VOGONS


First post, by pete8475

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EDIT - This is now a Celeron based build, P3 processors aren't working in this board at all.

I skipped over the slot 1 stuff back when it was new, went straight from Socket 7 to Socket 370 so I think this could be a fun little project.

Planned Specs:
Intel Pentium 3 500mhz Slot 1 "Katmai" version
ECS P6BX-ME
768MB SD-RAM
Coolermaster Centurion 541 MATX Case
LG DVD-RW
Mitsumi 3.5" Floppy
Soundblaster AWE64
3Com 10/100 ISA NIC

Right now I'm waiting for the motherboard to come from an ebay auction. I'll post pics of the machine once it's put together.

Once the board shows up I'm going to use a Matrox graphics card for initial testing and OS install. After that I'm not sure what I'll do long term for graphics. I'm trying to find a Voodoo 3 AGP version for a decent price online but I'm not having any luck. Nothing available locally lately either. I might get a Banshee as they are way cheaper but I'm sure a V3 is much faster.

Last edited by pete8475 on 2020-01-03, 19:49. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 19, by derSammler

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768 MB RAM is overkill and also not fitting to the time period. Moreover, Windows 9x does not work correctly with more than 512 MB RAM (there are patches, but why even bother). 128 MB is more than enough for a P3/500.

You can also just use a Banshee. You need a CPU with about 1 GHz to fully load a V3, so the Banshee (or a single Voodoo 2 paired with a second card) fits better to the CPU.

Reply 2 of 19, by dan86

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derSammler wrote:

768 MB RAM is overkill and also not fitting to the time period. Moreover, Windows 9x does not work correctly with more than 512 MB RAM (there are patches, but why even bother). 128 MB is more than enough for a P3/500.

You can also just use a Banshee. You need a CPU with about 1 GHz to fully load a V3, so the Banshee (or a single Voodoo 2 paired with a second card) fits better to the CPU.

I second that ram. Anything over 256mb it over kill for 99% of 9x systems. 128mb sounds about right. Banshee vs V3 is a hard pick. The voodoo3 it a much faster card, but the Banshee is a fun card to play with and is a little more friendly with some older and odd ball games like resident evil2.
But if this was me I'd get a TNT or something of the sorts with a voodoo2.

Reply 3 of 19, by pete8475

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dan86 wrote:
derSammler wrote:

768 MB RAM is overkill and also not fitting to the time period. Moreover, Windows 9x does not work correctly with more than 512 MB RAM (there are patches, but why even bother). 128 MB is more than enough for a P3/500.

You can also just use a Banshee. You need a CPU with about 1 GHz to fully load a V3, so the Banshee (or a single Voodoo 2 paired with a second card) fits better to the CPU.

I second that ram. Anything over 256mb it over kill for 99% of 9x systems. 128mb sounds about right. Banshee vs V3 is a hard pick. The voodoo3 it a much faster card, but the Banshee is a fun card to play with and is a little more friendly with some older and odd ball games like resident evil2.
But if this was me I'd get a TNT or something of the sorts with a voodoo2.

Fair enough, 512mb it is!

I actually have a pair of 8mb voodoo 2's (with homemade SLI cable!) that I could use but i find I get some weird noise on the screen if I use them in conjunction with either of my KVM switches (no weirdness without a KVM), hence a V3 or Banshee.

Sounds like a Banshee is a decent enough choice though so I might order one tonight on ebay.

Thanks!

Reply 4 of 19, by pete8475

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derSammler wrote:

768 MB RAM is overkill and also not fitting to the time period. Moreover, Windows 9x does not work correctly with more than 512 MB RAM (there are patches, but why even bother). 128 MB is more than enough for a P3/500.

You can also just use a Banshee. You need a CPU with about 1 GHz to fully load a V3, so the Banshee (or a single Voodoo 2 paired with a second card) fits better to the CPU.

Definitely overkill but I have a bunch of 256mb modules sitting doing nothing, but thanks for the reminder of the 9x issues with ram, I honestly forgot about that crap. Also it's mostly going to be used for dos 3dfx games anyway.

Reply 5 of 19, by chinny22

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With the CPU, Awe64 and the Banshee's great VESA compatibility this will make a great pure dos SVGA games rig.
Dos glide titles may be a bit tricky to get working in native dos as they expect a voodoo1, but I would worry about that on a game by game basis when your up to that point.

Reply 7 of 19, by pete8475

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chinny22 wrote:

With the CPU, Awe64 and the Banshee's great VESA compatibility this will make a great pure dos SVGA games rig.
Dos glide titles may be a bit tricky to get working in native dos as they expect a voodoo1, but I would worry about that on a game by game basis when your up to that point.

Nice!

derSammler wrote:

How many 3dfx games for plain DOS were there anyway? Most 3dfx patches for DOS games made the games run under Windows (Quake, Descent e.g.).

No idea, it's been ages since I touched any of those games.

Reply 8 of 19, by pete8475

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Well the project has begun.

I found an extra ide compactflash adapter so I'm going to use a 64gb card in there instead of an old ide hard drive.

This motherboard is a little quirky, some bios settings don't seem to actually work. Specifically the onboard sound stays turned on regardless of the setting in the bios and the numlock on boot option doesn't work either. So for now I've left out the AWE64 as the ESS onboard seems to have some dos support. ECS also has the wrong manual available for download too. In it they say jumper JP3 is to enable or disable the onboard sound, in reality JP3 on this board is to clear the CMOS. 🤣

Reply 9 of 19, by pete8475

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P3-500 and Voodoo 3 came in today.

