I haven't really done any official system build threads. I looked through my computer images folder and this is what I've got.

An image when the board was on the testbed, and another with it residing in the computer closet with 17 other cases (not all 17 are visible in the photo). The NexGen case is the one with the NexGen badge on the top right.

If you are using two Voodoo2 cards, then you must be slow onboard IDE controller. I use an Ultra100 ATA card in mine.

Yeah! that's awesome. I tried a updated pata card but it won't load the rom for me so i could boot from it, but yeah it would be good for storage.

I'm using a IDE to Compact Flash adapter. It works great, really zippy. Plus I was going to make a Windows 95 load too, so I can switch between 98 and 95 really easy. The Sandisk compact flash support max options the motherboard has so it's not so bad. Wish there was one more pci slot though. UDMA7 compact flash would have been awesome.

But to get the compact flash to work right was very interesting mashup operation.

Onboard detection doesn't work correctly to read the card's internal specs, and the dos utilities that come with the Nexgen 3.1 pack don't read correctly ether.
So you have to plug it in to a newer system's usb CF reader, I used Windows 7 then use msinfo32.exe to read the disk info. Regardless of the CF card Heads is always 255, and Sector is always 63. You just need the Cylinder number for Cylinder and LZ which are the same number. Then manually punch in the bios.
After I used Windows 7 Diskpart's clean command to wipe the partition info, then make a new primary. When I tried to use the Windows 98 boot disk to use fdisk I'd have drive problems later on during the setup of Windows 98.
Next I used format command from the windows 98 CD to format the drive. If I used Windows 7 I'd have drive problems later on during the setup of Windows 98.

It was just a bunch of trial and error putting something on something that wasn't designed for it. Hope this info is useful.

How many gigabytes/megabytes on the CF card will the NexGen system recognise and work with? Try writing to it while in the NexGen system and fill it mostly to capacity [with whatever data] to ensure the full size is usable.

We have the same motherboard. You should be able to use a Promise Ultra100 TX2 IDE controller card.

I noticed your case displays 110. Normally, people setup the actual CPU speed onto the case display. Not sure if this was intentional or not. It runs at 102 MHz.

It's just a badge to me, to signify PF110. Know it's not the actual Mhz rating. I was only pulling like 101Mhz on tests.

Hmmm that's interesting, so you think maybe I won't be able to fill up the whole 8GB on the CF card? My Win98 doesn't have the 137GB patch. Was thinking of putting a 128GB card in later. But I can test later to see if I can write to the end of 8GB card.

Yeah I'd rather have the slower speed disk than give up SLi. The games I'm running don't need much considering the sequential read speeds of the 90's the CF card is quite the upgrade. I noticed in the picture of your systems you have a couple IDE to CF adapters too. Sure makes things easy hu?

I know the NexGen 3.1 has EZIDE.exe which is suppose to extend drivers into windows for enhanced disk access. I haven't tried it yet to see if it works. But plan on it later. Then pull a read speed test again.

Oh by the way I did test a Compact Flash to MicroSD card adapter it did work. Just slow as snot.

I cannot say for certain on your system, but I've had systems which identified the whole HDD size in BIOS but could not access the whole HDD. For an only system such as this, it might be worth verifying this before you get too confident in your software setup. Setting up software is the most tedious process for me.

I don't have any system which uses CF as the main hard drive. I have two systems with the 3.5" CF card adapter which is mostly just a novelty. The tall skinny tower is the SXL2-66 system, which uses a SCSI2SD as its main hard drive. I have the 3.5" CF-to-SCSI setup on it for benchmarking purposes. The 3.5" CF on the other system is used mostly to image the SXL2's benchmark CF card, because for some reason, Norton Ghost doesn't work well on the SXL2.

Did you compare Voodoo2 vs. Voodoo2-SLI on your NexGen to confirm that it has any benchmark benefits? I recall someone testing this on an Am5x86-160 and there was no difference.

Interesting. About the voodoo sli part. Problem is everything I've done so far has been with just a keyboard. 😒 Serial mouse is in the mail from Ebay. So I've been limited on what I can do and test at the moment. So outside of dos tools I haven't been able to do a lot of testing yet. But when it comes in I'll run the old benchmark tools and try to post up the results.
The bigger reason I have SLi is I read that one card can only do 800x600 while two can do 1024x768. The higher resolution was the bigger reason. Well and it looks cool. Meh I would like to know what kind of speed your getting on sequential reads on mechanical drives on the onboard verses the add-in card. Just to know what I'm missing out on.

