First post, by TheAbandonwareGuy
- Rank
- Oldbie
Paid 80 for this on eBay. It's supposedly working and passed a system stress test. The IO is untested but the fact it passed a stress test tells me they keyboard and mouse ports are at least ok and I have a Compaq USB PCI card I can use for USB if its USB bad. It's a Deskpro 6266. I've been wanting a Pentium II AGP system for a while now for 1997 to 1998 games that I feel are too new for the S7 MMX machine and too old for the Pentium III. He was asking 88 total shipping included but I talked him down to 80 even citing the minor case damage and the IO ports being untested and the work it would take to bring it back to factory condition. Not a bad deal considering there was already a wealth of information available about these machines and Deskpros are my preferred model of vintage computer.
Pentium II 266 MMX (Kalmath?)
256MB SDR (Maxed out)
10GB HDD (Not stock. Not in a 1998 system no way)
ESS 1869F Integrated Audio (No clue if that's any good. Will be replaced by my SB Live)
CD ROM Drive (unknown speed)
3.5 Inch Floppy
Unknown AGP 2x Video Card (Should be either a Rage Pro Turbo, a Matrox Millinium II, or a Matrox G200)
It should have 4 PCI and 2 ISA. There combo slots so only 4 cards may be installed at once. The AGP is nice but the caveat is that it uses a non-standard mounting bracket so only cards with top mounted VGA can work. I'll have to swap the bracket but that's not hard to do. It will either get my RiVA 128 or the card I just bought as era correct AGP video unless it has the G200 option. If it has the G200 I'll leave it configured as is. It will also get my half functional Voodoo2 (only works in GLIDE and with one texture unit disabled. So it runs like a 8MB Voodoo Graphics). This will be the base for my Windows 95 build. I'll likely use 2.1 OSR since that has the USB and AGP drivers built in if I remember correctly. I'll also install my second gen (non-gold ports) Soundblaster LIVE although the onboard audio has a rather beefy speaker backed a by Phillips amp). Since it's been brought up here before let me go into detail on what the deal with those half bracket Compaq video cards are just to dispel any standing mis-understandings. (Note: Picture from UXWBIlls video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhlYV836tUE)
Basically, they are normal AGP video cards with half height brackets missing the bottom portion that are dual width in reverse. Shown here is the Rage Pro Turbo option. It's a normal PCB. It just lacks the metal bracket like seen on my Rage IIc that I just bought shown in the second picture.
In theory any card that:
1.) Has a VGA port that is mounted on the top 33 percentish of the board
2.) Can have its bracket swapped out
3.) Does not extend lower than the AGP slot (it would hit the IO port below if it did)
could be retro-fitted into this system. Vice versa the Compaq cards could probably be fitted into any normal ATX machine. The bottom half of the bracket slot however would be blank unless you swap in a compatible full height bracket. Overall if you have basic computer knowledge and aren't trying to fit unreasonably newer cards with DVI ports on the bottom into it its not that restrictive as most 90s video cards fit the above 3 criteria.
Cyb3rst0rms Retro Hardware Warzone: https://discord.gg/jK8uvR4c
I used to own over 160 graphics card, I've since recovered from graphics card addiction