Very impressive system!

Now in DOS, will there be issues with the Voodoo cards conflicting? I have a bit of experiences with V1 and V3 and the type of patch you use determines what card gets used. But also a V2 in the system, what card will get used with let's say Tomb Raider and the Voodoo Rush patch?

Personally I would ditch the V2. The V3 should run all / most games the V2 does. And the V1 is for those few games that only work / work better with V1.

Also interested to hear about the Gigabit Ethernet card. Mine is only Fast Ethernet and didn't even think that there might be Gigabit cards for Windows 98. When you say generic, what chip does it have?

The NIC uses a Realtek RL8169 chipset. Haven't had any issues with it, so far. Even the DOS drivers worked just fine during original testing with my XP system. Now that I have a Windows 7 system, I imagine I'll really have to do some digging to get it up and running.

As for the V1/V2/V3 setup, originally it was just a V2 setup. The first expansion on that was with a V1, but the pass through switching doesn't play nice with a V2. The next step was to add in a V3 (had to modify the motherboard as it was limited to 2.5 Amp on the 3.3V AGP line, V3 needs 4-5 Amps.) It plays perfectly fine with the V2, but that left a couple of games out that it couldn't support (not a big deal, don't have those games at this time.) After a considerable amount of research on the availability & costs of options for the last open slot, I decided to put the V1 back in with a switch box (have to manually switch in the V1, the V2 continues to work just fine on pass through switching.) When it comes down to cases, the V2-SLI on some games actually outperforms the V3 (the last Voodoo with Windows 3.1 drivers,) and there are quite a few games that won't work with the V3, but can utilize the advantage of a V2 in SLI. So, V1+V2+V3, gives me support for all 3DFX games. Play any that are statically linked (and can't take advantage of a V2-SLI) with the V1, play everything else with the V2, and use the V3 for the later Windows 9x games 😀

So, all the criteria of my project are met 😀 Full 3DFX compatibility, full ISA compatibility, & unless something breaks, I'll never need to open the system again 😀 The only thing it cannot do is run games that are exceptionally speed sensitive & produce proper graphics for the extremely old games (CGA Composite mode.) But then, I play those in DOSBox anyways.

FeedingDragon wrote:

Gigabyte GA-6BXC Motherboard (Modified for high current AGP 2x cards)

Curious as to how this mod was achieved/done ?

And wonder if all 3.3v AGP mobos (BX) are 'wired' the same when it comes to this amp'age thingy?
(me clueless whether Abit BH6 has this 'problem' vs Voodoo3, let alone Voodoo5)

pics or didnt happend...

bestemor wrote:

Curious as to how this mod was achieved/done ? […]
Show full quote

FeedingDragon wrote:

Gigabyte GA-6BXC Motherboard (Modified for high current AGP 2x cards)

Curious as to how this mod was achieved/done ?

And wonder if all 3.3v AGP mobos (BX) are 'wired' the same when it comes to this amp'age thingy?
(me clueless whether Abit BH6 has this 'problem' vs Voodoo3, let alone Voodoo5)

I don't think all of them do. The GA-6BXC board rev2.0+ has jumpers that do the same thing. Pics of the mod are Here for my particular board. Basically, you just run a direct connect from the 3.3V line on the power connector to the 3.3V line on the AGP port. If you can find the voltage control for the 3.3V line, you can check the part number to see what it is rated too. Also, a Google search of your motherboard "might" turn up details as well.

Living:
Right now, my camera is in a fixed mounting for taking photos for something else. Also, have to wait for the last 2 parts to arrive (VGA switch box & CM-32L.) But I can take pics without those pieces if you really want.

When I saw the title of this thread I was expecting a 486 without local bus or PCI slots.

Thanks for the link!
Looks clean.

Luckily no soldering, but still a level beyond what I dare venture into...

(wonder if PCI versions would have the same power draw/issue)

Anonymous Coward wrote:

When I saw the title of this thread I was expecting a 486 without local bus or PCI slots.

Me too.

Caluser2000 wrote:

Anonymous Coward wrote:

When I saw the title of this thread I was expecting a 486 without local bus or PCI slots.

Me too.

Sorry, my "ISA System" is what I called it when I first started planning it. Mainly for the ISA sound card support I was looking for. Since I wanted to play my older DOS based games, and PCI sound cards broke compatibility with many of them. I planned, designed, and built the entire system around that precept, thus I named it "ISA System." It is, as far as my research shows, the most advance 100% ISA compatible system that I can build. I've also referred to it as my "Vintage System," but I'm not completely comfortable with that title. To me, a vintage system would be a 386 or prior system (maybe an early 486.) But definitely not a Pentium III. Of course, I learned computers with a Commodore PET, and my first home computer was a TI-99/4A (with a Commodore 64 a year later, and an Apple IIe not long after that.) Yeah, my father was making extremely good money at the time.

Looking forward to the pics, the list makes it a real nice. Don't think I've seen a build with 4 3dfx cards in the same PC

As promised, first array of pics 😀 The switch box hasn't arrived yet and neither has the CM-32L. So, for switching from V2 to V1, I have to manually move the pass-through cable & monitor cable from the V1 to V2 or Vice Versa. When the switch box arrives, I'll put up pictures of it in action. According to others, it should work just fine. I'll also add pictures when the CM-32L arrives as well 😀

Pics Continued:

Final pics... A couple of games in action....

I would have also included Tomb Raider 3DFX, but in my last bout of install/clean/whatever I seem to have misplaced the CD 🙁

Argh!!! The switch box still hasn't arrived. Went to check, and discovered its coming from China... WHY??? I specifically clicked US Only when I did a search for one. Chose this one because of the price & look. It looks like it will fit in the small space above my system, it is push-button, which I prefer over turn knob, even the color is right 🙁

**Deleting this pic** No longer valid.

Last piece arrived 😀

Well, found out how to get a V1 & V2 to work together in the same system. What I ended up doing....

1) Place the V1 before the V2's in the PCI slots: Not sure if this is actually necessary, but the post I read suggested it might be, so that's what I did.

2) The Pass-Through cable goes to the V1 and not the V2's

For some reason this is what made it start working. One issue I discovered during testing. If Tomb Raider is loaded through the Voodoo Rush EXE file, even with a V1 GLIDE2X.OVL file, it won't work through the V1. If I use the V2 OVL file, it will work just fine. Only, the static linked EXE file will stop working after that until the system is powered completely down and then restarted. If I use the exact same V2 OVL file in another game (such as Shadow Warrior,) the static linked EXE file continues to work fine through the V1. With the V1 in the system, even setting the environment variables won't let it work through the V2 for some reason. Not sure what the issue there is. (EDIT didn't finish that thought for some reason)

As promised, the Pictures of V1+V2+V3 working together 😀

Tomb Raider through the Voodoo 1 card:

Shadow Warrior through the Voodoo 2 SLI cards:

Blood through the Voodoo 3 AGP card:

Final pic, I think, unless something else changes or someone asks for something specific. 😀

System closed up and in place.