VOGONS


First post, by eliot_new

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A long time ago, from 1999 to 2000, I worked in a computer store. I learned a lot about hardware there. Back then, I built myself a new PC because of Ultima 9. It was a Celeron 500, Intel chipset BX board, Riva TNT 2 AGP, 128 MB SDRAM, 20 GB HDD. Those were two special years for me; I played a lot of games, mostly DirectX, since I didn't have the money for Voodoo graphics. Since then, I've longed to own a Voodoo card at least once in my life. I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to play all the 3dfx games, or just the very early ones that still ran under MS-DOS. I finally decided on a Canopus Pure3D 3dfx with 6 MB of memory. After I bought it last week, I realized that it might not even run in my old PC. I have an old Intel i3 Socket 1150 on an Asus H97M-Plus, 32 GB DDR3-1600, a PCI-E nVidia Quadro K4200 that I randomly got as a gift from my neighbor in 2020, and Windows 8.1. A Voodoo 1 probably wouldn't run in this i3 PC. So this week I've been thinking about how to build a retro PC around the Voodoo 1. After reading a lot online, I've decided I'm tired of ISA local bus. I only want PCI, AGP, or PCI-E. So I've bought the following components and am waiting for them to finally arrive so I can put everything together. I've included the prices so you can understand why I didn't buy a Voodoo 3, GeForce 3, nor GeForce 4:

1. Asus CUSL2-C + P3 CPU with 1 GHz Intel Coppermine: €62
2. HP Elpida chip with 256 MB SDRAM at 133 MHz: €8
3. CPU cooler: €14
4. Toshiba SH-202J DVD burner IDE: €14
5. MSI GeForce FX 5600 AGP with 128 MB: €25
6. Samsung 80 GB HDD IDE: €22
7. 2x IDE cables: €6
8. Canopus Pure3D 6 MB 3dfx V1: €168 (very expensive, but a rarity)

I planned to create three primary partitions with Parted Magic to boot three operating systems:

1. Win98 SE + DOS for 3dfx games, e.g., Tomb Raider, Quake, UT
2. WinXP for DirectX 9.0 games and for the Glide Wrapper tool, to smoothly run newer 3dfx games like Ultima 9 or newer DirectX games like Half Life 1, No One Lives Forever, etc.
3. Win2003 Standard R2 to run applications like MS Office 2003, SQL Server 2003, and MS Dynamics NAV 2009 just for fun. I also have an old HP LaserJet M1005.

I found a user on YouTube who is using a Voodoo 1 graphics card on an Asus CUSL2-C with a Coppermine CPU and is playing Resident Evil 1. Therefore, I assume the 3dfx card is running on this motherboard.

I know the FX 5600 is oversized, but a GeForce 4, GeForce 3, GeForce 2, GeForce 256, or even the Voodoo 3 are sometimes offered for €100 or more. GeForce FX cards, on the other hand, are ridiculously cheap on eBay. I'll be using the nVidia 45.23 driver; it's supposed to still support the FX 5600.

Question: Which PCI sound card would you recommend that still produces good sound in DOS mode on Win98SE?

Aureal Vortex, Creative SB 128, Creative SB Live, Creative Audigy 1, 2?

Unfortunately, there was no PCI version of Gravis Ultrasound PnP. I had this card back in 1994 when I got my first PC from my parents. It rocked during Jazz Jack Rabbit and Rise of the Tried.

Please excuse any typos. I had Google Translate translate this text into English.

Reply 1 of 8, by H3nrik V!

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You may be missing ISA for sound in DOS as fair as I understand. But the CUSL2-C is a great board for windows.
I actually have a rare'ish 128 but version of the FX5200, which is reasonably fast, given that it's passively cooled ..

If it's dual it's kind of cool ... 😎

--- GA586DX --- P2B-DS --- BP6 ---

Please use the "quote" option if asking questions to what I write - it will really up the chances of me noticing 😀

Reply 2 of 8, by RetroPCCupboard

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Sounds like it should be a good win98 machine.

As for soundcard, If budget is a concern, then I think Soundblaster live will be fine. Be careful though, as some OEM models need drivers from the OEM. I think SB0060 is easy to find drivers for. Game compatability won't be as good as you would get with an ISA card.

Reply 3 of 8, by chinny22

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Ideally you would have had 2 sound cards an ISA one for dos and a PCI for windows. But what's done is done and work arounds exist.

Aureal Vortex is good card for Win9x era, has good dos compatibility but was all but dead during WinXP

Creative SB Live, Audigy 1, 2 are all the same family of cards. Main difference between them is newer the card the later the EAX version is supported.
(Live = EAX 2, Audigy = EAX 3, Audigy 2 = EAX 4

How much this matters will depend on your game library.
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … ith_EAX_support.

