Nice pictures, nice case and nice build!

Very cool, that's quite a stylish little case you have there and I like those NEC CD drives. I have a couple of the 8X version and they work well.

But what's with the trident VGA? I think that setup deserves better!

(Deleted. No longer relevant anyway)

(Deleted)

Looks very nice.
I would like to suggest getting a different keyboard adapter. Those rigid 1-piece adapters like you're using have a tendency to either fall out, or get knocked out when they hit up against something. Every time the PS/2 port gets accidentally hotplugged, it's maybe a 5% chance of burning out the port. Besides, the length those things stick out the back is just annoying (to me anyway).
The adapters that have a short stretch of wire in between the 2 connectors, are far better and safer IMO.

If it's only being used for DOS, then might as well leave it at 64MB. But if you're running Windows stuff then 128MB might be of some use, unless there's a caching limit.

Nice build!
Also is your avatar from the 1995 movie hackers ?

Thanks all. In the mean time I also obtained (for free!) a Microsoft Sidewinder Precision Pro joystick with the serial connector, so another part that suits the era of this machine 😀 I still need to clean and test it though.

@badmofo - indeed, the trident vga card is going to be replaced at some point, once I find a suitable replacement 2D card (which fits the era) that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. On the other hand, 1024x768x256 on a 24" has its charm 😉

@shamino - good point, I'll look out for one of those extended adapters!

@memsys - thanks, indeed - the avatar is a representation of the Gibson as featured in "Hackers" - which I thought appropriate for VOGONS 😉

But if you're running Windows stuff then 128MB might be of some use, unless there's a caching limit.

There indeed is a 64MB caching limit on the 430FX chipset. So unless you absolutely need more memory, it's best to stick with 64MB.

Looks like your board already has 256kb pipelined burst cache soldered on (with a COAST module to expand to 512), but then you seem to have plugged an extra 256kb into the async cache sockets. Very weird combination. Does the system actually report 512k installed?

The system does not have cache soldered on the board, but had 256KB installed in the sockets, I obtained a 512KB COAST module, so I removed the chips and installed the COAST module instead. The system reports 512KB in cachechk 7.

Interesting.

What are those two rectangular chips next to the DIP sockets? I can't read them from the glare, but they *really* look like pipelined burst cache chips.

*update*

Ah, I see now. Those are Intel 82438FX "data path units".

Indeed, they are 82438s!

For those interested, the manual can still be found online at motherboards.org

A new video card arrived in the mail today so the Trident card has now been replaced with a ELSA Winner 2000 AVI/3D (PCI S3 ViRGE/VX with 4MB VRAM).

The ebay seller was amoretro (german), so Fabian, if you read this, excellent wrapping job 😀

Read it. Great that the card has survived the journey 🤣

I think the card fits your system very well and the ELSA card with it's great 2D quality is a great companion for your Voodoo card.
Btw I really like these old Soyo FX-Boards. They are rock solid and just work. They are also really duarble.

Cheers
Fabian

Very nice. I like the case a lot and funny enough, it actually looks proper with that metal IBM logo. You have a Voodoo to accelerate 3D games but for 2D and pseudo-3D, I think that 1mb Trident card might be anemic. Also, Trident cards had a tendency to use crappy DACs. You should replace it with a good Cirrus Logic, S3 (Trio plz; their 3D cards were as bad as their 2D cards were good) or a Matrox Millenium. Another good route would be a PCI Rage LT running with the 2D-only Mach 64 driver.

The sound card is good but I think a better setup would be a card from different vender like Yamaha or Ensoniq with OPL3 and SB16 compatibility combined with a Creative Goldfinch card so you could still enjoy the cool qualities of AWE without the negatives.

Everything else in the computer looks as good as you can get for a 1996 era machine. You have jealousy from me even as-is.

Also, just curious... What OS is this bad boy running? Plz say Win95B.

GXL750 wrote:

Very nice. I like the case a lot and funny enough, it actually looks proper with that metal IBM logo. You have a Voodoo to accelerate 3D games but for 2D and pseudo-3D, I think that 1mb Trident card might be anemic. Also, Trident cards had a tendency to use crappy DACs. You should replace it with a good Cirrus Logic, S3 (Trio plz; their 3D cards were as bad as their 2D cards were good) or a Matrox Millenium. Another good route would be a PCI Rage LT running with the 2D-only Mach 64 driver.

You overread that he already has swapped the Trident with a ViRGE/VX, which is a very fine card. Also, the Trio and ViRGE share the same 2D core, but the ViRGE/VX has a way faster RAMDAC, the 2D quality is brilliant and no one is forced to use the 3D capabilities of the ViRGE.

GXL750 wrote:

The sound card is good but I think a better setup would be a card from different vender like Yamaha or Ensoniq with OPL3 and SB16 compatibility combined with a Creative Goldfinch card so you could still enjoy the cool qualities of AWE without the negatives.

There is no card from Yamaha with OPL3 and SB16 compatibility, neither is there such a card from Ensoniq. The CT3980 he has in his rig actually has an OPL3 built in, this specific model isn't using the CQM method but a real OPL3 circuit inside the CT1747 chip.

The system has received another upgrade. After some further testing, both AT Power Supplies in my collection were found to be unreliable. The 200W PSU had a tendency to turn off after 30 seconds when cold booted. The 230W PSU was just unreliable - which after 15 years is understandable.

I've gone ahead with an ATX to AT conversion, and acquired a conversion kit (including a new power switch) through Ebay and a new LC Power LC420H-8 PSU (lc-power.de) through Amazon.

While this power supply is not the best in the world, it is inexpensive, fits the case nicely and should be powerful enough to power the system. However, while Amazon listed it as the older 20pin-style PSU, I received the ATX 1.3 version with only 2 molex, 1 floppy and 4 sata plugs. This suffices in the current configuration though.

Inside:

Back:

Now that the build is complete, here's a SpeedSys report:

I thought I had already posted in this thread. What a nice build and what a nice case!