal setup for the era that you couldn't afford at the time than the gaming side . That dual slot rig has been apart more times than i care to remember, always something new to try, or buy.
I started on a 386 as well (Keen3-5, Grand Prix Circuit, Golden Axe) but my favourite era was around 1997-2001 (Unreal, Quake II-III, Outlaws, NHL98, Half Life, Tony Hawk Pro Skater). My own first PC was a 166MMX with a Banshee, but it struggled with at the time newer titles. Now I have a PII 350 with Voodoo 3 and I find that it is a good setup for playing almost everything from 1990 to 2001, except for very speed sensitive games (Wing Commander).
Nice Friday video Phil! A great respect for your passion on retrocomputing. Living in a country where computers were not common in homes until early 2000s, I grew up with Pentium M, ATI Radeon graphics and onboard AC'97 audio, but I'm more interested on the things on 90s to early 2000s computer books. That's where my fascination on retrocomputing comes from. Now I have a Core 2 Duo system with Intel 865 motherboard, ATI X800 XT graphics and Yamaha YMF724 sound card with integrated OPL3 and XG synth. I use it to play old games under Windows 2000 (however, Win98 does not work properly) and try old Linux distros. For old Macintosh, I have a Mac mini G4 with OS 9, and a PowerBook G4 with OS X 10.4. I'm planning for building a Pentium 4 system to play games under DOS and Windows 98.
Thank you for expanding upon your time machine-type retro PC endeavors! Several years ago they were part of what inspired me to dive deep into the hardware speed-tuning for CPU-sensitive games. My time machine is a dinky-sounding Celeron 800 with GeForce2 MX and an SBLink-connected ESS Solo-1 (a replica of my first private PC in 2001), but after years of Throttle/CPUSPD/FDAPM-type chipset throttling software capabilities "research", it can pretty much 100%-correctly run any PC game from 1980 to 2001 (excluding those requiring a real pre-VGA card or a pre-Pentium CPU, of course) and I love it :)
Hi Phil. Your passion for retro computing is really great to see. I started with a C64 and then went on to an IBM PS/2 model 50z with a 286 CPU, VGA graphics, 1MB RAM and 60MB HDD. I still have a bunch of retro ThinkPads and a few IBM compatibles with most being Pentium 3 or 4. To be honest, I'm still chasing my ultimate retro build being a Pentium MMX class machine from IBM. You're really lucky to have so much rare Roland equipment and I'm with you on Sound Blaster its also my favorite sound card brand still.
We got our first IBM compatible in 1992. It was a Packard Bell 486. Loved that machine. I still have it. I regards to retro, I have PCs for each different era, but I'm weird, and I have space to do so. Curious question. In regards to disabling the cache on the motherboard to slow the machine down to 386 speeds, does the ICD/ICE.exe programs not work? I have used the program for years and it worked for what I am doing, but I traditionally use it with slower machines than the Pentium. Also, does the SetMul program you are using work with the AMD K6 with MMX? Excellent video as always. Keep up the good work!
Great video again Phil, feel like I'm repeating myself but you have such a great channel, your content and knowledge is just excellent and great to see you in front of the camera now. 👍 I started with a 486 then on to a Pentium 100 and on and on it goes as we all know, the favourite era for me is the early 3d acceleration era from 96-2000, anything from P1 to P3 and now I have a quite ridiculous amount of parts and systems from mainly that era but also some XP stuff up to around 07 and I buy/repair build and sell stuff to fund buying more, it's a great hobby and one that seems to have gotten more popular the last few years and I think you've certainly contributed massively to that which is a great achievement. ✌
Nice to finally get to know you better, phil. Btw personally i'd pick a pentium 3 dos build because i am not really into the earlyer games and i want some good performance for heavier software like emulators (yes, there are emulators that runs on ms-dos).
You inspired me to build my own time machine. So a fast PC that you slow down for compatibility with the old stuff. Time travelling between the different era's as you go. Mine was set out to beat the old in-1 video. And a few years later the build is complete and plays sopwith at the correct speed. But it also plays Crysis 1 on low :D In my case its an Athlon 64 x2 4200, and CPUSPD to throttle it down. Combined witb the ASUS A8V motherboard for its excellent Windows 98 compatibility. A 6800GT AGP and a Voodoo 2 to fill in the gapps. For soundcards I went with the Audigy 1 and ESS Solo-1 with the ESS connected to the Audigy's line-in. Gives me fantastic dos compatibility while also having EAX, soundfonts, etc. OS wise I have gotten most of them running. Windows 3.1, 95, NT4, 98, 2000, XP, 7 and even 10. And I am sure it can do ME, Vista and 8 if I ttird. But, in case of the stuff older than 98 SE I do have to really fight the system and sacrefise components. So on those only the ESS is working with generic VBE drivers for video and only the Voodoo 2 for 3D. On the Windows Vista and higher end I loose the ESS and Voodoo 2.
Oh wow, what a great time machine! The Athlon 64 is indeed a great Retro platform and you've got there. The Voodoo 2 is great to add 3D acceleration under Windows 98. Amazing!
@@philscomputerlab It does have some challenges yet to overcome. Mainly the Voodoo 2, I have my own modified Voodoo 2 driver package that works very well in this machine. It by default clocks the Voodoo 2 down slightly to 85mhz to prevent overheating. For DOS the Glide driver gives you an option if you want the older more compatible glide driver you recommend on your website, or a newer very specific one compatible with fast frontside busses. My machine requires the latter. The biggest problem is that many of the games feature a static linked Voodoo 2 driver which then crashes on this PC. The solution is obvious but not simple, the frontside bus needs to be slowed down enough to make the card run at a speed the card can operate properly at with those games. There is VIAFSB, but I have not tried it yet and my chipset is not listed as supported. So hopefully in the future that becomes a thing. Another thing that does work is slowing the machine down enough with CPUSPD so these games start, but then the rest of the system is to slow to play them. So a potential option is a slowdown utility that only lasts for a few seconds, long enough to boot the game up. And then seeing how well that works, unfortunately I do not know of any such utilities. For 3D Acceleration I also of course have the 6800GT which does a great job in many newer games, but the Voodoo 2 has been fantastic in games where its texture support or driver compatibility fails me. If I can find enough time this year I may make a doscember video about this PC, since I have been wanting to present it to the world for a while now. The only thing that exists at the moment is a video of me installing the Windows XP drivers for it.
This is really impressive. I am only 21 so the first computer I ever used was some dell laptop that had windows 98 on it (I still have it too!). I played a little bit on sonic cd on there, and I remember trying to play some buzz lightyear game but it didn't run on there. We also had a windows xp desktop a bit later and that's where I first started playing minecraft, though it could barely run on there either. So in reality, "retro" for me is still relatively easy to get working. It helps that I did a lot of stuff on consoles when I was a kid too, even easier to get those kinds of games up and running one way or another.
