Without a doubt.

Yet, some things to consider :-

1. Will the AWE32 be fully compatible with the chipset's IRQ Routing? I can't say for sure.

2. Will it work in a slave slot? I seem to remember having to swap mine to a bus mastering slot in order for the high IRQ and DMA to work. Maybe, I've confused that with a GUS though...

I'd recommend a PCI VGA card with good VESA and Win3.x/Win9.x driver support like a Matrox MGA200/400 for DOS along with a nice fast PCIe card for modern Windows. If the motherboard's BIOS is half decent, you should be able to tell it to boot the PCI card first (PCI instead of PEG), thereby forcing it to be the DOS supported card. With your 37" TV, you could do VGA from the PCI and HDMI/DVI from the PCIe cards respectively.

dh4rm4 wrote:

1. Will the AWE32 be fully compatible with the chipset's IRQ Routing? I can't say for sure.

I hope there will be an option in bios to assign the IRQ to the ISA slot.

dh4rm4 wrote:

2. Will it work in a slave slot? I seem to remember having to swap mine to a bus mastering slot in order for the high IRQ and DMA to work. Maybe, I've confused that with a GUS though...

A point I'm really not sure. Have to try first, I guess.

dh4rm4 wrote:

I'd recommend a PCI VGA card with good VESA and Win3.x/Win9.x driver support like a Matrox MGA200/400 for DOS along with a nice fast PCIe card for modern Windows. If the motherboard's BIOS is half decent, you should be able to tell it to boot the PCI card first (PCI instead of PEG), thereby forcing it to be the DOS supported card. With your 37" TV, you could do VGA from the PCI and HDMI/DVI from the PCIe cards respectively.

I agree. There should be an option to switch to PCI graphics card. Then you can use a voodoo or voodoo2 card too.

These custom industrial motherboards are usually very expensive...

Tried some dos games on a p4 industrial board with isa slots and the sound still worked but those things are just too silly fast for dos games. Just get a nice old socket 370 p3/celeron with an isa slot and a kvm switch or multi input monitor 😀

Harekiet wrote:

Tried some dos games on a p4 industrial board with isa slots and the sound still worked but those things are just too silly fast for dos games. Just get a nice old socket 370 p3/celeron with an isa slot and a kvm switch or multi input monitor 😀

I agree. Malik, if you want a "high-end" DOS machine, build a Pentium II/III system with a BX board and be done with it. Those can handle all your later DOS & Windows 98 games. Plus, you don't know how that board will handle DOS memory management or if it has any ISA-DMA. For compatibility, you'll also want to stick with IDE or SCSI drives, which will dumb down a Core2Duo board a bit by excluding the SATA option.

For the earliest DOS games, use DOSBox on a killer Core2Duo. You'll be down to 2 computers, but the downside is needing duplicates of your favorite MIDI products. ie. I have a Roland SCC-1 and Yamaha DB50XG in my older computer, but a Yamaha MU90 and Roland SC-88VL attached to my new one.

I have to admit though, using a high-end PC like this with a SB16 ISA card + Wavetable board gives you all those MIDI options under DOSBox too. But I enjoy building older computers too much. 😉

Malik wrote:

As for memory considerations, though XP/Vista requires more memory, to prevent any problems in dos, we can "reduce" the available memory by creating ramdisks using xmsdisk.

You can use HimemX http://www.japheth.de/

to limit the amount of memory shown to DOS.

I use it with Windows 98SE to limit the amount of memory available to 9x.

Thanks guys, for all your very informative suggestions and recommendations!

I'm using my Dosbox in my Q9300 system. My MT-32 is connected to it via X-Fi I/O Drive. I guess I'll build another 440 based system for use with my dos and windows 9x.

Malik wrote:

I guess I'll build another 440 based system for use with my dos and windows 9x.

I highly recommend the ASUS P2B or P3B variants with a Powerleap adapter and a 1.4Ghz Celeron.

http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/p2b_p … pgrade_faq.html
http://shop.ebay.com/items/?_nkw=celeron+powe … rleap&_osacat=0

Well guys, what can i say - my last "retro" rig based on MB by iBASE - MB820.
http://www.ibase.com.tw/mb820.htm
I planned this a long time ago. And now it almost done.

