Building myself a Pentium

[eightbit]

Now that I have a very nice 486 I have now moved on to my next project....which is to build a nice Pentium 1 machine! 

 

I purchased this motherboard as NOS some time ago and did not realize that this revision of the board only supports 3.3V CPU's, so no MMX CPU's unfortunately as they run at 2.8V. A shame as I have a 233MHz MMX CPU right here too. Oh well.

 

Anyway, the best that this can be is a Pentium 200MHz non-MMX. So that is what is in here now along with 32MB of memory and an S3 Virge/DX card to start. I have other parts (sound cards, etc.) but this was simply a quick test to ensure the board, CPU and ram were working properly.

 

Now I have to obtain a case. I can very well go with another of the exact same case I used on the 486 and I know that will work out well, but ehh....I really don't want identical towers. I can also get a new age case and either leave out or replace the I/O panel, but I really am not feeling that idea either. This motherboard is a very early Pentium board. It has onboard IDE, floppy, com ports, even PS2 mouse header. But no I/O on the rear except the large keyboard connector....much like the 486 board I just used.

 

So, I have been holding out for a true vintage (either old and in nice condition or NOS) AT case. And, what I really would love is a desktop style case. I have owned a few desktop style Pentium machines back in the heyday (Gateway primarily) and while they were a PITA to work with sometimes I am willing to deal with that because I really love the form factor. 

 

I'll keep the thread updated as I get this machine together. 

Edited April 21, 2022 by eightbit

[wierd_w]

Stick with ISA sound. I know you have several to pick from now.

 

PCI cards dont behave right in pure DOS.

 

IMO pentium 200 is a bit fast. You will need moslo or similar on some games.

[DragonGrafx-16]

18 hours ago, wierd_w said:

Stick with ISA sound. I know you have several to pick from now.

 

PCI cards dont behave right in pure DOS.

 

IMO pentium 200 is a bit fast. You will need moslo or similar on some games.

I use a 200MHz CPU just fine in pretty much every DOS game I play. Sure, it can't run the earliest of DOS games but eh. So, no I don't believe it is too fast. Though I have a K6 so the Pentium may be faster for some things. But a 200Mhz CPU is perfect for mid to late 90s DOS gaming.

[Keatah]

Sounds good. It will be interesting to see what graphics and sound card end up in the final rig.

 

I have some nostalgia for the first Pentium machines 60, 66, and 90. And I briefly had one back in the day as an upgrade. Mobo, RAM, CPU. The rest I had to cannibalize from my 486 due to funds. I didn't like that state of affairs. So I gave up on it, returned (or sold-back) the parts, and "restored" the 486 to its former glory.

 

That.. And that technology was moving rather quickly. Higher speeds were around the corner and I was building interest in the Pentium-Pro. Though P-Pro would never penetrate the consumer market like earlier stuff. I set my sights on saving for a P-Pro. I got as far as a printed manual. And by the time I had enough stashed away, the PII was right around the corner. So I bought into that machine. It was one of my first homebuilt rigs, so it wasn't the "best" machine. But it was very good and didn't disappoint.

 

It was an inspiring machine in several ways. It had AGP and that kinda encouraged me to spend too much on graphics cards! I loved that the chipset was engraved with "secret" on it. Was my first real "exposure" to BGA mounting technology. I was able to play Star Raiders in emulation at more than full speed - not that I did such a thing other than to demonstrate the extra power and short work it made of something the 486 struggled to do. And the big black S.E.C.C was futuristic. And of course it had all the features of the P-Pro like Speculative Execution, MMX, big 512K cache, and more. Quake and other early 3D games were running properly fast now. And there was the excitement of a new formfactor. Despite having been ripped and gouged by the local computer store, I again, like with the 486, felt deeply enriched by the whole experience.

 

I like to say I have the machine today, but it's morph throughout the dotcom era and the following 7 years after it ended. with the only thing remaining is the SB-AWE 64 Gold and the case and various fitments. Though I could put it back to its original config, I'm happy with the PIII and BX mobo in there now.

 

I consider the Pentium 233 MMX to be the the top of the line Pentium. That just because a month or two later the PII was out. And the Pentium 300 (Tillamook) wouldn't come out till 6 months after that. Almost like an afterthought. Like they needed a filler product for a new process node. Semantics and first-hand experience on my part I suppose.

 

So 200 or 233MHz is a great speed. But MMX (for me) is a must-have. Always big on the latest instruction sets.