With the DOS/98SE/XP PC - formerly my uncles from 2001 - that I've refurbished for my Mum's use (it's primarily for all of her 25 to 32 year-old games which we still have - and all work on the build) I've stuck with: - the original Duron 1000 (multiplier pencil unlocked, and not with the original cooler - it was extremely inadequate) - upgraded it to 512MB RAM (original 256MB was reduced to single stick working at half capacity) - replaced the CT5200 AudioPCI with my recently purchased, second and pre-emptively re-capped ESS AudioDrive 1868f (Guon 9610 Rev-C, MIDI is glorious now) - fully recapped OG Gigabyte GA-7IXEH - Pioneer DVR-106 (8x DVD R/RW) - 50x Asus CD-ROM (needed for bootable CD) - Sony 3.5" FDD - 20GB Seagate U series X (very slow seek times - OK in 98SE though) - OG IBM 40GB 120GXP (kept with Windows XP - Belkin NEC based USB 2.0 card - Realtek gigabit NIC (new and driver CD goes from 95-Win7) - Original 300W PSU with the fan bearing oiled (silent now - also has connectors for Athlon SMP mobo and ATX 4 pin) - Original case, with ball bearing front fan from early LGA775 P4 machine - 256MB 5.1GB/sec FX 5700LE (RIP original GF2 MX200 - cracked fan, blown caps, damaged core) The only cost has been the capacitors, NIC, USB card, RAM, 128bit AOpen FX 5700LE (bought dirt cheap), this particular 1868f and time. Everything else I already had given to me years ago by family and family friends. Overall, extremely cheap compared to what it'd cost to buy everything now. It's actually been cheaper than what it'd cost to get the last few parts for a period-perfect 386 (still got some parts from my Mum's first and late 80's PC).
Hi Phil. My first computer was Slot 1 Celeron 433 paired with integrated SiS 6326 with 8 mb local memory. Sound was also integrated (SoundPro+). It was a PCChips mobo, they tended to integrate all in one. The first game was Quake 2. I have completed it with just a keyboard! I used arrow keys to move and to enjoy my friend I let him to press Control to shoot enemy. I also used a-z buttons to look up sometime. Fantastic!
For me it all started when using my mates Mitsubishi desktop pc, it had a Pentium 90 Cpu and run Windows95, i had the must fun customizing the OS, it was a beautiful looking computer with its matching Mitsubishi CRT screen
That's a really nice setup. A atx socket 7 seems way easier to work with. I have a working at socket 7 board with a pentium mmx. That thing only gives you a at keyboard out of the back. Thinking about fitting it into a modern case also for convenience. Thankfully your videos educate me enough to maybe even get it up and running lol. Not easy jumping on this platform when my first pc at home was a socket 478. Did play those old games and used the older oses at friends or at school. Get alot of nostalgia from these videos alone. Thank you for the great retro content.
Great to see your not camera shy anymore mate, I think it’s a really positive decision after all these years to talk to your audience direct. At the end of the day people will always support you, but putting yourself in the videos really connects with your viewers on another level. Well done pal, good on you! 👍
Really well said
@@symol30872 Yeah, I was watching this video, and I was trying to remember if I'd ever seen him in a video before(his face I mean, not just hands/arms), and I wasn't sure if I hadn't seen him in a video before, or If I had and there was just something different about him.
Agreed, well said 👍
I had imagined him as being very short with long frizzy hair and a big nose. I was way off 😂
@@adamschackart6859 i imagined a skinny, lanky Australian dude with long blonde frizzy hair. wait... that's just techyescity but without a haircut lmao
It's great to see you mate!
😍
This is most warm video i ever seen on this channel. Thanks.
Feels great to finally put a face to the voice after all these years! Well met, Phil. :)
I grew up on Commodores and later the Amiga. Stuck with them until sometime in 1992 when I managed to get a brand new 486 system thanks to work. I used that for many years playing DOS games, and most of the time I had a Tseng ET4000 which was later upgraded to an ATI Mach-something (I think it was a Mach64 but I kind of forgot). Sound was provided by the original SB16 which cost a bloody fortune I recall. :) Anyways, had that throughout the 90s. Early Windows never did it for me so I more or less skipped that stuff until late into the Win 98 era. Didn't move to Windows full-time until Windows 2000 came out. Now that was a nice Windows, finally.
Anyway! Very nice system you put together here, I sure could use something similar. The only working retro-PC I have now is a Core 2 Duo-rig that I use for XP gaming, but I really could use something older like this. I'm getting the itch to play Master of Orion again, hehe.. One of my all-time favorites. I know it works in DOSBox but as you know, that's not the same thing.
Keep it up brother, been a loyal fan for many years now - here's hoping for many more years to come. :)
Thanks for sharing! Yes Retro PC Gaming is a really fun hobby. With DOS there are actually many options, even modern stuff like AMD Socket 754/939 and Pentium 4 can work well. I want to test LGA 775 with DOS, but sound is the main challenge...
@Michaels Carport yeah, I believe I paid almost $500 for that box set that also included a CD-ROM drive (1X speed!) Crazy times, but so much fun. :)
I agree it's nice to finally see a face, and first I was kinda shocked at; 1 - the intensity in his eyes, and 2 - the shininess of his head. 😊
@@philscomputerlab Great video a what a beauty game on the screen (Indy IV)! I laughed a bit, reading that AMD Socket 754/939 and P4 are still considered "modern stuff"! 😅😅 Keep it up with these gems video, please! Cheers, M
My first PC was a Packard Bell 486sx running at 33Mhz with a whooping 4 MB of RAM that couldn't even run Doom... so I was beyond thrilled when I got my second PC - a Gateway 2000 with a Pentium 2 400Mhz that came with 32MB RAM , which I upgraded to 64MB and added a 3dfx Voodoo 2. The first PC I built completely for myself was an AMD Athlon 64 with a Radeon 9800 Pro and a Sound Blaster Audigy. Love your channel Phil, always brings up good memories.
This video felt like the most personal video you've made on your channel, and I really like it for that. Getting to know the real Phil and why all this means so much to you. Really great!
I have a SS7 Baby AT board I just recently got, and so far I've just been playing with a K6-2+, but it supports Pentium MMX and I've been curious to try it out, and this video gives a good reason for doing so.
The K6 CPUs are very interesting and the later ones can be quite a bit faster, depending on the software. It's what I used for a while until SETMUL utility supported the extra CPU options for the MMX. That's when I made the switch as I rather have more control over the slower speeds.
u're making me regret not lookin' into those Sound Blaster hardware alot earlier than i discovered ur channel even though i did picked up a Sound Blaster Live second hand
Heyyy, good to see you finally Phil :) Ive been tuning into your videos for years and years already. Hello from Denmark
I agree! Good choice to see you as a person instead of first person view 😎👍🏼
This channel exudes love. If the world was more like this channel it would be a much better place.
Great to see you in person Phil, i subscribed to your channel many years ago because you put so much passion with platforms i loved like the socket 7 and your contribution to the community is stunning!
I appreciate that!
Out of all the retro pc channels on UA-cam, yours is by far the best. I have learned so much over the years and I keep learning something new every-time you put out new content. You have such a genuine personality and way of doing things. Thank you, Phil for the hard work and dedication. And now your quality and presentation is even that much crisper and professional. 👍🏻😎👍🏻
Wow, thanks!
I'm a caveman and kept using a 486 up to the year 2000 and embarrassingly enough got my first sound card that same year (was using pc speaker all that time and programmed great tunes myself with BASIC). The card was an ISA-slot ESS Crystal Sound whatever model, nothing new nor crazy but for me it was the revolution. Had to buy speakers also for the first time, it felt weird having those in the desk. I couldn't believe that my programs and games could produce nature-like sounds. I remember using a windows sound recorder to save and edit wavs, it was an awful grinding experience but I remember it very fondly, kind of like a toddler playing with one of those "match the shape" toys.
my fried if u need i donate u a q6600 :)
I built a similar machine a couple of years ago out of mostly NOS parts where I could. I used a modernish NOS 2008 Cooler Master ATX case, an NOS Chaintech 6ESA0 ATX motherboard with the 440EX chipset and onboard Yamaha sound. No one seems to want the 66mhz limited chipsets on the Slot 1 boards, so it was quite reasonable on eBay (although the seller has since sold out.) I paired the board with a 233 MHz PII, 128MB of SDRAM and a PCI SATA1 card. Video is provided by an AGP S3 Trio with composite out that I've owned since the Mid 1990's.
