Gammitin (Ben) 💾
Perfect!
The update went well and it's now detecting lots more new drives, SD to IDE and also SATA to IDE.
There's an 8.4GB limit, but that's way bigger than anything that was available when the PC was built, so I'm happy.
Gammitin (Ben) 💾Partition Magic 8 can see the full amount:
Gammitin (Ben) 💾Quickly tested a Windows 95 install, all went well. I'm thinking that I'm going to put multiple drives in here and have a boot loader CF, Windows 98 with MS-DOS mode, plus some other OS's, like Linux, BSD etc. Should be fun to test out.
Gammitin (Ben) 💾So I've installed a PCI network card and also I've got loads of Soundblaster 128's, so I've decided to use it in this system. It's actually got amazing dos support, not Adlib but General Midi that supports 8MB wavesets.
Gammitin (Ben) 💾Here's Duke Nukem 3D in DOS, with General Midi (Excuse the mess 😀
):
Gammitin (Ben) 💾A little bit of Doom with General Midi:
Gammitin (Ben) 💾Updates in progress.......
Gammitin (Ben) 💾So this machine has 4x PCI slots, so far I have used 3. I think the best option for slot 4 is a USB card, but they're tricky with these old chipsets and Windows 98.
So far I've tried a modern VIA VT6212L, but as soon as the drivers start to load it crashes the system.
Gammitin (Ben) 💾I picked up a few 20+ years old USB cards:
NEC uPD720101 (£1)
VIA VT6212L (probably won't work but £2)
Hopefully the NEC one will do the trick, but we'll have to wait and see. 🤞
Gammitin (Ben) 💾So I found out that a MR BIOS is available for this board, but the bios chip is soldered so it's a little scary! I'm doing it! 😬
Gammitin (Ben) 💾Success! MR BIOS posts!
Gammitin (Ben) 💾Here's the options I now have, although I have lost the ability to boot from CD, not the end of the world, but we'll see if everything is ok and functional.
Gammitin (Ben) 💾The first positive is that it now hasn't got the harddrive size limitation of 8GB. I've resized this install with PM8 and I can now use the whole 80GB.
Gammitin (Ben) 💾I tested the games I installed yesterday, although the sound works fine in windows, in MS-DOS mode I've got issues. I've read that Mr. BIOS doesn't properly support PnP, but I'm not 100% sure. I'm doing a fresh install from scratch on a 32GB SD to IDE. We'll see 🤔
Gammitin (Ben) 💾The Windows 98 install went well, the system somehow feels faster with the new bios, I've installed the Soundblaster PCI 128 drivers and have the legacy sound all setup in Windows.
Gammitin (Ben) 💾8MB Wavetables added, I've configured Duke 3D inside Windows to use Soundblaster for SFX, General Midi for Music, works (didn't before the reinstall).
Gammitin (Ben) 💾Now where I'm struggling:
I know the Interrupt is 9 and the Base I/O port of the soundcard is 1200, I cannot for the life of me get the soundcard to work in pure MS-DOS, frustrating:
Gammitin (Ben) 💾So I've done a 360, having to change the soundcard for the sake of a funky bios I'm not going to do. I've reverted to the most recent Gateway bios, which is 1.00.10 BROT.
Decided to go with a 4GB SD card, which is large for this system. Reinstalling Win 98 again.
Gammitin (Ben) 💾I found this ISA RealMagic EM8010 mpeg decoder card and randomly I stumbled upon the correct cable! 👍
👍
I've just got to give it a quick clean and also sort out the bracket.
Gammitin (Ben) 💾One of the threads had snapped off inside, and wasn't easy to get out.
Gammitin (Ben) 💾Good to go!
REALmagic EM8010 ISA MPEG Audio/Video Accelerator - Net stream 1 (53-000517)
Gammitin (Ben) 💾Although this card is a little too old for this system, more suited to a 486 or older, I want to test it out and maybe use it on another older machine (like my favourite 386). Hopefully it works ok.
Gammitin (Ben) 💾I've recorded a 12 minute update video, I can't upload it here as it's too big, so here's the link:
Gateway 2000 Refurb / Rescue Update - Soundblaster 128 PCI in MS-DOS and next steps<https://youtu.be/Xfpwz9k3cMo?si=h1vbypYcaCSFscLq
Gammitin (Ben) 💾Good evening folks, if you haven't wanted my update video, reverting the BIOS did the trick!
I've now got a Soundblaster 128 PCI fully working in MS-DOS.
Here's the Windows 98 startup sound to celebrate 🎊
Gammitin (Ben) 💾One of my all-time favourites:
Descent II, can't wait to properly play this, like I did back in the day! 🤘
Gammitin (Ben) 💾Heretic sound test in MS-DOS:
SFX: Soundblaster
Music: General Midi
Gammitin (Ben) 💾NEC D720101 - Windows 9x compatible USB 2.0 card for, bought for £1! 👍
Gammitin (Ben) 💾