I had to sign up after scanning around, what a great group you have here.

I stumbled on this group looking for info for some restore builds I'm doing to take me forward for the next few years without buying much new stuff. So, I'm more cheap than a genuine retro builder. I retired from building years ago, was sick for years, and am now reclaiming my life - and cleaning out my basement. And that has led to some renewed interest...

I have desktops in multiple places I go to miles apart and I'm not really laptop guy. Overall, I'm recycling some higher end pieces of old for new purpose, and since I haven't kept up, I have some questions. The experts I need seem to be here!

I am 'upgrading" 3 computers to XP specifically for EFILive V8. Internet browsing may be better since things are starting to complain about FF12, old adobe, etc. I do play a few games which should be no problem, PF4, SC4, MW4, and my favorite Descent2XL. That last one may have advanced in my absence under the Doom3 engine, I haven't checked. All run W2K Pro and Server SP4 and are heavily tweaked.

For my own use I'm bent on Supermicro. I used to have a vendor relationship and most people resisted paying the price, which meant more support from me. So some of my builds coming up are leftovers from proto builds.

My main box I'm typing on is a C2SBC-Q with a Q6600. I'm going to change out the Quadro video for a ATI 7750 and a HD750 tuner since I'm in range of digital broadcast where that one sits. I expect no issues with that one, and I'll do it last. It pushes 2 40" Samsungs and I expect the ATI to do it much better.

Box 2 is a P3TDLE with dual 1.4 Tualatins. Here's where I found some interesting things on this here message board. First, yes, most PCI cards after PCI 2.x will run at 66 MHz. Frist, because it is in the spec, secondly, anything with a AGP cousin ran at 66. Benchmarks will scale to exactly double in my experience. I did get the tech info from ATI over a decade ago. Almost no 66MHz PCI board I know of is clockable. SM's generally are not but I have done a few with a custom strings in SoftFSB I believe. I don't bother anymore. So, this board has an ATI Wonder VE as primary and a 7000 as secondary at 66 MHz and there not to bad. That one sits in the high mountains with an analog TV repeater close by, still?!

-----Question 1: As seen elsewhere on these boards without much conclusion, what could I expect by using the most modern ATI 5450 PCI?

The advantages for me would be a single slot frees up the other 66 slot for a 8 port sata card. The current version uses a promise TX2 ATA card that will not coexist with the sata card. The onboard IDE pos of this generation are fatally flawed, so are disabled. So I could fit some SSD's and get a new BD player of some kind. But, would that modern card play a blueray as claimed with the p3's? Note, under 2k it had 4 scsi channels and the sata card was happy. I spent a week hacking in the W2k scsi subsystem to get the thing booting XP on those Buslogic flahpoint controllers only to see it was a waste of time since they would get confused and timeout every so often. Anyway, a sole sata card with SSD's would be nice and the system would be virtually silent since everything is passive cooling. Nice. It will change, but I also took the time to get it's Guillimot HS 64 Pro ISA soundcard fully working and working right from the unattended install of XP. It is a little big so I may use the DMX 6fire that is in the P4 system this will replace. Correct! That P4 is better suited as a space heater than a computer and I'm tired of fixing it. It's loud and dies on a regular basis. It is a 10,500' altitude and that is part of the issue, and a case for the SSD's.

Rebuild Question #2

-----What's wrong with the default driver in XP for the Voodoo 5500 AGP?

I'm considering using one on a P3TDe6 and a brief test install came up out of the box with usable resolution on 26" 1920x1200 display. I don't remember what it could do, it might have been lower, but I remember using it on a 24" SG widescreen tube monitor at 1440 or something. anyway, are any of the 3rd party drivers, or the W2k 1.04(?) drivers any better than the default XP driver? As I remember, under 2k the second gpu wasn't doing anything anyway? Has that changed?
Just to add unintended insult to the purist here, I may access this box remotely so it could be headless and just use the card to drive it's VNC. I know, blasphemy, that's my last subject.
Considerations for this box are simpler, just for full function backup and recovery duties. For one this is the most stable thing I've ever come across. As a long 24/7 life running everything and spooling 4 cameras to a raid array and it logged over 365 days up time!! 2 or 3 times exceeded 6 months, I may have a screen shot of that one, and was in use for over 10 years. I recently tried a P3TSSR and it simply doesn't load well. The giant P3TDe6 simply rocks, so I'm going to rebuild. It has the undecided video card, dual U160, 8 port sata at 64/66, Farrolon gigabit at 64/66, 4 port firewire, 4 port USB 2, 4 port Argus framegrabber, and a soundcard. It will connect to practically any storage device. I have done data recovery in the past and this case I made has connects up front; ide on the scsi chain, 50 pin slide, 68 pin slot, 80 pin 5 disk cage, floptical, and tapes, and esata. No SAS.

...But, iirc, a voodoo 5500 might run Doom3 with that Descent plug in under XP real pretty? So every so often I could use it for that, running quiet on a single SSD! maybe. Otherwise, 2000 server may need to stay running off those harrier sounding scsi drives. Dual boot would be easy I guess, XP lost support for scsi for the most part, none of my tools run without ASPI. Hacking in the current (no such thing?) ASPI into the install made for some interesting instabilities. And hacking floptical support into XP's DOS seemed impossible? And worthless. I do have old games on a handful of those disk, and movies on the tapes which also seems not to work under XP. I also have some other video cards that could work, but a modern choice for the AGP PRO 50 slot is absent. So that PCI P3TDLE may be a better front machine. Don't know yet.

So lastly, thanks for letting me ramble to this most excellent group, and I have my weak newbie vote for some kind of marketplace. Nothing would make me happier than getting some of my archived equipment into the hands of some vogons. Dual head DOS/NT? Ensoniq's? PCP 450w IT5H 292 Mhz MMX with 4 channel UW raid?

Enjoy