OK, you've got me interested 😀 I have a Diamond Stealth III S540 PCI on the way.

Highly doubt the very few supported games (unreal engine) will run well enough on a 400mhz K6-III at 66mhz on a Savage card even with Metal and the hi-res textures enabled.

Still it is probably more useful than having S3D on a S3 GX. To play S3D games you really need the S3 GX2 or the framerate will be terrible in mostly everything.

It's more the improved DX performance I'm thinking of, while keeping the S3 core for DOS. S3 drivers are crap of course so not expecting miracles.

Just wondering, those daughtercard 'legs' on the case bottom, what are they/where to buy ?? 😲

They're self adhesive pcb mounting pillars, got them from eBay.

Now this is a socket7 build that I can appreciate. Intel Triton II paired with a K6+ is double plus good. All the hardware is excellent except for the crappy case.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

All the hardware is excellent except for the crappy case.

Crappy case? I have to disagree with you Anonymous Coward. That thing is awesome. I know everyone has their personal preference when it comes to the look of the case, but you do have to give kudos for this case though..it is a nice compact generic AT case and ones like that are getting very hard to find. Having all the drive bays filled makes it look better. All the components put together in that case makes everything look nice and tidy. The teal blue power button just screams early 90's and the simplicity makes for a true retro feel.

I have to say though, I do prefer a little larger case for "ultimate"/"maxed out" builds like this though. It would be nice to have a larger case to have more drive bays to fill ...for example, I prefer to have a second optical drive installed (a DVD drive to go along with the CD ROM drive to be able to read DVD-R's) and maybe adding a zip drive for kicks might be nice too...that way you can use all your IDE ports as well to tuly "max it out".

I do understand why bjt used the smaller case though ....because the TXP-4 is a smaller form factor board (I have two of these boards and I love them).

You'll have to forgive me for the case as I bought it circa 95 with money from my first job 😀

Between the CD, HDD, SSD and LS-120 drives all the IDE ports are used. It's pretty tight working in there.

Made a couple of final changes but now the case is closed and it's staying that way!

NEC XR385 replaced with a Yamaha DB50XG
Mitsubishi LS-120 drive replaced with a faster/quieter Panasonic LS-120
STB Nitro 3D replaced with a Diamond Stealth III S540 PCI (32MB Savage4 Pro)

retrofanatic wrote:

Crappy case? I have to disagree with you Anonymous Coward. That thing is awesome. I know everyone has their personal preference […]
Show full quote

Anonymous Coward wrote:

All the hardware is excellent except for the crappy case.

Crappy case? I have to disagree with you Anonymous Coward. That thing is awesome. I know everyone has their personal preference when it comes to the look of the case, but you do have to give kudos for this case though..it is a nice compact generic AT case and ones like that are getting very hard to find. Having all the drive bays filled makes it look better. All the components put together in that case makes everything look nice and tidy. The teal blue power button just screams early 90's and the simplicity makes for a true retro feel.

I have to say though, I do prefer a little larger case for "ultimate"/"maxed out" builds like this though. It would be nice to have a larger case to have more drive bays to fill ...for example, I prefer to have a second optical drive installed (a DVD drive to go along with the CD ROM drive to be able to read DVD-R's) and maybe adding a zip drive for kicks might be nice too...that way you can use all your IDE ports as well to tuly "max it out".

I do understand why bjt used the smaller case though ....because the TXP-4 is a smaller form factor board (I have two of these boards and I love them).

It may look nice, but the sheet metal is of horrible quality. My friends and I all had these around 1996-1997. They were dirt cheap too. bjt probably made a smart move by binning the power supply that came with it. Agreed that good AT cases are getting hard to find though. ATX conversion is a good alternative if you can pull it off.

Overall I have to say bjt..a very nice build with some good attention to detail. If you change your video card..please post an update...I am curious to see the comparison of ati vs the s3 card.

Thanks for the comments. I installed the Diamond Stealth III last night, it's an S3 card too. The idea was to keep the great S3 compatibility in DOS while having better DX performance in Windows. The Voodoo3 is a secondary display so it won't work with most DirectX games.

Surprisingly, having all these 3D cards in one PC works OK. The Voodoo1 works with DOS games and in Windows all four cards can be used. I made a quick video of them working in Win98:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADhvY2NW4sI

The Savage4 has noticeably better image quality than the STB Nitro 3D.

bjt wrote:

Thanks for the comments. I installed the Diamond Stealth III last night, it's an S3 card too.

😊 Oh yeah, that's right...totally forgot about that. I actually think I own one of those. I might try the same thing as you in a future build. I've always wanted maximum compatibility from one of my windows builds.

bjt wrote:

Surprisingly, having all these 3D cards in one PC works OK. The Voodoo1 works with DOS games and in Windows all four cards can be used. I made a quick video of them working in Win98:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADhvY2NW4sI

The Savage4 has noticeably better image quality than the STB Nitro 3D.

Very cool! I see in your video that you have two monitors hooked up...how many can you potentially connect and what monitor is connected to what right now? (I hope you didn't say it in your video, because I was watching with audio turned off because I'm at work 🤣)...I'm guessing that one monitor goes to your Voodoo3 and the other to your diamond Stealth III, but which 3D card is passing through which 2D card? Again, sorry if it was mentioned, but I just wanted to clarify.

I've got the Stealth III as primary passing through the Voodoo 1, connected to the CRT. The Voodoo3 is secondary and connected to the TFT.

bjt wrote:

I've got the Stealth III as primary passing through the Voodoo 1, connected to the CRT. The Voodoo3 is secondary and connected to the TFT.

Ok cool. Thanks. I might try the same thing with my win 98 setup