Greywolf1 wrote on 2024-01-24, 09:32:

Now my challenge is finding the bloody cards eBay can’t seem to tell the difference between pci and pci-e or agp,
I’ve found a 5500 for £50 but most available are $200 -$500 from America
My best bet would be getting a pci-e card for the dell dimension 3100c but I’m unable to install any operating system on it it refuses the pain in the ass sata drive even with tutorials it keeps asking for the bloody floppy’s for the drivers

Well, windows OSes can be slipstreamed with the driver with things like nLite.

Linux should not care, as it has a "universal" AHCI driver.

Doesn't help with the people that cant tell the difference between PCI-e and PCI-X though...

just cut open the pcie slot and install ANY pcie card

Yeah I’m aware of that now but I don’t have that option in both computers
Currently the computer that’s functioning fully only has pci slots and the one I can’t get up and running yet is the one with the pci-e x1 slot can’t keep throwing money at it and buy multiple cards or other functioning accessories to make it work.
Want both up and running before I focus on one computer so I can sell the other computer as working.

Bin (or sell, no idea who would want it) the PCI only computer, its not worth the trouble.

An idiot who wanted to do retro gaming and thought a pentium 4 would be good enough but found out the model be bought when he got it that a more modern computer was shit.
Never thought I’d have this problem 25 years ago I bought stuff and it worked or fit never had to think if it was compatible.

In general, I find that the old "Pentium 90" to "Pentium 200mmx" era (VX, TX, HX, IIRC..) are the sweetspot for DOS gaming.

Greywolf1 wrote on 2024-01-24, 09:32:

Now my challenge is finding the bloody cards eBay can’t seem to tell the difference between pci and pci-e or agp,
I’ve found a 5500 for £50 but most available are $200 -$500 from America

Do you mean a Voodoo 5 5500 or a Geforce FX 5500? Because there will be quite the difference.

A Voodoo 5500 will obviously be expensive, and the PCI ones even more than the AGP. Very sought after in general, and the PCI ones will run on boards that only have 0.8V AGP 3.0 (The card needs a 3.3V AGP 1.0 or 1.0/2.0 (3.3v & 1.5V) compatible slot) and on boards with no AGP ports at all.

A Geforce FX 5500 will be a fine DX8 card, and while theoretically DX9 capable, performance isn't great. Should be faster than a FX 5200 or Radeon 9200 and slower than a FX 5200 Ultra or 9000 Pro.
Looking at old reviews, it will run about as well as a Radeon 9600 in the right games.
If you want DX9, there seems to be a Radeon X1300 and a Geforce 6200 in PCI
Looking for it I found a even a thread on the FX 5500 PCI
Anyone with experience with Geforce FX 5500 PCI?

For general late DOS gaming, everything up to Geforce 6 and Radeon 9000 will run flawlessly with official drivers, but slightly newer cards will also work if you mod the driver.
For the general platform, you would want driver support as well. There are a couple Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 Northwood boards with WIndows 9x drivers, but the classic Pentium 3/Athlon and older will work pretty much out-of-the-box.
For older DOS games you run into speed issues. As in, the games run too fast.

There is a Nvidia NVS 290 card that (used to be) cheap and plentiful. Basically a crappy Quadro GeForce 8400 or 8600 iirc. In pcie x1