appiah4 wrote:

Cyrix200+ wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

<snip>

Ok, third time is a charm. The chair trick actually worked, finally.. I used a desk instead, but it closed shut. I'll be trying it when I have access to my MMX system next time. Wow, so super excited! I'll need FastVoodoo drivers to SLI two different brand Voodoo 2s right?

Good to hear! Yes use the FastVoodoo drivers. Those driver overclock the memory a little bit, which caused problems with my Voodoo2's, so check that.

Do I need an external utility to dial them back down to 90MHz?

No something (an overclock panel in windows?) is included, but it needs to be enabled first somewhere. I forgot how, it has been a while 😜

EDIT:

Source: https://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/3dfx/voodoo2/rele … astvoodoo2_4.6/

Hardware overclock feature
--------------------------
In order to add overclock settings in driver control panel:
1)Open the FastVoodoo2_4.6/Tools/Tweaker folder
2)Copy Voodoo2_OC directory in Windows/System folder
3)Open it and do a double click on “V2_OC_control_panel.exe” file
4) Reboot the system
Remember do not set over 95 mhz without additional cooling!

just Doom things

I got rid of the slot fan and installed an 80mm fan in the front

I got my Dell Dimension P60 (modified Intel Premiere PCI/Batman) to POST. Dallas RTC dated 1994, and surprisingly it still has a charge (low battery warning). It indeed takes standard AT power adapters. Some questions:

1. It doesn't POST with PCI video, I've only been able to get it to POST with ISA. I'm assuming this might have something to do with the Auxiliary PCI power connector? Is there a converter for that or do the standard ATX Aux connectors work?
2. There is no voltage adjustment (like what is indicated on Intel manual) for 5V/5.27V. Is it still 'safe' to put the CPU speed jumper to 66 MHz (from 60MHz)? I'm actually running a Pentium Overdrive 120/133.

I took a picture of the BIOS screen... but my phone didn't save it or something. Sigh.

Also, I got some PC1066-32 RDRAM in the mail. I put it in an Abit TH7-II. First POST fine without issue. I select 133 FSB (since I'm using a P4-2.26) with 3x RDRAM multiplier (for PC800). System refuses to POST. Now system refuses to POST at all with my PC1066 RDRAM. I switched to my older PC800-45 RDRAM. System is ok. What's up with that?

dexvx wrote:

Also, I got some PC1066-32 RDRAM in the mail. I put it in an Abit TH7-II. First POST fine without issue. I select 133 FSB (since I'm using a P4-2.26) with 3x RDRAM multiplier (for PC800). System refuses to POST. Now system refuses to POST at all with my PC1066 RDRAM. I switched to my older PC800-45 RDRAM. System is ok. What's up with that?

Its a known issue that some PC1066 modules just wont work with the 3x multiplier. The TH7-II wont POST using the 4x multiplier at 133 MHz FSB unless you are lucky and got ICS RDRAM driver chips on the board capable of that speed. The best memory modules to get are 45ns PC800 memory as this is was the board was made for and these always will work with both the 4x multi at 100 MHz FSB and with the 3x multiplier at 133 MHz FSB.

Many TH7-II boards were sold with cheaper RDRAM driver chips only capable of driving RDRAM at ~PC900 or less making the boards top out at about 112 MHz FSB using the 4x memory multiplier or about 150 MHz using the 3x multiplier. The board was made for Willamette CPUs with 100 MHz FSB, beeing able to run Northwoods with 133 MHz FSB is more of a bonus.

Skyscraper wrote:

dexvx wrote:

Also, I got some PC1066-32 RDRAM in the mail. I put it in an Abit TH7-II. First POST fine without issue. I select 133 FSB (since I'm using a P4-2.26) with 3x RDRAM multiplier (for PC800). System refuses to POST. Now system refuses to POST at all with my PC1066 RDRAM. I switched to my older PC800-45 RDRAM. System is ok. What's up with that?

Its a known issue that some PC1066 modules just wont work with the 3x multiplier. The TH7-II wont POST using the 4x multiplier at 133 MHz FSB unless you are lucky and got ICS RDRAM driver chips on the board capable of that speed. The best memory modules to get are 45ns PC800 memory as this is was the board was made for and these always will work with both the 4x multi at 100 MHz FSB and with the 3x multiplier at 133 MHz FSB.

The board has ICS 9212-03. IIRC, those are only rated at 400 MHz, but should do 533 MHz comfortably because there literally were no 533 MHz RDRAM to test back then. I've reset the BIOS, so it should boot into 100 FSB mode, but it still won't POST. Maybe my ICS is a dud? I'd replace the ClockGen, but holy hell it is a tiny thing.

I finally got my Rage Fury MAXX working! I'm glad I didn't give up and trade/sell it off as broken. It might get it's own system if I can spare one.

xplus93 wrote:

I finally got my Rage Fury MAXX working! I'm glad I didn't give up and trade/sell it off as broken. It might get it's own system if I can spare one.