It's set up to triple boot MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 2k from the native IDE drive and Windows 98SE from a 40gb SATA drive . The onboard Yamaha sound gives decent Soundblaster compatibility plus native OPL3. The BIOS allows me to downclock the CPU to 133 mhz and disable the CPU cache for older games.
I've added a USB hub internally to allow most of the front case I/O to be hooked up, but the board doesn't have AC97 headers, so front mic and headphones aren't working. I've got a DVD drive and a CD-RW hooked up to the second native IDE channel. I've also got a 5.25 and 3.5" floppies installed on the floppy line. Power is supplied by an NOS ATX supply that has a -5V line. It was fairly difficult to find.
The case is pretty packed, but future plans are the installation of a GOTEK (although I dislike them, it's hard to argue with the ease of use) Possibly convert the "modern" partition from Windows 2k to XP (Again, I prefer 2K, but its hard to argue with 15 years of XP driver support) and the addition of an LS-120 drive to allow me to keep the option of booting from a 3.5' floppy with an added GOTEK.
I've got a Super Socket 7 ATX board waiting to build into a stupidly modern case with glass sides. I was going to use a K6-III that I've had for a few years sitting around, but I might just consider using a plain-jane Pentium MMX.
Nice!
Excellent video and so good to finally put a face to the voice, brings back so many memories, I'm currently going through all my stuff, I have a lot of Pentium stuff from this era and picking what to use to build a machine.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Really nice to have a (smiling) face to put to the voice!
Like you, I started with a Commodore64, then moved on to a 386/25 with a whopping 1MB of RAM in highschool, early 90's. A while later, a friend's father gave me a 486 DX2/66 with 16MB of RAM, which was light years beyond our little 386. In that 486 I had a Gravis UltraSound Classic with the 1MB memory expansion that I purchased off another friend's brother, as he was looking to upgrade to the GUS PnP. Around this time I had gotten into music tracking, and the GUS was *the* card to have for that - shoutout to Marc Schallehn (MAS of Prophecy) for UltraTracker, which took full advantage of the GUS.
In 1997 I got a Pentium 233MMX with 32MB, an AWE64 Gold, and later upgraded from an ATI card to a Voodoo3 2000 PCI. I used this system for a solid five years before upgrading to a Socket462 Athlon Thunderbird 750 on an Abit KT7A-RAID. And here I am, almost twenty years later enjoying your videos, which give me those warm fuzzy feelings as I also kick myself repeatedly for having just discarded all that old hardware than I'm now buying second hand all over again (mostly the expensive AWE64 and a lucky find Voodoo3 3000 AGP in a not well described eBay purchase).
Thanks for the videos Phil, I really enjoy everything you put out.
Thanks for sharing!
Well done! One of the few channels I watch start to finish.
It's my dream to build a home lab (I'm a network engineer) into a rack, but I also want to put in a retro PC using some kind of rackmount case. First I thought I would have to modify an ATX case to fit an AT or baby AT motherboard, then I got the idea of buying a smaller form factor PC and putting it on a shelf. But now I see the answer is obvious, just find an ATX socket 7 motherboard and use a standard ATX rackmount case.
Now I just need to find one for a reasonable price ... oh yeah, and buy an apartment large enough for a rack! 😄
In terms of your build, I think you've done a good job covering all the bases. If you couldn't find a board with AGP, then a PCI card would probably be fine, you'd just need to use the VGA input of your screen (or use an older model with a VGA input). Unless you can find one with DVI, but I guess that would be pretty rare.
I personally prefer the genuine OPL sound over the CQM/CT1978 sound. _[Insert why don't we have both meme here]_ Technically it's possible to have _two_ sound cards in one system, however I'm not sure how that would work in practice if you're using PNP cards. Obviously older non-PNP cards allow you to manually set the midi I/O port, IRQ and DMA, which would allow you to avoid conflicting with a PNP card like the AWE64. But I think the Adlib port is hard wired to I/O port 388/389h, so I'm not sure how that works with two cards in the system.
I would probably just use a SB16 card (with OPL3) and a Sound Canvas/MT32.
Philday is always a great day. Thank you for the continued content.
I love your focus on sound. Sound is such an important aspect of old games, and you touched on every reason you needed the hardware you have accurately.
Austria, UK, and Austraila? You get around, man.
Warms the heart seeing a vintage build like this. I had a AWE64 in my first PC. Cyrix PR200 (166mhz)
I'm thinking of changing the case, for some reason all my stuff is black and a bit boring 😃
@@philscomputerlab Nah, suits the build I recon!
@@philscomputerlab Oh AWE a AWE64 as much as I love classic Soundblaster opl/fm I would jump at thr chance to hear AWE again. my grandfather's XP machine had a 64 gold card, man playing songs on youtube was a blast on it
Yes a lot of games support the AWE directly and sound a step up from FM.
@@JohnSmith-xq1pz I remember at the time in the late 90s, musicians using the AWE64 having to manually adjust the audio tracks inside Cubase, so that each one started playing slightly after the previous to make them all play in sync. Later Soundblasters had better technology doing away with the need to adjust track delays / processing latency. However it was a great cheap entry level card for beginners, and those on a tight budget.
It's still very nice seeing your face all over again TBH. And it's so cool everyone's accepting of it!
Pentium MMX... never even heard of it until now. You're showing your age boio 😅😝
Cheers for the backstory about you and your brother playing old games. And those old games are definitely harder than today's ones. Even starting them was something of a learning curve. DOS = conveniently inconvenient LOL.
The layout of that Gigabyte case looks uncanny of the Coolermaster Elite 330. That case was used for my first games computer back in 2009. I reiterate, I got into computers VERY late. But better late than never hey. I had an Athlon X2 7750, 4GB DDR2 RAM, a 9400GT(I know, not a video card for any proper games haha), and a Sound Blaster Audigy 7.1, running on Windows Vista.
Great PC and video fella 👍
I have so many retro computers but my favorites would have to be my PMMX 233, 64MB EDO, 2MB S3Trio 64v2, 4MB Diamond Voodoo 1, ESS Audiodrive 1868, 40GB HDD system, and my P3 1.4, 512MB SDR, 64MB Voodoo 5 AGP, Sound Blaster Live 5.1, 64GB SD to IDE system. They span my childhood PC gaming experiences from throughout the 90s.
Another great video. I have just built a Socket 7 pc with a 233 MMX so your starter pack is just what I’m looking for 👍🏻
I would have never thought that Phil and I have the same hairstyle. Bald brothers for life!
😅
Very nice to see a face to the voice. Very envious of your sound set up - amazing. I've always liked the Awe 32 sound cards. Creative make really good cards. Keep the videos coming, love the content.
Great video as always. Really enjoying the new presentation format :)
Glad to hear it!
