This is the place, man. You've found it. Yeah, the name of the forum is "very old games on new systems" but it kind of morphed over time into everything "retro PC" and "retro games".

The sub-forum for retro hardware is Marvin, so a mod will move it there. You should read the sub-forum descriptions:

"Marvin
Discussion about old PC hardware and Retro PCs", etc.

Can you post the full specs of your machine with pictures? We'd all love to see that 😀

Pictures would have to wait. But for now here's two sets of specs...the original build from 1999 (my 1st year of college) and the current status:

ORIGINAL BUILD
MID-ATX Case
350-Watt ATX power supply (don't remember the brand)
ASUS P2B Revision 1.02
Intel Pentium II MMX 350MHz CPU (minimum required to get 100MHz bus for performance)
128MB PC-100 RAM (again, 100MHz bus made great performance and 128MB was total overkill in 1999)
Diamond Stealth II G460 8MB AGP (uses the Intel i740 graphics chip)
Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold 8MB ISA (the full-blown beast of a sound card!)
33.6 PCI Modem (for internet access back in the day)
10GB Maxtor IDE HDD (this drive failed and I got pissed and never bought another Maxtor ever again. Replaced with a 30GB Western Digital. MUCH better!)
36x CD-ROM (Upgraded to a 16x CD-RW eventually and started burning PlayStation game copies because I couldn't afford to buy the games at the time. I don't do that anymore.)
100MB IOMEGA ZIP Drive ATAPI IDE
DexDrive - PlayStation (a must when you have 40+ burned games and only 15 memory card slots to save to on your card)
Gravis GamePad Pro (for all the NES/SNES ROMs I had on that system)

RETRO REBUILD
MID-ATX Case (similar to one above, but a few years later on)
500-Watt ATX power supply (reuse from older Windows Vista PC)
ASUS P2B Revision 1.02 (original motherboard from above, replaced CMOS Battery with new CR2032 cell and flashed BIOS to latest version so I can see 40GB HDD below)
Intel Pentium II MMX 350MHz CPU (original CPU from above, disassembled and replaced the TIM with Arctic Silver 5, reassembled and tested)
256MB PC-100 RAM (Just added another 128MB chip, so now I have 2/3 slots filled, ECC memory but ECC disabled in the BIOS)
Diamond Viper V770 32MB AGP (nVidia RIVA TNT2 chipset)
Diamond Monster 3D II 8MB PCI (Voodoo2, most stable board)
STB Voodoo2 12MB PCI
STB Voodoo2 12MB PCI (no, I didn't accidentally copy that, it's intentional. It's an SLI set that works, but sometimes doesn't show up in Display Properties due to conflicting drivers with Monster 3D2. I think I might try reinstalling Windows fresh with these to see if it's more stable like the Diamond is...either that or get a 2nd Monster 3D2 8MB card and SLI those instead.)
Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE32 ISA 4MB (I didn't feel like paying over $150 for the AWE64 Gold again and I don't have my original part)
10/100 Fast Ethernet PCI (on home network, allows internet access AND file sharing from my Windows 10 PC.)
40GB Western Digital IDE HDD
40GB Western Digital IDE HDD (really nice to copy Windows 98 CD to this D: drive so I never have to swap disks again. Also good for archiving drivers between "reinstalls" while I work the bugs out of the system.)
42x CD-RW ATAPI IDE
250MB IOMEGA ZIP Drive IDE (inherited from an older Windows XP build from 2003.)

So I'm wondering that since my 350MHz Pentium II is pretty much holding my Voodoo2 cards back, I should be ok doing SLI with two 8MB Diamond Monster 3D II cards instead of the 12MB STB versions since all the games will pretty much be CPU limited. On that motherboard, I can only upgrade to a Katami Pentium III 550Mhz. That's the best the MB can support, but the P2 350 works fine right now, so I'm in no rush to spend more money. The TNT2 card is POWERFUL for these old games, but I only use it when I can't get better graphics performance with the Voodoo2 (i.e. DirectX games). I couldn't get the movies to play in Final Fantasy VII the first time I rebuilt this because I had installed DirectX 7 first. FF7 uses DX5. So I reinstalled Windows fresh and installed FF7 first with DX5 - videos play perfectly. The game LOVES the Diamond Monster. I've never seen menu color transitions that smooth and pretty. And the framerate is nice.

Unfortunately, I'm using an old 4:3 LCD monitor...best I have. I'd love to find me a nice working 19" CRT monitor as I think the Glide games will look TONS better, but eh...

