Amizaz
The 4200ti does a pretty good job with the voodoos. The picture is sharper than the last card I used with them. I also have this computer attached to a powered Belkin KVM switch, that also seems to clear up the picture a little.
Fender_178
I run Windows 98 SE. I forgot how unstable this operating system was compared to Win2000 and XP, but the dos compatability is priceless!
Hey guys,
New to the board. I'm in a similar boat, in wanting to get a retro-rig going. (As I get older, I'm becoming more and more of a tech curmudgeon. So instead of buying new stuff which I wont use, I want to revisit all the games I loved growing up and the large number of those games I've missed. I finally installed Starcraft for the first time, which my wife bought for me back in 1999. Yes, I'm really that bad with my games.)
I've used DosBox, but it just doesn't have that same feel.
I have a few machines that are suitable, however I left those at my parents a long time ago. (Zeos 486/66dx2, Custom 5x86/133, Packard Bell 386sx25) They're 800 miles away, 12-18 years old and I'm not sure of their condition at this time. So they're off the list for now. (And yes, my Packard Bell worked quite well for a long time... Shockingly. )
My quest to find a 486 rig has been futile, but I have come across an affordable Dell Dimension L550. They have P3s and Celerons, 35/system.
Linky: http://www.deltacomputers.com/ProductDetails. … x?ProductID=675
Any thoughts on this as a retro-rig? I'd dual boot Dos 6.22/Win 3.11 and Windows 98. Obviously I'd want to add a different sound card and video card. (SBPro and I'm undecided on the video card)
I'm making a vintage rig!!! You stole my idea!!! Hahaha
Well this is my plan:
CPU: Pentium III Slot A, 667MHz/256kb (acquired)
MOTHER: AOpen AX64-Pro (acquired)
HDD: 80GB WD (acquired)
RAM: 512MB ,SDRAM, PC133 (acquired)
2D: Banshee, AGP
3D: Voodoo2, SLI
Monitor: Sony 17" CRT (acquired)
In it's prime this was state-of-the-art hardware, easy $5000 😁
Now we can get it real cheap, in another 10 years a working system like this will be worth $5000 again, ha! CraZy but true
Had an old SCSI card & a new 1000RPM HDD I dumped a while back, would have been perfect, spewing!
What kind of cable do I need for Voodoo2 SLI?
wrote:What kind of cable do I need for Voodoo2 SLI?
You'll need 2. One which connects your 2d card to one of your voodoo2 cards, then another to SLI both v2s together. For the 2d to v2 cable, you can use any small (eg 0.25m) vga monitor extension cable. For the SLI cable which connects the v2s together, you'll need a little ribbon cable, which you can sometimes find on ebay when sellers are selling voodoo2s. You can make them yourself apparently, but I don't have a web link atm which will tell you where to put the "twist" in the ribbon, because I think you can use a floppy cable and alter it somehow.
That's what I was wondering if a standard cable could be used such as a floppy one.
I think it's crazy how "twists" in cables (even) with plastic coating can effect the internal current! then you wonder how people get cancer...
Anyone have anymore information on the SLI cable? Suggestions for hardware? 😕
I would like to get a timber cabinet 😀 Those acrylic ones are cool too or even a plain old one with one of those TURBO buttons hahahaha! I could wire the turbo button to under clock the FSB!!!! 😮
I'll need to check, I might actually have an extra one of those cables.....
If you could spare a SLI cable I would appreciate it, postage costs would be reimbursed through PayPal if necessary.
There used to be instructions on the web of how to make one, but I haven't been able to find them. Found this though:
http://www.forumapex.com/trading_post/41214-3 … _connector.html
wrote:There used to be instructions on the web of how to make one, but I haven't been able to find them. Found this though:
http://www.forumapex.com/trading_post/41214-3 … _connector.html
Yeah, destroyed 3 floppy cables trying to make 1....
What an interesting old thread! I have semi-usable retros based on three old setups, two of which are very similar. I had great hopes for the Asus P5A, and never ran across this preference it is supposed to have for K6-3s. I have several K6-2s, and a couple of Intel Pentium/MMX chips, but they seem too slow.
Of course, at this point, I haven't tried any pre-Windows stuff, so for all I know, the PI/MMX 200 that worked great in Win98 (but hardly at all in Win2K) is "too fast" for those.
The P5A proved incompatible with a TNT2, a Geforce256, and a GF2 Ultra, before I tried ATI cards. The Rage128s worked to a moderate extent, but seemed primitive. Neither the Radeon SDR nor Radeon DDR seemed to work at all well. Of the old ATI cards, a 7500 seemed about as good as any of them.