Danke Phil das ist wieder ein tolles Video :) Mein Pentium III System steht nun auch 👍
Hi and Greetings from Germany. I just finished Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlanis on my 486, last week. So nice to see it on your screen :-D For DOS gaming I'm using two computers. The first one is the mentioned 486 @ 160 MHz and Sound Blaster Pro 2.0. My first PC was a 486 and I played Keen4, Doom, Heretic, Duke3D and SimCity2000 . Then I have a machine for later games. And sure this has to be a Socket7 System with K6.2+ @600 MHz, Matrox + Voodoo2, SD AWE32 + Roland SC55. Back in the days I missed that era of late DOS 3D and early Windows 3D games completely. Because I jumped straight to a Pentium III 900 MHz and to UT99. Regarding MIDI: This topic was quite new for me and I learned a lot in your videos. Without your channel I guess I wouldn't have the Sound Canvas hooked to the AWE32 :-D
MIDI Music has a special charm. So it is the same thing for me like Vinyl for regular music. Who loves DOS Games needs MIDI.
Awesome :D
Another excellent video! Thanks Phil!
Like many who grew up in the 1980s, we started with a Commodore 64, then moved to an Amiga 1000 (with the 512k expansion) in mid-1986. Really wish I had kept these machines. We used the A1000 for nearly 9 years before moving to a Pentium 75/Windows 95 machine (specifically, an IBM Aptiva M-series), which I upgraded several times before building my own Socket 7 platform (AMD K6-3 450) in 1999 as I entered my freshman year of college. I still have this machine, and have built my own PCs ever since. After watching your video on Pentium 4 machines for retro gaming, I built 2 LGA775 machines based on the Pentium 4 520 (2.8 GHz). They dual-boot Windows 98SE/XP and work perfectly. They're fast enough to handle the games that ran like a slide show in the late 1990s (i.e., Flight: Unlimited), and give me a liquid-smooth experience with games like Need for Speed 4 (and I might add that network play with these machines is really fun). But I can also slow the machines down with DOSBox in Windows XP for speed-sensitive games like Wing Commander, etc. Using nGlide with ATI Radeon X800 series GPUs, legacy 3dfx support is very good for games that need it in Windows 98SE. The SoundBlaster Live! (with the Audigy2 ZS drivers you suggest in another video) provides a superb, cost-effective MIDI solution, allowing me to use my favorite soundfonts. Excellent video!
Pentium 4 FTW! Great hearing the X800 odes well with nGlide!
Phil never stop. Youre amazing. Good knoledge. Perfect presentation. Amazing videos! Thumbs up!
Wow, thanks!
I'm from a country in europe called romania. I'm sure you never heard of it but i can assure you that you have at least 1 fan here.all over the planet people apreciate your work. We salute you.keep up the good work.
Hi Phil!
My "Time-Machine" is an Intel 486 DX4/100 with 64MB RAM on an Asus VL/I-486SV2GX4 Motherboard.
I have mixed also old Hardware and modern components. The Case is a little bit show and shine.
It has a side Window and an UV-Light. Some of the old ISA Cards and RAM modules glow in UV-Light. That looks awesome ;-)
A GoTek as well as a DVD drive is also installed and for the HDD I use an IDE-CF Adapter.
(I dont wanted loud Harddrives in this system) this "Time-Machine" is very silent. ;-)
For sound I use the SB16 CT2290.
(I bought it from Hartlauer back the Days 1996). It was a complete Package in a big Box with CD-ROM Drive, Speakers and a fat Software-Package from Microsoft. (MS-Works, MS-Publisher, Encarta...etc)
All of the old components where back the days my daily PC.
And I am also proud that it is a VLB System. On this project I have done some Soldering.
(added a PS2/Mouse Port) and updated the BIOS for more compatibility. (UV EPROM)!
Greetings, EyeKeyFun
Viele Grüße aus dem Burgenland. :-D ;-)
Reading about Hartlauer, well that made my day 🙂 VLB is cool and IMO the way to go with a 486 instead of PCI.
I have the best of both worlds. My 486 rig (upgraded to AMD 5x86 133MHz) has an ESS688 and Sound Blaster AWE64 installed. The ESS688 has a real Yamaha OPL3 chip, so that covers most Adlib and OPL3 compatible sound generation. The AWE64 serves the wavetable sounds. I have a small patch cable going from the Line-out of the AWE64 to the line-in of my ESS688 so I can have sound coming from one output. The ESS 688 is on standard 220/5/1 address, while the AWE64 installed automatically on 240/7/3, and the AWE64 wavetable answers at the default 330H/620H addresses. The 240/7/3 is not really needed anyway, as digital sounds come from the ESS688 anyway. The operating system I chose for it is Windows 95 C OSR 2.5, which has a really good compatibility with General MIDI and AWE64, and the operating system itself services General MIDI compatible calls to DOS apps, so surprisingly even games without specific AWE compatibility can play MIDI sound tracks through the AWE. And everything "just works" running under Windows 95, which, given my past experience, was a pleasant change. But of course, I can boot to DOS any time if needed.
I follow you since the last 6 years... and now nice to meet you Phil... what a surprise!
Great to finally put a face to the voice, Phil! Loved the video. Your time machine videos were very helpful to me over the years when I started getting into retro PCs. 👍
My PC gaming journey started a little later than yours. I was more into NES/SNES in the early 90s, but did have an old monochrome IBM clone machine that I tinkered with on occasion and taught myself DOS with. It wasn't until about 1993 or so that I got really into PCs, with games like Wolf3D, Commander Keen and some of the Sierra classics. My best friend's Dad had a 486/33 and always had the latest games. In 1994 my family finally got a DX2/66 and I was thoroughly obsessed by that point 😀
Great video and nice setup! My favorite setup: Asus PVI-486SP3, Pentium 83Mhz Overdrive, VLB Tseng Et4000W32p, Creative AWE32 CT3980, and a real HDD with moving heads and spinning sound. Fav. games: Monkey Island, POP 1 & 2, all kind of flipper tables, Doom. 😉💪🏼
Hey Phil, nice to see a face to your videos! I have been running a similar build for a couple of years now as my main DOS gaming rig, even down to the FX5200 as a gpu. I found the FX5200 to have really good compatibility with DOS games even in Commander Keen and it can also play games like Duke3D in it's highest resolution which makes it really flexible. However, one thing to note that I learned just recently is the FX5200 will occupy a lot more upper memory than some other GPU's. Something like 30kb more which made a very significant difference in one of my builds. For example I was using a AG430HX motherboard which has integrated sound / graphics and has an upper limit of about 91k if I remember correctly. When using integrated graphics or adding a S3 Virge/DX, the upper memory limit drops to about 61k which is still probably enough. But the FX5200 seems to occupy twice the amount of upper memory which will drop the available upper limit to 31k. This means that when using LH on anything, even when using your Win98 Dos Utility, optical drivers will not be able to load out of conventional memory and it will be very difficult to run CD-ROM and loading a Sierra game for example. I struggled with this for a long time wondering why it was so difficult as I was unaware that the FX5200 was having this affect on upper memory. I discovered this by accident when working on my i430VX which does not have integrated gaphics, and actually has a larger upper memory limit out of the box. This is something I now keep in mind when choosing MB's and GPU's for my purely DOS gaming builds. Most the time there is plenty of upper memory, but I also like to play my games over etherDFS which also requires a large amount of drivers to be loaded into upper memory especially with packet drivers. I still keep my FX5200 ready and handy though as it is easy to swap out, and is nice to have on hand especially for later DOS games that utilize EMS.
