I'm predicting a PII 450mhz and a Voodoo 3000...just throwing it out there 😀

😀

Probably not Voodoo 3, if he's going period correct anyway. Voodoo 3 was 1999, so probably Voodoo2 SLI.

Where do u store all the computers? 1 each week, that means 52 per year...

F2bnp wrote:

😀

Probably not Voodoo 3, if he's going period correct anyway. Voodoo 3 was 1999, so probably Voodoo2 SLI.

Yeah, I was going to say Voodoo 2 SLI but thought he might need the extra PCI slots :p

I'm going to say that it may look like this:

Pentium II 400MHz
64-128MB RAM
Windows 98 SE
Slot 1 motherboard - ASUS.MSI or AOpen very likely
8-10 GB HDD (maybe less,who knows)
Voodoo 2 PCI / Riva TNT2 AGP (probably, not very sure but TNT2 is mid-1998)
generic CD-ROM drive
3.5' floppy drive
optional - 5.25 floppy drive
300-350w PSU

No, the TNT2 is 1999 as well. The TNT 1 was released in 1998 😀.

F2bnp wrote:

No, the TNT2 is 1999 as well. The TNT 1 was released in 1998 😀.

Well,TNT1 it is. And another video card I can think of is Voodoo Banshee,since it came out in September 1998.

Hahah! Nice to see some interest building in this thread. Some of you are right and some of you are wrong. 😈

I won't get to the pix today unfortunately..... My "honey-do" list had to come first I'm afraid. The good news as that we're now fully prepped for winter here in Wisconsin and my list of stuff to get done is finally... done! Well, at least for now...

Pix tomorrow guys - promise!

**Note, I don't have a build for each of the 52 weeks of the year. This was just a fun little thing for me to do so that I can play with these systems, clean em up, test parts and document them in my massive spreadsheet of retro goodness. If I did have 52 computers, I'm sure my wife would have me committed. I'm sure she's come close already after seeing what's in our basement.

Hoping maybe Voodoo II SLI, dual Slot 1 motherboard w/ dual Pentium II 450MHz (or OC'd), 1GB PC-100 SD-RAM, Nvidia RIVA TNT, massive full tower, and Windows 98SE Plus! 😁

I'm probably wrong on most of these 🤣.

AlphaDangerDen wrote:

Hoping maybe Voodoo II SLI, dual Slot 1 motherboard w/ dual Pentium II 450MHz (or OC'd), 1GB PC-100 SD-RAM, Nvidia RIVA TNT, massive full tower, and Windows 98SE Plus! 😁

I'm probably wrong on most of these 🤣.

I'd say wrong with motherboard and very wrong with RAM. I don't think there was any dual Slot 1 motherboard,and very sure there wasn't 1GB of RAM back then.

PcBytes wrote:

AlphaDangerDen wrote:

Hoping maybe Voodoo II SLI, dual Slot 1 motherboard w/ dual Pentium II 450MHz (or OC'd), 1GB PC-100 SD-RAM, Nvidia RIVA TNT, massive full tower, and Windows 98SE Plus! 😁

I'm probably wrong on most of these 🤣.

I'd say wrong with motherboard and very wrong with RAM. I don't think there was any dual Slot 1 motherboard,and very sure there wasn't 1GB of RAM back then.

There were many dual slot 1 boards that supported up to 1gb of ram. 1 example is the Asus P2B-D.

My A-Open AX6B+ supported 1GB of RAM. 440BX boards could do it if they had 4 DIMM slots.

Getting closer gents... Another teaser.

Artex wrote:

Getting closer gents... Another teaser. […]
Show full quote

Getting closer gents... Another teaser.

I have a strange feeling that now the rig is gonna be a AMD K6-2. 😀

I think these and then two in SLI

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/obsidian/

So you have 4 cards in sli.

Alrighty folks... Enough waiting... On with the show!

We all know (or should know) that 1998 was a great year in computing - not only on the software (gaming) side of things, but on the hardware side of things as well. 3DFX released their Voodoo2 chipset and killed it performance-wise across the board.

