foey wrote:

Hope you like the period correct wallpaper 😀

Hah! I was just going to mention that. Digital Blasphemy, I remember that site! And that wallpaper was one of my favorites back then too. 😉

chinny22 wrote:

Very nice, The 2 Creative devices next to each other is a real nice touch.
For the 2nd 3.5 bay I would finish the look and get a floppy drive. Back then every computer still had a floppy drive. Although lets face it your not going to get much use out of it.
If you want something that IS useful a USB floppy emulator will work exactly the same as far as that PC goes but you can use software to copy files onto the USB floppy on any PC for quick/lazy file transfers

Thanks 😀

Yeah It will have to be a floppy drive, i'll have to source one as I only have a black one spare.

*Potential upgrade alert*

I bought a 64mb 3D Prophet II GTS, Geforce 2 GTS Pro with DVI the other day. Trouble is... its not creative 😢 🤣

Any chance you're going to use that video card's S-Video port? 😁

On a side note,I've got my FX5200 128MB run on S-Video using a XFX 7 pin S-Video to RGB cable and using the Y port of the RGB side. Sharp and clean picture even though I was using the RGB side to get composite.The card itself is a Palit but I had to reflash it to a MSI firmware due to original not supporting TV-Out,which is a stupid thing considering the card had S-Video. (it has only VGA and S-Video)

Wow that's a nice case. The only one that comes close is the Lian Li PC-A05. Keep me posted if you find another ATCS case.

Update - 17-09-2014

A couple of updates...

2x256mb of PC-133 CL2 RAM.
I originally was using 384mb (128, 256) which was CAS 3. I had CL2 back in the day with my Athlon Thunderbird, not that it makes much of a difference but every little helps 😀

I've also installed the 3D Prophet II Geforce 2 GTS Pro. I've gone back to using older drivers and managed to get the card working via AGP x4. It took some time to find, but had to install the Via 4in1s each time I updated/rolled back the drivers. It adds a entry into the Nvidia registry entries for Via AGP x4. By default on the Via chipset its disabled.

I'm using Coolbits to take the memory up to 400mhz (Default was 333mhz) This is to match my Creative Geforce 2 Pro I had, which was clocked at 400mhz. The geforce 2 is memory bottlenecked out of the factory, so you get some decent gains.

I started to log some benchmarks with some small changes...

I've not used the machine for a while now as working on other machines. On my recent scouts on ebay I found a ECS P6IPAT with the Intel 815EP B-step chipset. I have two Pentium 1400-S Tualatins from my dual processor server build (MB Failed) which could be put to use.

Looking to replace the current board in this build now... 🤣

I also picked up a Creative Geforce 4 Ti4600 which I was thinking of using...

Edit - Just powered it on to test, Booted perfectly - had a little poke around in the bios, I just set the FSB to 150 and...

It will be interesting to compare on the Geforce 2 @ the same clock speed. Should I use the Creative Geforce 4 Ti4600 or a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP? (Removing the Voodoo 2s) 😕

In my opinion is better to use that 4Ti and SLI of Voodoo2, 4Ti for D3D and newer games and voodoo`s for glide ones. Voodoo5 is hard to get and there aren`t cheap.

GeForce Ti4600 with 3dfx Voodoo2 in SLI. If the combination actually works with no problems or conflicts.

I've just got round to get all of the parts swapped over. As per my post above I bought a ECS P6IPAT. A great excuse to upgrade and put my Pentium III 1400-S Tualatin to work!

The slide out motherboard tray was fantastic. I had to re route the Power ATX connector since this was in a slightly different position. I hate the ATX connector on the left hand side of the board!

I used a Intel cooler, these units are quite large - not the quietest but do the job.

Next upgrade on the list was a Creative Geforce 4 Ti4600, I used to have one of these back in the day. This had been on ebay for a while due to it being listed with just the Creative Product number! I was looking through my old photos of my PCs and came across the product number in one of my photos from 2002 which I typed into ebay!

