This is exactly what Micron sold as the Millenia and what I have. A great choice for Windows 95 - fast enough, but without any compatibility problems which new CPUs can exhibit with pre OSR2 Windows 95 releases. The Voodoo 1 will be perfect match for this setup - this is what I'm going to do with mine.

You know, for vintage stuff, I would have expected more of a response/discussion on this. I guess people don't like me.

That is pretty similar to what I had. S3 (I had a Virge DX back then) coupled with Voodoo1 is great compatibilty. That is a ton of RAM for 95;)

FFXIhealer wrote:

You know, for vintage stuff, I would have expected more of a response/discussion on this. I guess people don't like me.

I'd like to see this computer build of yours. It sounds interesting. How about some pics?

As far as the video card goes, I would put a Riva 128 in it. An S3 Trio seems weak for a P200. The Riva 128 works well with DOS games and software. Couple that with a Voodoo of your choice and you've got a nice build.

For storage CF cards seem to be a common and reliable solution around here. Iv got a small stash of sub 10gb HDDs Iv collected overbthe past year for that usage. Also It may be that your motherboard will support a 40gb HDD. If that is the case you could just partition any old 40gb drive to suit your purpose.

FuzzyLogic wrote:

FFXIhealer wrote:

You know, for vintage stuff, I would have expected more of a response/discussion on this. I guess people don't like me.

I'd like to see this computer build of yours. It sounds interesting. How about some pics?

As far as the video card goes, I would put a Riva 128 in it. An S3 Trio seems weak for a P200. The Riva 128 works well with DOS games and software. Couple that with a Voodoo of your choice and you've got a nice build.

Ok, I attached the shot I took last week. I'm also attaching one I just now took. I got some thermal paste from work and properly attached the active cooler to the socket. I'll not know if it works until I can turn it on and see. I also picked up a couple of CR2032 batteries....because all these MBs use them.

All I have is the motherboard, 200MHz Pentium processor, and the EDO RAM. That's it - no case, no power supply, no drives, etc. I do have extra IDE cables laying around.

ODwilly wrote:

For storage CF cards seem to be a common and reliable solution around here. Iv got a small stash of sub 10gb HDDs Iv collected overbthe past year for that usage. Also It may be that your motherboard will support a 40gb HDD. If that is the case you could just partition any old 40gb drive to suit your purpose.

IF I decide to run with this, nothing will be certain unless it powers up. Which means getting - at the very least - a 2D PCI graphics card. I've got one bookmarked on Ebay: NEW Matrox Millenium II 4Mb PCI MIL2P/4N for $23. From this forum, I hear really good things about these old Matrox cards. And I'd love to do the CF solution, but I have a feeling that's just going to cost more money. And Windows 95's FAT16 has a hard 32GB limit for partition sizes, correct? I don't even know if my copy of Windows 95 can handle a FAT32 file system.

Hell, on this system, I'd be happy with 1 GB for storage.

Do you have any PCI graphics cards to test with? I think the first step is to test it outside a case just to see if it POSTs. The cooling is not super important on a P200. I think passive would be fine and thermal compound is optional if you have good contact.

Do you have any desire to play with DOS? This would make a great DOS rig too. I wonder about that onboard SB16 though. How compatible would it be with DOS?

What is your current plan for storage? Do you have any small drives available?

Well, another member on this board sent me two PCI video cards: an ATI Rage IIc and a Matrox G450 Dual-Head PCI. I don't even know if they work, but it's worth testing. The first thing I'll do if the system boots and the video card works is boot to a Memory Tester and run all 4 memory chips through a harsh test. I've run the Radeon 1800 system through it and the 1GB chip passed with flying colors, as did my Pentium II with the 2x 128MB chips. I think I'll need to set up either the boot CD or find out if I can load it from the CD-R I have after booting to a Windows 98 boot disk.

I wouldn't mind playing with DOS...except that I don't own/have a copy of DOS. I only have it as a component of either Windows 98 or Windows 95 (the OS I plan to use on this particular build). My only concern of running a fully-DOS rig is there's no turbo switch for older DOS games or whatever. I think that was limited to the 486, right?

I don't have ANY small drives. The smallest drives I have are the 40GB ones on my Pentium II build. I think I'll be reinstalling that so only one of those drives is in there. 40GB is still tons of space for Windows 98. That's why I was considering other options for Windows 95. Since I'm pretty much limited to what? 1.2GB partition sizes? I could just use a 1GB CF card with an adapter, but I don't have any of that.

Read the "Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled" link in my signature. There are ways to slow down a P200 very conveniently. 😀

You should be able to "short-stroke" a 40GB drive by just making partitions whatever max size your OS supports. But I believe Win95 is limited to 2GB partition sizes. Win98SE is much more robust OS and what I would recommend over 95.

Nice that you're getting some video cards. 😀 That'll be fun to test. That G450 will be a sweet card if it works for you!

