VOGONS


First post, by Warlord

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So I made the same computer that everyone on Vogons has sort of.

This isn't my 1st k6 build. But my other one doesn't exist anymore. Most of these parts I just had because Hoarder.

Its the TYAN 100AT 1st rev
K6 III+ @ 550 Mhz 2.1v Stable
256 PC133 @ 100 Mhz Timings 2,2,2,5 ( this is just generic kingston ram that has good timings. Or rather I set these timings and it's stable.
Vodoo 3 3500 @ 183 Mhz ( I am thinking of underclocking it) Not sure how to.
Voodoo 1 (as gap filler) not every game will run on voodoo 3 (dreams to reality)?????
3com 10/100 NIC ( I have a dozen of these) This is the best card. Once you tick all the boxes for offload.
Sil 3512 Sata (This is the biggest improvement) I just hook up a seagate 80GB drive. ( I ran the HDD LED under the MOBO. I taped it to the tray)
The responsiveness between onboard IDE and this Sata card is night and day. It also is way more stable. Because MVP3 Flakeyness. MVP3 IDE can be summed up as slow and buggy. Seems fine for connecting CD drives tho,
AWE 64 Gold.

I disable L3 Cache btw. I don't need it. with 256 MB of ram, I think people says its overkill. But imo its just right. I just disable page file, since 256 is enough as I think to game without a pagefile.

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    Cable management It looks worst than what it is.
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    Inside
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    Front, with Dual Floppy Drive and 52x CD
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Last edited by Warlord on 2020-07-27, 05:49. Edited 13 times in total.

Reply 1 of 19, by Warlord

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Some More screenshots This is kinda a rare slot cooler. I own 2 of them. Its a fan and a blower with a speed control nob.

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Last edited by Warlord on 2020-07-27, 05:18. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3 of 19, by Warlord

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I take this SS7 heatsink, and I put a Intel 370 fan on it. I hook up a zalman fan controller to make it quiet. Also the Power supply. I take apart and replace fan inside with quieter Cooler Master one I found that I had.
I remove the 3.5 drive bay cage because it's just in the way. I chose to mount my HDD with some 2.5-5.25 rails under the dual floppy drive.

I just wire tied all the cables and stuffed them behind the case bezel.

I ran the sata cable under the motherboard for cleanness.

I found some old rubber gas hose, that I cut to make bumpers for under the motherboard there where the ram and cpus is. Since no standoffs on board for there? Idk why.

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Last edited by Warlord on 2020-07-27, 05:44. Edited 5 times in total.

Reply 4 of 19, by Warlord

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I still need to find a CD cable to hook up to Sound. I have one some where in my cables hoard.

The board is very stable, after lots of Bios tweaking.

I am not some period correct guy. I respect peoples who are. I make computers good that's all.

Reply 5 of 19, by mastergamma12

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TFW you don't have a Socket 7 system.

Nice rig though.

NNH9pIh.png

The Tuala-Bus (My 9x/Dos Rig) (Pentium III-S 1.4ghz, AWE64G+Audigy 2 ZS, Voodoo5 5500, Chieftec Dragon Rambus)

The Final Lan Party (My Windows Xp/7 rig) (Core i7 980x, GTX 480,DFI Lanparty UT X58-T3eH8,)
Re: Post your 'current' PC

Reply 6 of 19, by Joseph_Joestar

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Great build! It looks like both the K6III+ and the Voodoo3 3500 are becoming rare and expensive, so it's getting harder and harder to put together a rig like that.

Do you plan on using it for DOS gaming as well? If I'm not mistaken, SetMul should be able to work some serious magic with that CPU.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 7 of 19, by jheronimus

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Warlord wrote on 2020-07-27, 05:03:

3com 10/100 NIC ( I have a dozen of these) This is the best card. Once you tick all the boxes for offload.

Where do you need to tick all the boxes, exactly? Guess you learn something new every day.

MR BIOS catalog
Unicore catalog

Reply 8 of 19, by shamino

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On my copy of this board, I came to the conclusion that the onboard cache will cache up to 256MB RAM. I don't remember what utility I used for that though.
I like that case. All my AT cases are kind of junky.

My main complaint with this board is that it requires an 8-slot case to use the AGP slot, and yet to safely power the AGP slot it really needs an ATX power supply.
It also has solder pads to install a PS2 keyboard port, but it's not really useful because the 8-slot design requires an AT case.
If not for the 8-slot design it would be usable in ATX cases. That was an unfortunate decision by Tyan I think.

Does that modification you did allow you to have an AT style latching power button with an ATX PSU?
I like that dual floppy, I've still never had a 5.25" drive on anything.

