Fast forward to 2023 and I’ve significantly downsized my hardware collection. The kids have moved out, I got rid of my HTPC, cleared out all the old hardware I had collected over the years, and now only have 4 modern systems running in my home. I’ve also found a renewed respect for SFF and Nano computers, as well as the Raspberry Pi for all my low-powered computing needs.
While I still use DOSBox, ScummVM, and virtual machines, I have been wanting to rebuild a dedicated DOS/Win95 system, albeit with some major changes. My old system was overkill for what it was being used for, so my new build will be much less powerful, but still more than enough to handle what I want it to do.
- I wanted to make the system as physically small as possible.
- Minimal or no expansion cards. On-board Sound Blaster compatible audio and a decent integrated video chipset that can handle the mid 90’s and earlier games I want to run at native 640x480 or 800x600 resolutions.
- No hard drives. I want to run it all off SD Card and/or Compact Flash.
- As many video output options as I can get.
- Finally, a nice small case to put it in.
That search lead me down a few different rabbit holes, including the urge to “feature creep” and compromise on my initial ideas to add more functionality and expandability, something I didn’t want to do. Eventually, I stumbled across a cool little ITX motherboard that ticked all the boxes, was available and affordable at build time, and should have the power to do what I really wanted it to do.
The VIA EPIA-800 is an ITX motherboard with most of the features I was looking for, specifically…
A VIA C3 800MHz Processor. Enough power for the era and what I want to run.
Support for 2 PC-133 SDRAM modules and up to 1GB of RAM, way more memory that I will ever need. I will be running it with 512MB.
An on-board AC’97 audio chipset that’s 100% Sound Blaster Pro compatible in DOS and is selectable in the BIOS.
An integrated AGP Trident CyberBlade i7 video chipset with 8MB of VRAM. Easily powerful enough to handle most DOS and Win95 games of the era at 640x480 or 800x600. In terms of performance, based on what I’ve read, it seems to fall between a Voodoo 1 and 2.
PS/2 for keyboard and mouse inputs.
- Plenty of I/O options with dual USB ports, dual IDE connectors, Parallel, Serial, VGA/DSUB, S-Video and composite video, and a single PCI slot for expansion should the need arise.
If we take a look at the primary ICs on the board, they breakdown as follows…
C3 Processor – Manufactured by Centaur Technology, this version of the C3 is a 13W EBGA (Enhanced Ball Grid Array) 150nm “Samuel” core X86 processor with 64KB of L1 and L2 cache. It supports MMX and 3DNow technologies.
VT8601 – This is the northbridge, supporting the C3, Celeron, and Pentium 3 processors, Socket 370, as well controls the AGP, PCI, and DRAM, among other things.
VT8231 – This is the southbridge, and it contains the Trident CyberBlade graphics, AC’97 controls, Sound Blaster Pro emulation, and more.
VT1612A – This is the embedded AC’97 audio codec.
VT6103 – This is the TV encoder, supporting the S-Video and composite video outputs, as well as the video inputs.
VT6103 – This is the embedded 10/100 ethernet controller.
Sipex SP3243ECA – This is the RS-232 transceiver.
ISL6542CBZ – This is a VRM (Voltage Regulator Module)
Additional Board Info: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/via-epia
Board Drivers Alt: https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1141&menustate=0
Fun Facts:
The EPIA-800 was released in April of 2002 by VIA Technologies, who had developed the Mini-ITX standard just a year before in 2001.
The EPIA-800 was one of the two original boards VIA sold to their customers. The other was the EPIA-5000 that featured a 533 MHz Eden processor as opposed to the EPIA-800 and it’s 800MHz C3. The ITX revolution started with VIA and this board.
EPIA stands for “Embedded Platform Innovative Architecture”.
VIA makes a wide variety EPIA boards, and more than just Mini-ITX, like Pico-ITX boards!
Note: The PCI slot seems to be very picky about what cards work and what ones do not. From what I can find online, the PCI slot on this board is intended to be used with a difficult to find proprietary riser card that has on-board power management and adds 2 PCI slots for expansion. So, some PCI expansion cards simply won’t work when plugged directly into the slot on the motherboards. Here is a link to a discussion I found discussing video cards that work and do not work on the EPIA-800.
Forum Discussion: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=73187
I was able to pick up my board on eBay for $42 with 256MB of PC-133 pre-installed, a pretty good deal these days in my opinion. Once I had it in hand, it was time give it a quick inspection and check the caps, then get it up and running and see what it was actually capable of. I decided to setup my new retro PC with a single IDE to SD card adapter and a 128GB SD card broken into 4 FAT32 partitions, 3 at 32GB each, and one slightly smaller 4th partition).
Also, I have upgraded the RAM to 512MB, I had an extra 256MB stick on hand due to an issue with one of the boards. See the “Behind-The-Scenes” section below for more info.
