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Found an old Pentium 3 - what should I do with it ?

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First post, by Eleanor1967

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Hey guys,

a couple of days ago I found a pretty much untouched but dirty Compag Pentium 3 on the street, probably waiting to be picked up by the bullky-trash-pickup service we have here in Germany. But you know how it goes, we all have a big heart for something, so naturally I picked it up. They machine seems to be pretty much unmodified besides a different CD drive which is a year to new for the rest of the machine and was mounted with different screws.

Its specs are:
- Pentium 3 450 Mhz
- 128 MB of RAM
- Compaq OEM motherboard (Pic attached)
- ATI Rage IIc AGP graphics card
- Compaq Premier Sound (ES1869f based) Seems to be pretty decent actually

and a modem and 3COM network card which I already put on the to be thrown away pile.

The question is what do I do with this stuff now? I was kinda looking for a Pentium 3 anyway so building a machine is the natural thing to do here. I do have a couple of questions and wanted to ask you guys for your opinion/input.

I was thinking of building a higher end Pentium 3 before finding this system, more like 800-1000 Mhz range, but now with that 450 Mhz Pentium laying around I could just use that, I have a good selection of games which would run on this system that wouldn't on my currently fastest machine, a 233 Mhz P1 mmx system.

- So question is what GPU should I get for the system? Single V2 ? V2 SLI ? Maybe a V3? Maybe an ATI or something completely different ? Which one you guys think would fit this CPU ?
- Should I use the motherboard ? It works and looks fine at the first glance and its BIOS looked useable for an OEM board. So should I just run with it ?

I am curious about the motherboard it seems the have an Intel 740 on it, which according to wikipedia is an GPU, but its the only chip which could be the chipset and the board has no video out as far as I can see, so I am wondering how this is all coming together. A picture is attaced. Sorry for the poor quality, my phone is the only thing a have here at the moment, but I could borrow a DSLR if needed.

That should be enough of a wall of text for now, thanks for reading it 😉

Cheers,
Eleanor1967

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Last edited by Eleanor1967 on 2017-05-24, 11:32. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 1 of 9, by Deksor

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and a modem and 3COM network card which I already put on the to be thrown away pile.

What ? don't do it they are very decent cards ! and unlike modems, network cards can be quite useful (multiplayer, file transfert, etc ...)

Be careful with compaq stuff especially with the power connector because sometimes they aren't wired the same way as ATX even though you can fit the regular ATX plug in it you could break it ...

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Reply 2 of 9, by Eleanor1967

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Deksor wrote:

and a modem and 3COM network card which I already put on the to be thrown away pile.

What ? don't do it they are very decent cards ! and unlike modems, network cards can be quite useful (multiplayer, file transfert, etc ...)

Yes, I know 3COMs are decent network cards, but this one is really filthy, has coaxial and another parallel looking port which I dont know what it is. Also has no sexy indicator lights on the back. Basically its a card which has alot of stuff I dont need and it doesnt even flash cool while doing its job. And I mean its not like these late 90s network cards are a rare and a hard to get thing anyway. Maybe I will take the time to check if it is anything special...

Deksor wrote:

Be careful with compaq stuff especially with the power connector because sometimes they aren't wired the same way as ATX even though you can fit the regular ATX plug in it you could break it ...

Thanks for the heads up ! I was planning on using the original powersupply for now, since it caps looked fine at first glance. Though it has only 85 watts on its 3.3 and 5 Volt rail and 145 watts of combined power. Will have to figure out if thats enough.

Reply 3 of 9, by Kamerat

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Eleanor1967 wrote:

Yes, I know 3COMs are decent network cards, but this one is really filthy, has coaxial and another parallel looking port which I dont know what it is. Also has no sexy indicator lights on the back. Basically its a card which has alot of stuff I dont need and it doesnt even flash cool while doing its job. And I mean its not like these late 90s network cards are a rare and a hard to get thing anyway. Maybe I will take the time to check if it is anything special...

That's an AUI port.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 4 of 9, by ODwilly

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Agp voodoo 3 for glide games!

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 5 of 9, by chinny22

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What model Compaq is it? Should be easy enough to google say Compaq Deskpro xyz motherboard, get the motherboard part number and see what it is.
Looking at the layout I'm thinking it will be based on the BX chipset.

Will make a great late dos/Win9x games PC, you got ISA if onboard sound doesn't work in dos and even a 450 will have power in reserve for even the most demanding DOS titles.

Graphics wise, You have AGP so can make a fast Glide box with Voodoo 3 which also has good support in DOS.
or Nvida cards were pretty good at dos compatibility and you can play D3D games in Windows, You can probably go upto a GF Ti4600, and pair with a Voodoo2 SLI if you still want Glide.

Reply 6 of 9, by kanecvr

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chinny22 wrote:

You can probably go upto a GF Ti4600, and pair with a Voodoo2 SLI if you still want Glide.

A GF4 Ti is wasted on a p3 machine, especially a slow 450MHz unit. I saw no performance benefits going from a GF3 Ti200 to a Gf4 Ti4200 on my tualatin rig. It does help a bit at 1600x1200 but the machine still lags in some games. I'd say the best AGP card for a 450MHz slot 1 machine is a Voodoo 3 AGP. If you stick a faster CPU in there (say 800-900Mhz) it would then benefit from say a Geforce 2 PRO / GTS or GF 3 Ti200 + Voodoo 2 SLi, that's if you want to play D3D/openGL games at 1600x1200.

Reply 7 of 9, by chinny22

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Not saying its the best choice, indeed on a 450Mhz it would be a total waste, just that's about the latest card that'll work if OP has something lying around.

Reply 8 of 9, by Eleanor1967

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In the name of Kane!

So, I did some research. The name of the computer is Compaq Deskpro EP K450 / 6.3. I found some discussion of the system on here. Also I found some documentation on the HP website. My system should be the last one on the list since it is as chinny22 correctly assumed 440BX based and supports 100 Mhz FSB. I think I will keep the CPU for now, maybe I will pick another one up if I see one for auction for cheap.

On the topic of GPUs. I don't have any spares of that timeperiod or AGP in general so I will have to buy anything I put in there. I'm looking into Voodoo 3 right now but there isn't a single one for auction in Germany right now. I found one in the UK, will see for how much it goes. I don't like nvidia they are out in my book (today they are a really shady company with a lot of consumer unfriendly behavior). Is there anything else you guys would recommend ?

Last question for today: the parrallel port on the board has this metal thing in it, whats up with that ?

I also kept the 3COM card 😉

Reply 9 of 9, by chinny22

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Big metal thing is vrm heatsink if I had to guess?
Or maybe its just a system that can print/scan/use zip disks real quick 😉

Not much of a ATI guy myself, partly because they drop older legacy support much quicker, so don't really know the range
1st place I would look is here, find a card with good dos support, then check if it works in WIn98
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

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