Edited April 23, 2022 by Keatah

[MrMaddog]

On 4/22/2022 at 11:28 PM, Keatah said:

That.. And that technology was moving rather quickly. Higher speeds were around the corner and I was building interest in the Pentium-Pro. Though P-Pro would never penetrate the consumer market like earlier stuff. I set my sights on saving for a P-Pro. I got as far as a printed manual. And by the time I had enough stashed away, the PII was right around the corner. So I bought into that machine. It was one of my first homebuilt rigs, so it wasn't the "best" machine. But it was very good and didn't disappoint.

 

How were the Pentium Pros for DOS games really?

 

I remember at the time someone from a local church wanted to sell his P-Pro and even showed me a DOS game (Cyberia) running on it.

 

I really needed a PC for college and eventually to make games professionally but was worried about the "slow" performance of 16-bit DOS because of the stuff I read.

 

I know looking back it was dumb to always want the latest & greatest tech but PC's were moving so fast that I was afraid of being stuck with an obsolete machine that wouldn't be able to run anything sold in stores, much like I went through with the unsupported Atari computers.

 

 

[Keatah]

16-bit games were on par with equivalent MHz Pentium 1. 32-bit games and the upcoming 3D games really cruised! Just a little bit behind the Pentium II 233. The early 3D accelerators were matched pretty well. Quake and Unreal and whatever used the FPU just flew right by. The FPU, Speculative Execution, Cache, and Memory Subsystem were nextgen compared to original Pentium 1.

 

An issue with P6 architecture chipsets was that you had to run FastVid to enable linear framebuffering and some other minor tweaks to get that good performance. This was also an issue on the Pentium II platform. It's a well-known thing.

 

The VS440FX was/is a solid board for P-Pro usage. Can't speak for others.

[Keatah]

11 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

I know looking back it was dumb to always want the latest & greatest tech but PC's were moving so fast that I was afraid of being stuck with an obsolete machine that wouldn't be able to run anything sold in stores, much like I went through with the unsupported Atari computers.

There were a few times I bought what I thought was the going to be the latest hardware for a while. But during those days I was caught off-guard again and again. There were even times I got something home and the same week learned of something faster and better. The same week! And I'd just return/sell the items and get the new stuff. Sometimes I hadn't even had the opportunity to open the stuff up.

 

It was an untenable situation. But still fun..working through the speed grades..PII 266, 350, 450. PIII 450, 700, 850, and maybe more. Eventually topping out at 1400. Imagine that! Just a few short years prior in 1993/1994 I was hacking on a 486 DX2/50, the notion of a clock-doubled chip seemed like mystical magic.

 

The whole PC thing was so professional compared to the 8/16 bit rigs I had earlier. There was so much infrastructure and accessories and parts. Parts! Parts! Parts! And even though there wasn't any one "centralized" area for support I didn't miss any of it. Support was given by whomever made the cards or parts or software. Guys at the computer store.. Each software publisher.. Each major manufacturer.. All had something to offer.

 

This was kind of the way with Apple II, but on a much smaller scale.

[Dopy25]

Just heard this gem again recently and it your post reminded me of it.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpMvS1Q1sos

Edited April 27, 2022 by Dopy25

[eightbit]

Ahh, finally have a case coming so this build is coming soon!

 

I ended up purchasing one more of the same new old stock case I used with the 486 build. It was the last one and I just received a work bonus so perfect timing.

 

I have some parts together already for this (in no particular order):

 

1. Diamond Monster Voodoo 1

2. Diamond Monster Sound PCI with Diamond MIDI board addon

3. Creative CT6610 Permedia 2 PCI video card (4MB I believe)

4. 32MB RAM

5. Pentium 200

6. A bunch of other stuff!

 

This will be fun! I've been hyped up to build this after having a blast with the 486 build...which by the way makes me happy every day

 

 

[leech]

On 4/22/2022 at 12:05 AM, wierd_w said:

Stick with ISA sound. I know you have several to pick from now.

 

PCI cards dont behave right in pure DOS.

 

IMO pentium 200 is a bit fast. You will need moslo or similar on some games.

There are 'some' PCI cards that have a connection called SB-Link and the motherboard has to have it too.  This will allow a PCI card to work correctly in DOS Mode.  ebay seems to have two cards at 214USD though... oof. 

 

DOS era gaming really is annoying.  Let's take the Ultima series for an example.  1-6 will actually run on an 8088.  (Not that I think 6 would be enjoyable).  7 jumped the requirements to a 386.  And it uses its own memory management unless you use the expansion, which is a bit better at not being so picky, but it is for sure very much tied to clock speeds.  If you wanted physical machines to cover all eras correctly,  you probably need a 286, 386, 486 and Pentium 1-3.  I kind of think once we hit pentium era software, they figured out how to not make things too fast. 

