Ultimate Pentium Build

[Agent Orange]

Huh? Are you talking about a specific motherboard? Because this is completely false.

There were innumerable motherboards that had PCIe slots that worked with the Pentium D processor. Here's one out of thousands of examples:

GA-965P-DS3 (rev. 3.3) Overview | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global

Lasting Quality from GIGABYTE.GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ motherboards bring together a unique blend of features and technologies that offer users the absolute ...

www.gigabyte.com

I have this board and it supports from the 533 MHz FSB P4 all the way up to 1333 MHz FSB Core 2 Quads. Not that I'd recommend using it with a Pentium D, because they're power hungry furnaces that have terrible performance.



PGA370*

Correct. Pentium D should have been 'not recommended'. I have one myself on an Intel board.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Note that PCIe mobo/slots support Pentium 4, Celeron and Celeron D processors, but not the dual core Pentium D processors.

The Matrox Parhelia was sold in AGP, PCI-X, and PCIe variants. I was attempting to warn EverStar of this as his motherboard only supports PCI and PCI-X.

 

[EverStaR]

The Matrox Parhelia was sold in AGP, PCI-X, and PCIe variants. I was attempting to warn EverStar of this as his motherboard only supports PCI and PCI-X.

Thanks, I did get the PCI X. Got lucky a friend had one on his shelf, we rebuilds business class machines and old servers and had one. He doesn't like to sell on eBay.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Yup. That's a great deal.

If you can get your hands on 3x 4:3 monitor, the Parhelia(with adapters) can create a single 3072x768 resolution monitor out of them. Which was a pretty unique feature for the time. Only some games support it(unreal 2004 for example) but it is really interesting to play around with.

 

[EverStaR]

I will have many headaches as well as fun figuring out how to exploit it. Been realizing the limits lately of teach old dogs things they can't do. So now its a matter of slotting these PCs to run OS's that are possible. ARCA AND XP are running on the Core Duo, but I need a boot manager that can handle 5 partitions and 4 OS's on it. Plop doesn't like them or this machine. The Core Duo is just not going to deal with W98SE, that will have to end up on the tweener, or who knows, maybe a PII. It fights memory and whenI got past that, no video drivers or MB drivers, lol. Should have researched that one more before wasting time. XP bootmanager doesn't like Arca. I might try Arca's when I find a way to get back to it, lol.

The 486 has a video card that doesn't want to do more than VGA on OS2, even though there are OS2 drivers for it. Lol, I get caught in a nasty loop trying to install the drivers.

Oh, I do have a 4x3 monitor.

And so on!

What a hoot!

E

 

[twolazy]

I have a PCI-X Matrox Parhelia with both lead cables if needed down the road. Was going to list it up for sale next few months with a bunch of other stuff. I was using it a while in my dual pentium pro build and it was fun, but since moved it to an s3 virge and voodoo2.

 

[Zare]

ARCA AND XP are running on the Core Duo

What's your take on ArcaOS?
I went on their site, it looks like it's been designed by a scammer, but it is legit. Didn't find download, just purchase.

Looks pretty interesting, if one OS can 'touch' the modern Internet while still having native DOS/Win16 support. So if you've been using it, please share the experience. In particular I want to know are DOS and Win3.1 games running seamlessly most of the time, and is the native browser over the Unix layer capable enough to use vcfed forum in it.

It would be really nice to have an OS where you can reuse the prep-for-vintage flow you have on your modern PC, like downloading things, various disk image ops such as one click mounting, file management, PDF viewers and browsing, etc. but the OS is still supporting 16-bit Microsoft ecosystem natively. Yeah that completely smells like OS/2 on steroids.

 

[EverStaR]

What's your take on ArcaOS?
I went on their site, it looks like it's been designed by a scammer, but it is legit. Didn't find download, just purchase.

Looks pretty interesting, if one OS can 'touch' the modern Internet while still having native DOS/Win16 support. So if you've been using it, please share the experience. In particular I want to know are DOS and Win3.1 games running seamlessly most of the time, and is the native browser over the Unix layer capable enough to use vcfed forum in it.

It would be really nice to have an OS where you can reuse the prep-for-vintage flow you have on your modern PC, like downloading things, various disk image ops such as one click mounting, file management, PDF viewers and browsing, etc. but the OS is still supporting 16-bit Microsoft ecosystem natively. Yeah that completely smells like OS/2 on steroids.

Well, lol, it was a bit of a pa8n to get up and running, a lot like OS2 it's a bit HD picky. I ended up redoing every thing on the DUO AS I had received it as an XP W98 Machine and W98 barfed when I went to use it. XP worked great. So I added another SSD drive and got Arca to install seamlessly after creating its partition with Grub and formatting it JFS. But in going to load a new install of XP, it didn't create a boot manager to access it, and Plop doesn't want to see it, so I need a different boot manager to get back to it. I may have to. Consider CF Card drives for the DUO as well and give each OS its own card and then leave an SSD in it for utils, games etc to share accross OS's.

THE LITTLE I did use it it was fast, 1280x1080 on the 8800 GtX 768, looked really decent on the 50" display. I am out of town this week so I likely won't be able to try and resolve it until Sunday. You have to pay for it, a bit pricey so I think your wise to hold off until I can play with it more and answer some of your questions better.

E

 

[hunterjwizzard]

but I need a boot manager that can handle 5 partitions and 4 OS's on it.

Not super useful in this environment but they make these devices that fit in a 3.5" drive bay and it is a SATA selector. So you push a button and it selectively powers a single drive. Hardware boot manager! I want one, but am not sure for which machine yet.

Oh, I do have a 4x3 monitor.

You'll need three to try out vintage surround gaming. And for the record, I strongly recommend everyone does at least try it.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Consider CF Card drives for the DUO as well and give each OS its own card and then leave an SSD in it for utils, games etc to share accross OS's.

Better choice for the Duo: SATA hot-swap bays. Same principle, faster drives. I have tried XP on a CF card and it was not a tiptoe through the tulips.

 

[EverStaR]

Good to know and I was thinking about a 5 1/4 faceplate bay swappable for the SSDs, I have 4 left over from that era before I moved to Nvme. For large storage I just use dedicated large spinning disks. I have two storage systems and a few external USB HDs for frequently used data where as the bulk of it I keep offline and turn on only as needed. I have slowly been deduping data from messy storage habits. I also have an IDE to sata adapter to try for grins, don't hold much hope for that one.

E

 

[EverStaR]

Oh well, that was easy! Found a slick 5 1/4 bay solution, swapable 2ea 2 1/2 SSDs and 1 slim DVR/W drive in one bay. Should work out nicely if it works well. Bit of a wait for it though. That's okay, lots of projects in-flight, so no worries if few are on hold.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

My core2duo uses 3.5 inch spinning disks in hot swap for the OS. They also make 2.5 inch bays you can mount on an expansion slot in the back. I have one of those for the SSD on that machine. All works well.

 

[Zare]

I've used Bootit NG back in the day and recently.
It installs to MBR, has gui boot manager and backup/restore of drives. Can boot any partition from any drive known to BIOS