Sorry for late reply. Did need to test something first, so I don't recommend crap to you.
I see you finally got your K6-2+/570. Did you buy a lot of 3 or did you get a single unit from someone else?
There was a major breakthrough in the meantime. The Vogons collective found a way to turn K6-2+'s into K6-III+'s!
Re: SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
You might remember the story of the AMD tri core CPUs which could be turned into quad cores. Originally the idea behind the tri cores was to be able to sell quad core which had one core that didn't work properly. But because demand did outweight yield, AMD started to castrate fully functional quads. We don't know yet how many of the K6-2+ have a faulty cache. Some seem to need a bit more voltage to run the full sized cache.
If you can't do the mod yourself, you can probably find someone here on Vogons who will mod your CPUs for a small fee.
An advice on RAM:
Your board can't use single sided RAM sticks with 256MB capacity (8x32MB). It will recognize them as 128MB. You'll need double sided sticks (16x16MB). To make it even worse, your chipset is picky about which sticks it accepts. Had to learn that the hard way recently.
pinesal wrote on 2022-02-08, 20:55:
I will wait in the voodoo card for now. I still need to experiment with a glide wrapper. I tried OpenGlide and the results weren't good with the one game I tried.
You should still replace your ATI with a nVidia card. Your ATI is way to weak to emulate Glide and it sucks for 2D as well.
Also you should be aware that many games won't run with a wrapper. Some will run fine. Some will be buggy. Some won't work at all.
TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-08, 18:20:
just a word of warning however, all 3DFX GPUS are priced stupidly high right now and they are not a great option because of this stupid pricing but if you are patient you might be able to snag a Voodoo2 at a good price.
Yeah, patience is key. 2 weeks ago there was a 8MB Voodoo2 on Kleinanzeigen (German Craigslist) for just 65€ ($73). It was gone within 2 days. I recently won the bid on a 12MB Voodoo2 for 77€ ($87). Now I'm looking for a matching sister but didn't have luck yet. I have two Voodoo2's now, but they're mismatched. Finding a sister for my first Voodoo2 for a reasonable price is near impossible, so I decided to look for Diamond Monster instead. They were popular back in the day because they're overclocked (100MHz instead of 90MHz), so they often pop up. If you want to go for V2 SLI, I'd suggest to look out for Diamond. Ideally same revision and same RAM type. Creative also seem to be pretty common, but they're not overclocked. With other brands you'll have trouble finding a matching sister.
But if you find a Voodoo3 or Voodoo Banshee for a good price, just grab it. You can resell it with profit, once you find V2's for a reasonable price.
pinesal wrote on 2022-02-01, 15:07:
I have been debating whether I should try a CF to IDE adapter or an SD to IDE or SATA to IDE. I have an 8GB CF card but I don't know the speed of it and I have several high speed micro SD cards 16GB , 32GB and 128GB. And I have a 256 2.5" SSD drive. I went ahead and ordered a SATA to IDE adapter but I am still considering other options. I'll update this when I have made more progress.
SATA to IDE is the way go. Your board can recognize up to 137GB HDDs. Not sure if you can downsize your 256GB SSD to 137 and use it. Someone here on Vogons said it's possible, but I haven't tested it myself yet.
CF is more interesting for older machines, like 486, which can't recognize larger HDDs. It's almost impossible to find SSDs with less than 32GB capacity.
You could put three SSDs into your rig. Ideally at least one of them should be a docking bay.
For my own SS7 rig I have the following plan:
Primary Master = SSD for OS
Primary Slave = SSD docking bay for file transfer and ISO's
Secondary Master = SSD for game installations
Secondary Slave = disk drive
You should also consider to replace your CD drive with a DVD drive. In the early 2000s game compilations switched from CDs to DVD for cost reasons. Instead of 20 CDs you would just have a handful of DVDs. Same is true for game magazines. Often there were 2 different versions of a magazine. The standard issue with just 1 CD and the deluxe issue with 2 or 3 CDs. The deluxe issue would often contain a game as a bonus and did just cost 1 or 2 bucks more. Got some nice games this way, like Unreal and Incoming. At some point they switched from 3 CDs to 1 DVD. You can often find these disks very cheap on flea markets. They don't really have collectors value, but they're still legit copies.
I wouldn't buy individual drives on Ebay. Way to expensive. Look out for lots instead. You might be able to snatch up a handful of drives for a few bucks plus shipping. Got some nice drives this way. NEC, Toshiba, Philips, Sony... IDE drives are no longer produced, so it's wise to have a few spare ones. In 10 years you might need to pay insane prices for replacements.
Also consider buying a cleaning disk. Used drives often need some cleaning. A disk is much more convenient than taking the drive apart. Time is money.
Another thing you should consider: An USB 2.0 card.
With an SSD drive bay, you have a way to transfer data quickly. But you'll have to restart your computer, because IDE can't hot plug. Sucks if you just want to transfer a few patches. Unlike WinXP, Win98 doesn't have mass storage drivers for USB sticks. But there is a homebrew solution:
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/windows-98-u … age-driver.html
Cards with more than 2 USB ports will use 2 or even 3 IRQs. You should avoid that. You don't want to use USB peripherals anyway on a DOS rig. That's rather something for a pure Win98/XP build.
Stay away from VIA cards. While I achieved 35MB/s with a VT6212L on LGA775, it was slowed down to abyssmal 12MB/s on my Super Socket 7 (VIA MVP3 chipset, same as yours). Also Windows complained, that I don't have enough memory and the benchmark crashed. I had better results with a NEC D720101GJ. While it was only able to achieve 25MB/s on LGA775, the slowdown was just 25% on my MVP3 board. I've ordered a few more cards with different chips for testing purposes, but for now NEC D7201010GJ is a safe bet.
There's an US seller on Ebay which sells brandnew AUA-2000B cards for $6.89. Another one sells AUA-2000C, if you prefer a black PCB. You might be able to find them even cheaper in used condition. Search for "USB PCI" or "USB card" and have a look at the chip on the card. Got mine for 6€ (shipping included).
You also should consider adding a NIC to your build.
While Realtek cards were popular back in the day, they have the flaw that they consume too much CPU performance. Doesn't matter on a Pentium 4, but it does matter on older plattforms. 3COM is a better choice. And they can be bought cheaply. I won an auction with 3 of them for 1€ + 4€ shipping.
If you ever get Voodoo2 SLI, you'll have to get an ISA NIC (or get another mainboard with more PCI slots). Those are a bit more expensive. Like 20 bucks. But you might be able to find a bargain. Even if you wont need it, it's always nice to have spare parts to tinker around.
If you ever want to utilize all your PCI and ISA slots, you'll need a riser cable. The bottom PCI slot and top ISA slot share space, because the I/O shield of PCI cards is facing down, while the ISA card is facing up.
New riser cables can be bought for a few bucks, but they're bad quality. Held together by tape. Urghs. I recently found a better one on Ebay for 3€ minimum bid and won the auction. Maybe you're able to find something similar, so keep an eye out. I don't need the riser yet, but I plan to use 3 sound cards in the future. Patience and planning ahead is key if you want to keep your rig affordable. If you buy everything last minute, you'll pay extra.
I plan to use a 3D printer for a frame which holds the USB card in place. I'll also get an adapter cable which turns the external USB ports into an internal USB header, so I can plug in a conventional front panel. For now you can just use the USB card without a riser and tape a cheapass USB extension cable to the side of your case for easy access.
I got a few more ideas for your rig, but I'm gonna let you diggest the information first. 😁