Interesting! Did you try optimizing memory with MEMAKER or manually adding address spaces? Also, DOS 6.22 gives more memory than Windows 98 / DOS 7.1. Lots of little weird things with this hobby. Another good GPU is the Radeon 9200, over DVI it looks sharper but if you can, you should use VGA.
my biggest regret in vintage computing is not getting the soundcanvas when it was easy and affordable. i still want one really bad
Man, how much you helped me and whole Pc comunity. Respect!
Can't recall how many times Phil's videos have helped with configuring my retro space. Great to put a face to the name! Hi Phil!
Nice overview Phil, I like your practical no-nonsense approach to things.
Thank you 😊
My first experience with a PC was a 486DX 33mhz at my friend's house when I was about 10 years old. My first PC was a few years later with a Cyrix P150+ and Windows 95. I love this era of computing ❤
I don´t have too many DOS games i remember because i was born too late (1999).
But for this purpose i have my Compaq Armada 7770DMT which runs either DOS 7.1 + Windows XP or Windows 98 + Windows XP with two different hard drives.
The laptop has a multibay and hdd bay. Removing the drive is super easy and you just slide the other drive-caddy inside.
It´s meeting barely the minimum requirements to run Xp, but at least it gives me full USB 2.0 support for the PCMCIA card.
Data transfer is simple this way and organizing folders, games and stuff much more hassle free.
The hardware is perfectly compatible with DOS and the laptop form factor saves space.
The 800x600 TFT screen is just great for games.
Pentium MMX 233Mhz, 144MB RAM, 100Gb or 60GB or 20GB HDD (currently).
2D Graphics card with 2MB VRAM, 32bit colors within windows at native screen resolution.
Nice using a laptop for retro games 🙂
Great choices Phil. I'm busy with a socket 5 AT Pentium 200 non mmx, 2 x 32mb simm ram, awe64gold, Creative voodoo2, all in a perspex case. Really enjoy your channel , yup, my first pc was an imb pc-xt !
Whaaaaaat? I always thought, that you're 23 or 24. Your voice sounds very young to me. But very nice to see the face behind all the videos :-)
So good to see someone I heard in so many videos! Cheers!
Cool video and nice setup !
Born in 1986 I grow up with my dad's Atairi 520ST and Amiga 500 and my first computer was a 486 DX machine I think (with a matrox GPU !) then I got an AMD K6-2 with windows 98 wich from there I started building my own computers :) and I have a lot of cool memories from this period.
Thanks to your videos I found my self motivated to rebuild a Windows XP machine recently and the next one will be a MS-Dos/Windows 98 for sure.
Phil, thx to Your MEGA positive appereance Your YTchannel is even better. GOOD CHOICE! You are a tremendous person in retro community and the fact that You spend so much time on Your work gives me to be Your solid fan. Thanks and keep up with this great work.
Wow, thanks!
Very nice video Phil. Love the background stories and reasons why you chose components.
I grew up in the 90's. My first computer was a Packard Bell tower with a Pentium 233MMX running windows 95. I have fond memories of it running shareware versions of doom and duke3D. My retro PC consists of fast hardware that's able to run win98se natively.
Hey Phil, I'm glad you made this video-I've been here following most of the experiments and new things learned as you learn them, but summaries are useful now and then because the state of the art has changed over that long of a period of time. 😁
I started out trying to build something mostly period correct using the best combination of parts I could get my hands on affordably. Some of them are a bit mismatched and leave a little performance on the floor, like that I have a Voodoo 3 card which is a bit over-spec for a socket 7 machine … but I've got one, and the system I built can run some of those Glide-using Win98 games, so I'm absolutely going to take advantage of that.
I certainly could pick up a Sound Blaster card, but as you say they're not known to be the best-sounding. They are just the default option. I picked up an ESS Audiodrive that sounds good and has very high compatibility while being extremely cheap because it was a low-cost, single-chip, mostly PnP device in its day. Its FM is definitely a Yamaha clone, but not a bad-sounding one. I've also got one of those genuine Yamaha OPL4 cards, but the PCM support is incompatible with a couple of specific games that I wanted support for.
I'm not happy with the case I picked up. Got something in black since I figured it'd be easier to match, but it''s a period correct case and that means the front is actually beige plastic with a lame paint job. And it has all the fun of period era cases: Thick but very mild steel with lots of sharp edges, the distinctive ring of the U shaped metal cover, and the need to physically remove the hard drive cage to install 3.5 drives of any sort.
I've been saying for years that I want to sort of rebuild the system as a reverse-sleeper, but I hadn't found the case for it. Partly I think because it doesn't exist. What I think I actually want to do is get TWO cases: A Pentium 4 era case and its "modernish" retool that ripped out the drive cages and added glass to the side-that sort of thing. That or I stick the whole thing in my Enthoo Pro which has ONE drive bay and find a spot to shove a 2.5" SATA toaster in the back. … Ahha! Yes, Star-Tech has one. (Star-Tech: If there's some BS that might exist, and you need it, they probably make it. See also Silverstone.)
And yes, Silverstone DOES make one too! See what I mean? 🤣
Awesome writeup! It really is a journey :) The lack of drive bays is a real issue. At least you need one for the optical drive...
@@philscomputerlab Unless you build a SCSI system … but that intrudes on free memory for some DOS games. SCSI was great when I ran OS/2 or Linux, but lousy for DOS and games.
Hey Phil, thank you for taking the time to explain all of these.
One of the things I like most is your use of FX series cards, you have a lot of videos with them, here's to many more! 🏆🏆
🙂
Still rockin' my Leadtek WinFast A350XT TDH which is an FX5900XT bought in June 2004. I recently bought a replacement fan for it, and so its whisper quiet again and ready for another 18 years! 😂
@@EgoShredder I also have a 5900XT, from Gigabyte, and it's rocking inside a P4 build.
I have an NV Silencer 3 prepared for it, but Gigabyte's cooler is very nice, cool and quiet!
The FX5200 is really a good choice for pretty old hardware because it's got just enough hardware to fully implement DX9, but it's not very good at it. It's not spectacular the older APIs its more suited for (DX7/DX8/OpenGL 1.x), but it can run those titles well enough to keep up with the hardware you'd want for a DOS machine. And, because it was still built with a notion that Win98 users might be buying it, it's still got pretty decent DOS support.
Plus, the FX5200 was absolutely everywhere at the time it was a "current" card so there's a lot of them out there, but is widely considered to be A FLAMING PIECE OF CRAP by gamers trying to run the latest titles, so nobody wants the things. That makes them a cheap get for DOS/Win98 PCs which don't need anything better.
@@knghtbrd Another good card is the Radeon 9200 / SE / LE. Also cheap and even does DVI sharper. Over VGA they are all the same though.
Great video! I wouldn't have thought of that FX card for video, and I like that you can swap hard drives easily. One system I've been playing a lot of titles on lately is a restored IBM Aptiva E2U with a K6-2 (333MHz). I added a SB32 and connected it to my Athlon XP system with a Yamaha SW1000XG as a MIDI Synth. It has been great! Did my first stream with it last night. My Pentium III has an AWE 64 Gold with a SC-55 and Yamaha SW1000XG, and my 486 has a MT-32. I've gotten most of these systems up and running thanks to your site/videos!
I can't see the stream on your channel!