My biggest problem has been to keep Windows (any version) connected to the Asus MB's USB ports. I had trouble with audio card drivers for a variety of cards I tried, and with the nVIDIA video drivers. I'm just about to give up, but perhaps if I can locate a K6-III inexpensively enough, I'll see if that will reduce the frequent instances of erratic behavior.
The similar PC I put togther has a SOYO MB, with an MVP3 Via chipset. That's the very same chipset I was using back then ,when Win95 was brand new, in a "VIP" motherboard, and it hasn't shown any incompatibilities except with slightly newer Creative cards / drivers. It has an SB128 in it that works fine, and a Geforce GF2 GTS video card.
I would have abandoned the other (ALi Aladdin Asus) long ago, had the SOYO's BIOS known what a "Quick Boot" was. It's so damn slow getting from power-on to loading an OS, that I can lose my urge to play something while waiting on it!
My old PI/MMX 233 PC was never so slow back in the period when it was first line equipment.
So, folks, does this litany of P5A complaints sound familar? How much is related to the CPUs I'm using? (K6-2s from 350 to 575 MHz, mostly down- clocked somewhat.) And, of course, is there any trick to convince the SOYO that it really can perform a Quick Boot?
P. S. No matter what DIMMs I've tried in the several ALi boards, 128 MBs is the largest I could get to work, although the manual claimed the MB could handle 3 x 256s. The SOYO, on the other hand, is running happily on the first pair of 256 MB DIMMs that I stuck into it.
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Kiwi
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wrote:So, folks, does this litany of P5A complaints sound familar?
Yes. I've played around with different revisions of this board and it has some quirks.
wrote:How much is related to the CPUs I'm using? (K6-2s from 350 to 575 MHz, mostly down- clocked somewhat.)
The CPU's don't make much of a difference. The incompatility I mentioned above only occurs on late P5A boards with the M1541 G revision of the Aladdin5 chipset, with a mobile K6+ CPU (K6-2+, K6-3+) installed. This setup crawls at the speed of 486 (probably the caches are not working or something like that). Any other combinations work OK.
The P5A has troubles with fast AGP video cards, because of a generally shoddy AGP implementation and weak AGP voltage converters.
In my opinion this is not a severe drawback, because the K6 CPUs are too slow for DirectX 7 cards/games anyways. Voodoo 3/4/5, Matrox G200/400, ATI Rage 128 are all fine for this board.
I never had trouble with the USB ports though. What revision of the board do you have?
I agree that the K6's are to slow for most DirectX 7 games, but the funny thing is I've never had a problem wtih the falky agp implementation that I have heard so much about. I have plugged in Geforce 2MX, Geforce3 ti200, and a Geforce 4200 into my board with no problem. It is a revision 1.04.
Whoa! That was QUICK! I haven't finished looking through the fairly recent threads here yet (been awhile since I've dropped in), and I already see that someone is responding. I have two different Asus P5As, but one seems dead or nearly so. I formerly had a pair of Biostar M5ALA MBs as well, but gave one of those away (same ALi Aladdin5 Chipset).
The MORE problematic of two P5As is a rev. 1.04. The Biostar is a Rev 2.0. I'll have to add the "semi-working" P5A board's rev NR in edit (OK, it's Friday, and the one that does run, although erratically, is obviously a Rev 0 ). But it's both less readily accessible (the shop was added on behind the garage, and unless I go out there and start its separate A/C going a couple of hours ahead of when I want to be out there, it's just not livable in summer, after 9 AM or so.
South Texas is never a cool weather place in June, and we are currently in both a prolonged drought, and a severe Heat Wave condition), and the other thing is the acess panels are both securely attached, so I wouldn't be able to duck out the back door, cross the breezeway to the shop, zip in, take a fast look and duck back into the house's coolness.
Incidentally. I would've STARTED OUT experimenting with Via MVP3s if I'd seen any going for minimum bids on eBay, but either there were never many, or they ended up in landills rapidly. According to multiple reviews from when these ALi Aladdin boards were brand new, they were described as magically marvelous hardware, so I'd had very high hopes for the M5ALAs, but got fairly poor results from anything other than a rather slow P-I (a 133, perhaps?)
The P5As had been described even more glowingly in the reviews. Worse luck, I didn't find any honest reviewers' articles! (I've added a P.S to my opening round, above. The ALi boards were very picky about DIMMs, the SOYO was not at all picky.) I just wish that this particular MVP3 was less of a BIOS POST slug!
I've added a P.S. to my original comments above, and thought of another, to add here. Within a year or less of acquiring my PI/MMX 233 PC with the same MVP3 (Via) chipset, I also had a PII/400. It was on an Intel MB, with a 440BX chipset. It gave me constant trouble, and was disposed of long before the PI/233. I was surprised as could be back in the day to see the widespread good reputation of that chipset, which was the reason that I turned my back on Intel products of every kind.
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Kiwi
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