For the operating system, I had considered using Windows 98 SE, but I wanted to keep this system as lite as possible and everything I wanted to do with it runs in either DOS or Windows 95. Plus, the EPIA-800 on it’s own would really start to struggle with games made for Win98 and later. So, I decided to just install Windows 95 OSR2.5 and its DOS 7.1 on the primary 32GB partition of the 128GB SD card and it worked perfectly. I will install and maintain most of the games, disk images, and software on the two other 32GB partitions, and use the last odd sized partition for backups and the Windows 95 cab files. With this setup, I can easily add and remove data from the system via the SD card or a USB flash drive since Windows 95C OSR2.5 also gives me access to USB storage.
Since I don’t have an old IDE optical drive anymore, I decided to setup the Windows 95 install in a virtual machine first, then just copy that image over to the SD card. I used a Windows 95 boot disk in the virtual machine to copy the Windows 95 files over the SD card and make the C drive bootable, then do the actual install directly on the real hardware. I created all the partitions and formatting on my Windows 10 machine prior to moving the SD card over to the EPIA-800 for the install.
My Preferred VM Software: https://www.virtualbox.org/
During my setup and testing, I was powering everything using a standard 450W Corsair ATX power supply, but in order to power the completed mini retro PC, and keep it as small as possible, I was left with two options…
A Pico DC to DC PSU that plugs directly into the motherboard.
An ITX DC to DC power supply.
Both perform the same basic function and use an external power brick like SFF, Nano, and laptop computers. They both come in many different ratings and both could easily power my build. The only real requirements are it needs to be 20-pin ATX compatible and have a Molex/FDD power connector for the IDE adapter.
Most Pico PSUs are a straight 24-pin (not 20+4), requiring an adapter cable to connect to the 20 pin this EPIA-800 uses, the straight 20-pin Pico’s are a bit less common these days. The ITX style boards are larger and use a cable to run between the PSU board and the computer/components that are almost always 20+4 pins and would work out of the box for most builds. The only real downside to the ITX style PSU is they are larger, but the fact they’re separate boards also means they can easily be repositioned in a build.
I was also able to determine I didn’t need much power at all to run this board in this configuration, as you can see from the numbers below. I was using 3DMark99 to stress the system to get the max numbers you see here. I was also using an LED backlit keyboard, and those add an extra watt or two.
Max Load Watts: 51W
Average Gaming Load Watts: 46W to 48W
Average Idle Watts: 5W
Power Off: 1.5W
This meant no matter what PSU I decided to go with, I didn’t need anything all that beefy. Many options for both styles of PSU have 80W and 90W versions that could easily handle this build with plenty of headroom. Building a system with no platter drives, floppy drives, or expansion cards significantly cuts back on your power needs.
For the power brick, make sure you get one that can handle whatever PSU you use, in my case I picked up a 12V 10A 120V brick off Amazon for $20. I’ve had good luck with this particular brand and I like to buy power supplies that are rated well over what I need, and I also test the PSU before it ever gets plugged into the hardware I bought it for, just to be safe.
My Recommended Power Brick: https://amzn.to/3HkpPqh
I ultimately decided to go with an 80W 20-pin Pico PSU I was able to find on Amazon. My reasoning was simple, the Pico PSU is the smallest option available, and since one of the main goals of this build is to keep it as small as possible, the Pico edged out the ITX based on that fact alone. As mentioned above, 20-pin Pico PSUs are less common these days, but they do still exist, and due to the EPIA-800’s board layout, I can’t use a 24-pin and I didn’t want to have to modify one or use an adapter cable, I wanted to keep the inside as “clean” as possible.
20-Pin 80W Pico PSU: https://amzn.to/3wjTAl6
Goodisory MX01 on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3D4wjY0
The final result, that I have dubbed my “Mini 95”, is a simple small desktop retro computer that I dressed up to look as reminiscent of the era as possible, largely thanks to Geekenspiel’s amazing case badges and stickers!
Check out Geekenspiel’s website: https://geekenspiel.com/
Or Geekenspiel’s eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/geekenspiel
The system works great, I think it looks great, and now that I have it all setup how I want it, I can really dive into what this EPIA-800 can do! We’ll save all that for the next post though, this one is getting too long already, and I want some time to just sit back and enjoy the build before I dive into any sort of “benchmarking”.
In the meantime, here is a quick video to show it playing some of my favorite games! As always, until next time, thanks for reading!
Just a few days into my build, with Windows 95 installed and configured, I was in the process of sorting out a DOS audio issue and doing some basic performance testing at 800x600 16-bit color, when my board died on me. I woke up one morning, went to fire it up and dive back into it, and the board would no longer POST. After spending hours testing the board, trying everything I could think of to diagnose the problem, or at least tell me what the problem was, I had to shelve the board and replace it. Thankfully, I was able to order a replacement the same day thanks to an awesome eBay seller, so I was able to continue where I left off when the new board arrived. When I have more time, I will revisit the dead board and see if it’s recoverable, but at this point, based on how it’s behaving, I’m thinking either the CPU or BIOS is dead. I also need to buy a couple new tools that I seemed to misplace to aid in my troubleshooting and any repair I may attempt. I’ll do a short post when and if that happens.
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