2 ISA and 3 PCI... and two ISA card slots used....so that leaves you with 2 PCI slots. You didn't specify a video card in your list. I'm curious to see what you have. I looked up the manual for that system and it claims you actually have 2x ISA, 5x PCI, and 1x AGP slots. Lots of options for a cool 1999-era gaming platform, especially with Voodoo2 power.

FFXIhealer wrote:

2 ISA and 3 PCI... and two ISA card slots used....so that leaves you with 2 PCI slots. You didn't specify a video card in your list. I'm curious to see what you have. I looked up the manual for that system and it claims you actually have 2x ISA, 5x PCI, and 1x AGP slots. Lots of options for a cool 1999-era gaming platform, especially with Voodoo2 power.

Hi, thanks for your post and for the interesting info 😀 Also sorry if I was accidentally off on the number of PCI slots there; I'm sort of a hardware novice of sorts and I don't very often open up the inside of the PC to take a look, so it can be kinda hard for me to tell sometimes.

IIRC, I think the HP Vectra VE6 Series 8 comes with a Matrox Millennium video card, which I haven't changed or modified 😀

Where are the pics! 😁

And your P2-333 might be an interesting part. Soms of these have their multiplier unlocked from x6 downward to almost 1. If this is the case, you should definitely keep it! 😁

And nice to see a fellow WinME user here 😀

edit: Or was it the P2-400MHz part? But still a nice P2, fastest to officially support 66MHz FSB and unlocked multipliers are always handy 😀

sorry, accidental duplicate post-removed

Tetrium wrote:

Where are the pics! 😁

Ah sadly, I am a relative hardware novice - I don't usually open up the case of the PC except on a very rare occasion, and even then, my skills at hardware configuration are rather limited 😊 Thanks for the thought though, if I ever get around to opening the PC one of these days, I'll have to remember to tqake a photo of it. I may potentially also have one photo of the front exterior as well

And your P2-333 might be an interesting part. Soms of these have their multiplier unlocked from x6 downward to almost 1. If this is the case, you should definitely keep it! 😁

Thanks, ya it's definitely a keeper, in mho! As far as my backup rigs, I also have the same make and model PC, with various 300MHz, 333MHz, 350MHz, 400MHz, and 450MHz configurations. The previous gaming PC I used before this one, before the older one's motherboard gave up the ghost so to speak, was a 400MHz version. The very first one of these I had was also a 266MHz...a nice trip down memory lane there!

And nice to see a fellow WinME user here 😀

Thanks & likewise! 😀

You certainly have late dos sound covered! P2 is good choice as well, Plenty of power in reserve for even the most demanding games.
Few pics will be nice 😀

chinny22 wrote:

You certainly have late dos sound covered! P2 is good choice as well, Plenty of power in reserve for even the most demanding games.
Few pics will be nice 😀

Thank you! 😀 I will definitely try to see if I can find the photo I have of the front exterior, unfortunately, don't really have any pix available of the inside though...

Update: I found some pix online by googling the HP make and model, please note that this not my specific box, but it looks just like it aesthetically:

Galahad wrote:

FFXIhealer wrote:

IIRC, I think the HP Vectra VE6 Series 8 comes with a Matrox Millennium video card, which I haven't changed or modified 😀

If that's the card you have installed, it'll have a decent 2D chip on it, but the 3D will suffer. I'd try to find a Voodoo or Voodoo2 PCI card for 3D graphics. You could play Quake or Quake II easily with one of those. You'd need a VGA pass-through cable, as most of those cards for sale don't come with one....which is weird because they ALL came with one back in the day. I'd really like to know how this many spare cards float around but the cables are nearly impossible to find.

Galahad wrote:

chinny22 wrote:

You certainly have late dos sound covered! P2 is good choice as well, Plenty of power in reserve for even the most demanding games.
Few pics will be nice 😀

Thank you! 😀 I will definitely try to see if I can find the photo I have of the front exterior, unfortunately, don't really have any pix available of the inside though...

I don't know how good you are with a camera, but if you're looking for examples, there's a plethora of examples on Vogons to find, like this thread Retro Rig Photo Thread
The last page of the same thread Retro Rig Photo Thread

There's a link in my sig which will take you to my own (old) retro rigs thread, it also includes pictures.

And Artex is a true specialist when it comes to photographing his retro rigs, but there are many others who have become very good at taking pics where it matters, along with tons of detailed explanations and who make way better pics than I do and I'm sure most will be more than happy to assist you and give advice if you ask nicely 😀

Uncharted territory for you, but you never know, you might actually start to like it...a lot! 😁

FFXIhealer wrote:

Galahad wrote:

FFXIhealer wrote:

IIRC, I think the HP Vectra VE6 Series 8 comes with a Matrox Millennium video card, which I haven't changed or modified 😀

If that's the card you have installed, it'll have a decent 2D chip on it, but the 3D will suffer. I'd try to find a Voodoo or Voodoo2 PCI card for 3D graphics. You could play Quake or Quake II easily with one of those. You'd need a VGA pass-through cable, as most of those cards for sale don't come with one....which is weird because they ALL came with one back in the day. I'd really like to know how this many spare cards float around but the cables are nearly impossible to find.

I agree with the V1/V2 suggestion here 😀

Just a reminder for Galahad: A Voodoo pass-through cable is basically just a very short VGA extension cable. If he can't find a pass-through cable on short notice, he can use one of those instead 😀

But Voodoo's aren't very cheap to find these days (I dunno on what kind of budget he is) and if it is working for Galahad pretty much fine as it is, I wound't recommend him starting to fiddle with his perhaps only retro rig right away.

I can remember how scared I was opening up my own P2 back when I have virtually no experience what so ever.

This is why I started practicing with thrownaways, so if I would mess something up, I'd still have my trusty rig to fall back on.

FFXIhealer wrote:

Galahad wrote:

FFXIhealer wrote:

IIRC, I think the HP Vectra VE6 Series 8 comes with a Matrox Millennium video card, which I haven't changed or modified 😀

If that's the card you have installed, it'll have a decent 2D chip on it, but the 3D will suffer. I'd try to find a Voodoo or Voodoo2 PCI card for 3D graphics. You could play Quake or Quake II easily with one of those. You'd need a VGA pass-through cable, as most of those cards for sale don't come with one....which is weird because they ALL came with one back in the day. I'd really like to know how this many spare cards float around but the cables are nearly impossible to find.

When I first got a V2 card without a passthrough, I just used a 1.5m VGA extension cable that I found in a supermarket for about 8 bucks. It's big, but it gets the job done. I think people still need these for conference room projectors, so they are not too rare.

Also, where I live you can sometimes find a hardware MPEG2 decoder card like Creative CT7220 — they also come with VGA passthrough cables. Since these cards don't have a lot of use, they can be sourced cheaply or for free. I'm actually getting one next week just for that reason.

Edit: The CT7220 turned out to use a male-to-male cable, not a female-to-male, so it's actually not an option.

Thanks to FFXIhealer, Tetrium, and jheronimus for your suggestions for the Voodoo video card, I don't really play any 3D classic Win9x/DOS games though, so I think I may be good with the current configuration 😀