VOGONS


First post, by boxpressed

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I put the finishing touches on my go-to rig this week. I know that builds are never complete, but I'm very satisfied with where this one is now.

The best part about it is that I had purchased the motherboard at retail back in 1998 or so. This is not a period-correct build, but it is close enough to it for me.

CASE: Generic Baby AT with full three-digit LED display. I bought a complete system just for this case. It is very clean and in excellent shape. I used to have a case with an LED display but not one that could display any number past "199." It turns out that this case is the perfect one for my motherboard/CPU combo.

MOTHERBOARD: FIC VA-503+ rev. 1.2. This is a classic SS7 motherboard with the MVP3 chipset and 1MB onboard cache. I use the Turbo switch on the case to change the FSB speed from 66MHz to 100MHz. Because the case has an LED whose display responds to the Turbo switch, there are two three-wire connectors coming from the Turbo switch, both of which are needed for setting the FSB on the motherboard.

MEMORY: 128MB generic PC100 SDRAM.

CPU: AMD K6-3+ 450 ACZ. This one overclocks to 550 MHz with no trouble. I put a Scythe fan on the heatsink, and it is very quiet. The "plus" versions of the K6-2 and K6-3 allow you to set the clock multiplier and disable caches via software (SETMUL).

VIDEO: Geforce 2 MX AGP (about as high as I could go with this SS7) and 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 PCI (switch via BIOS).

AUDIO: Turtle Beach Montego 2 PCI (Vortex 2) / Creative AWE32 CT3900 with 32MB RAM / GUS Ace

DRIVES: 40GB WD Caviar / Mitsumi FDD with flash reader (SD card super convenient) / LG DVD-RW (DVD function used only for making Ghost 2003 images on DVD-R)

PS: Delta 300W ATX (need to upgrade this).

Other than a new PS, the only other hardware I might add is a Waveblaster-compatible daughtercard for the Vortex 2. But I'm happy with the GM from the AWE32 for now.

All in all, this is a very versatile system. Between the Turbo switch and SETMUL, I can run this rig at speeds comparable to a 486DX-33 all the way to a 550MHz K6-3+.

Fv7RmJ8l.jpg

Last edited by boxpressed on 2020-01-20, 15:35. Edited 3 times in total.

Reply 1 of 8, by foey

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Looks great. Really like that case and well thought out specification. I've started to put IDE DVD drives in older machines now, not are they easier to find but are not picky when it comes to reading discs.

Can you post some more photos inside? 😀

Cyrix Instead Build, 6x86 166+ | 32mb SD | 4mb S3 Virge DX | Creative AWE64 | Win95
ATC-S PIII Tualatin Win9x Build :- ATC-S PIII Coppermine Win9x Build Log [WIP] **Photo Heavy**

Reply 2 of 8, by boxpressed

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Thanks! The 52x CD-ROM drive that came with this case made a racket whenever it spun up. One thing I love about this build is that it is quiet: just the power supply fan and the CPU fan. Both the GF 2 MX and V3 are passively-cooled. The LG drive is quiet and dependable. Having a Ghost image of working installs on DVD has saved me a lot of time. Ghost compresses on the fly, so you can store over 6GB on a DVD -- and restore individual files from the image off the DVD!

I posted a lot of photos of the inside in this other thread, so I'll link to it here: Still working on finding my Windows 98 SE Final Build...

Reply 3 of 8, by squareguy

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Looks good. No reason to post pics of mine, yours is way better. Anyways what is the most demanding game/games you are planning for this box? My original plan was to cover DirectX 7.0 and below but the CPU even at 550-MHz does not seem up to the task. I May blur the line to include all DirectX 6.0 and below and then some/most DirectX 7.0 games. Thief 2: The Metal Age crawls in certain areas (especially out doors with lights) and Delta Force 2 just crawls.

I am contemplating selling all of my ATX stuff and going AT like yours.

