Some quick screenshots of the games I've tested so far:

Unreal - Glide

Quake 2 - Glide (this kept crashing when I tried to take the screenshot until I replaced 3dfxgl.dll with a newer version from patched Half-Life)

Half-Life - OpenGL

System Shock 2 - Direct3D

Deus Ex - Glide

Just for fun, the Monster 3D II configuration menus

The framerates I got for Deus Ex left something to be desired, though the game was definitely playable. I'm not 100% sure where the bottleneck is there, but I'm hoping for at least a little improvement when I add 167 MHz with the Celeron. Drive space on the 5 GB got tight very quickly with all this stuff (what an odd thing to have to care about again!), hence the additional 20 GB. Other games I intend to investigate include Blade Runner, Thief, Homeworld, Omikron: The Nomad Soul, Serious Sam, Fallout, Sacrifice, Forsaken, and Grim Fandango. Of those, I've only played the latter three.

Oops, looks like I posted this in the wrong forum. Sorry!

Very very nice, well done!

The thing about 3D graphics from that period is that it exploded over a short amount of time. So it's important to pick the right games from that period. Because two years later the performance has gone through the roof...

Update: just added a (comically large) NIC so I can take this bastard online. All PCI slots are now occupied. UT99 here I come!

The wisdom of putting a Windows 98 system online in this day and age seems questionable, but I have it firmly segregated from the rest of my network.

BTW - would a moderator mind moving this thread to the "Marvin" forum? I guess that's where it's supposed to go. Thanks!

I thought the NIC was ISA for a second; excluding really early PCI NICs, the only one's I've seen around that size were oddball expensive cards with some sort of role to play in servers and such.

Those ATX cases Dell used to use were top notch; among my favorite to work with.

Out of curiosity, does it use the 440BX or 440LX chipset?

Yeah, it's a gigantic NIC. Apparently a popular 3Com model back in the day. I'm guessing that empty 32-pin socket to the right is for a boot ROM.

The chipset is 440LX. According to what I've read, I can go as high as a Celeron 766 MHz, but no higher because everything after that requires 100/133 MHz FSB and this is 66 MHz.

Subjunctive wrote:

Yeah, it's a gigantic NIC. Apparently a popular 3Com model back in the day. I'm guessing that empty 32-pin socket to the right is for a boot ROM.

The chipset is 440LX. According to what I've read, I can go as high as a Celeron 766 MHz, but no higher because everything after that requires 100/133 MHz FSB and this is 66 MHz.

The LX won't work with the Coppermine-based Celerons, unless you use some kind of adapter.

The thing with LX is, you can put a faster CPU in there (probably also a Katmai) but the question is, will it recognize it correctly? And if not, is it a bad thing it's not recognized correctly?
What will work is however to put an unlocked P2 in there and let it run at 366Mhz (still 'an' improvement 😜) or a Celeron slot 1 (went up to 400Mhz at least).
The PPGA (=socketed) Celeron went up to 533Mhz.
I once tried a Katmai in a board not supporting Pentium 3's and it recognized it at it's correct speed, but will recognize it as a Pentium 2 instead of a Pentium 3. A Katmai 600 will get you 400Mhz that way (still better then the unlocked Pentium 2 😜)
But with Dell, you never know for sure what is supported and what is not.

This is all presuming the Pentium 2 you're using right now is a Deschutes.
If it's a Klamath, your upgrade path will be much more limited.

LX is a fine chipset though, limited mostly by it's inability to run 100mhz FSB CPU's and if that's not a problem for you, then there really isn't much of a problem 😉
I ran an LX rig for several years myself (with Celeron 400) and was perfectly happy about it 😀

Edit:I forgot to mention, if you happen to succeed in using a Tualatin on an adapter, you can even break 1Ghz with your rig hehe, using the 1400Mhz Celeron (commonly called, the "Tualeron").

According to Wikipedia, it has to be a Deschutes P2, since Klamath didn't go above 300 MHz.

These guys seem pretty confident that I can do a Mendocino Celeron 500 on 440LX with no trouble, provided that I first reflash the BIOS from Dell to Intel:

http://www.roberthancock.com/dell/xpsdproc.htm
http://home.earthlink.net/~billselk/al440lx/upgrades.html

They also indicate that Coppermine Celerons (up to 766) can work, if the slocket that I use has an appropriate voltage regulator. I'm not sure if the slocket I'm looking at (Super Slocket-III) is so equipped, though. Coppermines at 800 and faster use 100 MHz FSB, so it looks like they're not an option.

