First post, by foey
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Hello all,
I'm new, My Names Mark and I'm from the UK, South East and turning 30 this year. I grew up with Windows 3.11 (286-386), 95 (486) & 98. My love for everything retro has been a tad low recently after building up my games console collection (Mainly Sega Saturn). Years back I had a Escom P75, 8mb of RAM, 1Gb Hard Drive, Windows 95, then a good few years after AMD K6-2 400, 64mb of RAM with a 8MB ATi Rage AGP Card. Since then I upgraded everything I could and overclocked.
I work in IT and one of my clients was recently using a IBM Aptiva for their internet banking (Dial up) up until late last year, I was asked if I could dispose of it. I didn't have the heart and always planned of reviving it - Its been up in my loft for a good 6 months.
The Beast
The Specifications
IBM Aptiva
58XA Motherboard
AMD K6-2 300mhz
64mb SD-RAM (2x32mb)
O/B ATi 2mb Rage II + DVD
O/B Crystal Audio Sound Card
4.3Gb Seagate Hard Drive
48x IDE CD-ROM (I Replaced this a couple of years back for them with a spare I had)
My intentions were to throw anything I have at it, still have a good number of DOS Games on CD:-
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Monkey Island
Europress Network Q RAC Rally Championship
Indy Car Racing
Quake
Screamer 1 & 2
But to also see If I can play some windows classics which I still have...
Unreal & Unreal Tournament
Quake 2 & 3
Theme Hospital
Metal Gear Solid (Microsoft PC)
So I booted up, Formatted with a fresh copy of Windows 98 SE (Still have the CD and COA) and had a great time, all of my skills with DOS (Autoexec.bat and Config.sys) came flooding back and got most dos games running without any issues. But I wanted more... 😀 I had a Voodoo 3/Nvidia TNT2 back in the day so I decided to upgrade.
The first limitation is the motherboard, I have no AGP slot, just PCI. It also looks like the motherboard runs up to 300mhz, which its currently running at now. I had plans to upgrade to a K6 400/500.
The motherboard is :- 58XA Motherboard, http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/acer/mb/v58xa.htm
Ram Upgrade, 64mb to 288mb with some spare SD-RAM I had laying around
Hard Drive Upgrade, replaced the noisy 4.3Gb hard drive with a WD40Gb. I had two of these in my parts draw 😀 Obviously not time fitting but gives me a much quicker drive.
A quick scout of ebay and I've ordered a 16mb Voodoo 3 2000 PCI
I fitted the Voodoo today, after some time running I checked touched the heat sink to get a idea of how hot it was running. I burnt myself - there is hardly any room in the case for decent airflow... So back to my parts draw (good thing I don't throw anything out right 😊 😀)
92mm Fan @ 7v resistor with Zalman Fan Bracket
After some time playing a Unreal the card felt very cool, I took a photo with the case on, you can see the fan pretty much matches with the side of the case, meaning its pulling in cool air rather than just moving it around.
Unreal running in 3Dfx mode
Inside
Performance wise I need to get round to bench marking it however I'm finding its a little slower than I expected (Comparing to when I used to have my AMD K6-2 400/Voodoo 3 3000 AGP)
Quake 3 @ 640x480 - 15fps (16.3 fps Voodoo 3 @ 166mhz)
Quake 2 @ 800x600 - 30fps
Unreal T @ 640x480 - feels like ~15-20fps
3DMark '99 - 1168 3Dmarks, 1582 CPUmarks
Not sure if I'm CPU bound or GPU bound with it being PCI. Thoughts?
Edit :- Just overclocked the Voodoo to 3000 Speeds, just 1.3fps. Something I'm sure is wrong. I remember building a retro rig out of a Pentium 233mhz years back and getting much better results. It even ran UT2003 at decent speeds.
So overall its been fun and bought me right back to 1997-99
On my to-do list
- Replace Heatsink & Fan (Ordered 26/05) Fan Bearings are shot.
- Upgrade O/B Sound Card, Any suggestions?
- Look into speed issues, any advice?
- Anything else?
- Any ideas if I can get away with upgrading my CPU?
Cyrix Instead Build, 6x86 166+ | 32mb SD | 4mb S3 Virge DX | Creative AWE64 | Win95
ATC-S PIII Tualatin Win9x Build :- ATC-S PIII Coppermine Win9x Build Log [WIP] **Photo Heavy**