 

From what I saw online, an AMD k6-III @ 450 is about right as you can disable cache and make it 486 speeds.  With athat and moslo, you should be able to pull it off.

 

In my search for such a system... I now have 4 motherboards I need to recap!

[eightbit]

I have never really had any issues with the SB16 emulation that the Soundblaster Live! PCI series of cards provides. I have not tested them "rigorously" or anything, but from my memory I have never had any issues there.

 

As a matter of fact I just installed a SB Live! Value 4670 in a PIII machine I acquired (a Compaq Presario 5000) and from my brief testing of the SB16 emulation it seems fine to me. On that machine I would have no choice anyway as all it provides are four PCI slots

 

For this P1 build however I have decided to stick to ISA sound. The Monster PCI sound card has no SB16 emulation and I was not aware of that. Oh well...that card will live somewhere else at some point

 

I will probably stick the ISA Rockwell sound card (very rare sound card...not a modem combo) in this as I was extremely impressed with it!

 

 

[zzip]

I have two different Soundblaster Live cards,  one model SB0100 and the other SB0220.    The SB0220 works better all around and SB0100 had some issues (I forget exactly what they were though).

 

In retrospect SB Live was kind of a pain in the ass though.   Too many audio controls in its mixer  and difficult to get all the settings right.  One app might be too loud and another too quiet, want the mic to work? you need to get the settings just right for that.   Also had a TV card-  getting the sound on that to play and record also was tricky.  Had to keep notes on exactly which devices needed to be enabled for which purpose, and what levels should be set.

[leech]

53 minutes ago, zzip said:

I have two different Soundblaster Live cards,  one model SB0100 and the other SB0220.    The SB0220 works better all around and SB0100 had some issues (I forget exactly what they were though).

 

In retrospect SB Live was kind of a pain in the ass though.   Too many audio controls in its mixer  and difficult to get all the settings right.  One app might be too loud and another too quiet, want the mic to work? you need to get the settings just right for that.   Also had a TV card-  getting the sound on that to play and record also was tricky.  Had to keep notes on exactly which devices needed to be enabled for which purpose, and what levels should be set.

Old IBM clones were such pieces of crap, I still do not understand why they became more popular than the much easier to use Amiga, ST and maybe even the Mac.  If everything had been less about a power hungry monopoly, and software houses had coded their office applications for all platforms, the world would be a bit different and we would have choices today...

I skipped most of it so am playing with it now.. had an STe until about '95... and started using Linux in '97.

[zzip]

23 minutes ago, leech said:

Old IBM clones were such pieces of crap, I still do not understand why they became more popular than the much easier to use Amiga, ST and maybe even the Mac.  If everything had been less about a power hungry monopoly, and software houses had coded their office applications for all platforms, the world would be a bit different and we would have choices today...

Well there were two kinds of people,  those who liked the tech and those who wanted a computer for a specific purpose.

 

The people who were into tech tended to shun PC until maybe around the 386 era.   But the people who just wanted to run a specific app wanted the least muss and fuss to get there.  For them it's great if they can get the same app they use at work running on a different computer, but even better if they can have it running on the same computer, that way they don't have to learn two OSes and the experience is the same.

 

It seems like the "app" people far outnumber the "technie" people so when the clone market drove down the prices the sales exploded.

 

And we might think GUI is easier, but that's wasn't necessarily the case for everybody.   I remember when I started working was during the era when Windows was replacing DOS PCs,  I'd have users who knew exactly step-by-step what to type and what buttons to push to get a task done.  They'd have it all written down in a notebook!  But if the computer did anything unexpected they'd be lost.

 

Trying to show those people how to use Windows was a nightmare!  If Windows rearranged their icons, they were lost!  If a window showed up minimized or stretched to weird weird dimensions,  or if the Window was switched to view detail instead of view icons or any of the hundreds of other things that can happen in a GUI that could be at odds with what they wrote down in their notebook,  it was a panicked call to a techie like me to get them out of the mess.

[leech]

31 minutes ago, zzip said:

Well there were two kinds of people,  those who liked the tech and those who wanted a computer for a specific purpose.

 

The people who were into tech tended to shun PC until maybe around the 386 era.   But the people who just wanted to run a specific app wanted the least muss and fuss to get there.  For them it's great if they can get the same app they use at work running on a different computer, but even better if they can have it running on the same computer, that way they don't have to learn two OSes and the experience is the same.

 

It seems like the "app" people far outnumber the "technie" people so when the clone market drove down the prices the sales exploded.