Like you, my K6-3+ runs happily at 550MHz but won't do 600MHz at any voltage I'm willing to try. They seem to hit a wall there.

Reply 10 of 19, by kixs

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shamino wrote on 2020-07-27, 11:16:

Like you, my K6-3+ runs happily at 550MHz but won't do 600MHz at any voltage I'm willing to try. They seem to hit a wall there.

Most K6-3+ will run stable at 550Mhz. Only around 1 in 10 or even less will do 600Mhz stable. But performance increase from 550 to 600Mhz is really low.

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 12 of 19, by Warlord

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Thank you all for the replies.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-07-27, 07:50:

Great build! It looks like both the K6III+ and the Voodoo3 3500 are becoming rare and expensive, so it's getting harder and harder to put together a rig like that.

Do you plan on using it for DOS gaming as well? If I'm not mistaken, SetMul should be able to work some serious magic with that CPU.

Thanks, I'm fortunate to have started collecting before things got scarce. Now it's difficult to find things. Id suggest to anyone just starting this hobby now. Do not over pay for things and when you see something rare jump on it, as you wont see it for a long time again if ever.

Reply 13 of 19, by Warlord

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jheronimus wrote on 2020-07-27, 10:30:
Warlord wrote on 2020-07-27, 05:03:

3com 10/100 NIC ( I have a dozen of these) This is the best card. Once you tick all the boxes for offload.

Where do you need to tick all the boxes, exactly? Guess you learn something new every day.

Pardon me, I didn't mean to confuse. It's not a tick box, its a select box.
For some reason. The driver doesn't set these values by default. Once they are set network speed is a lot better.

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Last edited by Warlord on 2020-07-27, 19:15. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 14 of 19, by Warlord

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chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-07-27, 11:22:

This is a really nice system you built. Excellent job with the cabling. I bet it's nice and fast too.

Thanks. I only had time to run 3dmark 99. It's a period correct synthetic benchmark. I just run the 1st set. Interestingly my score is 3200ish if I enable the L3 cache. I find this suspect. I need to run some real world benchmarks. I don't trust that.

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Last edited by Warlord on 2020-07-27, 21:16. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 15 of 19, by Warlord

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shamino wrote on 2020-07-27, 11:16:

I like that case. All my AT cases are kind of junky.

Does that modification you did allow you to have an AT style latching power button with an ATX PSU?
I like that dual floppy, I've still never had a 5.25" drive on anything.

Thanks. The atx switch, I cannibalized from a server chassis. It's not a AT switch mod. I removed the AT switch from the case. I needed to mount the ATX switch on 2 standoffs. So I drilled 2 holes and used nuts to secure them.
The switch is from a case like this. Ya this board is a pain in the butt. It's only working is an AT case with a ATX psu, with ATX switch. I just used an AT keyboard, to PS2 keyboard adapter. I wasn't aware it had PS2 keyboard solder points. In hinds site you're right it doesn't matter. It's going to work one way.

I didn't mention I needed to do standoff mods. The mobo didn't line up. It was mm off. I had to drill out the standoff and secure them with nuts on the other side. Had to grind the original holes off the back side. Now the board lines up perfectly. All the expansion cards line up perfect. The board sits flat. Nothing is forced. It's secure.

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Reply 16 of 19, by MKT_Gundam

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Warlord wrote on 2020-07-27, 05:12:

I convert the AT case to ATX. I drill some holes and make this switch. So now it is a ATX AT case.

Can you explain the switch conversion ?

Retro rig 1: Asus CUV4X, VIA c3 800, Voodoo Banshee (Diamond fusion) and SB32 ct3670.
Retro rig 2: Intel DX2 66, SB16 Ct1740 and Cirrus Logic VLB.

Reply 17 of 19, by Warlord

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tldr
The switch is not from this case, I touched the switch the the back of the power button and measured the gap between the chassis and the mounting bracket. Found standoffs that were that same size as that gap and mounted the switch on those standoffs to the chassis. It's wasn't witchcraft just backyard ingenuity. the standoffs are secured with nuts so they are tight and don't wiggle.

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Reply 19 of 19, by 386SX

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Interesting I didn't remember there was an OEM Voodoo3 3500 without the tuner stuff on it. Why oh why 3dfx didn't just build the 2000 and the 3500 in that way directly. Maybe only few chips at first were able to reach that freq but it would have been much better for those times.
Which K63+ is that @ original frequency? Anyway it's a nice build. I would have used some Radeon SDR on it the original R100 7200 version. 😀