Unknown_K wrote on 2024-04-20, 01:00:

People who played GLIDE games want a Voodoo 3dfx card and since they are no longer made, they are valuable. Once DirectX was the only API supported then ATI and Nvidia were the ones to get.

I don't game on my Powermac G4's but I do like the ATI 9000 since it works good in OS 9 and OSX. You have less options for Powermac G5 AGP and a handful for the last PCIE based ones.

I only want 3DFX because I really liked the Glide API, I like the history of what 3DFX was trying to do and the technology they bought into the 3D gaming space. I always wanted to have at least one of each of their significant cards just so I could throw one into a period machine and actually play the games built around the 3DFX card for that era. I really dont care about their perceived value they will never be sold on, I bought them for my own enjoyment and to have a bit of GPU history.

While 3DFX is no more there are people still making Voodoo cards based around the remaining stock of VSA 100 GPU dies using reversed engineered PCBs, with modern components and better designed PCBs these modern 3DFX cards trend to be more performant than their older siblings while keeping backwards compatibility. They even have them running on the PCIe bus so even a modern system could in theory be used to mess around with the GLIDE API.

That said .. cheap they are not but .. the remade Voodoo 6000 is a thing of beauty.

Every thing above can be applied to the Pentium Pro, its a part of history.

I have a question, how fun are them G4/5 Power Macs to use ? The supply of both here in Australia is rather good and I have always loved the design of them especially the G5 with is sexy sleek Aluminium case. Im not a Mac person but owning a G5 is pretty tempting.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-04-19, 20:53:

My only reason for building a PPro system was to see how it performed relative to other systems of the era (e.g. 1996-1997).

It does occupy a bit of a retro-no-man's-land in my opinion. Not a daily-driver retro rig by any stretch.

The local Tech College had a sea of micronics pro180 /256k single cpu systems running Windows NT all over their network.

As unbelievable as it might seem the list price at that specific time actually wasn’t far from a standard Pentium (likely due to the site license / contract with Omnitech). Also for whatever reason most integrators had an immense price gap between the 180 and 200 pro workstations .

I bought a pallet of them when they were decommissioned and they actually worked well in Windows 2000 for daily driving even early 2k web browsing

luckybob wrote on 2024-04-19, 23:56:

I mean... I wouldn't call it a "good" reason. It's 100% rose tinted goggles and weapons grade copium. […]
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I mean... I wouldn't call it a "good" reason. It's 100% rose tinted goggles and weapons grade copium.

Credit where it's due, V1 & V2 were blazing stars of awesome. Then the company just shit the bed for a myriad of reasons.

The V4 & V5 were junk compared to the competition. The GeForce 256 ate voodoo for lunch, and the GF2 deflowering 3dfx's mother.

I lived through this in high-school, nobody gave 2 shits about 3dfx once nvidia released their cards. You either have the highest fps in the current popular games, or you were nobody. Something that has not changed.

The only voodoo cards I’d purchase now are voodoo 1’s 2’s and maybe a voodoo 3 if the price is right. I had a voodoo 3 2000 PCI card not even AGP and was able to sell it with 2 days of posting the add. People cream at the pants for these cards but unless it’s a voodoo 1 or voodoo 2 I don’t think the it’s worth the cost. Sure they are cool, sure they have a history but their history was only a positive history throughout the voodoo 1 and 2. There are so many better options regarding the voodoo 4 and 5.

winuser3162 wrote on 2024-04-20, 05:03:

luckybob wrote on 2024-04-19, 23:56:

I mean... I wouldn't call it a "good" reason. It's 100% rose tinted goggles and weapons grade copium. […]
Show full quote

I mean... I wouldn't call it a "good" reason. It's 100% rose tinted goggles and weapons grade copium.

Credit where it's due, V1 & V2 were blazing stars of awesome. Then the company just shit the bed for a myriad of reasons.

The V4 & V5 were junk compared to the competition. The GeForce 256 ate voodoo for lunch, and the GF2 deflowering 3dfx's mother.

I lived through this in high-school, nobody gave 2 shits about 3dfx once nvidia released their cards. You either have the highest fps in the current popular games, or you were nobody. Something that has not changed.

