My Windows 95 (Socket 7) PC Build

[Anapan]

Your response to the Voodoo question is acceptable - It requires a special build probably - I really just want to see if you are able to run One Must Fall: Battlegrounds as it is one game I was never able to play. I am looking forward to this further different computer as I enjoy this build.
What are the tiny numbers at the bottom of your above post for?

[Ziggy]

Those number are the thread view count at the time of the post. It was to help me better understand the popularity of the thread (in lack of a thumbs up system). For example, right now the view count is 13557. My last post, the view count was 12781. That's 776 views in like 3 or 4 days. We know that there are many lurkers that don't post regularly, or hardly ever post at all. But these view counts still aren't making sense. Even accounting for search engine bots and random people finding the thread through an internet search, sometimes that numbers still seem way too high.

Long story short, it's just me tracking the thread view count for my own curiosity.

[Ziggy]

So since I was able to finally score a socket 3 motherboard for a 486 build, this Socket 7 build no longer has to be my budget DOS PC. That being the case, I decided to rename my PC build threads so they more accurately reflect what I'm doing with them.

Now that I'm finally getting the ball rolling on my 486 build, that sorta forced me to work on this Socket 7 build again. Mainly because I had my only black 5.25" FDD in this build, and I decided that I want to put black drives in my 486 build and beige drives in this Socket 7 build.

I don't really (yet) have any pictures of the recent work, so this is gonna be more or less a blog post. So I'll try and break it up from being a huge wall of text, as I'm sure many of you don't care to read a novel about this.

WHY WINDOWS 95?

After getting the 486 hardware, I"ll be using that as my dedicated DOS machine. And the Pentium III will be my dedicated Windows 98 machine. So now I have a few motherboards and CPUs that are in between those two, and I figured why not make a dedicated Windows 95 computer.

I read a post on Vogons that makes some good points to choosing 95 over 98. If you use a version of 95 without IE 4 or later then it'll use less RAM than 98. It a leaner OS and can run faster than 98. And I've seen this talked about in various spots, some games will run better on 95 versus 98.

Although I used older computers at school and the library, my family's first computer was a Compaq Presario with Windows 95. Best I can tell the specs were a Pentium 150 Mhz and 16 MB of RAM. I, of course, have fond memories of this PC. So this may sound stupid, but I wouldn't mind having a Win95 PC just for the pure nostalgia of it. I later had a Windows 98 PC, but there's really nothing like your first computer. In fact, if I ever find that model Presario for a good enough price I would love to snatch it up.

Again, this may sound stupid and kinda pointless, but it's been a long time since I've heard that Windows 95 start up sound. At some point the family got a Windows 98 PC, and any retro gaming Windows PC that I've messed around with in my adult life has been with 98. I haven't legitimately used 95 since the mid 90's!

DECIDING ON THE SPECS

After deciding on Windows 95, I wanted to pick out more or less period correct hardware. I mean, to a point. I'm not gonna drive myself crazy, or spend ridiculous money, or deal with troublesome hardware just for authenticity. But I want to try and stick with hardware that was available between 95 and 97.

First thing I had to decide on was the motherboard. Even though this thread was started by me purchasing the Biostar MB-8500TUD-A mobo, I have since acquired several others. But I ultimately decided to stick with this Biostar for a couple of stupid reasons. But it mostly came down to one thing: This is an AT (and not ATX) board. My Compaq Presario had that "It's not safe to turn of your computer" screen when you powered down, and I haven't seen that screen since the mid 90s. Seeing it again now really took me back. I more or less want to capture the feeling on my first computer.

The CPU was an easy choice because this Biostar mobo came with a Pentium 166, which is very close to the 150 that my Presario had.

RAM, I think I'm gonna go with 64 MB. I know this isn't typical of what a computer would have in 95-97, but I see no point in limiting myself here. I mean, if the CPU or video card is the weakest link, that just means I use my PIII Win98 PC instead. But I don't want RAM to be a factor. Also, I'm not sure if I have many sticks of SD-RAM that are smaller. I know I have one 32MB, not sure if I have anything smaller than that. This Biostar mobo does also support 72-pin SIMM, but I think I want to stick with SD-RAM here.

I'm going to stick with the same Sparkle PSU that I've already posted about in this thread. It seems solid, and even the fan is quiet.

I'll also be sticking with the same case, the one that came with the "ACP Super Computer" badge. You can see a pic of it in this post, with the black drives installed. I've grown to like that ACP badge and decided to leave it on there. But like I mentioned earlier, I will be swapping out for beige drives.

