My DOS Retro Gaming PC Time Machine Socket 7 Pentium MMX 

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! 👍

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. :)

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Out of all the retro pc channels on RU-vid, 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. 👍🏻😎👍🏻

This channel exudes love. If the world was more like this channel it would be a much better place.

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! 🏆🏆

Warms the heart seeing a vintage build like this. I had a AWE64 in my first PC. Cyrix PR200 (166mhz)

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.

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!

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.

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 RU-vid 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.

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.

It's still very nice seeing your face all over again TBH. And it's so cool everyone's accepting of it!

Phil never stop. Youre amazing. Good knoledge. Perfect presentation. Amazing videos! Thumbs up!

Good on ya Phil. Your contributions to the community are invaluable. Great to see your happy face in your most recent videos.

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.

It's great to see you mate!

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 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.

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.

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.

Great video as always. Really enjoying the new presentation format :)

Well done! One of the few channels I watch start to finish.

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!! :)

Pentium MMX and Socket 7 videos are always interesting. Like !

Socket 7 is the lucky socket!

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

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 ;-)

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 👍🏻

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.

My DOS retro PC is DOSBOX. It runs everything I'm interested in perfectly.

Heyyy, good to see you finally Phil :) Ive been tuning into your videos for years and years already. Hello from Denmark

I follow you since the last 6 years... and now nice to meet you Phil... what a surprise!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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 👍

This is most warm video i ever seen on this channel. Thanks.

Philday is always a great day. Thank you for the continued content.

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.

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!

She's a looker. Great spec. Great to see your face (again). Really enjoying this new work you've been producing.

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.

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!

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!

Hey Guys! All these new videos, and getting to finally "meet" Phil! Sweet!

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 🍉😉👍!

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...

This video really gives you warm and fuzzy retro PC feelings 🙂 . Especially the Midi-part is pure nerd porn ;-) Since you're asking for our machines, mine are mainly built from parts I just have been too lazy to sell or I didn't want to, because I liked them too much: Windows98/DOS #1: Pentium-III-S 1266@1472MHz, Asus TUSL2-C, 256MB MCI PC150 @2-2-2-5-7 Timings (was big time back then), Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, SB Audigy Windows98/DOS #2: Pentium-III 500 Slot 1, Gigabyte GA-6BA (AT-Board), 256GB PC133, Voodoo 3 2000 AGP, Soundblaster PCI (Alternatively SB16 ISA) WindowsXP: Pentium-M 770 2,13GHz@2,4GHZ, FSB800, Asus P4P800-E Deluxe, 2GB DDR400, Gainward Geforce 7800GS (G71 Chip 24/8 Shaders), SB Audigy Windows7/10: Xeon E3-V4 1285L, Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H, 32GB DDR3 1866, EVGA Geforce GTX1080 FTW, Soundblaster Z Some AGP Cards to swap: MSI Geforce 4 Ti 4200 64MB, Hercules Geforce 2 MX, MSI 7600GT

Love hearing the backstory behind the interests and the choices of parts. I think many of us share a similar sentiment in why we build our retro computers today.

Great video Phil, I love the passion you've got for this stuff. *thumbs up* I grew up with atari/amiga 286/386/486 etc, but I was very young back then, I was born in 1986. My own PC era started with Windows 98/2000. That's when I started building my own PCs.

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.)

my biggest regret in vintage computing is not getting the soundcanvas when it was easy and affordable. i still want one really bad

Very nice video Phil. Love the background stories and reasons why you chose components.

Nice overview Phil, I like your practical no-nonsense approach to things.

I agree! Good choice to see you as a person instead of first person view 😎👍🏼

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.

So good to see someone I heard in so many videos! Cheers!

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.

Man, how much you helped me and whole Pc comunity. Respect!

Good to see your face! Always wondered what you looked like!

I would have never thought that Phil and I have the same hairstyle. Bald brothers for life!

I received i 2000 a PC with Pentium 120, 32MB oF RAM and Trident SVGA graphic card, I used to use this PC till 2005 with short break for something more powerful. The games I remember (because unfortunately I had no 3D accelerator) was Prehistorik 2, this was a great platformer game and I returning to it few times per year 😃

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 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.

My first computer was right around the turn of the millenium, a pentium 2 with 256M of ram and no dedicated graphics card with proper 3d accelaration. I ended up playing a lot of DOS and classic rts. It was quite a machine, but by that time it was already behind the capabilities needed to run the new "cool" and "popular" games the kids were playing. I remember installing some games from friends with more advanced setups, and my preteen brain could not figure out why it would run so slow or not at all. It was my humble freshman start to the PC gaming world.