Be sure you save a copy of the original BIOS in case the flash fails. Just because a board looks like one that was sold to many OEM's or sold at retail doesn't mean a BIOS flash will work.

Well, I've ordered the slocket, but I've also managed to lay my hands on a Pentium III 550 MHz, 440BX chipset. Don't know yet whether it's Katmai or Coppermine.

It's less generationally-appropriate for the Voodoo2 cards, I guess, but I'm definitely going to need more CPU horsepower for Deus Ex and even System Shock 2 (which, it turns out, performs less well on the P2-333 than my brief initial test showed).

So, after I get the slocket, I'll have three CPUs to compare: P2-333, Celeron-500, P3-550. I'm pretty curious about how the Celeron-500 will stack up against the P3-550, even though it's a Mendocino. I'd rather use the Dell case if possible because it really is quite nice. The Voodoo2 ought to be enough GPU-wise, though.

I get slowdowns in Deus Ex with my PIII 1Ghz, never really figured out why. There's a thread around here somewhere that I raised about it.

Nice setup though, there's something special about seeing games running on the intended hardware.

There is plenty of exploit fixes from the community at large for Win98SE, search around on MSFN for them. Also , just don't install java or use IE and if you surf with firefox just install noscript and you should be good to go. Win98 is so far out of malware authors attention now... just keep it behind a router or something so they can't telnet etc in to it and you should be fine.

Nice machine. I have a very similar Dimension XPS D266. It's very easy to install the Celeron 500 PPGA in this machine, just flash the last Intel BIOS using the instructions from Bill's page. I've had the original Pentium II 266, a Pentium II 400 @ 266 (mult. locked, runs much cooler than the original) and now a Celeron 500 in it.

The machine will not start with the Celeron 500 in it with the original Dell BIOS, you must install the intel AL440LX BIOS with your original CPU. I've also tried coppermine celerons in mine, they didn't work (not sure if it didn't boot at all or they were unstable, it has been a while).

Also very important! DO NOT CONNECT A STANDARD ATX PSU! The connector will fit, but these Dells use their own non standard wiring, using a standard ATX PSU will fry the motherboard!

Success! Using Bill Selk's excellent instructions, I was able to reflash the BIOS from Dell to Intel and get the Celeron 500 accepted. Configuring all the jumpers on the slocket (various combos for 66/100/133 MHz FSB, Intel/AMD/Cyrix, 1/2 CPUs) was a real hoot.

Unsurprisingly, Windows 98 still registers the Celeron as a Pentium II, but the 167 additional MHz is definitely noticeable in UT99, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, and other games that work the system to its limits. I was a little sad to lose the slick SECC with its nice copper heatsink, but the bare slocket with the Celeron and its bland aluminum heatsink lashed to it have their own kinda cool aesthetic.

So far the 200W PSU that came with the Dell has supported all of this - the new CPU, all the PCI cards, the additional HD - without complaint.

badmofo wrote:

I get slowdowns in Deus Ex with my PIII 1Ghz, never really figured out why. There's a thread around here somewhere that I raised about it.

Nice setup though, there's something special about seeing games running on the intended hardware.

What graphics card are you using? And how much RAM does that rig have? My PIII 650Mhz with 16mb Voodoo 3 3000 graphics and 384Mb RAM runs it perfectly 😀

I also tried it with an AMD Duron 800Mhz with a 32Mb Geforce 2 GTS and it ran quite badly for some reason 😒

PowerPie5000 wrote:

What graphics card are you using? And how much RAM does that rig have? My PIII 650Mhz with 16mb Voodoo 3 3000 graphics and 384Mb RAM runs it perfectly 😀

I also tried it with an AMD Duron 800Mhz with a 32Mb Geforce 2 GTS and it ran quite badly for some reason 😒

That's interesting, I've tried a Geforce 2 GTS and an Ultra. Maybe it just doesn't like those cards. I bought a Voodoo 3 3000 recently as it happens so I'll pop that in and see what shakes loose.

I have 512 RAM BTW.

Apparently deus ex is absolutely glide optimized so it runs like crap on anything else unless u throw a mad am of hardware at it