Thats awesome. I gave up hope of ever finding mine. A Packard Bell 486 system.....

Never give up my friend! It took me literally years but they are out there... I had to order this all the way from Italy haha! But it's so worth it. I wish you luck on your quest to find your machine.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-01-28, 01:16:

[...]

The picture from the back of the computer is a sound card but the card asked about in the other thread shows the backside of a Voodoo 1 4MB card. One sold by A-Trend to be exact.

Yes, now I see that one (hadn't seen the other thread)

Best guess: the seller intended to keep the Voodoo (or sell it separately) but forgot to remove it before taking that pic.

Prepare for some fun contact with seller afterwards when that card inevitably turns out not to be in there. If he posted a pic of the machine with it visible and didn't explicitly say it was not included, he's in the wrong - but going from there to getting the Voodoo card or some other compensation isn't likely to be plain sailing, unless the seller is unusually decent about his mistake.

That's what I'm thinking Dionb. I will be certainly bringing it up if it turns up without it but hopefully it does. Either way I'm happy as that wasn't the card I thought it was when i purchased it i assumed it was a sound card so it was going to be a bonus anyway. Finding my exact childhood rig is what counts.

In terms of 3DFX for this sort of spec machine... What would be the best card without bottle necking the card? Also, are 3DFX cards good for DOS games? I've literally never owned a 3DFX card but I've always wanted to try one out. It was a major want back in the day when i tried playing Unreal Tournament on my original PB machine.. It was awful! Total slideshow haha!

look at the picture from the back, like I said, the top slot is simply not visible in that picture you can see there is one more above the sound card if you look at the perspective... I wouldn't just automatically assume ill will before we know anything :p

darkomen wrote on 2020-01-28, 10:21:

That's what I'm thinking Dionb. I will be certainly bringing it up if it turns up without it but hopefully it does. Either way I'm happy as that wasn't the card I thought it was when i purchased it i assumed it was a sound card so it was going to be a bonus anyway. Finding my exact childhood rig is what counts.

😀

In terms of 3DFX for this sort of spec machine... What would be the best card without bottle necking the card? Also, are 3DFX cards good for DOS games? I've literally never owned a 3DFX card but I've always wanted to try one out. It was a major want back in the day when i tried playing Unreal Tournament on my original PB machine.. It was awful! Total slideshow haha!

A Pentium MMX is slow for accelerated 3D at the best of times. A simple 4MB Voodoo1 like in that pic is the best fit (although a Voodoo Rush might actually be faster due to a bit of CPU offloading). There aren't many DOS games that use Voodoo, those that do tend to be Voodoo1-specific. Tbh, accelerated 3D is a Windows thing, most DOS games just use the video card as a simple frame buffer and if anything is rendered, it's done in CPU. With a P233MMX and Voodoo, you could definitely speed up your slideshow, but it's still not going to be anywhere near fast. Now, a P3-1400S and Voodoo2 will run it very nicely, but that's a totally different ballpark.

Ok so I've figured it out after a bit of digging.

It was listed previously for a much higher price with the 3D FX card, a monitor and a Creative sound system.

The old listing clearly shows the pass through cable. So it's been removed for sure but the seller didn't change the original picture showing the card inside on the new listing. So, yeah.. sucks would of been a nice bonus but oh well.

darkomen wrote on 2020-01-28, 10:41:

[...]

The old listing clearly shows the pass through cable. So it's been removed for sure but the seller didn't change the original picture showing the card inside on the new listing. So, yeah.. sucks would of been a nice bonus but oh well.

Still, he did advertise with a pic showing the Voodoo without disclaiming it. Whatever else he advertised previously doesn't change that.

True, will certainly bring it up when it arrives.

A Pentium MMX is slow for accelerated 3D at the best of times. A simple 4MB Voodoo1 like in that pic is the best fit (although a Voodoo Rush might actually be faster due to a bit of CPU offloading). There aren't many DOS games that use Voodoo, those that do tend to be Voodoo1-specific. Tbh, accelerated 3D is a Windows thing, most DOS games just use the video card as a simple frame buffer and if anything is rendered, it's done in CPU. With a P233MMX and Voodoo, you could definitely speed up your slideshow, but it's still not going to be anywhere near fast. Now, a P3-1400S and Voodoo2 will run it very nicely, but that's a totally different ballpark.

Ok good to know thanks for the feedback.

I guess it's a bit of a waste of time then really in my case. Plus 3DFX cards seem to have gone to stupid money in my country. I actually have a custom built Windows 98 SE machine for all my 3D accelerated gaming needs (it has a Geforce FX 5700LE and Pentium 4 2.8Ghz which runs literally everything Windows 9x based) so this Packard Bell I'd like to make purely MS DOS as ironically my custom built PC refuses to support my Sound Blaster Lives SB16 emulation so i was always thinking about building a MS DOS machine for those classics like Command & Conquer, Theme Hospital, Magic Carpet etc.

Adding a 3DFX card or any 3D card to the machine with just a curiosity really. I'm curious about how it would have performed back in the day if i had actually managed to buy a 3D card.

That said though as stated before, if i can find the original Master CD for this machine with all that nostalgic software it will be running Windows 95 / MS DOS but I doubt i will find that to be honest.