All reassembled

Specifications As of 04/10/2015

CPU Intel Pentium III 1400-S Tualatin
Motherboard ECS P6IPAT Intel 815EP B-step Motherboard
RAM 512mb Crucial PC133 CAS2 Ram
Primary Graphics Card 128mb Creative Geforce 4 Ti4600 AGP 4x
Secondary Graphics Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo 2 SLi, 2x 12mb CT6670
Sound Card Creative Sound Blaster Live! CT4760
NIC 3Com PCI 10/100 NIC
SCSI Adaptec 2940U2W SCSI Controller
Storage 40Gb Western Digital 7200rpm IDE Hard Drive - Windows ME
300Gb Seagate Cheetah 10k.7 SCSI Hard Drive - Windows 2000 + Storage for Games
Optical Creative DVD5240E 5X DVD-ROM Drive
Optical Iomega ZIP100 Drive (ATAPI)
Extra Creative Live! Drive IR SB0010
PSU Suntek 420w Dual fan PSU

Had no idea it's been a year since I originally built this!

Benchmarks

Graphics cards
The machine orignally started off with the first Geforce 256 DDR, It's a great card however needed something with a little more poke for the more demanding games. I used to have a Creative Geforce 2 GTS Pro with my AMD Thunderbird hence why I upgraded to a Herc Geforce 2 GTS Pro.

With this recent upgrade I had a choice of cards...

Voodoo 5 5500 AGP
Currently running in my K7 machine. I didn't feel like pulling the Voodoo 2s out! This way I get SLI glide for older games and the other graphics card for DirectX/OpenGL

64mb 3D Prophet II Geforce 2 GTS Pro
Great card, similar to the one I had back in the day (Just had to overclock the memory to match the Creative Pro) however the image quality is not as good as the other cards I have.

Creative Geforce 3 Ti500
I was testing this card for some time last night. I've had a Geforce 3 Ti200 but never a Ti500. In both 3DMark 99 & 2000 there is hardly any difference between the Geforce 4 Ti4600, it's only 3DMark 2001 it starts to lose out by some margin. I really wanted to use this card as It suits the build, however it runs very hot. After some benchmarking I was unable to touch the memory heat sinks for any length of time and the heat around the card was significant - esp in the case I have.

Creative Geforce 4 Ti4600
Very quick card, runs quite cool as well. Good compatibility, just trying to find the ideal driver version.

ATi Rage 128 MAXX
Still awaiting for the card to arrive, however will run some tests in this machine with the card 😀

Let me know your thoughts 😀 Hope you enjoyed reading!

Very beautiful rig 😀

I love the front panel for the soundblaster live! Great touch. I'm REALLY jealous of the ti4600. I've never been able to get my hands on one of those. I have a Quadro FX 2000 which is the same as the GeForce FX 5800, but it's hot and really loud, REALLY loud. I've heard nothing but good things about the ti4600.

Case
For me the real push for this build was finding the right case. I had previously started building it in a new-ish cheaply black case. However after cutting my hands on it trying to assemble it, it just didn't feel right. The case of choice in 2000-2002 was the CoolerMaster ATC cases. They looked stunning and were marketed as top end.

I can relate. Once you uses these nice Aluminum cases like Lian Li you never go back and it does not feel worth it to build in a cheap case.
I have had a lot of bad experiences cutting myself building in cheap sheet metal cases.
Its just not worth it.

Steve Jobs said “build the best computer and don’t settle for anything less”.

So that is how I looks at it, I try to use the best components in my builds with the best assembly and cable management and software install.

A tip for people searching for these cases. The family is called ATC-S or ATCS but the individual cases have names like ATC-500 not ATCS-500. If you search for ATCS but not ATC you will miss listings. Search both.

Someone here recently mentioned the difficulty in finding a "ATCS-200". There's no such thing.