Phil has a video on running DOS 7.

Well I came home yesterday and found the two cards waiting, but couldn't get to them as I was busy. This morning I had a chance to check the thing out. I used my AMD Athlon XP system as a host with the MB sitting on a cardboard box on top of the open case so I could use things like the floppy and the power supply without actually having to remove them. Pictures included.

So the thing actually powered up! I put a CR2032 battery in it and tried to boot with the ATI card...nothing on the screen. Disappointing, but not surprising. So I switched it out for the Matrox card. BOOM! BIOS POST is a beautiful thing to witness on a system this freaking old.

Notes:
CPU fan does work properly. Causes a little bit of noise, but for a system this old, it's acceptable.
20-pin ATX hook-up gets caught on a capacitor, but only affects me if I try to unplug it. Will note for future.
I used a phillips screwdriver to turn the thing on and off using the MB header. Works fine. Soft-off apparently works.
Didn't have a working Windows 98 boot disk, so I will rectify that later with my Windows 98 system. I have plenty of blank floppies.
The BIOS let me put a 2016 date, so nice.

I re-connected my Windows XP system (for the floppy drive to use) so I could make a Memtest x86 boot floppy and that worked pretty well. Hooked up the Pentium system again and booted to it just fine. It's running now. It sees all 40MB, so here's crossing my fingers that the whole thing passes the mem test. It's ~58% complete as I type this line.

And now as I type THIS line (after uploading the image to the post), it's passed at 100% with 0 errors. Woot. So I now have a working Pentium 200 MHz processor, a working MB, and 40MB of working EDO RAM, and a working PCI video card. With the Matrox G450, I don't even need to bother with a Voodoo1 card at all, I think.

Now I just gotta figure out what I want to do about a case, a budget PSU, another CD-ROM and storage device to put on it.

And oh, I don't HAVE Windows 98 Second Edition. I only have Windows 98 FIRST Edition (that's on my Pentium II build) and Windows 95 OSR2, so that's what I'm gonna put on this thing if/when I get a storage device for it. If I HAD DOS, I'd think about using it. If I HAD Windows 98 SE, I'd have put it on my Pentium II build already. Some people here aren't willing to shell out serious cash for things like this, though I will thank another forum member for sending the video cards. I'll play with the ATI card to see if I can figure out what's wrong with it and maybe fix it or not.

FFXIhealer wrote:

If I HAD DOS, I'd think about using it.

When Mr. clueless1 refers to "running DOS 7", I believe he is referring to DOS "as a component of either Windows 98 or Windows 95", as you have already stated. (And there's always FreeDOS. Nothing really wrong with FreeDOS, though the documentation leaves much to be desired.)

Jorpho wrote:

FFXIhealer wrote:

If I HAD DOS, I'd think about using it.

When Mr. clueless1 refers to "running DOS 7", I believe he is referring to DOS "as a component of either Windows 98 or Windows 95", as you have already stated. (And there's always FreeDOS. Nothing really wrong with FreeDOS, though the documentation leaves much to be desired.)

Yep. This video might give you some ideas to adapt with what you have, FFXIhealer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2SPlHzAcSI

The nice thing with an ATX Socket 7 setup is that you can pretty much use any ATX case/psu. No need to track down any AT stuff.

I will note that for the short while the system was on doing the memory test, the Matrox card did get a bit warm to the touch, unusual for a card operating in simple VGA mode. I'd probably want a case that will have a fan blowing air directly on the card. Maybe either a mid-ATX case with a generic 300-350 watt PSU would be way more than enough.

Jorpho wrote:

FFXIhealer wrote:

If I HAD DOS, I'd think about using it.

When Mr. clueless1 refers to "running DOS 7", I believe he is referring to DOS "as a component of either Windows 98 or Windows 95", as you have already stated. (And there's always FreeDOS. Nothing really wrong with FreeDOS, though the documentation leaves much to be desired.)

Plus DR-DOS/OpenDOS and (in a legal grey area) PC-DOS 7.1.

FFXIhealer wrote:

the Matrox card did get a bit warm to the touch, unusual for a card operating in simple VGA mode.

Not sure why that's unusual..? Cards are supposed to get warm – and you're not normally supposed to touch them. 😉

FFXIhealer wrote:

I will note that for the short while the system was on doing the memory test, the Matrox card did get a bit warm to the touch, unusual for a card operating in simple VGA mode. I'd probably want a case that will have a fan blowing air directly on the card. Maybe either a mid-ATX case with a generic 300-350 watt PSU would be way more than enough.

Notice the weird soldered wire grounded to the heatsink with a screw? No idea what was going on there. 99% sure that was not a factory mod 🤣. And agreed, these old cards were designed to run hot. Simple case airflow is more than enough to cool them. Worst case a Molex powered 40mm fan would do the trick easily.

I think temperature isn't a bad thing per se.
Some devices require a specific amount of warmth to work properly.