 

And we might think GUI is easier, but that's wasn't necessarily the case for everybody.   I remember when I started working was during the era when Windows was replacing DOS PCs,  I'd have users who knew exactly step-by-step what to type and what buttons to push to get a task done.  They'd have it all written down in a notebook!  But if the computer did anything unexpected they'd be lost.

 

Trying to show those people how to use Windows was a nightmare!  If Windows rearranged their icons, they were lost!  If a window showed up minimized or stretched to weird weird dimensions,  or if the Window was switched to view detail instead of view icons or any of the hundreds of other things that can happen in a GUI that could be at odds with what they wrote down in their notebook,  it was a panicked call to a techie like me to get them out of the mess.

Ha, and now these days so many kids were born after the Internet became popular, so they act like they are expert at all tech, but most have zero troubleshooting skills...

[Keatah]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

In retrospect SB Live was kind of a pain in the ass though.   Too many audio controls in its mixer  and difficult to get all the settings right.

I currently have the first LIVE! in my legacy PIII. But it's scheduled for removal for that exact same reason. Additionally switching between two soundcards and one set of speakers is a little wonky anyhow. The AWE64 Gold will remain as it seems to work with everything.

 

Early on I always wanted anything and everything in PC hardware. Now its about simplification - even for legacy rigs. Not simplification to the point of losing compatibility or functionality. But more about de-duplicating features that overlap.

[MrMaddog]

2 hours ago, leech said:

Old IBM clones were such pieces of crap, I still do not understand why they became more popular than the much easier to use Amiga, ST and maybe even the Mac.  If everything had been less about a power hungry monopoly, and software houses had coded their office applications for all platforms, the world would be a bit different and we would have choices today...

I skipped most of it so am playing with it now.. had an STe until about '95... and started using Linux in '97.

Because no one got fired for buying IBM & Microsoft, and no one wanted to get fired for not working at home...

 

(Ok, so PC's did become awesome gaming machines, but dealing with Windows & DOS was still a PITA...)

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, leech said:

Old IBM clones were such pieces of crap, I still do not understand why they became more popular than the much easier to use Amiga, ST and maybe even the Mac.

Ease of use doesn't matter much if there's nothing to use. A huge force in the rise of the clones was the stability and availability of business software. And of course all the interoperability. Within reason what worked on one machine worked on another. Maybe not much at first, but the trend was easily recognizable and growing. Software that worked on a 286 also worked on a 386 and 486. I'm using a sentimental & legacy package from Windows 3.1 straight away in Windows 11 on Alder Lake today. Without emulation or virtualization.

 

And of course being able to bring all that software and data home. And running it on a customizable machine was icing on the cake.

 

Customization was important to me and likely millions of others. I couldn't afford a full-blown system maxed out. No way. I scraped together funds for a base 486, and over time I purchased upgrades & peripherals on the cheap.

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Well there were two kinds of people,  those who liked the tech and those who wanted a computer for a specific purpose.

Back in the day I was a little bit of both, maybe 60% techie and 40% software user. I loved following the developments and evolution. But also had a desire to do practical things.

 

1 hour ago, leech said:

It seems like the "app" people far outnumber the "technie" people so when the clone market drove down the prices the sales exploded.

They do. And nowadays the 60/40 mix has become 70/30 or 75/25 mix for me personally.

 

For productivity today a 5-10 year old computer is perfectly serviceable. And I find myself just upgrading on CPU and OS generations. Long gone are the MHz comparison days, or exact HDD interface specifications and transfer rates. Gone is the soundcard compatibility game or drilling down through graphics card features.. Don't even care about PCIe lanes or fan profiles. Not the data hoarder endlessly comparing Seagate vs WesternDigital. At least for us.

 

While I do read the specifications and technology white papers today, it's mainly for leisure like keeping tabs of how far we've come. More about being amazed that modern drives have 500,000 TPI. Or that my most recent HDD is filled with Helium and uses a magnetic booster to focus the write field on the platters better. Look up EAMR. It's like a bonus. My new stuff has got these features? Cool!

 

We will buy based on brand. Especially established big-names, Intel, Samsung, WD, Dell, Microsoft, and so on and so forth. Watchdogging is easier. Very likely we'll hear of a fuckup from a big-name rather quickly. A small company, not so much.

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, leech said:

Ha, and now these days so many kids were born after the Internet became popular, so they act like they are expert at all tech, but most have zero troubleshooting skills...

Totally tubular. Having to learn how to use 8-bit rigs effectively meant developing a way of thinking that the modern tech scene doesn't encourage presently.

 

Loved the Apple manuals that came with the II series. They were both technical and layperson oriented. They had simple tutorials and applicable examples. At the same time they had all kinds of reference material like schematics and command conventions and memory maps.

