Well, AvP crashes when I try to launch (I'll mess with that one later) and I can't remember where I put my Quake III cd key. So that leaves me with Unreal.
Game won't play beyond 320x240 rez and only cranks out about 50-120 fps (spends a lot of time @90 fps). Which I guess isn't too shabby considering that seems to be relying almost completely on the CPU.
I'm thinking the Voodoo 3 will have much better performance.

Well, here's the update. Tested the Voodoo 3 2000 and couldn't get it to display though it did display in my ss7.

I don't think you need a key to run quake 3? at least not offline. I seem to remember always skipping past that screen without entering a key.

I didn't see an option to skip and keep installing. Doesn't matter anymore as I have found my key (sitting in an old box of course).

nemesis wrote:

Well, here's the update. Tested the Voodoo 3 2000 and couldn't get it to display though it did display in my ss7.

Did you set your primary video adapter in the BIOS to display PCI first?
Usually it shouldn't matter (only slower as it will look for an AGP adapter first) but I'm gonna suggest it anyway 😉

I forgot to mention that it's AGP, should I still set my primary as PCI? Also, it was sold to me marked as a v3 2000 but video BIOS tells me it's a 3000. (It's the video card I'm now using in my 503+ from my other post.)
I have another v3 3000 coming though, so I can test that one when it gets here.

The primary setting is really only relevant if you have multiple video cards and monitors. However, you might as well change it to AGP for good luck.

Update: Cannot find BIOS settings for selecting the PCI or AGP as primary video.
My new Voodoo 3 3000 arrived and I installed it. It immediatly displayed and allowed me to get into BIOS, then windows (although it was very slow to get past the POST screen), but when it got into windows, it loaded about half the background (no icons or that popup when it recognizes new hardware) and then froze. Eventually I rebooted and now it won't display anything to the monitor, just like the other V3 3000. 🙁
I hope this sheds more light on the subject cause I'm baffled. 😖

The FIC PA-2012 seems to be the very first AGP board ever released. Perhaps the AGP port simply can't cope with the juice the Voodoo 3's require??
Perhaps you should try some cheap low-power PCI card to rule out any other problems?

Tetrium wrote:

The FIC PA-2012 seems to be the very first AGP board ever released. Perhaps the AGP port simply can't cope with the juice the Voodoo 3's require??
Perhaps you should try some cheap low-power PCI card to rule out any other problems?

I tried out an ATi Rage 128 pro PCI card and it works (compatible with the games I was testing) but it's performance is very underwhelming (this tends to be my experience with ATi anyway). According to what I have read, it is true that the PA-2012 is the first motherboard released with AGP.
On another note, I removed the USB mouse and replaced with a PS/2 and that removed most of my lockups. somehow there must be a conflict with the USB ports. At least it has some historical value if nothing else.
EDIT: Fixed open parentheses.

Imo legacy mice/keyboards are always preferred over USB mice/keyboards for boards of that age. I tend to stick to PS/2 whenever I can, at least for anything that's pre 2Ghz or so 😉

Yeah, for pre 1GHz, PS/2 seems to be the sweet spot. After Socket A launched, USB was perfect for me... well with the exception of a certain (I won't mention the make) computer that burned up a USB flash drive of mine (it seems that some wires got crossed somehow during construction or something 😠 and I had no way of knowing about it til I was treating my fingers for minor burns. Well, the lessons we learn are often the lessons that burn... ok bad pun.
Edit: And I think you know my feelings toward XT and AT keyboards based on my other posts.

bushwack wrote:

I <3 me some socket 7. But 768mb RAM? That's just crazy. I figure the 2nd and 3rd stick is gonna be pretty jealous of the 1st stick. 😁

Yeah, seriously. When I had my P150, I only ever had 48megs in it and when I got my K6-2 533 I only had 64 for most of the time I used it. My 3 DELL GX1 machines max out at 768mb, but I can't see even putting that much in those.

When I was growing up... scratch that, I never grew up.... Ok, when I was chronologically advancing through years, I never had many new computers, so I had to push what I had to get what I wanted (i.e. running a pentium 166 requiring game on a 486dx 66 @ nearly 1.5 seconds per frame in some cases), so now when I have the opportunity to see what vintage machines actually do when maxed out, I jump at the chance. 😁

nemesis wrote:

when I was chronologically advancing through years

LMAO!! 😁

Anyway, yes I reckon many of us Vogoners wanted something when it was unavailable to us and now want to find out what they were really like 😉

I was once doing repairs on my mothers computer and happened to spot that the guy (one of those scam artist types) who had done *cough* repairs on it previously had actually plugged the front USB header into the firewire port!
Lucky she never uses USB sticks, plugging USB into a firewire can't be good news.

And do mention the make of the board that toasted your stick (and finger), you got me curious now anyway 😉

Tetrium wrote:

LMAO!! :D […]
Show full quote

nemesis wrote:

when I was chronologically advancing through years

LMAO!! 😁

Anyway, yes I reckon many of us Vogoners wanted something when it was unavailable to us and now want to find out what they were really like 😉

I was once doing repairs on my mothers computer and happened to spot that the guy (one of those scam artist types) who had done *cough* repairs on it previously had actually plugged the front USB header into the firewire port!
Lucky she never uses USB sticks, plugging USB into a firewire can't be good news.

And do mention the make of the board that toasted your stick (and finger), you got me curious now anyway 😉

I wasn't paying attention once and did that. It blew out the firewire header, as well as the USB headers. A huge pop and sparks flew from the motherboard as a VRM or two died. Moving the usb header over to the correct loctation showed the USB headers were dead. Fortunately the ports in the backplate still worked, and the board was otherwise fine. It still works too.

It was the dumbest thing I've ever done with a computer, and it's not happened since. I was tired at the time and rushing to put the box back together.

I don't remember the make of the board off the top of my head, but it wasn't the board that tried it's hand at making a family bucket of grilled human fingers (ok, maybe that was kinda dark). The true culprit turned out to be the front panel of the (ok, I'll say it) HP Pavilion desktop from early 1999 IIRC.

I once used the USB port taken from the front panel of a late 90s or early 2000s Pavilion and I remember before I could do anything with it on another motherboard, I had to change the connector's pinout. HP didn't use the standard pinout.

GXL750 wrote:

I once used the USB port taken from the front panel of a late 90s or early 2000s Pavilion and I remember before I could do anything with it on another motherboard, I had to change the connector's pinout. HP didn't use the standard pinout.

Wow...that's pretty important stuff right there.

Any idea when (if...) hp started using the standard USB pinout?

I talked to a few friends of mine and they said that their HP computers used a different usb pinout as late as 2009 (maybe even later but that's as new as we checked), although one said it's something to do with the motherboard chipset... not really sure where he was going with that as he never finished the conversation.