875P chipset
3.0ghz, 800mhz fsb , 512kb, Northwood
3gb RAM
AGP MSI 6800 GT 256mb
Voodoo2 12mb PCI
Creative Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 SB0060
GUS ACE rev1.1 ISA
Creative AWE64 Gold CT4390 12mb ISA

I tested following ancient ISA cards for this time:
AWE32 CT2760 - ok!
AWE64 Gold CT4390 - ok!
SB32 CT3760 - ok!
SB Pro 2 CT1600 - ok!
GUS PnP - GUS Classic emulation doesn't work. Interwave ok.
GUS Ace - ok!
Roland SCC-1 - ok!
Roland MPU-401AT - ok!
Roland MT32 hooked to two above cards - ok!

All in all - almost all classic dos games, dos utils, dos 6.22 itself and even wfwg3.x - all works like a charm!

Malik wrote:

There should be an option to switch to PCI graphics card. Then you can use a voodoo or voodoo2 card too.

Please go to this website:

http://www.falconfly.de/identify-3dfx.htm

And scroll down to the bottom of the sceen, where it says "Caution". It tells you about a potential problem with old voodoo cards in modern mobos.

valnar wrote:

I highly recommend the ASUS P2B or P3B variants with a Powerleap adapter and a 1.4Ghz Celeron.

I have seen a DFI P2XBL being sold locally. Any idea about this board? Thanks.

aleksej wrote:

All in all - almost all classic dos games, dos utils, dos 6.22 itself and even wfwg3.x - all works like a charm!

That's nice to hear. The Power of DOS reigns ever supreme!! 😁

Malik wrote:

I have seen a DFI P2XBL being sold locally. Any idea about this board?

I don't know anything about the board, but I have a Core2Duo X38 chipset DFI board now and love it.

Do I know if the board will support anything above it's intended PII design? No.
It may support the Powerleap. Dunno.

aleksej wrote:

I tested following ancient ISA cards for this time: AWE32 CT2760 - ok! AWE64 Gold CT4390 - ok! SB32 CT3760 - ok! SB Pro 2 CT1600 […]
Show full quote

I tested following ancient ISA cards for this time:
AWE32 CT2760 - ok!
AWE64 Gold CT4390 - ok!
SB32 CT3760 - ok!
SB Pro 2 CT1600 - ok!
GUS PnP - GUS Classic emulation doesn't work. Interwave ok.
GUS Ace - ok!
Roland SCC-1 - ok!
Roland MPU-401AT - ok!
Roland MT32 hooked to two above cards - ok!

I wonder: will Roland LAPC run on such mobo?

retro games 100 wrote:

Please go to this website: […]
Show full quote

Malik wrote:

There should be an option to switch to PCI graphics card. Then you can use a voodoo or voodoo2 card too.

Please go to this website:

http://www.falconfly.de/identify-3dfx.htm

And scroll down to the bottom of the sceen, where it says "Caution". It tells you about a potential problem with old voodoo cards in modern mobos.

Point noted. Thanks for this important information.

Thanks to all your comments, I have completely scraped off my idea of a "Hybrid-PC". Too much to balance.

I guess a Retro-PC has it's own individualized merits that can't be shared. Something like a class of its own!

Anyway, it's much fun to rebuild a real retro pc! I've been hooked to Vogons and eBay ever since I came to know there are so many people with similar interests in Vogons!

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

I wonder: will Roland LAPC run on such mobo?

Right now my LAPC is inaccessible, but i will check up it later too.

p.s. On AWE based cards General MIDI emulation provided by AWEUTIL (/gm, /gm:xx) in pure DOS doesn't work at all on this system. Gives "Feedback path error". In DOS screen/session under W9x all ok. I think here is some limitations/bugs in AWEUTIL related to this hardware.

I don't think something as simple as the LAPC would have many issues in one of those industrial mobos. It only uses one IRQ and no DMA right?

I don't remember about that.
Ofcource bios has IRQ/DMA control abilities in PnP/PCI Configurations menu:

Resources Controlled by: Auto/Manual
then
IRQ Resources / IRQ XX: Legacy ISA or PnP/PCI
DMA Resources / DMA XX: Legacy ISA or PnP/PCI

Unfortunatelly some useful options like Passive Release and ISA/PCI latency is missing.

I just remember reading somewhere that LAPC has trouble in Pentium 166 mobo, but I don't quite remember why. Probably bus speed problem or such.