 

And since these early machines didn't have complex (compared to today) software interfaces, a user had to develop an understanding of what was going on. What was expected when it came time to interact with the software. An amazing amount of those tips and techniques applies today and allows a (vintage) user to rapidly identify or eliminate a solution that may or may not apply to a certain problem.

 

Most of them aren't able to be put directly into words. But rather they're taught through interacting and non-interacting examples of both similar and dissimilar issues.

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, MrMaddog said:

(Ok, so PC's did become awesome gaming machines, but dealing with Windows & DOS was still a PITA...)

Coming straight off the Apple II and Amiga, none of it was a pain in the ass. It was a whole world of elegance and quite the wide-open landscape. The Apple II had run its course, having utilized it since the late 70's through early 90's.

 

I remember when I first took delivery of my 486 I was afraid of losing the capabilities of blitter chips, sound & graphics chips, and other specialized ASICs for other computery functions. All stuff heavily advertised as being the reason why Amiga/ST were better machines.

 

This new 486 had NONE of that. And so I kept the Amiga I had at the time on standby. Still using it occasionally for games and continuing on with PhotonPaint. FOMO you know.

 

Though that rapidly changed as I actually acquired the software I was lusting over. The astronomy stuff, the fractal stuff (fractint). Solid word processing. The magic of not swapping floppies. A terminal program as sophisticated as what I had on the Apple II. All of it was T H E  S H I T  !!  All of it pre-Doom. And pre-me-owning-a-soundblaster. Windows 3.1 was amazballs! It actually worked!

 

Once 90's PC gaming got underway, even pre-3D, I was firmly convinced Wintel was the best platform ever conceived of! One moment I could be doing mission-critical correspondence, the next.. playing arcade-like games. Just not having to trek 10-miles cross-country to GalaxyWorld was a huge savings, allowing me to buy moar gamez. What a moneysink those establishments were..

[zzip]

42 minutes ago, Keatah said:

 

I remember when I first took delivery of my 486 I was afraid of losing the capabilities of blitter chips, sound & graphics chips, and other specialized ASICs for other computery functions. All stuff heavily advertised as being the reason why Amiga/ST were better machines.

Given that a 486 could emulate an ST with blitter chip at full speed, I was pretty confident the raw power of my 486 would more than compensate for the loss of blitter and other specialized hardware.   Besides my graphics card and any graphics card marketed as a "Windows Accelerator" had hardware blitting functions that your driver could access

 

My soundcard could produce any sound my STe could and even had a DSP chip like the Falcon did.   And I had emulators to run my old ST software, so I was set.   I still kept my STe because I still liked it, but it mostly sat in the basement unused from then on.

[Keatah]

On a slightly different note, I believe Pentium and Windows 95 were the two products of the 90's that thrust Wintel into the everyday consumer's hands with great success.

 

I clearly recall people in my workplace (whom never talked computers) were suddenly getting up to speed on basic terminology. Not because of necessity, but because of curiosity and how these two products would bring the computer home to everyone. Windows 95 software boxes were pretty and colorful. And fit right in with Best Buy and CompUSA campyness. Pentium became a replacement word for cryptic microprocessor names. Windows95 had a happy sounding tone about it. Both products were easy to market.

 

I would say the marketing campaigns and resulting explosions were far far better than anything videogame or console related in the early 80's. So much more wider in scope than anything 8 or 16 bit. Everything was vastisized in a grand way.

 

Everybody was asking me what they could do with these things. I was always at a loss because the stuff I was interested was skinny'ern a bottle rocket silo. But yet the possibilities were endless. And the up and coming America Online thing was all the rage. People whom had never touched a keyboard or mouse were suddenly joining clubs and communicating world wide. Getting tech support. Downloading game patches and levels. Trading recipes. Most without ever having to learn anything about "computers".

[leech]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Given that a 486 could emulate an ST with blitter chip at full speed, I was pretty confident the raw power of my 486 would more than compensate for the loss of blitter and other specialized hardware.   Besides my graphics card and any graphics card marketed as a "Windows Accelerator" had hardware blitting functions that your driver could access

 

My soundcard could produce any sound my STe could and even had a DSP chip like the Falcon did.   And I had emulators to run my old ST software, so I was set.   I still kept my STe because I still liked it, but it mostly sat in the basement unused from then on.

Huh, which emulator did you use on a 486 that would do a full speed ST?  Not that I don't believe you, just curious. 

 

With things like the MiSTer and how well the ao486 core is improving, one doesn't NEED a 486 machine, I just like messing with hardware!

[The Usotsuki]

Maybe PacifiST?

 

I know Genecyst can do full speed on a 486SX2/50 - because I've done it.