VOGONS


First post, by Technics84

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Hallo Vogoners

My Name is Markus and I'm 32 Years old.

(Please excuse my bad english , I 'm from Germany.)

A little history. In the Past I had almost the same system, but could never afford a Voodoo Graphics card or even a SLI .
Now I 've decided to build a system, I always wanted to have that days. Just for Fun.

I want to play Games i played in the Past like Need for Speed, Half Life..

I would be grateful for comments and suggestions.

Let me introduce you my Socket 7 Retro System:

Tower: InWin
Power Supply: Hipro HP-200 200W
Mainboard: Asus P/I-P55T2P4 Rev. 3.10
CPU: AMD K6-2 AFQ @ 400 Mhz (6x66Mhz FSB)
RAM: 128MB (4x32) EDO 60ns
GPU: Matrox Mystique 220 – 4MB (Pic:)
3Dfx SLI: 2 Gainward Dragon 3000 Voodoo 2 – 12MB
Sound: Sound blaster Vibra 16 CT4180
HDD: 8GB IDE

The first Step I made was disassembling and cleanig every Part.
C-Mos Battery empty....
The Motherboard has a Dallas Real Time Clock onboard. I fixed ist as you can see on the Pictures below.

The Mainbard can only cache 64MB. I bought a single SRam 256KB 15ns so it can cache up to 512MB.
Later i will ad a SPB Cache Ram Module with 256KB to get full 512KB Cache.

The two Voodoo's get realy hot! So i added two Brackets with Air holes. The Air Stram is cooling the Voodoo's realy good.

As you can see my Big PC has the same Case Designe, so i chosed a LG DVD vor my Retro System.

In my Big PC (i5-2500K with GTX760) I use a Sata BD-Rom / DVD-R with an old Front of a LG DVD-R. I build in a green LED because i didn't liked the blue one.

So everything matches in Designe, thats great.

But the best of all:
The Voodoo's and the CPU Coller fit like a glove. You can only put a sheet of Paper in between. Thats cool.

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Reply 1 of 6, by archsan

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Hi and welcome to vogons. 😀

What a nice system you got there. The InWin AT case looks particularly well-designed and built.

Your battery mod looks very tidy. I've generally stayed away from boards with Dallas RTC, but many good AT boards of the era have it (ASUS, Gigabyte, even TYAN) so I might have to review my "policy" about them.

Btw is the larger case ATX? I wonder how do they look from behind. My guess is that the larger one has a mixed AT/ATX form factor (with vertical AT port cutouts + ATX backplate) like some case I've seen but I could be wrong.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."—Arthur C. Clarke
"No way. Installing the drivers on these things always gives me a headache."—Guybrush Threepwood (on cutting-edge voodoo technology)

Reply 2 of 6, by Technics84

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Thank you very much!

The larger Case has a ATX backplate.

I Like those InWin Cases very much because the quality is so good.
I wished they would sell them anyway, so hard to find in good condition.

It looks exactly like this:

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Reply 3 of 6, by matze79

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What sense does a SLI make on a System that can't take Advantage of it ? Fun ?

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 4 of 6, by Jade Falcon

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K6-2 AFQ @ 400mhz can take advantage of voodo2's. Might not be the best setup for 2 voodoo2's. but it sure beats the heck out of a pent90 haha

Reply 5 of 6, by kanecvr

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At 66Mhz FSB the K6-2 takes a pretty big performance hit... for Half-Life and NFS your machine could benefit from a newer mainboard that supports 100MHz fsb and CL100 SD-RAM - along the lines of the VIA MVP3/MVP4 or the ALi Aladdin V...

Reply 6 of 6, by matze79

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i tested it out, and it does not benefit, except you have 8mb voodoo 2's then you can raise the resolution.
Also here is phils test:
http://www.philscomputerlab.com/uploads/3/7/2 … ing_project.pdf

Do you have tested if your Board Cache full Memory ? it could be another performance penalty.

On Slow CPU's in some Situations, SLI can be Slower then a Singlecard because of useless overhead feeding two of them.

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board