Creative SB 128 lack any EAX, only reason to pick this over a Live/Audigy is you already have the card and want to save money.

And don't worry about the FX 5600 This actually makes alot of sense. You now have both Glide AND D3D games.

Reply 4 of 8, by Matth79

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You're in a minefield for DOS sound compatibility with PCI only

Reply 5 of 8, by Archer57

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Hmm, curious build. It'll likely work just fine for what you want from it. However i would have probably done it differently - either older, with ISA sound card, for DOS. Or if you are dropping ISA anyway - newer, like S462/S478, so that all the newer stuff works better. But then in newer build voodoo1 looks kind of out of place... it'll likely feel a bit like 3d decelerator compared to FX5600 + wrapper.

I mean WinXP and 2003 will run on P3+256MB RAM, but it will be quite slow.

Especially with that vintage HDD - this is something i would never have done - paying money for old HDD. IDE-SATA + SSD would be my choice, or at least IDE-SATA + modern HDD if you want HDD.

I am not sure how well all the stuff you describe will fit into 80GB, may be a bit... limiting.

Reply 6 of 8, by RetroPCCupboard

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Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-01, 03:08:

Especially with that vintage HDD - this is something i would never have done - paying money for old HDD. IDE-SATA + SSD would be my choice, or at least IDE-SATA + modern HDD if you want HDD.

I am not sure how well all the stuff you describe will fit into 80GB, may be a bit... limiting.

Personally, I think for Win98 an IDE HDD is fine. Though, yes, I agree I wouldn't buy one. I just happen to have kept all of the ones from my PCs over the years. Mostly they are hitachi.

SSDs are certainly better performance, quieter, and more reliable.

Reply 7 of 8, by sfryers

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eliot_new wrote on 2025-07-31, 18:23:

1. Asus CUSL2-C + P3 CPU with 1 GHz Intel Coppermine: €62
8. Canopus Pure3D 6 MB 3dfx V1: €168 (very expensive, but a rarity)

A Coppermine P3 can be too fast for a Voodoo 1 in some circumstances, particularly with DOS glide games. If you do find games aren't running properly, setting the FSB to 66MHz (to reduce the CPU speed to 500MHz) may help.

MT-32 Editor- a timbre editor and patch librarian for Roland MT-32 compatible devices: https://github.com/sfryers/MT32Editor

Reply 8 of 8, by eliot_new

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@H3nrik V:
I also wanted first the FX 5200, but then discovered that the 2nd hand price is 12€ without shipping on eBay whereas I paid 25 € incl. shipping for the FX 5600.

@chinny22:
Amazing list of games, thank you! I tend to buy an Audigy 1 now. The only games, that I will miss because of EAX 4.0:
Bioshock, Collin McRay, Doom3, Gears of war, Prey, Quake 4, The Witcher 1 => I can play them on my newer PC, I guess (with my SB Audigy 5.1 PCI-E)

@Matth79:
I plan to use DOS-Box on my newer PC for all games that will not work.

@Archer57:
I still have a Pentium D805 2.66 GHz, Fujitsu Socket 775 board, and 4 GB DDR2-667 RAM in my basement, which is disassembled into individual parts.
My first thought was, of course, to use it for the Voodoo 1.
But I read that it has problems with the P4 architecture under DOS games and Glide.

My goals:

1. To play the most popular DOS games that support Glide, like Tomb Raider 1 or early 3dfx games that ran under Win98, like Unreal 1.
=> 3dfx Canopus V1
2. To play newer games (1999-2003) like Ultima 9 under D3D
=> FX 5600
3. Newer 3dfx games that absolutely required Voodoo 3 but didn't support neither D3D nor OpenGL.
For this, I would use Glide Wrapper (I don't have any examples, Ultima 9 also had D3D, what games from 2000 require V2...V5 Glide only?)
=> FX 5600
4. To play newer OpenGL games at a decent speed (I lack any examples, but I remember that the Quake 123, Hexen 2, Heretic 2 required OpenGL)
=> FX 5600

@Windows 2003 and Windows XP:
as soon as I've built the retro PC and everything is working, I'll buy another 256 MB of SDRAM.

@Parallel ATA EIDE HDD:
I really wanted one. I want to relive the feeling from 2000, what it was like back then to build a PC manually with all the components from back then. If the Voodoo 3 weren't so expensive, I would have bought one. So, the graphics card is the only component that's out of the ordinary. Besides I can also still connect a SATA adapter with SDD and use instead the 80 GB HDD in my Playstation 2 Fat Edition.

@sfryers
Thank you very much for the hint!
Indeed it is a P3-1Ghz EB with FSB 133 which I can slow down to 495 Mhz. Really cool 😀