Pentium II PC for video processing

A high-end computer for video capture and processing. It has a larger casing and high-end components. It is powered by Pentium II 450MHz processor, has 256MB of RAM and two SCSI hard disks. There is IDE optical drive, as well as CD-RW drive and tape drive. To capture video, there is a FAST AV Master board, very high-end card which captures VHS video in quality better than some modern devices.
Video files are large, so FAT32 file system starts to have some limitations. Most video processing machines were running with NT 4.0 or Windows 2000. This machine has Windows NT 4.0 Workstation OS and Ulead MediaStudio PRO software which comes with AV Master board. With it, it is possible to capture, cut and merge video clips.

Approx. year 1998

Class ATX
CPU Intel Pentium II
Speed 450MHz
RAM 256MB DIMM (PC133)
ROM Award BIOS
Mainboard Shuttle HOT-661P
Graphics Trident 3DImage 9750
(AGP, 4MB)
Sound Creative SoundBlaster 32
CT3600 (ISA)
Ports I/O On-board
(Serial, parallel, PS/2, USB,
2xIDE, FDD)
Network SMC 83C171A2 EtherPower II
PCI, RJ45
System expansion bus 1x AGP Slot
4x PCI Slot
3x 16-bit ISA slot
Floppy/removable media drives 1x 3.5" 1.44MB floppy disk drive
 
 
 
Hard disks/storage devices:  - 2x Seagate SCSI 16GB drives
 - Teac 6x CD writer (SCSI)
 - DDS SCSI Streamer (Archive Python 28388)
 - IDE CD-ROM drive

Peripherals in collection:
 - None
Other boards:

 

  - Tekram DC390F PCI SCSI controller
 - FAST AV Master video capture board
Casing High ATX tower
Non-standard expansions: None
Operating system(s): Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Workstation

Contents: Starting, usage Drivers Links

Starting

Computer is a standard one, but installation of Windows NT 4 using proprietary SCSI card is a bit difficult. It doesn't matter is the card equipped with ROM or not, Windows NT setup will not see SCSI drives. Even if you have IDE CD-ROM you have to boot from floppies, or it will not detect SCSI card with manufacturer's drivers. So you need 4 floppy disks:

1. 3 installation floppy disks for Windows NT 4 - do it by starting NT4 setup on some Win9x computer with parameter /ox. Start e.g. X:\i386\winnt /ox and it will make 3 floppy disks.
2. 1 installation floppy disk with SCSI board drivers from SCSI board manufacturer or drivers site, it must be for Your SCSI board.

So the procedure is following:
1. Boot the computer from disk 1. It will then ask for disk 2 and load kernel. You will have a Setup there.
2. You will be offered with option "S" to skip detecting of mass storage devices. Use it.
3. Select other device, insert SCSI driver disk. It will read disk and offer controller option.
4. If you have ATAPI CD-ROM drive, add it too. "IDE-CD-ROM ATAPI ...".
5. Setup should ask for disk 2 again, then 3, then for NT 4.0 CD in SCSI CD-ROM drive.
6. You can then partition disk and continue installation.

WARNING: For video processing computers, disabling ACPI may be needed for flawless functioning of video capture board. You should do it in BIOS Setup, then in Windows NT Setup in "Computer type".

Installation of drivers is quite straightforward but there is no device manager in Windows NT. So:
1. Network is installed in Network applet from Control Panel. Be sure to install TCP/IP too! Install network BEFORE SP6 or you will get a nonsense error similar to "no server memory to process this command" from Server service at startup. If you installed SP6, reinstall it after adding network. Look here for details: https://support.microsoft.com/pl-pl/kb/800127 
If SP6 cannot be reinstalled (e.g. you've installed IE6 and SP6 can't be then reinstalled because of some encryption libraries error), start SP6 installer, wait for license window observing target extracting path, like C:\temp\... or d:\temp\... Having license window hanging on screen, go to this directory, find "srv.sys" file and copy it to some other directory. Abandon installation of SP6 and copy this Srv.sys to C:\Winnt\System32\drivers overwriting existing file. Restart Windows and the error should be gone.

2. Sound is installed from a small device tree in Multimedia applet in Control panel. You should see a speaker icon near clock after installation.

3. AGP information on Windows NT4
Windows NT 4.0 without SP4 or SP6 will NOT support AGP video boards. Video board will work as "VGA" giving some 640x480x16 colors, 800x600 max. So to avoid problems, install all drivers except video first, then SP6, then video drivers. After having working video board, you can install other programs or IE6. If you install IE before SP6, you will not be able to install SP6 as it detects IE6 encryption libraries as installed upgrade.

Python 28388 is a SCSI tape drive and can use WinNT's native drivers - it just needs to be detected and installed in control panel.

Creative SoundBlaster 32 jumper information
All cards have a jumper marked MFBEN. This jumper enables or disables NMI generation for the AWEUTIL.COM utility. This functionality is required when AWEUTIL is emulating a MIDI interpreter in DOS. If you are not using AWEUTIL other than for initialization, you can remove the jumper.

Models without PNP : CT2760, CT3900, CT3780, CT3910

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Drivers

HOT 661 manual (7-zipped PDF)
HOT-661 BIOS v. 074, last one for Rev. 2.x/1.x
FAST AV Master drivers:
   - Archived Win9x drivers site
   - NT driver not present in archive site
   - Codec for playing videos in Win2K/XP.
SoundBlaster 32 driver:  NT4, DOS/Win3.x/Win95
Trident 9750 NT4 driver
SMC EtherPower II driver disk
Tekram DC390 driver
WinNT 4 USB drivers for Your convenience: Woodhead, Inside Out, Inside Out Dell Edition - try, maybe some works

 

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Links

http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au/usb.htm - Unofficial USB driver in NT4.
http://web.archive.org/web/20091019012335/http://us.geocities.com/mypublic99/ - Woodhead's NT4 USB driver page.

https://www.shuttle.eu/_archive/older/de/661.htm#hot_661 - Shuttle HOT-661 archived support page - links may be broken.