Another up-and-comer, NVIDIA, released their Twin-Texel powerhouse - the Riva TNT chip - which handled both 2D and 3D in a single card, and could handle 32-bit color as well (vs the Voodoo2's 16-bit). The drawbacks of this card were of course the fact that Glide support for the TNT card was non-existant, and use of the Direct3D renderer at this point in time was fairly limited as well. I also remember fighting the TNT card on a Super 7 chipset. Finally, you also needed a pretty powerful CPU to get the performance out of these cards.

So my goal with this build was simple.. Let's try to stay time-period specific, using hardware released in 1998. Why not get the benefit of *both* Direct3D and Glide by using a 2D/3D Riva TNT card (Diamond Viper V550 16MB AGP) and some kind of 3DFX solution as well. Then I thought, "how can I up the "bad-ass" factor of this system?" Back in the day I had two 12MB Voodoo2's connected for 1024x768 SLI gaming. Of course everyone knows the cool/retro factor of that setup, but why not amp things up a bit?

I dug through my collection of hardware and found a little (well, not really little) diamond in the rough - my Quantum3D Obsidian 200SBI - the single card SLI solution that superceded the "stacked" X-24 board in 1998. In my opinion, this is a better design of the card since the X-24 was prone to heat issues. I popped open my boxed X-24, grabbed the medusa cable and got to work. Thankfully this classic Enlight EN-7237 case actually fits this giant card!

I decided to go with the Pentium II 450 Slot 1 processor to pump out enough juice to push these cards, and I paired with my rock-stable Asus P2B 440BX chipset motherboard. I decided to scale back a little bit with the sound card for this build, using a PnP Sound Blaster 16 but I still made use of a Roland SCD-15/SCB-55 GM daughterboard to preserve the excellent MIDI soundtracks for games that used it. On the memory front I chose a single 128MB stick (way overkill) and a large 120GB Western Digital spindle drive to store the heaps of ISO's I've made. To round things out, a USB 2.0 card, NIC, and CD-ROM.

Case: Enlight Enlight EN-7237 (4-Bay)
Power Supply: Enlight HPC250-G2 250W
Motherboard: Asus P2B Rev. 1.02 (Intel 440BX)
Processor: Intel Pentium II 450Mhz (SLOT 1)
Cooling: Just Cooler SECC Pentium II Cooling Fan & Heatsink

Network: Network Everywhere NC100 10/100 PCI Adapter

Misc: Belkin F5U220 Rev. 3 5-Port USB 2.0 PCI Interface Card

Storage:
Western Digital 120GB Hard Drive (WD1200BB)
3.5" Floppy Drive
LG CRD-8480C 20X-48X IDE CD-ROM

Memory:
1x128MB PC133 6NS 3.3V NON ECC SDRAM

Audio:
Creative CT-2950 Sound Blaster 16 PnP
Roland SCD-15/SCB-55 General Midi Daughterboard

Video:
Diamond Viper V550 16MB AGP (Nvidia RIVA TNT)
Quantum3D Obsidian 200SBI 24MB PCI (2 x 3DFX Voodoo2)

Onto the hardware Pr0n!

Diamond Viper V550 16MB AGP

Intel Pentium II 450

Beautiful Beige!

There she is - the bad-ass 200Sbi.

"Is that a Medusa cable coming out of the back of your PC, or are you just happy to see me?" 😎

Creative Sound Blaster 16 PnP (CT-2950)

Roland SCD-15/SCB-55 GM Daughterboard

Mounted!

Asus P2B Rev 1.02 (Intel 440BX for the win!)

Quantum3D Obsidian Driver

Why not going for a Diamond Viper V770 32MB AGP.. I think that the TNT2 is nicer then the previous TNT1 card. The differents is maybe one or 2 years later..

Robin4 wrote:

Why not going for a Diamond Viper V770 32MB AGP.. I think that the TNT2 is nicer then the previous TNT1 card. The differents is maybe one or 2 years later..

I actually had a TNT2 Ultra in there originally but realized it was released in 1999. Seeing as how I wanted to stick with period-specific hardware, the V770U TNT2 Ultra had to go in favor of the V550.

TNT = 1998
TNT2 = 1999

Nice build... and with rare components.
PII 450 SECC1 is not that common. And 200SBi - quite hard to get. Let me guess - is it from Ebay, Canada? 😀 There were few of them for sale last year.