Hey ya all,

I started working on the machine about a year ago, that is picking some related parts every now and then. I knew what I wanted from it (an exclusive win95 rig, early 3D and win9x games up to '98) and the exact hardware I fancy: 233MMX S7, 64mb RAM, AWE32, Matrox+Voodoo1.

Since Voodoo cards are relatively rare, every time I stumbled upon one locally, I grabbed it. This way I was able to accumulate 5 of them:
- Voodoo2 Orchid
- 2x Voodoo2 noname in SLI
- Voodoo Diamond Monster 3D
- AGP Voodoo 3 1000

But it was not all the roses. No roses at all, to be blunt.

When it finally came down to testing it, turned out that the Orchid works only once in a blue moon. First of the nonames had it's Voodoo2 chipset legs damaged, while the other one displayed some artifacts and froze. And alas, my high hopes for Diamond's Voodoo1 were crushed as well. It had a missing cap - so I went and bought a freaking Japanese soldering iron to fix it - an adventure on it's own - it's been over a decade since my last soldering job. But after all of this, when it's activated - the screen simply goes to sleep and the PC stops responding.

I got so frustrated with the whole situation, I decided to just chill and play some Diablo. If you used to twisted plots, you should not expect a happy end by this point.. I've been using COM mouse from my DOS machine and the sensitivity was subpar, so I swapped it for PS/2. It was then when I realized that the PS/2 is dead. Such a cherry on top. It was my best S7 mobo in extremely mint condition.

Anyway, given that I would have to replace the motherboard in any case, now I'm at a crossroads:
a. I still have the Voodoo 3, albeit untested. I also accidentally own an ASUS SS7 board I could theoretically pair with it, though I strongly prefer the original Socket 7 platform. Thus the build will be temporary even if everything is fine with the hardware. I know that V3 doesn't work with some early 3dfx titles (about 20% from what I've seen online) and have no idea how well it performs in lowres 2D and how is the picture quality.
b. I could just replace the mobo with my second best S7 one, plug the Matrox Mystique back in and enjoy the beautiful 2D. As for 3D games, I could play it in software mode, same way I did back in the day; install it on my P3+ti200; or just ignore it altogether for now, I don't think that the list is that huge anyway. Later I could gamble on another V1, if I feel like it (anything with a V in it feels like a crapshoot to me at this moment).

After being backstabbed by all the evil magic I'm leaning towards "b". At the same time, some Carmageddon 2 and Unreal can prove to be the best remedy. All opinions are highly appreciated.

P.S. All but Voodoo 3 are thoroughly tinkered with and are DOA, so please don't waste your time.