Congratulations, what was wrong with it and when can we expect benchmarks?

Anywho, I finally got my Dimension 2400/2.6GHZ Celeron/512MB DDR/TNT2 M64 PCI/Voodoo2 12MB/Windows ME build running stable. God getting 9x OS's running on grey box dells is a nightmare.

Setup Windows 95 on my HP Pavilion 7270 and installed System Commander 7. Now I can boot between 2 hard drives, one with MS-DOS 6.22 + WfW 3.11 and another with 95 http://imgur.com/a/PrGcM

oeuvre wrote:

just Doom things

LCD aside, that's a very nice period setup. The Gravis gamepad always a nice touch and those Altec's are awesome speakers (especially if you have the sub). The thing I like about them the most is the two inputs, so you can plug in a MIDI box without extra parts.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

xplus93 wrote:

I finally got my Rage Fury MAXX working! I'm glad I didn't give up and trade/sell it off as broken. It might get it's own system if I can spare one.

Congratulations, what was wrong with it and when can we expect benchmarks?

Anywho, I finally got my Dimension 2400/2.6GHZ Celeron/512MB DDR/TNT2 M64 PCI/Voodoo2 12MB/Windows ME build running stable. God getting 9x OS's running on grey box dells is a nightmare.

Nothing apparently, the problem was that the 440BX system I had didn't have a CPU. Now i have another complete Dell XPS system, a T700. As soon as I got home with it I pulled the regular 128 pro out and tried the maxx.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

God getting 9x OS's running on grey box dells is a nightmare.

Tell me about it, I've had a hard time getting Windows 98SE to work on my Dimension 4300S with the new hardware I've put in over the years, it seemed like it was easier to install 9x on my Optiplex GX260, then again that was back when the Optiplex was at its original configuration (Integrated Video/Audio/NIC) and pretty much everything on my Dimension is separate (AGP Video & PCI Audio).

Anyways, remember the Memorex floppies that I've bought two weeks ago? well last night I've found that only 7 out of 10 floppies were in working condition, I tried to write a disk image onto one of them using my Toshiba Satellite 315CDS laptop, I had to format the floppy inside Windows because WinImage was throwing errors during the formatting process, after writing the image I've tried to install the written program (Mannequin Designer) on my P1-233 Rig, the program's setup ended prematurely due to file corruption; a reformat on two different computers confirmed that the floppy was damaged because it stated some bad sectors were on the disk.

I knew Memorex was a bit of a dodgy name for electronics and blank media so I'm not surprised at all, but transparent multi-colored floppies were a thing I couldn't pass up on. 😎

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

Tell me about it, I've had a hard time getting Windows 98SE to work on my Dimension 4300S with the new hardware I've put in over […]
Show full quote

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

God getting 9x OS's running on grey box dells is a nightmare.

Tell me about it, I've had a hard time getting Windows 98SE to work on my Dimension 4300S with the new hardware I've put in over the years, it seemed like it was easier to install 9x on my Optiplex GX260, then again that was back when the Optiplex was at its original configuration (Integrated Video/Audio/NIC) and pretty much everything on my Dimension is separate (AGP Video & PCI Audio).

Anyways, remember the Memorex floppies that I've bought two weeks ago? well last night I've found that only 7 out of 10 floppies were in working condition, I tried to write a disk image onto one of them using my Toshiba Satellite 315CDS laptop, I had to format the floppy inside Windows because WinImage was throwing errors during the formatting process, after writing the image I've tried to install the written program (Mannequin Designer) on my P1-233 Rig, the program's setup ended prematurely due to file corruption; a reformat on two different computers confirmed that the floppy was damaged because it stated some bad sectors were on the disk.

I knew Memorex was a bit of a dodgy name for electronics and blank media so I'm not surprised at all, but transparent multi-colored floppies were a thing I couldn't pass up on. 😎

Is it live or is it memorex? ....it's dead Jim

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

Tell me about it, I've had a hard time getting Windows 98SE to work on my Dimension 4300S with the new hardware I've put in over […]
Show full quote

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

God getting 9x OS's running on grey box dells is a nightmare.

Tell me about it, I've had a hard time getting Windows 98SE to work on my Dimension 4300S with the new hardware I've put in over the years, it seemed like it was easier to install 9x on my Optiplex GX260, then again that was back when the Optiplex was at its original configuration (Integrated Video/Audio/NIC) and pretty much everything on my Dimension is separate (AGP Video & PCI Audio).

Anyways, remember the Memorex floppies that I've bought two weeks ago? well last night I've found that only 7 out of 10 floppies were in working condition, I tried to write a disk image onto one of them using my Toshiba Satellite 315CDS laptop, I had to format the floppy inside Windows because WinImage was throwing errors during the formatting process, after writing the image I've tried to install the written program (Mannequin Designer) on my P1-233 Rig, the program's setup ended prematurely due to file corruption; a reformat on two different computers confirmed that the floppy was damaged because it stated some bad sectors were on the disk.

