badmojo wrote:

raymangold wrote:

Also, is that a Model A keyboard? (they're rubber dome, but I can't say I see them very often).

Yes it is - I bought it new in the box a while back for a buck! Yes it's rubber dome, but I need a rest from the clacking of my model M sometimes.

What do you know about them? Searching the interwebs didn't turn up anything much. It has a manufactured date of 27-FEB-96.

Well I'm thinking the 'A' stands for Aptiva, since they were manufactured during that period briefly. They are a bit odd in having a discreet division and multiplier symbol on the numpad. That's pretty much all I can say as nobody bothered to document anything else. They were largely overshadowed by IBM's KB-8923 option; which are far more common and weren't actually even designed by IBM from what I can tell (IBM just advised a few things such as the pebble grey keys instead of a pure-white key design and of course the logo near the indicators).

I also noticed the cambridge soundworks speakers, I like their designs (and subsequently they are Creative's only real source of income these days).

Has anyone performed any statistical analysis as to whether lack of active cooling on the voodoo 3 is correlated with lower lifespan (voodoo3 lifespan not user lifespan)? If so, one would want to know by how much and with what probability.

blank001 wrote:

Has anyone performed any statistical analysis as to whether lack of active cooling on the voodoo 3 is correlated with lower lifespan (voodoo3 lifespan not user lifespan)? If so, one would want to know by how much and with what probability.

The prevailing theory is that running any integrated circuit at higher temperature speeds up the process of electromigration. Poorly manufactured or defective ICs can prematurely experience electromigration-- but then I have fully working ICs from the 1970's which have not suffered this yet. Therefore it's really hard to tell 'how long' it will take. Probably the majority of these devices will outlive us.

However, the Voodoo 3 has other challenges, there's a linear voltage regulator which runs just as hot: http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/CS5205-1-D.PDF although not many seem to notice this. If that fails, the card won't run as well. Although I don't imagine that part is very hard to source and simply replace... in any event it should have been fitted with a larger heatsink as well.

raymangold wrote:

Well I'm thinking the 'A' stands for Aptiva, since they were manufactured during that period briefly. They are a bit odd in having a discreet division and multiplier symbol on the numpad. That's pretty much all I can say as nobody bothered to document anything else. They were largely overshadowed by IBM's KB-8923 option; which are far more common and weren't actually even designed by IBM from what I can tell (IBM just advised a few things such as the pebble grey keys instead of a pure-white key design and of course the logo near the indicators).

I also noticed the cambridge soundworks speakers, I like their designs (and subsequently they are Creative's only real source of income these days).

Thanks for the info, pics of it below.

And yes those Cambridge speakers have served me well for 10 years now - they're the 2.1 SW310 model. I attempted to replace them with some far more expensive AudioEngine 2's a while back but decided I liked the SW310's more.

Well, a heads up on cooling the V3 3000 and the 3500 listed by the OP using the evercool heatsin I mentioned on the first page. It dosent fit. 1. There is a clock crystal about 1/8" to close on both cards for the cooler to fully seat, and 2. It's just slightly to big and over hangs the AGP connecter by about another 1/8". The mounting holes are a perfect match though. If my bench grinder wasn't dead I would grind those areas off and it would be perfect. The ram sits close enough to the cooler that it would be actively cooled from fan exhaust if the included ram sinks were used. So its still a great concept, but needs some elbow grease to make it work.

On a second note, when I reinstalled the original heatsink, I used a decent TIM (MX-2), and noticed a average 8° C drop. That cooler was attached with a double sided strip of metal with a glue like TIM. Had to use rework station set to 300° C and a good strong twist to get it to come off. I think it's worth doing just to replace the lousy TIM on the original heatsink.

When I get a chance in the next few weeks, I will get a new grinder and shape the cooler cooler to fit and report back. Btw, the cooler comes with a standard mobo connecter and an adaptor for standard molex, so powering the cooler in most retro rigs should not be an issue.

That "PC Air Conditioner" is hilarious.

I could of course just strap a fan to Voodoo but that strikes me as inelegant

Not IMO, back in the day I did exactly that. 😀

Beautiful setup! I like the CRT and the nice period correct case.
Of course the A3D is always a good choice 😁
The Air conditioner is hillarious indeed!! 🤣

fyy wrote:

That "PC Air Conditioner" is hilarious.

I could of course just strap a fan to Voodoo but that strikes me as inelegant

Not IMO, back in the day I did exactly that. 😀

Well I didn't because it leaves nasty screwmarks on the heatsink.
For reasons like this I am using these:

Arctic wrote:

Well I didn't because it leaves nasty screwmarks on the heatsink.
For reasons like this I am using these:

You could do this:

Phil's YouTube and Website updates (philscomputerlab)

I did start with a fan strapped on with cable ties - a socket 7 cooler fan fits very nicely, and the one I had lined up perfectly with the 2 empty holes on the V3's heatsink. It worked fine and I would have left it there if not for the 'air conditioner' 😊

A small change to this system - I've replaced the PSU with a new Antec Basiq 350, which I've had good experiences with in the past.

badmojo wrote:

bought from this eBay seller who seems to have an unlimited supply.

