S423 P4 1.5 GHz + some cheap ECS board for it. Good stuff.

Just finished a P233 and Voodoo graphics build and genuinely surprised what it can do in 3D games, I expected it to be a bit of a potato

britain4 wrote on 2021-07-08, 08:07:

Just finished a P233 and Voodoo graphics build and genuinely surprised what it can do in 3D games, I expected it to be a bit of a potato

Same here, only with a Pentium MMX 166.

I built that rig with DOS gaming in mind, and I certainly didn't expect it to run Half-Life at 30+ FPS in 640x480. Voodoo magic I guess.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-07-08, 08:33:

britain4 wrote on 2021-07-08, 08:07:

Just finished a P233 and Voodoo graphics build and genuinely surprised what it can do in 3D games, I expected it to be a bit of a potato

Same here, only with a Pentium MMX 166.

I built that rig with DOS gaming in mind, and I certainly didn't expect it to run Half-Life at 30+ FPS in 640x480. Voodoo magic I guess.

I've got a P200 with Voodoo 1, exclusively running DOS games. Descent 2 on that rig never ceases to blow my mind. But I think I'm missing out on a lot of Voodoo fun, and I need to install Windows!

Pierre32 wrote on 2021-07-08, 08:55:

I've got a P200 with Voodoo 1, exclusively running DOS games. Descent 2 on that rig never ceases to blow my mind. But I think I'm missing out on a lot of Voodoo fun, and I need to install Windows!

I use a CF to IDE adapter with DOS 6.22 + Win 3.11 on one CF card and Win95 OSR2.1 on the other. This allows me to easily swap between them as needed.

Like you, I'm mostly using my Voodoo1 for DOS Glide games, but it's remarkable what it can do in some Windows titles. Basically, games that were literal slide shows in software rendering become playable at 20-30 FPS with the Voodoo. I've posted some of my impressions and benchmarks here, in case you're curious.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-07-08, 09:09:

Pierre32 wrote on 2021-07-08, 08:55:

I've got a P200 with Voodoo 1, exclusively running DOS games. Descent 2 on that rig never ceases to blow my mind. But I think I'm missing out on a lot of Voodoo fun, and I need to install Windows!

I use a CF to IDE adapter with DOS 6.22 + Win 3.11 on one CF card and Win95 OSR2.1 on the other. This allows me to easily swap between them as needed.

Like you, I'm mostly using my Voodoo1 for DOS Glide games, but it's remarkable what it can do in some Windows titles. Basically, games that were literal slide shows in software rendering become playable at 20-30 FPS with the Voodoo. I've posted some of my impressions and benchmarks here, in case you're curious.

Nice one, and cool build.

My 286 12MHz build kind of surprised me. At the time I built it, my slowest PC was a 386SX 16MHz (an Olivetti-branded slim form factor PC, with everything onboard), so the 386 was my base reference and I expected the 286 to be much worse.

Surprisingly, I found the 286 to perform quite well and better in some respects compared to my 386SX. Even with only 1MB RAM on the 286, it felt more responsive in many areas than my 386SX and some benchmarks confirmed this. Even Windows 3.11 seemed to boot quicker, even with the RAM limitations taken into consideration.

I basically put this down to the fact that the 386SX had poor onboard graphics vs decent ISA graphics with more VRAM in the 286 and the 286 had a faster IDE controller vs the crappy onboard controller on the 386.

My Via C3 build ended up surprising me the most, in the fact I didn't think it would end up being my main retro rig.

My VIA C3 Nehemiah all-rounder build

Also how stable it is even though its pretty much fully loaded. Not had any problems and it runs all my games sweet!

It's a bit the other way around with my system.
It's a super 7 board mvp3, and it had no marks for brand of type numbers.
Performance was pretty good, stability superb.

Turned out to be a pc chips, which I wouldn't have bought if it's name was known to me.

Still have it, running strong with a K6-2.

One of my recent finds, a PII-300 based Compaq Presario 4850 from 1997 has definitely impressed me with its robustness. I decided that this would be "the" machine to install a pair of V2s in just because it looks so dang cool, and I'm honestly surprised that it works as well as it does. In fact, most of the temper tantrums it throws can be chalked up to Win95 being Win95.

