First post, by TheMobRules
Today while I was doing some cleaning in my house I found this, lurking in a dark corner like an ancient evil that is not to be disturbed:
Yes, it's the heinous PC100 M747, a slot 1 motherboard from the late 90s made by PCChips under the brand "PC100". It is without a doubt the most wretched piece of technology I have ever possessed. 😒
My story with this thing begins back in late 1998, when a friend of mine got himself a Voodoo 2 card and I saw what a game changer it was in terms of 3D performance at the time (I had a Mystique 220 in my socket 7 PC then so you would understand why I was underwhelmed with "3D" up to that point).
So, I decided it was time to upgrade and I was determined to get a Voodoo 2 and a slot 1 build with it. I was still in high school back then, so after saving enough money I got a Diamond Monster 3D II with 12 MB, one of those magically overclocking Celeron 300 processors and 64MB of PC100 RAM (I even got a new beige AT case to go with it 🤣 ). Coupled with my Mystique and drives from my socket 7 PC, I was almost ready to go! All I needed now was a motherboard.
I hadn't much money left, and also prices being really inflated by taxes here in South America, I had to go with a low cost option: the M747. Big mistake. What should have been a thrilling time of 3D madness with Quake II, Unreal and all that was instead day after day of random crashes, lockups, resource conflicts and tears. 😢
The most annoying things I remember were 3D games randomly locking up with the sound looping and requiring a restart (Need for Speed 2 would always hang after playing no more than 10 minutes), and also the inability to use my old Sound Blaster card because disabling the crappy onboard sound of the M747 would cause every single game to BSOD. 😵
It was a painful experience, so as soon as I was able to I ditched this thing and replaced it with a brand new P3 based system with a Voodoo 3 and from then on it was smooth sailing. For some reason I somehow lost the CPU but kept the motherboard, I think it's dead but I won't bother checking. However I have a proper Slot 1 retro build in progress with better stuff that I will share with you as soon as I get some parts I need.
Has anyone here more M747 or PCChips related memories to share? 🤣