Did you get your card(s) shipped directly to Australia? If so, how much did he charge?

SquallStrife wrote:

Did you get your card(s) shipped directly to Australia? If so, how much did he charge?

Nah I use shipito, so just paid his U.S shipping price which was reasonable from memory.

badmojo wrote:

SquallStrife wrote:

Did you get your card(s) shipped directly to Australia? If so, how much did he charge?

Nah I use shipito, so just paid his U.S shipping price which was reasonable from memory.

Was thinking of going that route, but thought I'd ask anyway. Cheers! 😀

badmojo wrote:

By 'pure DOS' I mean booting into DOS 7 from a boot menu I've setup in my Autoexec.bat and Config.sys. What else are you loading […]
Show full quote

boxpressed wrote:

One question: can the Vortex 2 be used as a "pure" DOS card? When I copy the two lines in the autoexec.bat to a DOS bootdisk, I get errors. When I start Quake, the sound is obviously messed up, unlike when I play it after using "Restart in MS-DOS mode" from 98SE.

By 'pure DOS' I mean booting into DOS 7 from a boot menu I've setup in my Autoexec.bat and Config.sys. What else are you loading from your boot disk? Maybe AU30DOS.COM needs HIMEM.SYS or something? This is what I use:

Config.sys:

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1DOS=HIGH,UMB
2DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
3DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS
4files=40
5buffers=30
6LASTDRIVE=D

Autoexec.bat:

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1LH C:\WINDOWS\SMARTDRV.EXE
2PROMPT $P$G
3SET PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\XTGOLD;C:\DRIVERS\FASTVID

Apologies for taking so long to respond to your query. Here are my autoexec.bat and config.sys:

Autoexec.bat

1@ECHO OFF
2PROMPT $p$g
3PATH=C:\;C:\WINDOWS
4LH MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000
5CTMOUSE.EXE
6SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D3 T4
7LH AU30DOS.COM
8FASTVID 111 128 f0000000

Config.sys

1DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS
2DEVICE=EMM386.EXE NOEMS
3BUFFERS=10,0
4FILES=100
5DOS=UMB
6LASTDRIVE=H
7FCBS=4,0
8DOS=HIGH
9DEVICEHIGH=OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD000

I put AU30DOS.COM & AU30DOS.INI on the boot disk. Perhaps we're not supposed to use the Vortex 2 without Windows in this way?

And here is a photo of the error I get:

I stumbled across the solution while researching another question!

Aureal Vortex 2 / TB Santa Cruz aka Videologic Sonic Fury unter DOS

The trick is to put SET WINBOOTDIR=C:\WINDOWS somewhere in your autoexec.bat.

Enjoying the AU8830's so-so SB Pro emulation on Duke Nukem 3D right now...

That's very useful, thanks for sharing this solution.

I never tried the Vortex 2 in a pure DOS environment. But with a wavetable board, this card is actually quite decent.

boxpressed wrote:

The trick is to put SET WINBOOTDIR=C:\WINDOWS somewhere in your autoexec.bat.

Enjoying the AU8830's so-so SB Pro emulation on Duke Nukem 3D right now...

Why so-so? I tried it in Duke3D briefly and it seemed OK?

Everyone's favorite retro-blogger really likes this hardware combination. Both the graphics and sound card were underrated for their time. Both are solid Windows and DOS performers (the latter to the extent of its SBPro emulation, which may I hope improve). You know what their best features are...they work when other fancy-shamancy cards fail.

I guess it's the rebel in me that gravitates so fondly to them instead of the Geforces and the Live!s of the day. Quite the 1999 machine indeed!

My PIII received some Christmas cheer with a motherboard switch + CPU speed bump (EPoX EP3vca / 1GHz PGA370). And I finally got around to experimenting with Fastvid on this machine, which of course enables some stuff to make vid go fast. I haven't actually come across any SVGA games that this machine can't handle I must admit but - using benchmarks - I was able to see significant improvement with Fastvid running:

Before:
3DBench: 286.3
Chris' SVGABnch: 55.8
PCbench: 183.9
Quake: 132.2

After:
3DBench: 759.4
Chris' SVGABnch: 140.3
PCbench: 222.4
Quake: 149.3

And I also added an ISA sound solution for use when booting directly into DOS mode. I'm a big fan of ESS Audiodrives and this is the best implementation I've found to date, the Labway ES1688:

When paired with a Yamaha DB50XG it's a really nice setup; non-pnp, full sized card, great sounding SB Pro 2.0 emulation, and the ES(1)688 chipset is supported natively in some later DOS games.

Wow! Your rig is so neat! Congratulations. I really like it.
I remember when first slot 1 proccessors came to market. I wanted one of these so bad!
And I like your Philips CRT too. I have a 109e5 (19 inches) for my -now restoring- retro rig. They are rock solid! 😎