I've had bad luck with early Presarios, what with the insanely proprietary hardware, wonky BIOS setups, and general inflexibility with upgrades. And this particular Presario looked even more daunting, with front AV inputs, a really early implementation of soft power/sleep mode that's not ACPI compliant, and a not-quite-NLX but definitely rocketship inspired form factor. I find old Presarios to be as infuriating as old Aptivas and usually avoid them, but this one was, well... huge and black, baby! Full size Presarios are pretty uncommon around here, and it's hard to turn down a 1997 machine that won't ever need retrobriting!

At first I had my doubts about powering a V2 SLI setup with a 165w PSU, especially with ~43w of its output going to the CPU alone. But somehow, it all manages to work relatively well. Why, just last week I played POD for a solid hour with nary a glitch!

I'll admit, though, that I have this thing because it's cool, not because it actually serves a purpose. No, for serious 9x gaming, I use a boring beige Dell T550 with a Celeron-1400, V3-3500 AGP and 98SE. You might not think that a V3-3500 is much faster than a couple of V2 in SLI, but I guess the CPU makes all the difference because this machine just runs circles around the Compaq. And the bog-standard Win98SE install on the Dell is a million times nicer to work with than the Compaq-ized Win95 that's required to make all of the proprietary gizmos function properly.

But you know, I fully expect a bulletproof '90s Dell rig running 98SE to actually work as intended. The weirdo Presario, on the other hand? Half the time I'm surprised that it even makes it to the desktop!

waterbeesje wrote on 2021-07-08, 18:06:

It's a bit the other way around with my system. It's a super 7 board mvp3, and it had no marks for brand of type numbers. Perfor […]
Show full quote

It's a bit the other way around with my system.
It's a super 7 board mvp3, and it had no marks for brand of type numbers.
Performance was pretty good, stability superb.

Turned out to be a pc chips, which I wouldn't have bought if it's name was known to me.

Still have it, running strong with a K6-2.

PCChips actually made some very good boards, the MB560TG is my favorite Socket 7 board.

Gateway GP6-400 rebuild with its WS440BX mobo. I don't even know which is faster but either my almost generic PC133 128MB SDRAM are very flexible, or the 13.7GB IBM drive it came with has some absurdly fast cache.

I swapped the WS440 for a Jetway J-7BXAN R2.0 though, and will see how that one fares. If it's just as fast, then it clearly is the HDD that runs exceptionally good (especially since it's from the Deskstar era, and especially since it ran for so long in the first place.)

Running Stunts/4DS on a 386SX40 was surprisingly fluid, as my computer at the time was a 486SX25 and I was expecting it to by jerky. Was pleasantly surprised!

I can add another build to the list with my most recent K5 PR166. The K5 runs rock solid @133MHz turning it into a K5 PR200. I was not expecting that at all and it is a real nice bonus:)

Let me add another one:

AT based Celeron 533 build w/ PCChips M726MRT.

It's a surprise that:
- this thing doesn't lock up like crazy (I bet one of the reasons of bad rep PCChips/Amptron/Elpina/Matsonic got was purely lock ups all around.)
- works absolutely brilliant with a GF2 MX400 (or any nVidia card for that matter.)
- isn't horribly picky about disabling onboard stuff (though there isn't much to disable besides a CMI8738 and some modem that is offboard in the first place)

PcBytes wrote on 2021-09-22, 11:04:

Let me add another one: […]
Show full quote

Let me add another one:

AT based Celeron 533 build w/ PCChips M726MRT.

It's a surprise that:
- this thing doesn't lock up like crazy (I bet one of the reasons of bad rep PCChips/Amptron/Elpina/Matsonic got was purely lock ups all around.)
- works absolutely brilliant with a GF2 MX400 (or any nVidia card for that matter.)
- isn't horribly picky about disabling onboard stuff (though there isn't much to disable besides a CMI8738 and some modem that is offboard in the first place)

I also like my Celeron 533 P2B-F build, it becomes a very mid-range 386 with caches disabled. I run it with an FX5200 with DVI out for the sake of video capture. Pretty versatile rig all told.

My PI machine with a PCChips M598LMR board. Admittedly it did need a few caps but since then it’s been rock solid, plenty of (actual)cache and none of the horror stories I’ve heard about them

I bought this OEM Fujitsu Myrica P2 system a month ago because the case was so late 90s. I was gonna strip the system and put a SS7 in there. But as I tried it out it is indeed a very stable system with all original parts. I put a sb16 in there for DOS compatibility and a voodoo 2. Ok the motherboard is kind of nerfed lacking copper mine support, it has those stupid switches but it is complete and it just works.