VOGONS


First post, by vandymachine

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Hello everyone!

First off, this is my first post. I have lurked here for years but never joined.

Now, on to details.

I originally years ago had one Voodoo 2 card. I never had the money to buy another one. Well, that has changed!

I am working on building a Voodoo 2 sleeper PC and see what I was missing back in the late 90's.
My specs for the build are as follows.

HP Pavillion 6643 PC
Windows 98 SE
Intel 810 Motherboard
800 MHZ Pentium 3 processor
NOS Thermaltake Volcano 7+ Processor fan with fan speed control switch
256 MB of PC 133 ram (runs at 100 mhz on this mobo)
15 GB Quantum Fireball HD (Might switch this out with a 32 GB CF to PATA adapter)
52x CD ROM BURNER
NOS Floppy drive
Soundblaster Live CT4780 Sound Card
*TBD* PCI video card - Any suggestions? Matrox?, Nvidia Riva TNT2 (which I have NOS) ?)
2 Voodoo 2 12 MB video cards in SLI

PC has all disks and manuals 😀 - A rare sight to be sure!

I have taken everything apart & cleaned.

I have installed the Thermaltake CPU fan. I had to cut off one of the metal holes on the CPU bracket to clear a capacitor (there are still 2 others on that side). There will involve a bit of dremel work on the CD cage for said fan & heat sink to fit also.

The hard drive was relocated from the lower front wall of the case to just under the CD-ROM drive.

An exhaust fan was installed where the Hard drive was previously.

Installed Windows 98 SE using the 2 original restore disks (Now I have to re remember how to properly delete things out of the registry without blowing everything up...🤣)

Looking to install a small fan (small GPU fan) over the north bridge chip - Because why not? And, there are mounting holes for it 😀

Issues thus far are:

The motherboard's bios is older & will not see the 800 MHZ CPU at full speed. It sees it as a Pentium 3 600 MHZ. While searching the web for CPU compatibility I found my solution. I would have to update the bios - obviously. Problem is all of the links I have found on the net are dead for said bios update. Does anyone know where I could find this updated bios?

Links to pics of the build (so far) are below. Pudding in the first picture will not be in the build 😜

IMG_20180601_183527.jpg
IMG_20180601_183855.jpg
IMG_20180601_183641 (1).jpg
IMG_20180601_183809.jpg

Last edited by vandymachine on 2018-06-02, 01:44. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 14, by KCompRoom2000

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For the BIOS update, I've managed to find one that should be compatible with your motherboard here:
https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php … riverid=1052515
HP used the same motherboard design on multiple systems of that generation, so chances are this is compatible.

For a PCI video card (for use in conjunction with the Voodoo2s), I'd most likely go with the nVidia Riva TNT2. Although if your TNT2 is not an M64 model, you may consider using the TNT2 video card for Direct3D games and the Voodoo2s for Glide games since the TNT2 is a little more powerful than the Voodoo2 in terms of Direct3D performance.

vandymachine wrote:

15 GB Quantum Fireball HD (Might switch this out with a 32 MB CF to PATA adapter)

Wouldn't a 32MB CF card be too small to fit a Windows 98 installation? (or did you mean to say 32GB)

Reply 3 of 14, by vandymachine

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I got the bios updated. Thanks again for the tip. Even with the updated bios, it still sees a Pentium 3 600 MHZ instead of the 800 MHZ chip that is in there now. Maybe I am missing jumpers somewhere in the motherboard....

Reply 4 of 14, by Katmai500

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An 800 MHz PIII running at 600 sounds like a 133 FSB part running at 100 FSB. (6x133 = 800, 6x100 = 600) If it's an i810 board and not i810E, it only supports 100 FSB. Are you sure the cpu is an 800/100 chip and not the more common 800/133?

Reply 5 of 14, by chinny22

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Hated these PC's back then, well the case design anyway. Even still they represent what a lot of people had back then (my parents been one) so its good a few are around in the wild I spose.
Even 600Mhz is fast enough for a lot of Direct 3D Games, I would also go with what vandymachine said.

I didn't have any 3dfx card back then, gotta say SLI is pretty cool even in the games that make no use of it at all!

Reply 6 of 14, by vandymachine

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Well, things didn't turn out exactly how I had hoped. It turns out the Voodoo 2 cards didn't fit. The IDE connector on the motherboard was too tall.

Alas, I decided to throw one of the NOS Nvidia TNT 2 V64 cards I had in there.

