VOGONS


First post, by Great Hierophant

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A few years ago, my brother-in-law gave me a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI card he had kept from his old PC, from with that sprang the nucleus of a Windows 98SE gaming system. I am a firm believer in convenience, and have always wanted to build a powerhouse turn of the century gaming system. After many failures and false starts, I have finally enough of that system in place to be able to show it off. Here are the specs :

CPU : Intel Pentium III 600E Coppermine Slot 1 w/heatsink & fan
RAM : 256MB PC133 SDRAM CL2
Motherboard : ASUS P3B-F v1.03 1xAGP/5xPCI/2xISA
Graphics : Voodoo 3 3000 PCI 16MB SDRAM
NIC : 3Com Fast Etherlink 10/100Mbit 3C905B-TX
Audio Card 1 : Diamond Monster Sound MX300
Audio Card 2 : Sound Blaster Live! CT4760
Hard Drive : WD300BB 30GB 7200RPM 2MB Cache IDE
Optical Drive : Pioneer DVD-115 16xDVD/40xCD
Floppy Drive : Epson SD-800 Combo 5.25" & 3.5" HD
Keyboard : IBM Model M 1391401 PS/2
Gamepad : Playstation Gamepad w/PSX to USB adapter
Mouse : Microsoft Intellimouse Wheel PS/2
Case : Antec Solution Series SLK 1600 w/Antec 300W power supply w/2x80mm case fans

As you may note, some of these components (hard/optical drive, case/ps, fans) are not strictly vintage-1999 or earlier, but none of the major components are outside the timeframe.

The beauty about the Voodoo 3 PCI card is that it has no problem with overclocking the system to 800/133 CPU/FSB. The CPU does this very well. Also, because of the 6.0 multiplier, the system will underclock to 400/66. Thus a wider range of software can be run on the system. Additionally, the Glide support allows a wider variety of games to run in 3D accelerated mode than on comparable or better accelerators of the year 1999. Because it is a PCI card, I used a fast CPU.

Fan and Heatsinks are much easier to install to Slot 1 CPUs than the socketed CPUs of the time. One of the case fans has an LED attached.

The two audio cards handle A3D and EAX duties. Both can happily exist in the same system. The ISA slots are currently unoccupied, but I anticipate inserting an AWE32 in one of them. I have one free PCI slot, which I may use for a Creative DXR2 decoder card, if I can find one cheap. The Antec case is perfect for this because it does has clearance for a 13" card at the bottom of the case. The power supply provides a -5v line, and has plugs as varied as a SATA and AT P8/P9 style (only one of each).

The 3Com NIC is very common and cheap, and it has native Win 98SE drivers, and also a working DOS packet driver. I can get sometimes 5MB/sec transfer speeds over an Ethernet-based LAN.

The hard drive is hot to the touch, but is large enough to hold disk images. A 30GB hard drive was high end in 1999, but two drives could provide the equivalent space. One drive is more convenient. The DVD drive is old enough to be flashed to region free RPC-1 status, and I have done so, because I can! Its tray is a bit ornery, the drive sometimes fails to catch itself when it closes.

So far, I have yet to play a game that refuses to work on this system. Final Fantasy VII, Planescape Torment, Tomb Raider, GLQuake, and many more all work happily.

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/ - Nerdly Pleasures - My Retro Gaming, Computing & Tech Blog

Reply 1 of 12, by Jolaes76

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A very versatile build, indeed. Excellent balance of speed, compatibility and quality/stability.
I will take a look at all the throttling software I have when I get home (although I know you prefer hardware throttling, but in Win9x, with ACPI availabe, things can get much smoother than in DOS) and will let you know if I find anything useful.

"Ita in vita ut in lusu alae pessima iactura arte corrigenda est."