So speaking about the external drives... A while back I scored two NOS Sony CD-ROM drives. I really wanted to get something specific, and these pretty much nail it. I posted a pic of them in the Slot 1 thread. They look good in the pic, but they are deceptively yellowed. I put the better looking one in the Win98 Slot 1 build. Now that I want to use the other one for this build, I took that sticker off and it revealed a much less yellowed surface underneath. It looks horrible, so I had to Retro Brite it. I should have taken before and after pics, but I forgot.

I have exactly one beige 5.25" FDD that I was planning on putting in here, but now I'm not sure if I'm gonna. My Presario didn't have a 5.25" drive. The DOS machine will, and I'm just not sure I'll need one for Windows 95. Anyone think I should just stick it in? I could always do it down the road if warranted. This ACP case did come with a drive bay cover, so no worries there.

Which leads me to the external 3.5" drive bays. This case came with a beige FDD and a beige Zip drive. So I'm missing a 3.5" bay cover. That wasn't a problem when this was gonna be a DOS machine. I purchased one of those CF card adapter that mounts in a 3.5" bay, and since I was using black drives it fit right in (see the pic linked above). But now that I'm swapping the black drives out for beige, the CF card reader will no longer match. I could paint it beige, but I really don't even have a need for a CF card in this PC. That leaves me with an empty external drive bay and nothing to fill it with. I tried searching for dummy plates that I could 3D print, but surprisingly I couldn't find any 3.5" ones (except for one that had a design in it). Although I can't really do much in the way of designing my own 3D models, a dummy drive is easy enough that I think I can do it without much effort. So I was gonna do that, but I stumbled on another idea. The Biostar Motherboard has pins to connect an infrared sensor, and right now you can easily find IrDA sensors that fit in a 3.5" external drive bay. And in beige no less! So I decided to grab one of those to fill the empty drive bay, even though I doubt I will ever use it. I'll post pics when it comes in and I get it installed.

For the sound card, I'm going to use my NOS Sound Blaster 16 WavEffects ISA card that I got years ago. These were released in 97, so that fits. And it's what I have on hand. Would there be a better choice for Windows 95?

The video card, for right now I'm going to stick with the S3 ViRGE/GX. I might want to get something else, but I have no idea what. Any suggestions? The ViRGE/GX gets a bad wrap for being a horrible 3D card, the so-called "3D decelerator" because you can often get worse performance with this card versus software rendering. But I'm not sure what else to get. Something that was available between 95-97 that isn't a Voodoo.

And that leaves that hard drive. I didn't want to put anything to crazy big in here, but I also don't want to use an old hard drive. I mean, I really wouldn't mind using an authentic drive from the 90s, but I'd just hate to take the time to set everything up and then deal with HDD failure. So what I decided on is using a Western Digital 8GB drive that came out of an OGXBOX. It's more size appropriate, but manufactured a lot more recently.

And I think that covers most or all of the hardware for now.

I'll stop there for this post, as to not make a huge wall of text.

[Ziggy]

My post above described how this PC build has changed focus, and the plans I have for it now.

After yanking out the black drives, I decided to start rebuilding this PC. I'm in the process of spray painting the case for my 486 build, so I figured what else do I have to do while I wait for paint to dry LOL.

I figure I'll get everything loosely set up, and then I'll go back through everything and do cable management and tidying up and whatnot. So I got mostly everything installed. At least, enough that I could install Windows 95.

And then I ran into nothing but problems...

Anapan was nice enough to send me a care package of some old PC parts (thanks again!) including an 8GB WD HDD that came out of an OGXBOX. So I installed that, and that's when all hell broke loose.

First, the computer was hanging on Verifying DMI Pool Data. This was unsettling because everything worked the last time I used this computer. I'll just jump ahead and tell you, it ended up being both a bad Windows 98 boot disk as well as a bad hard drive. But I took the LONG way around to figure that out LOL.

Many years ago, I had a cousin give me a copy of Windows 98 SE on a CD-R along with a boot floppy disk. I've used that boot disk so many times over the years, and it's always worked fine. Including just recently, I think I last used it at the end of 2023 sometime, worked fine then. Also, usually you see "disk read failure" or "non system disk" message (or however it's worded). But with this disk, it just hung on Verifying DMI Pool Data. I have a Windows 10 computer right there, that I have a FDD installed in, so I checked the boot floppy on that. I was able to read it, and all of the files were there. So I thought the problem was something else.

So I tested just about everything. I removed all non essential hardware, and re-seated whatever was left. But it was still hanging on Verifying DMI Pool Data. So at that point, I was thinking uh-oh, motherboard hardware failure. After all, I've already experience hardware issues with this board (that was repaired). I was worried it might be something catastrophic. But then I set up my Slot 1 PC and tested the boot floppy on that, and it also hung on Verifying DMI Pool Data.