I knew Memorex was a bit of a dodgy name for electronics and blank media so I'm not surprised at all, but transparent multi-colored floppies were a thing I couldn't pass up on. 😎

I thought 7 out of 10 was good for pretty much any package of floppies these days? Standard failure rates apply even to new magnetic media AFAIK. More so if there preformatted IIRC.

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

Anyways, remember the Memorex floppies that I've bought two weeks ago? well last night I've found that only 7 out of 10 floppies were in working condition, I tried to write a disk image onto one of them using my Toshiba Satellite 315CDS laptop, I had to format the floppy inside Windows because WinImage was throwing errors during the formatting process, after writing the image I've tried to install the written program (Mannequin Designer) on my P1-233 Rig, the program's setup ended prematurely due to file corruption; a reformat on two different computers confirmed that the floppy was damaged because it stated some bad sectors were on the disk.

I knew Memorex was a bit of a dodgy name for electronics and blank media so I'm not surprised at all, but transparent multi-colored floppies were a thing I couldn't pass up on. 😎

I bought a box of those colorful Memorex floppies a couple years ago from a Goodwill and a great majority of them were bad and they were actually rather new floppies I think the box had a 2006 copyright date on it if I remember right. I've learned over the years that Memorex is very dodgy , I seem to remember my dad buying a spindle of Memorex CDs back in the early 2000s and every single disk failed in the middle of burning.

Well, I've got a taker for the Dell now.

Meanwhile, de-comming the Dell 4600 allowed me to get some of my drives back in action. One of which was an actual WORKING 80GB drive, which I just put on my 486 and have made some discoveries about Windows 2000 Professional and the DDO compatible with the WD800 drive....

First off, apparently a 486 CAN indeed boot from CD-ROM even if it's not availible in the BIOS. Apparently On-Track has a function where you just press the "C" key on startup (version 9.88) and pretty much anything AT-Class can boot off a CD-ROM. Did not have to use my Win2k boot floppies once, just booted off of CD - installed from CD, right now am reinstalling due to a corrupt login file....but at least this go through I have a mouse.

I also learned NTFS does not play happily with DDO - and I also found out that FAT-32 is faster than NTFS is anyway for Disk Access - which is kind of important since I plan to tweak/whittle this Win2K install down to it's core (ie, only what I'm using) to save memory). When I tried installing with NTFS, for some reason it decided to write over the MBR.....uh, no. Also, I don't need fast folder access as much as fast file access anyway, expecially when the sick and twisted DAW experiments start (because I love seeing how close old hardware can get to my modern PC - this DX4 in an XT case has been the best 486 I've built yet, it even did a 3 track rock demo in n-track under Windows 95).

Which leads me to the NEXT part of Windows 2000. Serial mice.

For years, I've shied away from using Win2K with generic AT class systems because most of the serial mice (ie my faves, which includes a Microspeed PC-TRAC Serial trackball as my #1). Well...I've found a mouse that works - the old Microsoft "Dove Bar" serial mouse - of which I have 2 luckily.

So this go around on the install - I plugged in the Dove Bar and of course, hallaluja, it came up, and it's nice and smooth. Could not find my PC-TRAC at all, but oh well, the PC-TRAC has been sticking on some turns so maybe it's good to let the other mice play for awhile and give ol Microspeed a rest while I clean the ball and the rollers inside again.

In other interesting notes, seems ALL of my hardware is supported. Boot time is about a minute - which I expect, but while once up, a lot snappier than I remembered. Full sound, NIC, no device conflicts. Seems pretty happy for a PC running such a "heavy" O/S - if I keep having this luck - just might have to try throwing some actually "sick" stuff on there.

brassicGamer wrote:

oeuvre wrote:

just Doom things

LCD aside, that's a very nice period setup. The Gravis gamepad always a nice touch and those Altec's are awesome speakers (especially if you have the sub). The thing I like about them the most is the two inputs, so you can plug in a MIDI box without extra parts.

Thanks! Yeah, always liked Altec Lansings. I still use my ACS495s on my main desktop.

Tested and upgraded my new PPro system. It's a Dell OptiPlex GXPro with 2x 200/1M and 512MB. Still deciding what video card to use. I don't know a lot about pre-AGP graphics cards. Plus I don't know if I have anything decent for PCI. I know I just got a Mach64 4MB, but I want good 3D. (No, I don't have any extra Voodoo cards, at least not PCI.

@xplus93

NICE!11 My favorite era of systems! what are your plans with it?

luckybob wrote:

@xplus93

NICE!11 My favorite era of systems! what are your plans with it?

Not sure yet. I've got a 233MMX system for that era, but it's not dell, and the XPS M233s has a 430VX chipset. So i'm considering using this as my main rig for that era. At the very least i'm going to upgrade it with a SCSI controller and HDD. If I don't use it for a gaming rig then it will be my admin system for everything up to win2k. That's if i can get my hands on some older servers.