26. August 2016, 06:07:46

#5

ZylonBaneQuote

Just checked, the first PC I ever built had a Hercules TNT AGP card.

26. August 2016, 07:50:24

#6

voodoo47Quote

ahh, Hercules, good stuff. I was starting to build in the Virge era - you know, the "S3 things that do 2D for your Voodoo". got a box full of them in the corner, people just dumping them on me once I upgraded their pcs with something better.

anyway, about the TNT(2);
-many slow, cut down versions floating around
-pci version slow and expensive (this mattered at the time)
-worse image quality in 16bit (this mattered at the time)
-no paletted textures (this mattered at the time)
-running in 32bit slowed the card down quite a bit
-no texture compression, so the large texture support is mostly a paper feature
-image quality cheating (no true trilinear)
-drivers not exactly top notch

so yeah, not a perfect card, but hey, no such thing as perfection in this world, right?

26. August 2016, 09:51:33

#7

Valet2Quote

Wow, a great setup you have there!

I also recommend you installing KernelEx. It's a set of libraries for running more software, designed for nt systems. For example, I have Firefox 9.0.1 running on Win98se.

Also, about videocard, there's a reason to find a GeForce 2 GTX, if you're not into shaders, with shutter-glasses output socket (asus made that card, must be cheap on ebay). That would be enough for playing 98-2001 games in 32-bit.

What about soundcard - any would be enought for playing under Windows. If you're a dos-dude, get some old SoundBlaster 64 / 128, they can emulate Soundscape midi (ensoniq), which is really cool, and supported by all games I've seen. I will help you installing the stuff.

Also, cool that you're using an sd-card adapter as a system drive. Old hdd's were a really bottleneck. You can also use an sdd with pci-sata card (I'm sure some of them have drivers for Win98, or work as legacy devices).

Oh, there's also an utility for dos called vbehz which allows you to set any display refresh rate for any resolution, work with all nVidia cards from TNT to GeForce 4, at least. Doesn't work with GeForce 5 and higher, and with any Radeon cards, I've checked.

I have some useful stuff for Win98 here: ftp://ftp.valet2.com/98

Here's KernelEx: https://sourceforge.net/projects/kernelex/

26. August 2016, 11:51:29

#8

voodoo47Quote

not planning to have pixelshaders on this computer, as mentioned, 3D api hoarding is the intention here (a grand total of 9 once everything is set up). also not planning any DOS gaming (got other machines for that), so the integrated intel soundcard should be plenty. Diamond Monster Sound would be nice, but I don't have one at hand and I don't feel like ebay hunting (and money spending) at the moment.

I do plan to play around with ssds some more however - ordered a different set of adapters off ebay (they are dirt cheap) to hopefully get that msata drive going, but maybe I'll just give up and get a normal sata ssd with a sata->ide 3.5 adapter (no room for a pci card because of all the graphics hardware) - we'll see.

I know about kernelex, but I currently don't really need it - not planning to run anything that would require it on this computer. for now.


also, I'm thinking I'll go for a Voodoo1 after all (max old games glide compatibility) - should have a 8MB version (800*600 capable) somewhere.

26. August 2016, 12:32:24

#9

Join2Quote

Quote by voodoo47:

first, lets a have a look at how a no bs desktop should look like;

Shortcuts for Half-Life, Unreal & Q3 and not SS2, Deus Ex, Doom or any other superior game. Decline of voodoo47.