@@philscomputerlab I moved over to twitch a few months back. Had a lot of friends that stream there, so I went that route after experimenting with both. twitch.tv/mikboy018
Your DOS time machine is hands-down my favorite project and I took a strong liking to it from your 136-in-1 CPU video, so seeing this new video was a HUGE treat! In fact, it's what inspired me to pick up some retro hardware a couple of years ago so that I could get back into all the DOS gaming I grew up on as a little kid, and this project is such an ingenious way to have an authentic experience across multiple eras of DOS games without a massive hardware footprint.
I've modeled my build heavily after yours, but with some differences and it's not quite final yet:
- AWE64 Legacy and Gravis Ultrasound PnP Pro
- Voodoo 3 3000 AGP (experimenting with this and a S3 Virge DX alongside a Voodoo 1)
- Old school beige ATX tower complete with cone speaker for those *really* old DOS games that are still compatible
- CRT monitor
I don't have any MIDI modules yet, but I did manage to snag a license for Roland Sound Canvas VA before it migrated to Roland's cloud service, so I put that to use with your MIDI Emulator project.
You have made it so easy to reexplore gaming on DOS and early Windows platforms with as little hardware as possible, and it has been a blast playing these games with the experience I wish I had those years ago. Thank you so much for your world class content!
Awesome!
I’m glad Steve Balmer has found something to do to keep himself occupied since leaving Microsoft. ;)
Love the videos mate. I appreciate the Aussie availability/costing that comes with your content as well.
awesome vid, thanks for your efforts and sharing, your personality shines thru! pc magazines were essential to me also in those dark days before the modems...
It's nice to note you speak with both Austrian and Aussie accent. My first ever computer was a Pentium 166 MMX in a Dell Optiplex Gn+ from 1997/8. I was an intern at a large multinational accounting firm. We just started computerisation. We used to have a computer room where there were 20 desktops shared by 200 staff, whilst waiting for new laptops for every staff over a 3 year period. One day, I noted our MIS took 4 units and were about to throw them in a dumpster at the back of our office. I asked for permission to take all 4 home and was OK'ed as all 4 were faulty in one form or another. I started disassemble each and learn the internals of a PC. Eventually, I figured which parts were faulty in each of the 4 and realised i could mix & match their parts to make 2 perfectly working units that's better than new.
I turned one unit into a home modem dial-up server, fax server & file server. I gave the other unit to my sister's friend's nephew who needed a computer for his university studies. I used it until 2007 when the PATA HDD failed. I didn't replaced the PATA HDD since I have my own laptop by then. I'd kept it in storage and shortly after, left for another country to work.
I would be retiring end of this year, and return to my childhood home. I remembered that Dell with the Pentium 166 MMX that started my knowledge in computers. I plan to make it run again and was researching in UA-cam when your video was recommended. I had also forgotten about the need to a PATA to SATA adapter as shown in your video. I would need one to connect SATA drives into those PATA interfaces.
by the way, did you encounter any limitations to the size of SATA SSD ? I supposed the smallest sized 128GB SATA SSD should be OK.
I believe any OS, programs and games from that era would still work in the DELL Optiplex Gn+ but not much use for anything connected and modern. I plan to try DSL and Puppy Linux to see how much more it can do.
Thanks for sharing your story! Even smaller than 128 would be recommended, these old machines have hardware as well as software capacity limitations. You could look into buying IDE to SD card adapter and using 32GB SD card instead.
@@philscomputerlab thanks. didn't know there's SD to IDE adapter as I can't get these in my locale. We do have IDE to SATA and SD to USB but not SD to IDE.
@@DilbertCronicles Yea these days a lot of gadgets are only available online on places like eBay or Amazon.
A very nice Machine Phil. My first was a Pentium 133 and Windows 95. Thanks for the info on the Roland and all the Videos you make I always learn something new from them.
Pentium 133 was also my first Pentium. I built that machine after coming from an AMD 486DX4!
She's a looker. Great spec. Great to see your face (again). Really enjoying this new work you've been producing.
Pentium MMX and Socket 7 videos are always interesting. Like !
Glad you think so!
It's good to see you in front of the camera Phil, it makes your videos more personal. Well done!
With the Roland MPU-401/AT in this retro PC, an additional Waveblaster-type card should have gone in of course 🙂 as it is the perfect card for it.
You provided some very good and practical tips for anyone looking to build a versatile DOS gaming PC. Maybe it's time for me too to build a Pentium MMX machine, as I have plenty of parts to do so. I just a suitable PC case. I have mostly been using Pentium II systems for DOS lately, although I don't run the very old DOS games on it.
Keep up the good work Phil!
It's hard to find the one perfect MS-DOS/Windows 9x machine that can run the greatest games from the 1980s-1990s, including the early 3D accelerated games. Yes, there's DOSBox for modern machines, but the biggest problems lie with the early Windows 9x games and early 3D accelerated games that rely on ancient operating system/graphics/sound libraries (for games that haven't been rewritten and sold on digital distribution platforms). For me, this means several machines from the mid-1990s to about 2004, all networked together. This makes for great retro gaming LAN party experiences, and, with DOSBox SVN builds supporting NE2000 networking, it's easy for a modern PC to join a LAN party with older Windows 9x machines running IPX network gaming sessions (i.e., Doom 1/2, Duke Nukem 3D, Descent, etc.). As legacy hardware prices continue to climb, it would be really neat to see projects like "PCem" continue to improve.
Good on ya Phil. Your contributions to the community are invaluable. Great to see your happy face in your most recent videos.
Hey Guys! All these new videos, and getting to finally "meet" Phil! Sweet!
Love this new format Phil, awesome work!
Hi Phil, I'm really really surprised by how similar my setup is! I have a Socket 7 with a Pentium 200 MMX in which, of course, I use your 136 in 1 project :). My main focus is also MIDI, and that is the reason why I have a MPU-401AT card hooked to a MIDI splitter, which goes to my MT-32, SC-55, SC-88vl and Yamaha MU80 (all of them connected to my speakers through a mixer nearly identical to yours). The difference is that I use a Sound Blaster 16 (CT2290) instead of an AWE, and a S3 Virge with a Voodoo 1 for some 3dfx glory :D. What a great machines do we have!! :)
Nice setup 🙂 The S3 Virge is perfect and with the Voodoo you can play Tomb Raider, Descent, Screamer 2 and a few other DOS games, very nice.
Nice to see your face Phil, and interesting to hear your stories! I've been watching your videos for a couple of years now and I just wanted to say that I like them a lot. Keep up the good work!
Great video! That is a great retro machine and thanks for sharing your story for why you chose the components! I'm starting to feel a little nostalgic...maybe I should pull my old PC out of the closet (not as old as your retro build). Would be like opening up a time capsule!
Good luck! It's a really fun hobby and so many cool games. But I actually like playing with the gear more than actually playing the games 😇
We had a 486 DX/50 in the household. Had some sort of Cirrus Logic SVGA capable card and a soundblaster clone. It came with 4MB Ram but we later upgraded to 8MB. However I had a C128 myself (only ever used it in C64 mode, though) and absolutely loved it. I actually finished Giana Sisters at least once back in the days but I also played Zak McKracken on it and many other games.
When I saw this video, I thought maybe you were interviewing someone based on the thumbnail lol. Nice to put a face to the voice, thnx Phil!