That's just kinda odd. I guess it got some file corruption, and it partially loaded something and hung. So it didn't outright give a disk failure or non system disk message. I grabbed a Windows 98 boot disk image and wrote it to this same floppy and now it works fine. So, moving along...

Now I can't run Windows setup because it can't write to the drive. I figured because it's locked. I thought I could just reformat, but I couldn't even detect the drive in fdisk or Super fdisk. The BIOS detects the drive just fine, but the POST warns that the drive is bad. I thought that was just because it was locked. SeaTools detects the drive, but fails both short and long tests. Again, I thought because it was locked. So I was trying to look up how to unlock or at least reformat this drive without having to resort to using an Xbox. I found one suggestion on a forum to use a Linux live CD and use the dd command to zero out the drive. Well, that wasn't convinient, but it reminded me of another bootable utility disk that I have. Derik's Boot and Nuke, it's a simple utility that you can boot into from a CD and securely wipe drives. But the reason I stumbled upon it years ago was that it's an easy way to zero out a drive, which can be useful for a problematic drive. So I began to zero out this Xbox drive. It got more than halfway through and then reported an error with the drive. Damn, that's not good.

I still had hopes that this drive wasn't bad. I mean, it wasn't making any funny noises or anything. In fact, it seemed to sound fine. So I had to resort to getting on an Xbox. Luckily, I had recently hardmodded an Xbox. I flashed the BIOS in an Xbox, which allows you to do so many things. Only I'm using a new one called Cerbios, and I flashed the UDMA6 version of it. You can't change the DMA setting, it's hard coded into the BIOS when you flash it. It requires that you upgrade to an 80-conductor PATA cable and have a capable drive, which I did. So when I connected the 8GB Xbox HDD, I couldn't load anything because of it. At least, I think that's why nothing would load. So then I remembered that I have a mod chip, which when installed will load a different BIOS. I already had this Xbox set up for an easy installation of the mod chip, literally just snap it in place and solder one wire. So I installed the mod chip and finally I was able to boot the Xbox... Only now the HDD is making the dreaded CLICK OF DEATH!

Now I can't be sure what happened to this drive. Was I getting errors because it was locked? Or did it already fail, and would have started making horrible clicking noises. Or was it because I zeroed out a good portion of it? I don't know. But either way, this HDD is for sure toast now. I unlocked it anyway, and reinstalled it in my PC. It makes the horrible click of death, which I think is when the head can't find the sectors anymore. SeaTools at least no longer reports that security is enabled, but it instantly fails the tests.

Grrrrr, I just wasted so much time on the floppy disk and HDD.

So the Xbox that I was using, I mentioned that I just recently upgraded the HDD in. So I actually have that 8 GB WD HDD. I was going to hold onto it for a while "just in case," but now I kinda need it. I don't have any other HDDs this small, and the other HDDs I do have on hand I have plans for.

OK, enough of those shenanigans.

Now I have a working HDD installed, and a working boot floppy. In fact, I went ahead and made a Windows 95 boot floppy, just for shits and giggles. So today, I FINALLY installed Windows 95 on this damn thing LOL.

You can use a Win98 boot disk to install Win95, and in fact the Win98 boot disk is better. But I just wanted to use the 95 boot disk for the authenticity of it. It's just that it for some reason sets up your CD drive as R. So later when Windows is installed and your CD drive is D, it can no longer find the install disc. It's just kinda stupid.

Anyway, I got 95 installed and finally made it to the desktop. So next I installed the third party USB drivers, which is recommended to do it right after the OS is installed. These drivers allow you to use USB thumb drives, and you even get an eject hardware icon in the system tray. Then I installed the Intel chipset drivers. All was going well up to this point.

Then I decided to activate DMA on the CD drive and HDD, which prompts you to restart. I restarted, and after the Windows splash screen I'm left with a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper-left corner and it stays there forever. I checked the BIOS, and DMA is set. And the POST even reports the drives are running in DMA mode. So I'm not sure what happened there. I can boot into safe mode, but after poking around in Device Manager I'm kinda scratching my head.

And at this point I'm left wondering... Why exactly am I messing around with old computer?

Whatever. Next time I have time to mess around with it, I think I'll reinstall Windows. I used OSR2.1, but I think I was to install OSR2.0 instead. I don't like the splash screen that 2.1 has, it says "Microsoft Internet Explorer" under Windows 95. That's just not the splash screen I remember seeing on my Presario. I don't think it makes a difference if I use OSR2 versus 2.1. After I manually install all the latest drivers and DirectX, it'll probably be fine. I know there's an unofficial service pack that I can use to get all the final OS patches, but I'm not sure if that's crucial or not.

