Only thing you're missing on the video cards is an option for Creative 3D Blaster PCI for CGL and Rendition supported games 😀

Hmm. I never had a Rendition card back in the day. Does it support any games that aren't better served by S3/3dfx/PowerVR?

bjt wrote:

Hmm. I never had a Rendition card back in the day. Does it support any games that aren't better served by S3/3dfx/PowerVR?

See my thread: 3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)

Niice build! 😁

Are you also using the LS-120 drive with the 120MB disks btw?
If so, do you happen to also have the USB version of the LS-120 drive? That would seem like a nice way to "quickly" swap data around between your retro rig and your main rig 😀

Yeah that would be cool. I have a few 120MB disks but not another USB drive unfortunately. I got it mainly to help with reading data from borderline disks, the error correction on the LS-120 drives is meant to be better for that. Motorised floppy eject is cool too 😎

I have only 1 other suggestion, but it's not easy to realize it, is to replace the 1.44 floppydrive with a pc-standard 2.88 floppydrive. With a pair of those (one in your retro rig and 1 in a main rig) you could use those to swap data around. Not a big improvement (only twice the data and twice the speed if using the 2.88 disks) but it would be an extra "cool"-factor in my book 😜

Edit: However those drives won't read the 720kb disks though, dunno if you still use those

Hey that's neat, another retro-build filled to capacity! I can just imagine the anticipation of pressing the power button and watch it come to life once everything was in place 😁 .

Some questions for bjt:

- Is the Seasonic PSU a good one for a Socket 7 build? The PSU in my P166MMX rig is showing signs of age (it is over a decade old by now) and I would like to get a
replacement that just works (my board is ATX, no need for an adapter).

- Is heat going to be a problem? There are 2 video cards and 2 3D cards in there, after all.

- Why two 3dfx cards? Max compatibility, or personal preference? And how do you choose which one works and which one doesn't?

The Seasonic PSU was NOS and I would certainly recommend it if you can find something similar. TELVM did an analysis here: A tale of two PSUs

Heat wise, nothing puts out much heat apart from the Voodoo3. I've put it in the top PCI slot now so it's away from the other cards.

The Voodoo1 is for DOS games as these "just work" without any special environment variables. I have a couple of Voodoo1-only games too. The Voodoo3 is for Windows Glide/GL. It gets literally double the framerate in GLQuake, even at 1024x768.

Although the Voodoo3 is running as the secondary display, Glide/GL still works fine. I've only found one game which doesn't work with this setup, which is the 3Dfx version of Mechwarrior 2. To play that I just have to reinstall the Voodoo1 Windows drivers.

Great build!!!! However i believe you should look for a QDI Titanium IB+ motherboard. Very stable and has the awesome Speedeasy configuration!

This is a formidable setup indeed. I built a similar time machine a few years ago.

I concluded that beside near-to-perfect DOS compatibility I need the best possible speed AND features of a good D3D card, and that had to be nVidia. So I dismissed getting a Voodoo3 entirely. (As I see it, 3dfx was already on the decline by then, and most 3D games play at least as nice on D3D hw. Of course, this is a matter of tastes and eternal ground of debates.)
For DOSsing I have kept an AWE32 CT3900 with 32 MB RAM + DB60XG + LAPC-I in the rig (good Creative compatibility, no hanging notes experienced, ultimate sound in LA synth games) supported by a Voodoo2 PCI card.
For keeping up with '96-97 games, I put in an nvidia Ti4200, later replaced by an FX5500. These cards are much more powerful than a Voodoo3, so one can set insane level of D3D detail in earlier games. Like the Voodoos, nvidia cards are VBE 3.0 out of the box - healthy refresh rates can be set on old CRT monitors. An SB Live! Digital is added for 48 khz /Directsound and to lighten the burden on the CPU (same as yours) in Windows.

My motherboard is the GA-5AX 5.2, with the UDMA 66 controller. I also added a NEC USB 2.0 card and a Speeddragon USB 2.0 to RJ45 NIC for a better "Windows Experience Index" 😀

carlostex,

I do not think that QDI board would support a K6-2+ / K6 III+ CPU. And a simple pentium MMX is no match for a 600 Mhz K6-III+... Even the Tillamook falters.