I've been following your guide for the 136-in-1 with a Pentium MMX 233 and thanks to that, I've put together a really enjoyable system myself - a Socket 7 board with options for a FSB as low as 50MHz, which at 2x leaves my system at 100MHz, and then in the other direction I've even been successfully overclocking the CPU to 250MHz with a 75MHz FSB at 3.5x. Running at 100MHz and disabling the L2 cache and disabling everything with Setmul, I can get as low as 8.6 on 3DBenchmark and easily run something as slow as Day of the Tentacle, then on the other end, putting the Voodoo 1 I've put in there to good use and running games as late as Unreal. I've also put in two ISA sound cards - a Sound Blaster 16, which provides the 16-bit digital sample playback but also has an OPL3, then a Sound Blaster Pro clone with a non-buggy MPU-401 interface for the MIDI.
I have Windows 95 on it as that's the Windows version I experienced first, and after installing the USB supplements and getting the networking set up, it's been a dream to work with, and I'm not really missing any conveniences that come with Windows 98 like people like to make out! Most DOS games may be before my time, though there were still a few I grew up with that do seem to have some speed-sensitivity, and experiencing those and my childhood Windows software again has been wonderful. Thanks Phil!
Also interesting that you're using USB keyboard and mouse - I found them to have quite a delay when trying them out before, but I'll give them another try. I also actually originally put an FX 5200 into this system, as I had one spare and wanted a nice 1280x1024 desktop, and it's certainly nifty to get DVI/HDMI out on a DOS machine! I've since switched to the S3 Virge/DX that I got bundled in with my Voodoo 1, since that felt more fitting for the time, but it's nice to see I'm not the only one to try that.
Now, if only we could find a way to get digital audio output (of all sound) within pure DOS! (even if it involved sending the audio to another card within the PC, such as how a SB Live! can work with DOS games under Windows)
Thanks for all the videos, research and playing around, Phil!
Nice with the 50x2 MHz! The S3 card will work better with a few games like Commander Keen 🙂
You know... I have a similar-era machine. P200MMX, S3 Trio, Voodoo 1, AWE64. I built it with the greatest compatibility in mind but had the power to run late-era DOS games. I hadn't used it much lately and was considering selling it off. Was thinking of using my 486SX laptop for the older games and using my Win98 rig for the few late-era DOS games that I do still play from time to time but watching this video changed my mind. I'll keep it around :) there's just so much that it's capable of doing and I'm just not going to get the same experience on another machine.
I do need to figure out a good way to capture VGA though, mainly because I have everything routed through a 4 port KVM that only does VGA. It would allow me to capture all my retro machines rather than just this one.
To answer your question though - my first x86 PC was a Sharp 286 laptop around 1990-1992. I was only like 6-8 years old but I could write a few simplistic BASIC programs with it. Got a 386 later on then went up from there.
I always wanted a retro pc
My first pc was a 486dx4, I had it when my brother bought a pentium 100, it was old when I got it. The 486 had no sound, no cd rom. Then I bought a "multimedia kit" as they were called, with cdrom and sound card. The oldest pc games I started with as a kid, as far as I can remember, were: Wolfenstein 3D, IndyCar Racing. Later I was able to get Doom, Terminal Velocity, Wacky Wheels, Sim City 2000, The Need for Speed, Duke Nukem 3D. That's when this pc started to be slow and I was able to acquire a pentium 200, I remember games like Quake, Screamer 2, Theme Hospital.
Awesome!
I use a 2004 eMac and a real MT32, very versatile combination. OS9, X, DOSBox, ScummVM, source ports, Amiga etc... My favorite game is Frontier right now, great video!
Phil, I really like your mesh slot covers, they really look sharp.
Nice video Phil. I've forgotten more DOS than I can remember so thats not happening any more. It's Slot 1 stuff that always get my interest the most . My pet is a dual slot 1 running 900mhz P3s , maxed ram at 1gb, Maxtor 7200rpm x4 on a Highpoint 100 Raid card and a Geforce 2 gts. 2 other rigs running slot 1 and voodoos. Win XP Shuttle rig with a 2600 Athlon and FX5700 Ultra. Various other things kicking around. It's more the playing around with the hardware combinations and , as you said, getting the ideal setup for the era that you couldn't afford at the time than the gaming side . That dual slot rig has been apart more times than i care to remember, always something new to try, or buy.
Woke up not only to a new LGR video but Phils Computer Lab face reveal! It's going to be a good day
I started on a 386 as well (Keen3-5, Grand Prix Circuit, Golden Axe) but my favourite era was around 1997-2001 (Unreal, Quake II-III, Outlaws, NHL98, Half Life, Tony Hawk Pro Skater). My own first PC was a 166MMX with a Banshee, but it struggled with at the time newer titles. Now I have a PII 350 with Voodoo 3 and I find that it is a good setup for playing almost everything from 1990 to 2001, except for very speed sensitive games (Wing Commander).
I remember Golden Axe, it uses the PC speaker for sound effects on the PC 😅
Socket 7 is the lucky socket!
Yes I remember being excited about this platform back on VOGONS when everyone was building high performance, and expensive, PCI 486 machines 🙂
Nice Friday video Phil! A great respect for your passion on retrocomputing.
Living in a country where computers were not common in homes until early 2000s, I grew up with Pentium M, ATI Radeon graphics and onboard AC'97 audio, but I'm more interested on the things on 90s to early 2000s computer books. That's where my fascination on retrocomputing comes from.
Now I have a Core 2 Duo system with Intel 865 motherboard, ATI X800 XT graphics and Yamaha YMF724 sound card with integrated OPL3 and XG synth. I use it to play old games under Windows 2000 (however, Win98 does not work properly) and try old Linux distros. For old Macintosh, I have a Mac mini G4 with OS 9, and a PowerBook G4 with OS X 10.4. I'm planning for building a Pentium 4 system to play games under DOS and Windows 98.
Thank you for expanding upon your time machine-type retro PC endeavors!
Several years ago they were part of what inspired me to dive deep into the hardware speed-tuning for CPU-sensitive games.
My time machine is a dinky-sounding Celeron 800 with GeForce2 MX and an SBLink-connected ESS Solo-1 (a replica of my first private PC in 2001), but after years of Throttle/CPUSPD/FDAPM-type chipset throttling software capabilities "research", it can pretty much 100%-correctly run any PC game from 1980 to 2001 (excluding those requiring a real pre-VGA card or a pre-Pentium CPU, of course) and I love it :)
Awesome!
What could be better than a retro PC 🤔? - A time machine: two in one.
As always thanks for the video, you've made my day 🍉😉👍!
Happy Friday Phil! Thanks for sharing details of your DOS gaming build and for sharing some of your personal history 👍
Glad you enjoyed it
Hi Phil. Your passion for retro computing is really great to see. I started with a C64 and then went on to an IBM PS/2 model 50z with a 286 CPU, VGA graphics, 1MB RAM and 60MB HDD. I still have a bunch of retro ThinkPads and a few IBM compatibles with most being Pentium 3 or 4. To be honest, I'm still chasing my ultimate retro build being a Pentium MMX class machine from IBM. You're really lucky to have so much rare Roland equipment and I'm with you on Sound Blaster its also my favorite sound card brand still.