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).

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.

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 !

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’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.

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 think you know the retro community loves you, @PhilsComputerLab I’ve seen tools you’ve made, especially dosbench, I a few retro gaming community videos & we all appreciate it, thank you. & yes, your face is welcome too. 😄 Don’t know if you’ve ever come across this but I’m currently restoring an old Time brand Win ME PC that has an *integrated* AGP, 32MB (discreet) TNT2 M64. I’ve seen discreet graphics integrated many times before but never an M64?

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!

Phil, I really like your mesh slot covers, they really look sharp.

Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis was awesome back then. I played it on a 40MHz 386, first the floppy disk version, and then the CD "talkie" version. The game has three different storylines, depending on dialogue choices when talking to Sophia at the school building. A socket 7 build is great for DOS gaming. It's too bad the AWE64 Gold lacks real OPL. Otherwise it would be the ultimate retro soundcard. Btw, using a USB keyboard or mouse in DOS can cause stutter and/or audio glitches in games that are sensitive to timing/interrupts. Pinball Fantasies is one example. Maybe not that interesting, but my Socket 7 build: "New old stock" AT motherboard with Intel 430TX chipset. Pentium 200MHz MMX 32MB SDRAM S3 Virge DX 4MB PCI 3Dfx Voodoo 1 (A quite rare version with a black PCB, slightly faster memory than Righteous 3D (1 fps more ;) ). Labtec Yamaha YMF719-S ISA soundcard with OPL3 and wavetable header. Cactus Industrial Grade CF-card (IDE-adapter).

It felt a little bit weird to see an Intel Pentium MMX to be used as a DOS machine with so little RAM. Because I remember the TV ads with the new video multimedia capabilities, and Win95 could finally do something exciting... Like showing Encarta and such ;-) (but it does make more sense when you slow the CPU down in steps)

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!

Woke up not only to a new LGR video but Phils Computer Lab face reveal! It's going to be a good day

Very interesting video. I follow and watched all your videos about retro stuff. I grew up in the 90' with an Apricot computer 386sx at 16 mhz, 1 mb ram and 40mb hdd. No sound card, just pc speakers. My nostalgia games are prehistorik 2, wolf 3d, commander keen, f-19, home alone, tom and jerry, f-29... For me was indeed a "wow" moment how some old games sound with real sound cards. Strange coincidence, I have, for 10 years or so, 2 thin clients you showed in retro videos: hp t5535 and hp t5720. It was mind blowing for me to install dos/ win98se on them. Now I have 2 pentium 166 original pcs with isa sound cards, fujitsu futro b210 thin client with ms-dos and an intel 865g fujitsu with pentium 4 running windows 98se. It is more fun to fiddle with configuring/installing then actual playing games on them :) I have a genius maxfighter f-16d joystick with gameport connector and i struggle to install it on ms dos, win95 and win98se. I have seen you playing with joystick. Can you please make a video about installing/ configuring few joystick in dos/win95/win98se?

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

Every time I hear you say a German word I'm thinking "he sounds Austrian"! Great to hear it confirmed ;) Greetings from Germany! :)

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.

My first PC was a IBM 286 with EGA (I also had a C64 before that) I've currently got a 486 sx66 with a SB16 in it (it has an onboard video card with 1mb of ram) - This is my primary DOS computer. My XT computer I got given to me ages ago, its a IBM 5155 Portable PC, but it was "upgraded" back in the day to have a V-tech XT board. It now has a 5 1/4 and a 3 1/2 floppy, plus a SBVibra (to emulate the 8bit SB) - I just need to organise getting an xtide for it. I also have a Pentium 3, with I'm mostly using to access and back up my old disks and transfer that to the other PCs. It will eventually be a windows/dos gaming machine. This one just needs an ISA sound card that works in DOS.

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 😀

Happy Friday Phil! Thanks for sharing details of your DOS gaming build and for sharing some of your personal history 👍

Awesome to see your face Phil - been a sub from years ago - cool retro PC after having accumulated your knowledge. :)

That is ONE tricked out socket 7 setup, great video!

Really enjoyed this video Phil. It’s true, one benefit of getting older means we can now afford the toys we loved back in the day. We can also remember the stuff we had .. and got rid of.. only to buy it back in 2020s eBay costs 😅

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!

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 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. 😉💪🏼

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 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!

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. ✌