Anyone else find that GLQuake...the framerate is perfectly smooth walking around, but the monsters seem to almost jump from frame to frame in their movements and animation. Weird. I'm thinking about how to record and upload a sample of that. I don't think it's the monitor. I mean, it's Quake 1, for cryin' out loud! On a Voodoo2! The framerates ought to be screaming.

Moved to Marvin.

May also work in "System Specs"

The animations in Quake/GLQuake are normal like that, they just used few animation frames since the game was originally software rendered.
Some newer source ports interpolate the animations to make them smooth, Fitzquake is a good example.

Fitzquake 0.75 seems to work best on my 98 machine but i have not activated said feature, it does however implement all the effects missing from glquake bringing it on par with the software version.
Keep in mind i used a GF4 so it may not run terribly well on a TNT2 or V2

keenmaster486 wrote:

Can you post the full specs of your machine with pictures? We'd all love to see that 😀

Nopileus wrote:

they just used few animation frames since the game was originally software rendered.

it's more due to the fact that interpolation isn't thought of yet in the rushed development

Ahh, an Asus/P2 fanboi. In 1998 I was an Abit/C300A@450 fanboi myself. There was recently a "post your retro build" or such thread, I have my old system specs (and its modern recreation) there, let me see if I can find it.

(edit) Re: what hardware were you using in 1999?
Re: Celeron, the good bad and ugly.

FFXIhealer wrote:

DexDrive - PlayStation (a must when you have 40+ burned games and only 15 memory card slots to save to on your card)

This isn't really the right place to brag about your burned disks. It's a pretty strict "nothing illegal" place here. 😀

That aside, that's a solid Slot-1 rig. I don't think your needlessly complicated V2 setup is worth the trouble, though. Would you mind explaining a bit about how you arrived at this?

Welcome to the forums! 😀

I know the original 350mhz P2 most likely holds a special place for ya, but I think a 450+ P3 would suit your SLI goodness better. If your performance with the 350 suits you fine than stick with it, in some cases nostalgia outweighs any other consideration, I 100% get that bro. Also sick system, looking forward to a couple "outer" pics and think that you have a solid setup.

P3 Katmai 600 (2.0V) should be good to go with your P2B board. But the 500MHz version is probably more common.

But if you want to keep it true to title thread ("1998") then Deschutes 450MHz is your highest option. Also, authentic 1998 SECC not SECC2 version. 😉

This has always been a dilemma for me as well, when I have to choose between a 1998 build vs a 2000-ish build even on the same BX platform.

SquallStrife wrote:

This isn't really the right place to brag about your burned disks. It's a pretty strict "nothing illegal" place here. :) […]
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FFXIhealer wrote:

DexDrive - PlayStation (a must when you have 40+ burned games and only 15 memory card slots to save to on your card)

This isn't really the right place to brag about your burned disks. It's a pretty strict "nothing illegal" place here. 😀

That aside, that's a solid Slot-1 rig. I don't think your needlessly complicated V2 setup is worth the trouble, though. Would you mind explaining a bit about how you arrived at this?

Welcome to the forums! 😀

I'm not bragging about the burning of PSX disks. This was back in 1999-2000 anyway and I don't do that and haven't done it in 15+ years. I actually have a job and buy games now.

Anyway, the Voodoo2 came in 2 flavors, the 8MB and the 12MB. So I wondered if working with a 2MB/texture shader vs a 4MB/texture shader would make much of a difference, if any, on these old games, most of which I did not even own at the time or even now. And then there's the SLI, which allows for that 768p resolution or something. I don't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head. But considering that all the reviews on the internet agree that the Voodoo2 system is CPU limited up to around 1.2 GHz or some other such, I assume that my "wimpy" 350 MHz Pentium II would definitely CPU limit a full-blown SLI system. If that is the case, then what purpose does the extra 2MB per texture shader per card serve except to waste space? Unless I end up with a game that actually can support higher-resolution textures? But that's in Direct3D, not Glide, right? And if I'm running Direct3D instead of Glide, I'd just rather use the RIVA TNT2 32MB AGP card instead anyway. It would most certainly be faster and support WAY bigger textures anyway.

The ASUS P2B supports up to a 550MHz Katami Pentium III on the 100 MHz bus. I've looked into maybe getting one, but most of what I see available on Ebay come with some weird-looking heatsinks and fans. I'd have to worry about cooling the thing properly, and then what would I do with that Pentium II afterwards? Sell it? I'm really using the P2 because it's FREE at this point, you know? It seems like the 550 Pentium III Katami is fairly common on selling sites. And besides, this build isn't necessarily about milking the best performance and highest framerates, but having a good quality picture to play either my old games that sit on my shelf and don't necessarily work properly with newer systems or to be able to play the older vintage (pre-2003) games.