Neither works in this motherboard. I'm sick as a dog today and stayed home from work. Looks like this PC is sick too. heh.

Voodoo 3 works nicely in my Athlon XP 2000+ machine.

I'm going to shelve this project for a while, this board has been kind of weird since day 1. Also last week it stopped seeing one of my Promise Ultra 133 cards, so I swapped that out with my extra one thinking it was the problem. That card works fine in the AMD machine.

EDIT - after having a nap and taking a look at things again I have the Voodoo 3 working nicely in this machine, however the P3 still does not post. Ah well. I have a Celeron 366 on the way that I'm hoping will run well at 550mhz (5.5x100fsb).

Reply 10 of 19, by PcBytes

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Knowing ECS for their cheapness, go ahead and replace ALL capacitors. Believe me, I had ECS boards work just sweet (ECS K7VZA being an example) after replacing ALL capacitors on the board. I did replace the BIOS on my K7VZA tho (with the BIOS from a Chaintech board) but that should not be needed in your case.

"Enter at your own peril, past the bolted door..."
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Reply 11 of 19, by pete8475

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PcBytes wrote on 2019-12-28, 16:35:

Knowing ECS for their cheapness, go ahead and replace ALL capacitors. Believe me, I had ECS boards work just sweet (ECS K7VZA being an example) after replacing ALL capacitors on the board. I did replace the BIOS on my K7VZA tho (with the BIOS from a Chaintech board) but that should not be needed in your case.

I've pretty much abandoned this project for now, I've tried two Slot 1 Pentium 3 processors in this board and neither posts. Celerons in a slocket work fine though.

The whole idea I had for this was to play older 3dfx games and it seems like these processors would be too slow to really take advantage of a Voodoo 3. So at the moment I'm waiting for an Asus CUV4X and some other goodies to show up and I'll put that stuff in a midtower case.

Reply 12 of 19, by chinny22

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Which games are playing?
the Celeron may not push the V3 to the limit but may be perfectly fine for your games. Even if it's a stopgap while waiting on good deals for other hardware

Reply 13 of 19, by pete8475

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chinny22 wrote on 2019-12-30, 11:38:

Which games are playing?
the Celeron may not push the V3 to the limit but may be perfectly fine for your games. Even if it's a stopgap while waiting on good deals for other hardware

First thing I installed was Carmaggedon and the expansion, I've never played through the expansion so I wanted to start with that. The 3dfx version runs like ass on that Celeron unless you reduce the screen size by about 50%.

So I moved the V3 and Compactflash drive into an AMD Xp2000+ machine I recently acquired and it runs butter smooth, so yeah the ECS slot 1 machine is shoved under my workbench for now.

Reply 15 of 19, by pete8475

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So a while back I ordered a 366mhz Celeron on ebay for this machine and it came in today. Runs stable at 550mhz (5.5x100fsb), it's definitely faster than the 400mhz Celeron that was in there but it's still a bit too slow for my liking in 3dfx Carmageddon.

Ah well.

EDIT - Definitely NOT stable enough at 550mhz, it crashes in Prime95 after a few minutes. Takes 2.2volts to get it to this level, going to try 2.3 next.

Last edited by pete8475 on 2020-01-03, 20:14. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 16 of 19, by pete8475

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Seems a bit better at 2.3volts, at least it now gets through a full 3dmark99 run. heh
I was really hoping my 400 would run at 600 but I can't get that stable regardless of voltage.

3dmark scores:
400mhz/voodoo 3 - 2669
550mhz/voodoo 3 - 3842

Reply 17 of 19, by The Serpent Rider

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I was really hoping my 400 would run at 600 but I can't get that stable regardless of voltage.

It's nearly impossible for the Mendocino core. The integrated L2 cache can't work reliably after 550Mhz. The Katmai core can be overclocked up to ~650Mhz, because L2 is external and work at half-speed.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 18 of 19, by melbar

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550Mhz are not bad. Back in the days i have overlocked my 466 version to 525Mhz.
I have reached the 525Mhz without adjusted voltage...

But be aware of the topic "Electromigration". To reach this 550Mhz, you overclock a 0.25 micron CPU with integrated L2 Cache. You overvolt up to 30%.
In the range of 550-600Mhz i would feel better with a coppermine...

#1 K6-2/500, #2 Athlon1200, #3 Celeron1000A, #4 A64-3700, #5 P4HT-3200, #6 P4-2800, #7 Am486DX2-66

Reply 19 of 19, by pete8475

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melbar wrote on 2020-01-04, 06:45:
550Mhz are not bad. Back in the days i have overlocked my 466 version to 525Mhz. I have reached the 525Mhz without adjusted volt […]
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550Mhz are not bad. Back in the days i have overlocked my 466 version to 525Mhz.
I have reached the 525Mhz without adjusted voltage...

But be aware of the topic "Electromigration". To reach this 550Mhz, you overclock a 0.25 micron CPU with integrated L2 Cache. You overvolt up to 30%.
In the range of 550-600Mhz i would feel better with a coppermine...

When this stuff was current I ran a Celery 466 at just over 580mhz (83mhz FSB) for several years in an Asus CUBX until I upgraded to a fast Coppermine P3.

This stuff is just me playing around so if it dies, it dies. I ordered a CUV4X and some other stuff on ebay a while ago so this will go into storage when that shows up.