Every time I hear you say a German word I'm thinking "he sounds Austrian"! Great to hear it confirmed ;)
Greetings from Germany! :)
We got our first IBM compatible in 1992. It was a Packard Bell 486. Loved that machine. I still have it. I regards to retro, I have PCs for each different era, but I'm weird, and I have space to do so. Curious question. In regards to disabling the cache on the motherboard to slow the machine down to 386 speeds, does the ICD/ICE.exe programs not work? I have used the program for years and it worked for what I am doing, but I traditionally use it with slower machines than the Pentium. Also, does the SetMul program you are using work with the AMD K6 with MMX? Excellent video as always. Keep up the good work!
Yes SETMUL will work with your CPU! It's just that with the Pentium MMX it has additional options that give you wider range of speed settings.
Great video again Phil, feel like I'm repeating myself but you have such a great channel, your content and knowledge is just excellent and great to see you in front of the camera now. 👍
I started with a 486 then on to a Pentium 100 and on and on it goes as we all know, the favourite era for me is the early 3d acceleration era from 96-2000, anything from P1 to P3 and now I have a quite ridiculous amount of parts and systems from mainly that era but also some XP stuff up to around 07 and I buy/repair build and sell stuff to fund buying more, it's a great hobby and one that seems to have gotten more popular the last few years and I think you've certainly contributed massively to that which is a great achievement. ✌
Great to finally see your face Phil!
Nice to finally get to know you better, phil.
Btw personally i'd pick a pentium 3 dos build because i am not really into the earlyer games and i want some good performance for heavier software like emulators (yes, there are emulators that runs on ms-dos).
You inspired me to build my own time machine. So a fast PC that you slow down for compatibility with the old stuff. Time travelling between the different era's as you go.
Mine was set out to beat the old in-1 video. And a few years later the build is complete and plays sopwith at the correct speed. But it also plays Crysis 1 on low :D
In my case its an Athlon 64 x2 4200, and CPUSPD to throttle it down. Combined witb the ASUS A8V motherboard for its excellent Windows 98 compatibility. A 6800GT AGP and a Voodoo 2 to fill in the gapps. For soundcards I went with the Audigy 1 and ESS Solo-1 with the ESS connected to the Audigy's line-in. Gives me fantastic dos compatibility while also having EAX, soundfonts, etc.
OS wise I have gotten most of them running. Windows 3.1, 95, NT4, 98, 2000, XP, 7 and even 10. And I am sure it can do ME, Vista and 8 if I ttird.
But, in case of the stuff older than 98 SE I do have to really fight the system and sacrefise components. So on those only the ESS is working with generic VBE drivers for video and only the Voodoo 2 for 3D. On the Windows Vista and higher end I loose the ESS and Voodoo 2.
Oh wow, what a great time machine! The Athlon 64 is indeed a great Retro platform and you've got there. The Voodoo 2 is great to add 3D acceleration under Windows 98. Amazing!
@@philscomputerlab It does have some challenges yet to overcome. Mainly the Voodoo 2, I have my own modified Voodoo 2 driver package that works very well in this machine. It by default clocks the Voodoo 2 down slightly to 85mhz to prevent overheating. For DOS the Glide driver gives you an option if you want the older more compatible glide driver you recommend on your website, or a newer very specific one compatible with fast frontside busses. My machine requires the latter. The biggest problem is that many of the games feature a static linked Voodoo 2 driver which then crashes on this PC.
The solution is obvious but not simple, the frontside bus needs to be slowed down enough to make the card run at a speed the card can operate properly at with those games. There is VIAFSB, but I have not tried it yet and my chipset is not listed as supported. So hopefully in the future that becomes a thing. Another thing that does work is slowing the machine down enough with CPUSPD so these games start, but then the rest of the system is to slow to play them. So a potential option is a slowdown utility that only lasts for a few seconds, long enough to boot the game up. And then seeing how well that works, unfortunately I do not know of any such utilities.
For 3D Acceleration I also of course have the 6800GT which does a great job in many newer games, but the Voodoo 2 has been fantastic in games where its texture support or driver compatibility fails me.
If I can find enough time this year I may make a doscember video about this PC, since I have been wanting to present it to the world for a while now. The only thing that exists at the moment is a video of me installing the Windows XP drivers for it.
I also started my PC journey with a 386 and DOS 5.0
This is really impressive. I am only 21 so the first computer I ever used was some dell laptop that had windows 98 on it (I still have it too!). I played a little bit on sonic cd on there, and I remember trying to play some buzz lightyear game but it didn't run on there. We also had a windows xp desktop a bit later and that's where I first started playing minecraft, though it could barely run on there either. So in reality, "retro" for me is still relatively easy to get working. It helps that I did a lot of stuff on consoles when I was a kid too, even easier to get those kinds of games up and running one way or another.
Good to see your face! Always wondered what you looked like!
With the DOS/98SE/XP PC - formerly my uncles from 2001 - that I've refurbished for my Mum's use (it's primarily for all of her 25 to 32 year-old games which we still have - and all work on the build) I've stuck with:
- the original Duron 1000 (multiplier pencil unlocked, and not with the original cooler - it was extremely inadequate)
- upgraded it to 512MB RAM (original 256MB was reduced to single stick working at half capacity)
- replaced the CT5200 AudioPCI with my recently purchased, second and pre-emptively re-capped ESS AudioDrive 1868f (Guon 9610 Rev-C, MIDI is glorious now)
- fully recapped OG Gigabyte GA-7IXEH
- Pioneer DVR-106 (8x DVD R/RW)
- 50x Asus CD-ROM (needed for bootable CD)
- Sony 3.5" FDD
- 20GB Seagate U series X (very slow seek times - OK in 98SE though)
- OG IBM 40GB 120GXP (kept with Windows XP
- Belkin NEC based USB 2.0 card
- Realtek gigabit NIC (new and driver CD goes from 95-Win7)
- Original 300W PSU with the fan bearing oiled (silent now - also has connectors for Athlon SMP mobo and ATX 4 pin)
- Original case, with ball bearing front fan from early LGA775 P4 machine
- 256MB 5.1GB/sec FX 5700LE (RIP original GF2 MX200 - cracked fan, blown caps, damaged core)
The only cost has been the capacitors, NIC, USB card, RAM, 128bit AOpen FX 5700LE (bought dirt cheap), this particular 1868f and time. Everything else I already had given to me years ago by family and family friends.
Overall, extremely cheap compared to what it'd cost to buy everything now. It's actually been cheaper than what it'd cost to get the last few parts for a period-perfect 386 (still got some parts from my Mum's first and late 80's PC).
Very nice!
Hi Phil. My first computer was Slot 1 Celeron 433 paired with integrated SiS 6326 with 8 mb local memory. Sound was also integrated (SoundPro+). It was a PCChips mobo, they tended to integrate all in one. The first game was Quake 2. I have completed it with just a keyboard! I used arrow keys to move and to enjoy my friend I let him to press Control to shoot enemy. I also used a-z buttons to look up sometime. Fantastic!
For me it all started when using my mates Mitsubishi desktop pc, it had a Pentium 90 Cpu and run Windows95, i had the must fun customizing the OS, it was a beautiful looking computer with its matching Mitsubishi CRT screen
That's a really nice setup. A atx socket 7 seems way easier to work with. I have a working at socket 7 board with a pentium mmx. That thing only gives you a at keyboard out of the back. Thinking about fitting it into a modern case also for convenience. Thankfully your videos educate me enough to maybe even get it up and running lol. Not easy jumping on this platform when my first pc at home was a socket 478. Did play those old games and used the older oses at friends or at school. Get alot of nostalgia from these videos alone. Thank you for the great retro content.