Reply 4 of 12, by King_Corduroy

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Fog over HD-SDI is a bit scattered. Must share some impressions. Passed 2 objects with different hardware. Let's start with the first. Chambers Street Surgery. Maxim. distance up to 150 m DVR BP near skameroj. REG-p Practice. Cable РК-75. Connector crimped (supplemented by soldering pins). Bottom line don't work the two most distant camera 150 m. A total of 9 cameras. Ordered the $ 150 amps at reg-r Intervision to another object. For the lead before placing amplifiers tossed REG-p Practice. In General, entries for the Praksise insensitive. And rummaged in the Intervision made conclusions: the guys at Intervision software professionals at the highest level. Very flexible in your machine. The build quality of the 5 plus. Practice as referred not ice. Now Pro camera Practice. The lighting is very bad but the picture in the daytime but BW. In principle, and believed in them. Uncomfortable in a bracket upset and the absence of an external composite video connector. But if you unscrew the CAP...

That is the translation of a part of the cryllic text btw
So is that spam? Cause it looks like spam.

Check me out at Transcendental Airwaves on Youtube! Fast-food sucks!

Reply 6 of 12, by Great Hierophant

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King_Corduroy wrote:

I demand pictures! 😜

Be careful what you wish for :

file.php?mode=view&id=15417&sid=8f8c7568e4438e64ad21ba58790d0e6f

file.php?mode=view&id=15418&sid=8f8c7568e4438e64ad21ba58790d0e6f

file.php?mode=view&id=15419&sid=8f8c7568e4438e64ad21ba58790d0e6f

file.php?mode=view&id=15420&sid=8f8c7568e4438e64ad21ba58790d0e6f

file.php?mode=view&id=15421&sid=8f8c7568e4438e64ad21ba58790d0e6f

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http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/ - Nerdly Pleasures - My Retro Gaming, Computing & Tech Blog

Reply 7 of 12, by Great Hierophant

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file.php?mode=view&id=15422&sid=8f8c7568e4438e64ad21ba58790d0e6f

file.php?mode=view&id=15423&sid=8f8c7568e4438e64ad21ba58790d0e6f

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http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/ - Nerdly Pleasures - My Retro Gaming, Computing & Tech Blog

Reply 8 of 12, by Great Hierophant

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The last photo showed the case in a natural light, here is the same angle with flash (like the rest of the photo) :

file.php?mode=view&id=15427&sid=8f8c7568e4438e64ad21ba58790d0e6f

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http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/ - Nerdly Pleasures - My Retro Gaming, Computing & Tech Blog

Reply 9 of 12, by King_Corduroy

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Boy you weren't kidding. 🤣 That case has just awful styling. 🤣
I like the desktop model you have next to that 5150 (or whatever it is) though, that thing looks so cool!

Check me out at Transcendental Airwaves on Youtube! Fast-food sucks!

Reply 10 of 12, by Great Hierophant

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The Antec case is not the most stylish thing I have ever owned, nor the most convenient. You have to slide off the top cover before you can remove the side covers. The side covers are removed by pushing upwards on them. There is no removable motherboard tray, and the power supply has too many wires, leading to all that bunching on the top. Still, I've dealt with far worse.

The desktop model is my 486, and the case is a fairly modern AT case. There is a 5150 on the side, and my PCjr is on top of it.

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/ - Nerdly Pleasures - My Retro Gaming, Computing & Tech Blog

Reply 11 of 12, by King_Corduroy

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Very nice! I have a PCjr sitting right next to me. 🤣

Yeah that case sounds like a pain, I have a Sony Viao that opens up in a very similar manner except its like half the size so allthe components are right on top of each other, working on it is like working on a bmw. You have to disassemble everything just to do something as dumb as swap RAM.

Check me out at Transcendental Airwaves on Youtube! Fast-food sucks!

Reply 12 of 12, by raymangold

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Good ASUS motherboard, nice rubycon capacitors (none of the annoying cheapies). Good model M-- an earlier one, so it'll be a bit louder and springier to the touch-- you can also still mount LEDs on those, just requires some wiring, and/or resistors depending on what controller it is.

Those 3com NICs are some of the best for the time, they're always stable and work without complaint-- good quality. Plus they're common as dirt as I.T. companies are throwing them out by the bucket-load.

You may want to be cautious about the V3's temperature. I'd suggest sticking a fan underneath it (or on top with a nice heatsink with thermal tape or whatever).