What I think I should do, after I finally get all drivers installed and everything is working, before I start installing software and games, I should make a HDD image. One, because it's so easy to break Windows 9x and tough to fix when you do. And two, I guess HDD failure would be a bitch after taking so much time to getting everything set up correctly.

[Ziggy]

I was talking about colors I was sampling in my Socket 3 / DOS build thread to restore that case with. Here's how some of those colors look for my Windows 95 case though...

(The 3.5" bay cover is the painted part)





I think Yarn is the nicer color, but Clamshell just looks like a better fit for this case to my eyes.

I said in an earlier post that I got an IrDA sensor thing to fill that empty 3.5" bay. But I don't know, since Clamshell is such a good match, I might reconsider 3D printing a blank cover for it instead.I mean, it's not like I'd ever use an infrared device with this PC.

[Ziggy]

I've been having a little trouble deciding on a video card for this build...

I want something that is 3D capable, but I also want to keep it age appropriate to the build. So something between 95 and 97. The problem there is that most of the 3D cards from that time period were terrible, or so I'm lead to believe from the reading I've been doing. I guess this period was mostly first gen 3D cards, so that's not a total shocker.

A Voodoo 1, Voodoo Rush or nVidia Riva 128 are the cards that I see most recommended, if you're looking for something age appropriate for a Windows 95 build. The problem there is that Voodoo cards are expensive. The Riva 128 is actually pretty cheap, at least in AGP form. A PCI version of the Riva 128 is actually uncommon and pricey! I'm limited to PCI, since the motherboard I decided on has no AGP slot.

S3 ViRGE/GX - This is what I have right now, a Compaq OEM version of this chip. I believe mine is 2MB, although I'll have to double check that. This chip gets panned as a 3D "decelerator" card because performance is so terrible. And I've read that the drivers are buggy as well. I've just read so many bad things about it that it makes me think I need another card. Also, I think I need something with 4MB RAM minimum. Apparently at 1024x768 I'll be limited to 16-bit color mode, and you need 4MB video memory for 24 or 32-bit at that resolution. This is really just so that my Windows 95 desktop can look nicer.

So what 3D capable card to get that was released between 95 and 97, is available as a PCI card, isn't totally horrible and isn't too expensive? I came up with very little, because like I said, all of the cards from this period are terrible for one reason or another. With the exception of the Riva 128 or Voodoo. So I bargain hunted, and here's what I came up with...

ATI 3D Rage II+ DVD 4MB - This sounds like it might be a decent card for this PC. Looking at benchmarks on vintage3d.org, it looks like the first Rage II sometimes outperforms the Virge GX but they are kind of on par. The Rage II+DVD is suppose to have even better performance. But interestingly, that same link also benchmarks the Rage II+DVD against another card...

SiS 6326 - If you Google this 3D chip, you'll often find that it's horrible. But from the link above, it benchmarks better than the Virge GX and Rage II+DVD. These were meant to be value 3D cards, but that's OK. I wasn't looking to make this the ultimate gaming rig, just a typical Windows 95 machine. And this card might be perfect for that. And it looks like it can get nearly double the framerate in Turok with the SiS 6326 compared to the RageII+, which is probably the most graphical intense game I would try and run on this PC.

[opa]

I wasn't looking to make this the ultimate gaming rig, just a typical Windows 95 machine.

This sentence gave me a chuckle considering what year it is. lol

[Ziggy]

Got my new clamp meter today. I mentioned in my 486 thread that I want to measure the current draw since modern ATX power supplies have weak +5V rails compared tho the ones used back then. But I don't have my 486 machine set up yet, so I decided to play with my new clamp meter on this PC instead. I just looped all of the +5V wires from the main connector through the clamp and got a reading of about 3.3A. This is with the PC at idle, granted. I'll have to measure under load.

What benchmark software should I use under Windows 95?



Here's an updated version of that little PCB I posted about a while back. It's just a simple circuit that allows me to use an ATX PSU and case with the AT style motherboard. I added status LEDs on this updated version. Red illuminates when you flip the switch on the back of the PSU, it indicates standby. Green illuminates when the PSU is turned on. Only I put a bit of heat shrink tubing on the green LED because it is so blindingly bright to look at.

I have an even further refined circuit for this, but I'll post about it once it's built and tested.

I wasn't looking to make this the ultimate gaming rig, just a typical Windows 95 machine.

This sentence gave me a chuckle considering what year it is. lol

I should have said, "ultimate Win9x gaming rig."