VOGONS


First post, by SolidSonicTH

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This build is still in-progress but I figured it's far enough along to show it off.

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This project was born from an interest in building a system with an SBC as well as seeing what kind of performance I could get out of a system without an AGP slot.

The specs are as follows:

  • As far as I can tell, an IEI ROCKY-3786EV single board computer attached to a Nexcom NB-9S6P backplane
  • Intel Pentium III 1.2 GHz Socket 370 CPU that came preinstalled; a little faster than I'd want to pair with the Voodoo 2s (see below) but it's probably fine -- I could just get a 400 MHz Celeron later if I really wanted accurate speeds
  • 512MB of SDRAM preinstalled (I want to use the other slot to add another 256MB to get it to 768MB)
  • 2x 12MB 3dfx Voodoo 2 2000s in SLi
  • Some sort of Turtle Beach sound card that has an Aureal Vortex AU8830A2 chip, not sure of the specifics
  • Adaptec USB 2.0 host card (will be replaced with a different host card that has an internal port when I finalize the build)
  • 32GB SanDisk CF card inserted into the onboard CF slot running Windows 98 SE

The case it's in right now is a Fractal Design Focus G mid-tower but its final home will be a Rosewill Throne full tower monstrosity (however I need to mod that case in order to fit the SBC as its support for an overkill 10 HDDs means the rails ram up against to where the SBC needs to sit -- it also needs to have new mounting holes drilled as the holes don't match the backplane's adequately for whatever reason). The case was reserved for a different project but for now it's serving as the SBC's home (if it had access to that top PCI slot I'd probably just use this case because the standoff holes are actually correct for the backplane, by and large, and I don't need to mod it to fit the SBC). There are two power supplies because the one that's in the case (the gray one) is a dinky 300w Future Power unit that crapped out when I attempted to load the system with both Voodoo 2s installed (it would just bootloop). The EVGA 450w is an SFX power supply for still another project but with that plugged in there's no issues and it runs just fine.

As for future additions before I mark it as complete:

  • As mentioned the USB card will be swapped out for one that has an internal port so I can then hook it to an internal header hub and attach the front panel USBs to the hub
  • I have an ultra-slim IDE DVD writer on order and when it arrives I'll be getting this in order to mount the optical drive and 3.5" floppy disk in the same bay, although the Throne case does have enough 5.25" bays that I can put all three items in their own slots if I have to -- the optical drive will also need a JAE adapter to connect to IDE and I'll probably have to mod the bay adapter to allow for the JAE board
  • The aforementioned 3.5" floppy as well as a 5.25" 1.2M floppy drive (which is beige, unfortunately, but such is life -- the black one I have is flaky)
  • Add a serial and a parallel breakout bracket and possibly a standalone USB 1.1 bracket that will pin out to the headers on the SBC, although with the USB controller card working properly this may not be necessary as I need USB in order to have a mouse since the lone PS/2 port is taken up by the keyboard
  • Secondary storage on a mechanical HDD, probably 200GB partitioned to meet Windows 98's 128GB limit
  • A fan hub of some sort to manage the massive six 180mm case fans in the Rosewill Throne
  • A better power supply, obviously
  • Maybe a wavetable daughterboard for the sound card, like a DreamBlaster X2GS

This is my second Windows 9x machine and it's more of a concept build than the original (with a focus on the AGP-less design and SBC), which is a jack-of-all trades SLOT-1 board. I'll probably show that one off in a future post along with my "end of an era" XP x64 machine.

Reply 1 of 1, by ptr1ck

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Nice build. I don't think 1.2ghz is too fast for the Voodoo 2 SLI, but I also don't think any CPU is too fast as long as it's not breaking things.

I've got a build in the same case. When I ran an add-in USB card, I had to custom make a cable to tie in the card to a splitter to get both ports working and then they were flakey at best. It might work fine without a splitter but that's only for for one port.

With this much stuff going into the case, cable management will be hard to make it look good through the window. I'd roll with non windowed case if I could.

"ITXBOX" SFF-Win11
KT133A-NV28-V2 SLI-DOS/WinME