With those games: no difference at all. Here's a list of DOS games with Voodoo support:
Revised list of Voodoo games for DOS.

With the original MasterCD you'd probably also need the original Master Boot Floppy (tools to generate your own floppy from the CD weren't integrated when this one was released iirc) and you need to hope the HDD still has its original partitioning, as there needs to be a hidden sector in there to allow install from the MCD.

Ohhhhh damn! yeah you are correct i forgot about the old red floppy disk. I was never aware of the partition either. I remember restoring my original one once it took AGES! But yeah, damn i guess that's a no go then.

The HDD in this one actually has an original factory install on it but it's all in Italian and being from Italy i doubt it has the same software bundled that I used back as a kid.

I may try to keep the original install intact though seems a shame to wipe it. I wonder if i can image the recovery partition for other PB users.. Might help someone out some day.

Nice getting your PC back 😀 I was lucky and we never got rid of my childhood one and ended up brining it back with me from Australia to the UK a few years back.
It's still one of my most used PC's even though it's the slowest simply due to the nostalgia.

In the end I removed the original HDD as is and installed a bigger drive to install whatever I want.

Well, it's been a busy day indeed! The Pulsar arrived but sadly with some battle wounds 🙁 The floppy disk drive cable is missing for whatever reason... The CD ROM i presume doesn't work because they randomly included a later model CD-RW IDE drive and if you look on the listing carefully you can see they actually are using that drive. The CD ROM drive was also unplugged when it arrived here. Typical eBay huh? Unfortunately as expected the 3D FX card was removed which sucks but I've ordered a Creative Riva TNT 16MB which is a little newer than i would have liked for this machine but it was the right price and should work nicely. Will certainly show me the limitations of my old CPU back then that's for sure.

I was going to try and glue the side panel back together but there were sooo many little pieces it would be a nightmare so unfortunately this is how it will stay.

But yeah, I spent a good part of the day building a nice fresh new desk for my pair of retro rigs.

Once built, the 2 machines fit perfectly and look great.

The little draw under in the middle has the Pulsar keyboard a nice new old stock PS/2 keyboard

I can't do too much else with it as sadly I only have USB mice and i need a PS/2 mouse. But it works and runs very well. I'm hoping I can change the language inside windows as it's Italian right now but I'd like to keep the original Packard Bell installation. If anyone needs an image of the drive I'm sure i could make one as it has a lot of the original PB bundled software still on it.

aww that sucks 🙁
you should definitely try to get some recourse for the damage and the false advertisment with the picture including the voodoo.

those explorers should be PS/2 compatible usually they had adapters included... at least the first few versions did, the 3.0 should still include them at least

I did contact him about it as there is a lot wrong with the machine. Props to him or her though as they replied very quickly and offered a partial refund or this...

It's a Pentium 2 350Mhz
ATI Rage AGP
30GB Hard Disk
64MB RAM
No sound card but plenty of PCI slots and even a ISA slot

He's offered to ship it to me and give it to me completely free which is extremely kind of him/her so I'm going to accept that offer as I see it as a really good offer. Might make a little 3DFX rig out of it.

At least the Packard Bell still works that's the main thing. Like you mentioned the 3.0 should support PS/2 so I've ordered a PS/2 to USB adaptor so hopefully that will work out fine and i can get using it very soon. I have 4 of those mice as they are the only mice i get on with (i have big hands) so i have later and early models. hopefully one of them will work. I can't wait to start using it properly.

Looks like awful shipping, but that black ABS (? - or some similar plastic) just crumbles after a few decades. I have a Sun Sparcstation 20 - generally built like the proverbial brick outhouse and in near mint condition, but it has similar wavy plastic that simply disintegrates even under a light touch. Kudos for the seller that he's accepting responsibility (also for the mixup he caused with the Voodoo pic) and is making a serious offer of compensation 😀

That P2 is interesting. It might just be 2 ISA slots under there, but what really caught my eye is the 3.5" drive. That's no ordinary floppy drive. Can't make out what it is, but very much worth a closer look.

it says "MITSUMI" if I'm not mistaken, and the floppy cable seems to be connected, might just be a fancy bezel ^^

I see what you mean, I would imagine it is fairly fragile by now being what 24 years old? I think these Pulsars were made in 1996/1997 so yeah the plastic is probably very brittle.

The floppy drive caught my eye too, I did wonder myself but I think it is just a fancy bezel like Imi said.

Got an ID on the P2 motherboard - it's a DTK PRM-0080i E1, probably RB revision. DTK was a big player in the late 1980s, but by the time this board came out they were on their last legs. Lots of dead links to manuals & stuff for it. Assume it can only do Klamath and Deschutes P2, maybe Katmai P3 and Mendocino Celeron, but Coppermine is highly unlikely.

Edit:
http://www.uncreativelabs.de/th99/m/C-D/35600.htm

Jumper settings, unfortunately incorrectly labeled, J7 on the pic is the same as JP4 in the legend, the multiplier jumpers.

This suggests support for Coppermine 800MHz with the right BIOS

https://web.archive.org/web/20001029182247/ht … dukty/st_mb.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20001002075645/ht … PRM-0080ie1.htm