I also removed the Thermaltake CPU fan and heatsink. I installed a new CPU fan and the original heatsink.
I also installed a new North bridge heatsink and fan. The original set up had none.

As for the CPU issue - The documentation about this particular motherboard says a 500 mhz processor is all it can handle. The spot on the motherboard where the jumpers would be is empty.
Funny enough the P3 800 that I installed shows up as a P3 600E in the BIOS.

Reply 7 of 14, by britain4

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vandymachine wrote:

The spot on the motherboard where the jumpers would be is empty.

I’ve had luck just soldering in the jumpers on boards like this - not sure if it works on all of them though especially OEM boards which might have other components missing as well

- P-MMX 200MHZ, PCChips M598LMR, Voodoo
- P-MMX 233MHz, FIC PA2013, S3 ViRGE + Voodoo
- PII 400MHz, MSI MS6119, ATI Rage Pro Turbo + Voodoo2 SLI
- PIII 1400MHz, ECS P6IPAT, Voodoo5 5500
- Toshiba Libretto 110CT, 300MHz, 96MB RAM

Reply 8 of 14, by FFXIhealer

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I had to install jumpers manually with a soldering iron once while trying to repair someone's old system a few years back. I ended up soldering parts of a thin paper clip to use as jumper header pins and made sure they were a solid connection. Worked like a charm, but man was I nervous about screwing up the board - I always am when I have a hot soldering iron near them.

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Reply 9 of 14, by britain4

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FFXIhealer wrote:

I had to install jumpers manually with a soldering iron once while trying to repair someone's old system a few years back. I ended up soldering parts of a thin paper clip to use as jumper header pins and made sure they were a solid connection. Worked like a charm, but man was I nervous about screwing up the board - I always am when I have a hot soldering iron near them.

Haha, that’s inventive, I think I stole the IR header or something off another board and used that.

- P-MMX 200MHZ, PCChips M598LMR, Voodoo
- P-MMX 233MHz, FIC PA2013, S3 ViRGE + Voodoo
- PII 400MHz, MSI MS6119, ATI Rage Pro Turbo + Voodoo2 SLI
- PIII 1400MHz, ECS P6IPAT, Voodoo5 5500
- Toshiba Libretto 110CT, 300MHz, 96MB RAM

Reply 10 of 14, by Katmai500

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vandymachine wrote:
Well, things didn't turn out exactly how I had hoped. It turns out the Voodoo 2 cards didn't fit. The IDE connector on the mothe […]
Show full quote

Well, things didn't turn out exactly how I had hoped. It turns out the Voodoo 2 cards didn't fit. The IDE connector on the motherboard was too tall.

Alas, I decided to throw one of the NOS Nvidia TNT 2 V64 cards I had in there.

I also removed the Thermaltake CPU fan and heatsink. I installed a new CPU fan and the original heatsink.
I also installed a new North bridge heatsink and fan. The original set up had none.

As for the CPU issue - The documentation about this particular motherboard says a 500 mhz processor is all it can handle. The spot on the motherboard where the jumpers would be is empty.
Funny enough the P3 800 that I installed shows up as a P3 600E in the BIOS.

The 800 P3 you installed is probably the 800EB version with 133 MHz bus and a 6x multiplier. Your motherboard only supports up to 100 MHz bus. So the motherboard thinks it's a 600E because 6 times 100 = 600.

Reply 12 of 14, by buckeye

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My personal experience regarding the V2 SLI is it's overated. I mean it's cool to get it installed and working but in all honestly I end up using my Geforce2 Ultra more often than not. Get you a good GF2, it'll run most games for it's time period pretty smooth with less hassle compared to the voodoo's.

Asus P5N-E Intel Core 2 Duo 3.33ghz. 4GB DDR2 Geforce 470 1GB SB X-Fi Titanium 650W XP SP3
Intel SE440BX P3 450 256MB 80GB SSD Radeon 7200 64mb SB 32pnp 350W 98SE
MSI x570 Gaming Pro Carbon Ryzen 3700x 32GB DDR4 Zotac RTX 3070 8GB WD Black 1TB 850W

Reply 13 of 14, by FFXIhealer

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Reply 14 of 14, by Katmai500

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vandymachine wrote:

There was a 500 mhz Celeron in there before. I will take the P3 at 100 mhz more 😀

Absolutely. It's a nice upgrade and running it at 600/100 won't hurt anything. 😉