Gateway 2000 Case and 200-Watt PSU
Intel SE440BX-2 Motherboard
Intel Pentium III 450 CPU
Micron 384MB SDRAM (3x128)
Compaq Voodoo3 3500 TV Graphics Card
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card
Western Digital 7200-RPM, 8MB-Cache, 160GB Hard Drive
Windows 98 SE

Reply 4 of 8, by PhilsComputerLab

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Very nice machine! The trick with the turbo button is great, gives it added flexibility. Also nifty with 2 graphics cards and 3 sound cards.

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Reply 5 of 8, by boxpressed

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squareguy wrote:

Looks good. No reason to post pics of mine, yours is way better. Anyways what is the most demanding game/games you are planning for this box? My original plan was to cover DirectX 7.0 and below but the CPU even at 550-MHz does not seem up to the task. I May blur the line to include all DirectX 6.0 and below and then some/most DirectX 7.0 games. Thief 2: The Metal Age crawls in certain areas (especially out doors with lights) and Delta Force 2 just crawls.

I am contemplating selling all of my ATX stuff and going AT like yours.

I was hoping that the rig would be up to the task of running most DX7 games at a playable rate, but I realized that I don't have many DX7 games to test with. I was planning on playing Quake 2 and Unreal-engine games, maybe some Quake 3-engine games. I guess Unreal is technically DX7, but D3D for it was an afterthought, and I tend to think of games like it as "Glide" games even though DirectX involves more than just the D3D renderer. I'd like to find a "classic" DX7 game besides Q3 (and that doesn't have a Glide option) to benchmark D3D with. Thief II may be a candidate.

I do have a lot of old PC Gamer demo CDs, so I'm going to check out a few from 2000 to see how they run. First up is Interstate '82.

Reply 6 of 8, by PhilsComputerLab

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Quake games use OpenGL and run fine on more modern machines. A3D sound, at the moment, is still a Windows 98 highlight 😀

Unreal you do want to play with a Voodoo, or on a modern machine with modern non-official renders.

I found that a lot of the later games run fine, even better, on a Windows XP machine. So for me, A3D support is one reason to play these on a Windows 98 machine. Thief is one of the later games that have A3D, not sure about the second one.

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Reply 7 of 8, by boxpressed

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philscomputerlab wrote:

Quake games use OpenGL and run fine on more modern machines. A3D sound, at the moment, is still a Windows 98 highlight 😀

Unreal you do want to play with a Voodoo, or on a modern machine with modern non-official renders.

I found that a lot of the later games run fine, even better, on a Windows XP machine. So for me, A3D support is one reason to play these on a Windows 98 machine. Thief is one of the later games that have A3D, not sure about the second one.

Yes, it seems as though A3D may be the primary reason to use 98 over XP if you're interested only in Windows games. If I didn't care about DOS games with proper ISA sound, I'd just run an XP rig.

I guess I could dual-boot 98 and XP on my KT133A/Athlon XP 2400+ build (has one ISA that I'd use for the AWE32) and have the best of both worlds, but I like the versatility of this SS7 machine. And the nostalgia. I agree with your philosophy for your SS7 build (which inspired me to build this one): play as many DOS games as possible while still being able to play MOST 98SE-era games in 1024x768 at respectable rates. I can live with that compromise because space is an issue for me.

Reply 8 of 8, by boxpressed

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I found an old Computer Gaming World DVD that contains five full edition games, including Thief II and Deus Ex: GOTY.

I loaded Thief II, and it seems to run okay with the V3 3000 and a Quadro DCC. Is there some kind of timedemo for it? (Thief doesn't seem like a game where there's a ton of quick action, even though it is demanding on a system.)

UPDATE:

I decided to use 3DMark 2000 to benchmark DX7 performance:

with GF2 MX (30.82) : 2336
with Quadro DCC (30.82): 2384

So, as we all probably expected, the CPU is bottlenecking the videocard after GF2 MX levels (I don't have an original GF to test).