The only voodoo cards I’d purchase now are voodoo 1’s 2’s and maybe a voodoo 3 if the price is right. I had a voodoo 3 2000 PCI card not even AGP and was able to sell it with 2 days of posting the add. People cream at the pants for these cards but unless it’s a voodoo 1 or voodoo 2 I don’t think the it’s worth the cost. Sure they are cool, sure they have a history but their history was only a positive history throughout the voodoo 1 and 2. There are so many better options regarding the voodoo 4 and 5.

PCI versions of the Voodoo 3 sell quickly due to them being compatible with the Amiga, Mac and PC they are quite adaptable cards, not so much with the Voodoo 4 and 5 PCI versions which are only MAC and PC compatible.

I see some cooling discussion here, so I'm just going to add a link to a Socket 478 adapter that would help if you got access to a 3D printer: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6109363

As others mentioned, getting a motherboard for a good price is not easy - when not the initial price, its the shipping. Been holding onto a couple of 200MHz 256K models for several years now hoping that a motherboard pops up locally.

dionb wrote on 2024-04-19, 22:23:

Yep, often the desire for something is far more interesting than the possession of it. A bunch of French novelists have made that theme their life's work.

I can think of lots of examples where I lusted after some unusual old hardware, eventually found it - then lost a lot of interest. I'm looking at a PPro here, it's looking back at me but I turn away and mess around with a different system.

Motörhead - The Chase Is Better Than The Catch

Munx wrote on 2024-04-20, 05:45:

I see some cooling discussion here, so I'm just going to add a link to a Socket 478 adapter that would help if you got access to a 3D printer: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6109363

Ok... that's cool. *RIMSHOT*

I am 100% going to try that. I have an xp-120 that would look so stupid on such an old platform.

Here is a picture of my rare engineering sample given me by an intel engineer back in late 1990's (1997 iirc). Yes have had it in my possession that long.....
It only works on a genuine Intel board like the VS440 AFAIK, note the lack of printing. It is an ES 528 version, the only other picture I have ever seen with ES 528 printing is here
https://www.chipdb.org/img-intel-pentium-pro- … 766-es-5150.htm

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-20, 01:19:

I have a question, how fun are them G4/5 Power Macs to use ? The supply of both here in Australia is rather good and I have always loved the design of them especially the G5 with is sexy sleek Aluminium case. Im not a Mac person but owning a G5 is pretty tempting.

In my opinion, the FW800 MDD G4 and the G5 Power Macs are... rather uninteresting... as retro systems. They won't boot the classic OS, if they're running Tiger or earlier they can run classic apps in the 'Classic' virtualization environment. And the Intel transition was only a few years later... and almost all software for PPC OS X was ported to Intel. If you want to play with that era of Mac software, you're better off looking for a 2010 Mac Pro which will boot Snow Leopard (with Rosetta to run any PPC-only OS X software) all the way up to High Sierra, so the entirety of the 32-bit-compatible Intel era.

The FW400 MDD G4 or the earlier G4 machines are extremely interesting because they will boot the classic Mac OS... but, unlike, say, a beige Mac, they are extremely friendly in terms of 'industry-standard' peripherals (DVI monitors, USB keyboard/mouse, IDE hard drive, Ethernet, etc) so very easy to add to a collection centered around Windows PCs. And the classic OS includes the 68K emulator, etc, so with a bit of luck, you can run most of the software from the classic Mac era including the 68K era. Lots of very interesting software from the classic era, very different from what was happening on other platforms at the same time. G4s with 867MHz+ CPUs will also run Leopard which is the last OS X for PPC, but Leopard is a hardware hog compared to Tiger...

If you have had no experience with the classic Mac OS, then... let's just say the classic Mac OS is very unique. (Unlike OS X, which is just a pretty *NIX) Temperamental, but also crazily customizable with a resource editor, and it's just a ... unique... view into history. Some things will seem weird because Win95 implemented them differently; some things will seem very normal. But it's important to put it in context - the classic Mac OS shipped 11 years before Win95 and was originally designed for a machine with 128K of RAM, 64K of ROM, and a 400K floppy drive (compared to Win95's requirements of 4MB of RAM and.. I forget how many megs... of hard disk space).

If you want a very collectible machine, look at the later titanium PowerBook G4s too. But those in good condition are rare.

My advice - if you can pick up a decent condition FW400 MDD G4, grab it...