I also have a copy of ghost. Dos, and the version that will run in windows. I just ordered a new CF reader should be here this week. One of the reasons I haven't tested anything else (besides no mouse) is I wanted to make a ghost image of my functional base image. You right reloading is where the most time is spent. I've probably seen the windows 98 installer 20 times or more on this build alone. Which is why I refuse to test any new drivers until I have a image of the CF card.

Once I get a good verified image, I'll try out the FX5200 again with 77.72 nvidia drivers. Think I'm using 71? Which is causing a odd shutdown problem after they're installed. It's the original custom packaged drivers from Creative for the Riva TNT. Also I'll test the windows IDE driver extensions. After that I'll test filling the CF Card and let you know. Then get some read/write speed tests to hopefully post up.

Did you make that NexGen badge or find a new old stock original? I just ordered a 3DFX square badge for this case. There is a square indention on the lower of the front panel for one, thought it would be a cool estetic.

Yes, that sounds right about 800x600 being max on a single Voodoo2.

My 120 GB mechanical drive has some giant partitions that I would not trust to test out on the onboard IDE controller. I'm not sure about the present, but 10 years ago those Promise Ultra100 controllers were a dime a dozen on eBay. I think I got 5 cards for $15. All in use now.

I didn't realise the Creative TNT drivers would have FX drivers in the package. The TNT was so much older than the FX series. In general, you want to test out several drivers on these older systems. I want to say I ended up with driver versions in the 40's or 50's for the FX on the K6-III.

I made the NexGen badge on that particular case as the indention is non-standard. Just used a standard B&W laser printer, cut it out, then used some ultra clear boxing tape to protect the print and give it some gloss. Then doubled sided tape to attach the badge to the case. I sort of recall there being someone on eBay or in the forums who makes or orders custom badges though.

I ran some benchmarks on my PF110 system with the Promise Ultra100 using Adaptec SCSIBench32 and WinTune98. I am running windows 95c.

In Adapted SCSIBench32, for a 128 kb block size, it records a sequential transfer rate of 58200 KB/s
In WinTune98, just checking the Disk benchmark (and the box to run 3 times), I get 17.71 MB/s for an averaged cached disk access, and 3.59 MB/s for uncached disk access. You need to view the result on the html file Wintune98 generates on the desktop when the benchmark is finished.

Perhaps you can compare these with your IDE CF setup on the same system.

Interestingly, with the same host controller on my IBM 5x86c-133 setup, I get only 27800 KB/s for sequential read using Adaptec SCSIBench32. For WinTune98, I get 16.44 MB/s cached, and 4.65 MB/s uncached disk access.

Wowzers. That's some nice speed. Mouse gets here on 10/24. I'll download the same tools and get you the numbers. Thanks now I have something to compare against. 😁

Creative TNT drivers. File name 4404_Win9x.zip
https://support.creative.com/Products/Product … goryID:6&page=1

[version]
DriverVer = 05/09/2003, 4.4.0.4
LayoutFile=layout.inf

then further down...

INFName="nvcuml.inf"
NVIDIA&DEV_0020.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster RIVA TNT"
NVIDIA&DEV_0028.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster RIVA TNT2/TNT2 Pro"
NVIDIA&DEV_0029.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra"
NVIDIA&DEV_002C.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA Vanta/Vanta LT"
NVIDIA&DEV_002D.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster TNT2 M64/M64 Pro"
NVIDIA&DEV_0100.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster GeForce 256"
NVIDIA&DEV_0101.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster GeForce Pro"
NVIDIA&DEV_0110.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster GeForce2 MX"
NVIDIA&DEV_0111.DeviceDesc="Creative GeForce2 MX200/MX400"
NVIDIA&DEV_0150.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster GeForce2 GTS/Pro"
NVIDIA&DEV_0151.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster GeForce2 Ti"
NVIDIA&DEV_0152.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster GeForce2 Ultra"
NVIDIA&DEV_0170.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster 4 MX460"
NVIDIA&DEV_0171.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster 4 MX440"
NVIDIA&DEV_0172.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster 4 MX420"
NVIDIA&DEV_0173.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster4 MX440 SE"
NVIDIA&DEV_0181.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster4 MX440 with AGP8X"
NVIDIA&DEV_0182.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster4 MX440/440SE with AGP8X"
NVIDIA&DEV_0183.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster4 MX420 with AGP8X"
NVIDIA&DEV_0200.DeviceDesc="Creative GeForce3"
NVIDIA&DEV_0201.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster GeForce3 Ti 200"
NVIDIA&DEV_0202.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster GeForce3 Ti 500"
NVIDIA&DEV_0250.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster 4 Ti4600"
NVIDIA&DEV_0251.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster 4 Ti4400"
NVIDIA&DEV_0253.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster 4 Ti4200"
NVIDIA&DEV_0280.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster4 Ti4800"
NVIDIA&DEV_0281.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster4 Ti4200 with AGP8X"
NVIDIA&DEV_0282.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster4 Ti 4800 SE"
NVIDIA&DEV_0311.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster FX 5600 Ultra"
NVIDIA&DEV_0312.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster FX 5600"
NVIDIA&DEV_0321.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster FX 5200 Ultra"
NVIDIA&DEV_0322.DeviceDesc="3D Blaster FX 5200"

