I can vouch for the T450 and T500. If I remember right my T500 came with a Voodoo 3 AGP from the factory 😁 I used it for every 9x game I could get my hands on back in the mid-2000's and never ran into any trouble that wasn't of my own making 😜

Just curious, does the T450 support wifi cards? If so, which ones?

I use a T550 as my Win98 gaming system. Can't say enough good things about it. It works great with a Celeron-1400, ISA AWE64 and PCI Aureal SQ2500.
AGP support is solid as well. I currently use an overclocked V3-3000, but I've tested cards as new as the 9800Pro and FX-5600U. No problems at all.

It even has its own thread:
Bitchin'Fast! PC '99 - My DOS/Win98/Glide Rig

Braca862 wrote:

Just curious, does the T450 support wifi cards? If so, which ones?

Well, it has PCI slots and runs Win9x, so it'll support any PCI wifi cards that have drivers for Windows 98. But honestly, you're better off with a 10/100 ethernet card. Wifi would work, but it's likely to be slow.

I have a question about the voodoo 3 3500 agp tv. It has an svga instead of a regular vga. Can you still plug a regular vga cable into it?

Braca862 wrote:

Just curious, does the T450 support wifi cards? If so, which ones?

I don't know about that particular computer, but I did have a minor issue finding a wireless card that would work on another Slot-1 440BX based board in an IBM. The card I ended up having success with was a DLink DWL-G520M. There might be tons of others that also work, but that's the one I know about. It is an 802.11G card.
I think finding a compatible "N" card for a machine of that era might be more of a challenge since they came out even later, but maybe people here know of some that are legacy friendly. I haven't messed with them much because personally I avoid using wireless as much as possible.

The PCI revision is typically listed in a card's system requirements, so you can try to just find a card that calls for earlier PCI revisions. The problem though is that cards that call for later PCI revisions often end up working fine on older boards anyway, so you don't really -know- that it's incompatible until you try it.

Braca862 wrote:

I have a question about the voodoo 3 3500 agp tv. It has an svga instead of a regular vga. Can you still plug a regular vga cable into it?

Ummm, there's no difference in the connector. All VGA cards from about 1990 and newer support SVGA and higher. Are you perhaps confusing this with the S-Video out? There's still a regular VGA connector on the card.

Also got a XPS500 upgraded to a 1GHZ CPU fine.
Any Slot 1 based Dell will make a great 9x PC as they will have the legendary Intel SE440BX motherboard.
No overcloceking options but rock stable.

Only thing is Dell boards don't use ATX connector, it looks the same but it isn't! Not a problem as long as you use the matching power supply or buy a converter.

Gateways of the same era also use the same motherboard but with a standard ATX connector. They have a SB 64 on board, which isn't quite as nice as the Dell's Yamaha but does work in true DOS with the Yamaha doesn't.

But yeh I do like my Dell

Braca862 wrote:

I have a question about the voodoo 3 3500 agp tv. It has an svga instead of a regular vga. Can you still plug a regular vga cable into it?

If it's like mine, then that connector isn't a regular VGA connector, and it isn't DVI either. The card originally came with a dongle that plugs into that connector. The dongle has the VGA connector as well as the TV hookups on it. I have one of these cards but not the dongle.

It's been a long time since I looked into this so my memory is fuzzy. I tried searching for info on it but I can't find the thread(s) I was remembering. All I dug up is that it's called a "PnD" or "P&D" or "Plug and Display" connector, also "EVC" and maybe other names.

There are PnD->VGA adapters out there. I haven't tried one though.
About 6+ months ago I bought a simple PnD->VGA adapter from a seller on NewEgg. I think it was Monoprice. The connector didn't fit, the shroud going around the pins was shaped differently than what they show in their photograph. I should have contacted them about it but I never did.
If I ever get around to using that card, I'm going to try cutting open the shroud on the adapter so I can force it to fit over the connector on the card and see if it will work.

I love those machines. Look for one with an ISA slot. They support up to 1.1GHz Slot 1 PIII and 768mb RAM. Quite versatile and they're stupid easy to work on. The cases are also high quality and durable.

How do you upgrade the speed of those computers up to 1 ghz?

chinny22 wrote:

They have a SB 64 on board, which isn't quite as nice as the Dell's Yamaha but does work in true DOS with the Yamaha doesn't.

The Yamaha DS-XG sound does work in pure DOS, you just have to run the initialization utility. You get SB16 PCM sound and true OPL3 FM synthesis.

oeuvre wrote:

Look for one with an ISA slot.

^Yes.

Braca862 wrote:

How do you upgrade the speed of those computers up to 1 ghz?

Get a new CPU rated at 1 GHz and swap them out.

SL4BS is 1GHz Slot 1.

Will any CPU's do? Or do I have to buy a CPU specifically for those models?

It has to be either a Slot 1 CPU or a PGA370 CPU, used with the Slot 1 adapter.

In the case of the XPS t500, where on the motherboard is the slot 1 located?

See http://www.tbfcomputing.com/ebaypicture/4.29. … 3ak100_9958.jpg

It will be obvious, as it's the slot the CPU is stuck in 😀

oeuvre wrote:

SL4BS is 1GHz Slot 1.

According to CPU-World that's a 133FSB CPU. Unless I'm mistaken the machines in question here are 440BX based and won't go any higher than 100FSB. You can get away with overclocking the bus on many 440BX boards but it won't be an option on a Dell.

For a Pentium 3 slot-1 1GHz 100FSB, they list SL4BR and SL4KL. For the same specs in socket 370 (needing an adapter) they list SL5QV.
For socket-370 Celeron (again needing an adapter) at 1.1GHz/100FSB the codes are SL5XR and SL5XU.
The 1.0GHz/100 Pentium 3 is probably faster in most cases than the 1.1GHz/100 Celeron due to larger cache.