Horun wrote on 2024-04-20, 17:16:

Here is a picture of my rare engineering sample given me by an intel engineer back in late 1990's (1997 iirc). Yes have had it in my possession that long.....
It only works on a genuine Intel board like the VS440 AFAIK, note the lack of printing. It is an ES 528 version, the only other picture I have ever seen with ES 528 printing is here
https://www.chipdb.org/img-intel-pentium-pro- … 766-es-5150.htm

What speed rating is that?, I remember the local PCS maintenance corp tearing down a quad pro133 and he stated that some corporations had ppros deployed before the official release date and that he had to destroy the system and send the parts to a specific party once the contract was up.

Munx wrote on 2024-04-20, 05:45:

I see some cooling discussion here, so I'm just going to add a link to a Socket 478 adapter that would help if you got access to a 3D printer: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6109363

As others mentioned, getting a motherboard for a good price is not easy - when not the initial price, its the shipping. Been holding onto a couple of 200MHz 256K models for several years now hoping that a motherboard pops up locally.

Oh wow, that is pretty cool. Now there is some use for those shitty Intel S478 coolers after all? Time to get a few of those printed.

Munx wrote on 2024-04-20, 05:45:

I see some cooling discussion here, so I'm just going to add a link to a Socket 478 adapter that would help if you got access to a 3D printer: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6109363

Knowing the strength of the parts I 3D print in PLA, I wouldn't dare using that kind of adapter to be honest .

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-04-20, 21:45:

Knowing the strength of the parts I 3D print in PLA, I wouldn't dare using that kind of adapter to be honest .

I mean, yes... but I think it is more designed for the Intel oem P4 heatsink.

just run a test print for fitment - then make a solid one out of ABS. Should be fine if you arent going to ship the machine.

Is it still possible to find correct VRM modules for these boards - sure I have an old Siemens board somewhere, just no processors (easyish?) or VRMs (hard?!)

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2024-04-21, 14:23:

Is it still possible to find correct VRM modules for these boards - sure I have an old Siemens board somewhere, just no processors (easyish?) or VRMs (hard?!)

At the moment you have the chance to get some really cheap, it´s article number 135001060040 on Ebay. These VXI VRMs are top quality, but they have quite tall caps. This might cause problems when the VRM socket on the mainboard is positioned in the wrong orientation - with the VRM´s component side towards the cpu cooler.

Those are good ! The caps appear to be 20mm (TI UCC3882 datasheet) so you need nearly an inch from vrm socket slot to heatsink if orientation is toward the cpu.....

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-20, 01:19:

I have a question, how fun are them G4/5 Power Macs to use ? The supply of both here in Australia is rather good and I have always loved the design of them especially the G5 with is sexy sleek Aluminium case. Im not a Mac person but owning a G5 is pretty tempting.

I own a G4 MDD for much the same reason I own a PPro system, Dual processor over any real need for it.
It dual boots OS9 and OSX, exact versions I can't remember as I haven't really done anything with it after installing the OS.
The excuse is one day I'll try out some of those games that had both PC and Mac version on the same CD but mostly to have another dual socket computer in my collection.

G5 towers are very nice but I just don't know what I'd do with it, even the G4 is getting a bit too modern for my needs.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-04-22, 01:44:

I own a G4 MDD for much the same reason I own a PPro system, Dual processor over any real need for it. It dual boots OS9 and OSX […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-20, 01:19:

I have a question, how fun are them G4/5 Power Macs to use ? The supply of both here in Australia is rather good and I have always loved the design of them especially the G5 with is sexy sleek Aluminium case. Im not a Mac person but owning a G5 is pretty tempting.

I own a G4 MDD for much the same reason I own a PPro system, Dual processor over any real need for it.
It dual boots OS9 and OSX, exact versions I can't remember as I haven't really done anything with it after installing the OS.
The excuse is one day I'll try out some of those games that had both PC and Mac version on the same CD but mostly to have another dual socket computer in my collection.

G5 towers are very nice but I just don't know what I'd do with it, even the G4 is getting a bit too modern for my needs.

I actually dont have a use for a Mac, I just love the look of the G4/G5 ..even the G3 looks ok, but with no real use for one I dont feel like the cost is worth the investment.

I have only one PPRO machine, a Dell PowerEdge 2100/180. This reminds me of a question I've been meaning to ask.

This machine has EISA slots however currently it has only a 3C509B-C ISA NIC installed. However, I have also obtained a 3C592-C EISA card. Both are 10 mbps EtherLink III cards.

Before I switch them around, I'm curious to know how to benchmark network performance ISA vs EISA. Would there be any measurable difference?

not on a 10mb card. thats the bottleneck