And the outer pics may have to wait. The front cover has a peg that holds the side panel in place, but it broke off. I've super-glued it back on, but I want to get a-hold of a hot glue gun and really surround the base of that peg with a bunch of glue to reinforce it before I put the faceplate back on. Hell, I might consider a newer-style ATX case so that I can have a fan on the side panel blowing air down on the Voodoo cards. In the case pictured above, there's just a standard 3-pin 80mm case fan blowing outside air into the case near the bottom where the cards are anyway, but that's a pretty far distance to shoot air. It also sounds like a wind tunnel. There's an 80mm fan on the back behind the processor and the PSU's 120mm fan sucking air out of the top.

Actually, from my own experience and the benchmarks I've seen on this forum a 450MHz Deschutes is not a big bottleneck if you are playing in 1024x768 with your dual voodoos. There is a difference when you have a P3, but it's marginal (as long as you play in high res that is).

FFXIhealer wrote:

The ASUS P2B supports up to a 550MHz Katami Pentium III on the 100 MHz bus.

First of all... it's not Katami, it's... Katmai!!! <-- see what I did there? three exclamation marks just like the ol' logo.. ehh nevermind

Secondly, "550MHz" was definitely what's officially supported at the time of release. However 600MHz is still mentioned here as supported:
http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-ASUS/P2B.html

And if you're feeling a bit more adventurous:
http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/p2b_p … pgrade_faq.html
http://www.overclockers.com/upgrading-and-ove … -1-motherboard/
...and just search around for others' upgrade experience with same rev board as yours, this series was very popular so lots of information out there.

So yeah, with the right Slotket, faster Coppermine is a possibility.

I have run up to a Tualatin 1.2GHz on a BX board with a modded slotket in the past, so it's possible even though nowhere near officially supported.

Munx wrote:

Actually, from my own experience and the benchmarks I've seen on this forum a 450MHz Deschutes is not a big bottleneck if you are playing in 1024x768 with your dual voodoos. There is a difference when you have a P3, but it's marginal (as long as you play in high res that is).

Well I just ran the TimeDemos for Quake 1 @ 640x480x16 running on just the 8MB Diamond Monster and I got:

Demo1: 40.2 fps
Demo2: 38.6 fps
Demo3: 38.7 fps

And I'm not interested it tricking this system out to the max...just seeing what I could get away with on the existing hardware (RAM, CPU, and motherboard). I'm pretty pleased so far, though I wonder if a re-install of Windows will give me a stable SLI setup of the 12MB cards.

Just downloaded and ran CPU-Z version 1.76 for Windows 98. I got this:

http://valid.x86.fr/292dps

To compare, this is my current Skylake system:

http://valid.x86.fr/lhbar1

The Pentium II ranks in at about 2% of the Skylake i7 for single-thread and about 0.5% for multi-thread performance. @.@

Love slot 1 machines ever since MY 1st PC back in 98!
Nice you still have some of the original parts as well 😀
Also a fan of SLI although that's more recent, I missed out the original time round and more because of the novelty of the idea.
Not sure if your aware but you don't need matching cards now for SLI if you use the fastvoodoo drivers from here
http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/3dfx/voodoo2/drivers.

But yeh its tempting to max everything out for no reason then to max it out so if your CPU, Video, whatever isn't holding you back then congratulations on resisting the urge!

chinny22 wrote:

Love slot 1 machines ever since MY 1st PC back in 98! Nice you still have some of the original parts as well :) Also a fan of SL […]
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Love slot 1 machines ever since MY 1st PC back in 98!
Nice you still have some of the original parts as well 😀
Also a fan of SLI although that's more recent, I missed out the original time round and more because of the novelty of the idea.
Not sure if your aware but you don't need matching cards now for SLI if you use the fastvoodoo drivers from here
http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/3dfx/voodoo2/drivers.

But yeh its tempting to max everything out for no reason then to max it out so if your CPU, Video, whatever isn't holding you back then congratulations on resisting the urge!

What urge? To go overboard with the 12MB SLI cards? Yeah, I think the single 8MB Voodoo2 card is more than the CPU can handle on its own, so there's really no point in SLI unless I want to play at 768p resolutions. Hell, I can't even get Quake1 to play on 3dfx over 640x480 anyway.

And this build was just because I still had the PII, the MB P2B, and the 128MB RAM stick. I wanted to see what I could do with them. This is where I'm currently at with it.

The Riva TNT2 32MB Card: $10.
The 128MB PC-100 ECC stick: ~$15
The Diamond Monster 3D II 8MB: $25
The 2x STB 12MB Voodoo2 cards: $76
The VGA pass-through cable: $15
The SLI bridge cable: $10

Makes you wonder....