Jolaes76 wrote:

carlostex,

I do not think that QDI board would support a K6-2+ / K6 III+ CPU. And a simple pentium MMX is no match for a 600 Mhz K6-III+... Even the Tillamook falters.

Of course it does. I know because i own one. All it needs is a modded BIOS, just like the OP board needed one.

Nice!

What is the performance compared to the Aladdin V boards?
Can do you achieve lower than 2.0V for the CPU?
And 100 Mhz FSB and above?

That QDI board does look nice. It's pretty much the same as the ASUS but with a slightly better layout. Full length cards are always going to be a challenge with the CPU placement on AT boards though.

Hear you on the D3D angle too. I wanted to get the PowerVR/S3/Voodoo1 combo in there though and I'm not sure if an NVidia card would play nice as a Win98 secondary display, whereas the Voodoo3 works quite well as secondary via Glide or MiniGL. In any case I wouldn't go any newer than a TNT2 as this is still a Socket 7 build, albeit with a CPU normally found on Super Socket 7 boards.

The QDI supports down to 2.0V like the Asus, which is perfect for K6-3+. I believe the 400 ATZ will do 450 or 500 no problems at 2.0V but that would mean a FSB overclock on TX. I wanted to keep the TX stability intact so it's strictly 66Mhz for this build. Both the Asus and QDI will do 85Mhz but then you're in to the realms of overclocking PCI, IDE etc.

I'm sure any Aladdin V board at 100Mhz will kill TX in memory performance. Are there many Ali V AT boards out there? Gigabyte GA-5AA is one but it only has 2 ISA slots.

Back in the day I had a FIC VA-503+ (MVP3) which had great memory performance but stabilty was always slightly questionable.

hmm. I also have two 5ALI61 rev F boards. Not in the same quality league as Gigabyte, ASUS or FIC, still neither of them failed so far. This board also needs a modded BIOS. Eariler revisions of this board had no reliable 100 mhz FSB support (95 Mhz worked, though) and had a half-size BIOS. Rev F, however, has got it all, except CPU core voltage starts at 2.15 V (measured) which is a bit too high for the K6 2+ but the regular K6-III fares fine. This board has 3 ISA slots...

Jolaes76 wrote:

Nice! […]
Show full quote

Nice!

What is the performance compared to the Aladdin V boards?
Can do you achieve lower than 2.0V for the CPU?
And 100 Mhz FSB and above?

Obviously performance is lower, it does not support 100MHz FSB.

I don't remember if it can do lower than 2.0V, it might do 1.8V but i really don't remember. It's a very stable board though, based on Intel TX chipset. Very cool for an AT build, and the speedeasy menu is great.

bjt wrote:

Although the Voodoo3 is running as the secondary display, Glide/GL still works fine. I've only found one game which doesn't work with this setup, which is the 3Dfx version of Mechwarrior 2. To play that I just have to reinstall the Voodoo1 Windows drivers.

You have a m3D, why not run the PowerVR version, which is the best by far?

Yeah, looking forward to trying the patch 😀

bjt wrote:

The Seasonic PSU was NOS and I would certainly recommend it if you can find something similar. TELVM did an analysis here: A tal […]
Show full quote

The Seasonic PSU was NOS and I would certainly recommend it if you can find something similar. TELVM did an analysis here: A tale of two PSUs

Heat wise, nothing puts out much heat apart from the Voodoo3. I've put it in the top PCI slot now so it's away from the other cards.

The Voodoo1 is for DOS games as these "just work" without any special environment variables. I have a couple of Voodoo1-only games too. The Voodoo3 is for Windows Glide/GL. It gets literally double the framerate in GLQuake, even at 1024x768.

Although the Voodoo3 is running as the secondary display, Glide/GL still works fine. I've only found one game which doesn't work with this setup, which is the 3Dfx version of Mechwarrior 2. To play that I just have to reinstall the Voodoo1 Windows drivers.

Thank you for the answers and link bjt. Really appreciate it 😀 .

I have an old Enermax 300W PSU that an old college classmate gave me back in November. I'll clean it up, take some pics and post them in that thread to see if TELVM finds it acceptable. If not, then I'll just look for the Seasonic or something similar to it.

Once again, thank you.

Alternatively you could also replace the Virge card with a later Savage card so you can do S3 MeTaL and those other weird S3-only OEM S3TC-supporting game versions, in addition to having something for Direct3D 😀