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Building a vintage DOS gaming PC.
-Edit- I stand corrected. I did an international search on Gravis Ultrasound cards, and they are going for outrageous prices. Way outside the range I would pay as well. I will check around with the various clubs around here and see what I can find. Maybe I can find one for an affordable price.
Yeah, the prices are crazy. I'm sticking with an Sb16 until I can find a GUS for a fair price.
-Chip
Depending on the model of GUS you can definitely get one for sub 100 even on E-Bay. Look for the PnP version as that one goes for fairly cheap. Your set up for your 386 is pretty nice. I think I might upload a video of my classic gaming computer, a NCR 3230 486SX-25, 8MB of RAM SB Pro 2, 540MB Hard drive (as large as the system will detect) 4x CD-ROM (It's quiet and all the speed that is needed for older games), and a MPU-IPC-T card. This Intelligent Mode Midi card is then connected to a Roland CM-64 for all of my MT-32 needs, and a Roland Sound Canvas MKII for General Midi. If you are interested in an intelligent mode midi card and can find a MPU-IPC-T card, I have a spare break out box here. Hearing games in MT-32 and General Midi of OPL2 or OPL3 Synthesis is like night and day. I have been told that if you want the best old old school gaming machine you go with a Tandy SX1000 as it can do VGA and such but if you are playing games that only have speaker sound, it has a three channel speaker, playing three different tones at once, which the standard PC cannot do.
-Edit- I stand corrected. I did an international search on Gravis Ultrasound cards, and they are going for outrageous prices. Way outside the range I would pay as well. I will check around with the various clubs around here and see what I can find. Maybe I can find one for an affordable price.
I'm actually building a few retro-pc's. I also have an Epson Apex (XT Class, 4.77-8 Mhz, CGA, 640k, 2 360k floppies), a 486DX/100 and a Pentium 120.
But the current system is 386SX/25, 8 Megs, Tseng ET4000 VGA 1 Meg ISA, SB Pro, 2 Gig CF IDE HD, 48X CD-ROM, 1.2 and 3.5 floppy, and an external Zip drive (parallel).
I was looking for a GUS for my pentium system but the prices on ebay are a bit outrageous. Anyone know of a cheaper place to get a Gravis Ultra Sound? I'm thinking sub 100 (USD)?
I've seen people recommend a Sound Blaster Pro for games of that era. Supposedly the SB 16 might sound a bit different or have bugs in the FM synthesis chip... I don't know... I never noticed such a problem when I had one.
Wow, that is a retro machine. So how much RAM will this system have? I reckon you'll be perhaps doing a little Windows 3.1x gaming on it as well. The ISA Tseng ET4000 is a great card for both DOS and Windows3.1x gaming on such a system. I think an ISA Gravis Ultrasound Wave may be a tad too much for the old 386 but getting yourself a nice SB16 compatible sure does wonders. You got a CD-ROM drive?