Awesome touch on the badge work! 😁 I really want something cool to display NexGen too. So much work not too.

Also I tried 2 different PCI geforce 6200's, but no post. I was told they wouldn't work without a AGP capable chipset. 🙁 Not sure how true that it. I was thinking more there isn't enough power from the board to support it. But then again finding old enough drivers for it that would work on the NexGen CPU probably... probably don't exist. But that didn't stop me from ordering a 3rd card. Which is a JATON VIDEO-348PCI-Quad suppose to be Dual GPU on one card, with 6 pin connector. Which is far as I know the newest and fastest nVidia pci gpu card that has drivers for both 98 and 95. When I get a ATX power supply, and ATX to AT conversion kit with dummy load. I'll test it.

sounds like you need a mouse to do much else.

I think those are much newer creative drivers than what I think I tried with my creative TNT card. Older drivers might work better.

Well BIOS is limited to LBA no "Large" option. So 1024 Cylinders 63 Sectors 255 heads at 8.4GB is max size. 8GB CF Card is 974 Cylinders.
Max transfer of DMA Mode 2 is 16.6 MB/s. So that's the best I could hope for.

I've tried other sized sd cards and tried manually just typing it in and it'll just hang on post drive detection. So 8GB is best I can get on size. I figured as much, but had to try for the lolz. I'll just add a second or third 8GB later if needed.

EIDE driver doesn't know what the CF card is so it errors out.

Does IDE DMA work? I use the CD-ROM on the onboard IDE port so that I have DOS access and when in Windows, I don't recall if there is the DMA check box option under the CD-ROM. I thought not, but I'll have to check.
EDIT: What happens when you put a check mark in DMA for the CD-ROM then reboot? Think back now, I recall doing this, rebooting, but the DMA check box disappeared. What date do your IDE drivers have? Mine 6-30-2001. I'm not sure where they are from.

The latest update for this board, which is a package called updtpi31.exe, Revision 3.1 - 8 April 1996, doesn't have any mention of IDE DMA drivers. It provides the DTC branded EZIDE.EXE for Windows 3.1 only, so I assume we are left to rely on Windows 95 for drivers. WIN4BM.386 is the DMA IDE driver for Windows 3.1x, but if you read v3.1 notes, it says "*** NOTE!! *** Do not use these drivers with Windows 95."

The previous revision update utility, v3.0, contained a DTC benchmark utility, DTCSPEED.EXE. Have you played with this and determined if DMA is working?

driver is 1999. DMA stays on for both HD and DVDrom after reboot. DTCSPEED.exe is about 14,500k dos, and under a windows dosprmpt 13,500k

Do you know how you got up to 6-30-2001? I've tried hunting down Windows 98 SE updates to find it but no luck.

Tried applying the custom LBA48 file batch, it was a bust.
Correction I did install a lba48 patch because the info I read on it said it include eide enhancement. I'm getting up to 14,500k in win98 dosprmpt

I'm pretty sure I have the Win95 Unofficial Service Pack1 OSR2SP 1.05 installed. This may be where the date comes from. Perhaps my IDE drive, which is an older 8x, doesn't support DMA and is why the check box doesn't reside?

DTCSPEED on my Ultra100 controller gave me something in the 60-80K range in DOS. The fraction of a second it runs for isn't long enough.

I'll give that version (sp1 1.05) a try. I tried the latest 3.x and my load imploded, had to re-ghost image.

OK. I don't think I installed any of the extras except for the System Information program, like what Win98SE has.

Thought I'd let you know.
I got the FX5200 working under Windows 98 SE on the nx586 with https://http.download.nvidia.com/Windows/45.23/
No issues so far. Only driver set so far I got working. I haven't pressed further up the revisions.

Yes, I think only the driver revisions from NVIDIA for which the FX series first appeared will work properly. Same was true for the GeForce4 MX440 AGP8X PCI card I used. Actually, for that card, I think only one revision worked period with D3D + OpenGL. Its usually pretty easy to find a revision for which just the display drivers work though. Must test accelerated applications.