I can imagine that somewhere out there is a late socket A board, probably low end, that has a dummy or token 4 Pin connector on it, purely to reduce support volume asking "Where do I plug the 4 pin" as it was produced when all PSU were getting the extra 4 pin, but was mainly an old 5V design.

PD2JK wrote on 2023-08-11, 16:55:

Thanks, now I want to know the power draw on such a P4 connector. 😉

IIRC its 192 watts max draw on that connector, but I think its also got a lot to do with what the VRM can handle via that connector. (8 Amps per +12v wire for a total of 192watts max, An Athlon isnt going to get anywhere close to this)

Its a good idea to not get this P4 ATX plug confused with the 4 pin EPS plug which has very different ratings !

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-08-11, 17:51:

I can imagine that somewhere out there is a late socket A board, probably low end, that has a dummy or token 4 Pin connector on it, purely to reduce support volume asking "Where do I plug the 4 pin" as it was produced when all PSU were getting the extra 4 pin, but was mainly an old 5V design.

Oh im sure there was ..I can imagine it coming from some no name company out of Taiwan 🤣.

CrFr wrote on 2023-08-04, 19:23:

Village Tronic MPDD Pro card (Trident Blade XP). Probably shit card, but I bought it mainly for being unusual (at least I haven't seen one before). Might be good for late 90's OS9 machine.

My initial hypothesis was correct. This turned out to be total waste of money. Drivers on mac are so poor that it doesn't offer almost any 3D acceleration at all. Tried Unreal Tournament, only ran in software mode. Quake 2 ran in OpenGL mode, but unit of measurement was not the usual "frames per second", instead it was "seconds per frame". Frame rate was something like 0.1fps.

Really a shame. VGA output quality on this thing is outstanding. Really enjoyed it on my CRT. I guess this is more business oriented multi monitor card than gaming.

CrFr wrote on 2023-08-11, 18:00:

CrFr wrote on 2023-08-04, 19:23:

Village Tronic MPDD Pro card (Trident Blade XP). Probably shit card, but I bought it mainly for being unusual (at least I haven't seen one before). Might be good for late 90's OS9 machine.

My initial hypothesis was correct. This turned out to be total waste of money. Drivers on mac are so poor that it doesn't offer almost any 3D acceleration at all. Tried Unreal Tournament, only ran in software mode. Quake 2 ran in OpenGL mode, but unit of measurement was not the usual "frames per second", instead it was "seconds per frame". Frame rate was something like 0.1fps.

Really a shame. VGA output quality on this thing is outstanding. Really enjoyed it on my CRT. I guess this is more business oriented multi monitor card than gaming.

Are there good Windows 9x drivers? If the Blade 3D shares similarities it should be a good 98se card.

CrFr wrote on 2023-08-11, 18:00:

CrFr wrote on 2023-08-04, 19:23:

Village Tronic MPDD Pro card (Trident Blade XP). Probably shit card, but I bought it mainly for being unusual (at least I haven't seen one before). Might be good for late 90's OS9 machine.

My initial hypothesis was correct. This turned out to be total waste of money. Drivers on mac are so poor that it doesn't offer almost any 3D acceleration at all. Tried Unreal Tournament, only ran in software mode. Quake 2 ran in OpenGL mode, but unit of measurement was not the usual "frames per second", instead it was "seconds per frame". Frame rate was something like 0.1fps.

Really a shame. VGA output quality on this thing is outstanding. Really enjoyed it on my CRT. I guess this is more business oriented multi monitor card than gaming.

Are there good Windows 9x drivers? If the Blade 3D shares similarities it should be a good 98se card.

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-08-11, 14:54:

Something to keep in mind should your MSI board ever kick the bucket. […]
Show full quote

gamefan_851 wrote on 2023-08-11, 12:45:

Thanks a lot for the psu recommendation. […]
Show full quote

asdf53 wrote on 2023-08-11, 11:54:

PSU recommendation: Antec Earthwatts 380 from 2007. They are already 80 Plus certified so very efficient, but still have enough power on the 5V and 3.3V rails (130W combined) which is rare. And also has the 12V connector for newer boards. I use this with an Athlon 1400 and a Barton 3200+.

Thanks a lot for the psu recommendation.

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-08-11, 12:15:

I have a Topower 600Watt PSU with 57 Amps on the +5v Rail, 28 Amps on the 3.3 rail, 260watts combined ...its a Pentium4 PSU IIRC but has -5v and the AUX +12v cable, really nice PSU. Put it through testing recently and surprisingly it handled the tests wonderfully, was expecting some droop on the +12v rail but none at all.

Currently its being used in a Barton 3200+ build !

Thanks for your input as well. Any advice on that topic is more than welcome because getting the right psu can be a bit tricky.

Something to keep in mind should your MSI board ever kick the bucket.

There are a number of late Athlon XP boards that have the 4 pin +12v connector and its worth seeking one of these boards out as the +12v connector makes getting a PSU for Athlon setups as easy as grabbing any ATX PSU . .even modern ones will work as long as they have that 4 pin 12v plug.

As an example the Abit NF7-S 2.0 has the 4 pin socket, you can see it in the link below as the little 4pin socket next to the ATX connector, these boards seem to be fairly easy to obtain on Evilbay at reasonable prices.

http://hw-museum.cz/mb/12/abit-nf7-v2-0

This is also the board I use as its a rock solid Barton board, some here might not agree as its got a Nforce chipset and has a few issues with DOS compatibility due to that, but for a Win98se/WinXP box its pretty much perfect. (Not sure why people would use a Barton CPU for DOS .. its overkill)

Thanks for the info. That is good to know that there might be some boards that are not that picky concering the power supply. That is very valuable information.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-08-11, 16:23:

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-08-11, 14:54:

Something to keep in mind should your MSI board ever kick the bucket. […]
Show full quote

Something to keep in mind should your MSI board ever kick the bucket.

There are a number of late Athlon XP boards that have the 4 pin +12v connector and its worth seeking one of these boards out as the +12v connector makes getting a PSU for Athlon setups as easy as grabbing any ATX PSU . .even modern ones will work as long as they have that 4 pin 12v plug.

As an example the Abit NF7-S 2.0 has the 4 pin socket, you can see it in the link below as the little 4pin socket next to the ATX connector, these boards seem to be fairly easy to obtain on Evilbay at reasonable prices.

http://hw-museum.cz/mb/12/abit-nf7-v2-0

This is also the board I use as its a rock solid Barton board, some here might not agree as its got a Nforce chipset and has a few issues with DOS compatibility due to that, but for a Win98se/WinXP box its pretty much perfect. (Not sure why people would use a Barton CPU for DOS .. its overkill)

It is not that straight forward, unfortunately. What I’ve read about the subject recently, most sA boards with P4 are still very 5V heavy including most nForce2 boards.

What I’ve gathered, the known boards which actually can rely on 12V rail are ABIT NF7, Gigabyte 7NNXP and the MSI KT880 Delta. This is also the reason I decided to go the refurb route: my Epox has P4, but most likely still relies heavily to 5V and I can later choose and test freely the boards I like to use in the system.

also thanks for the info that the solution is not that straight forward but it is still goo to know there might be some solutions. I was aware from the start that getting a Socket A will be bit tricky to get it to work. I am up to the challenge luckily.

ODwilly wrote on 2023-08-11, 19:48:

CrFr wrote on 2023-08-11, 18:00:

CrFr wrote on 2023-08-04, 19:23:

Village Tronic MPDD Pro card (Trident Blade XP). Probably shit card, but I bought it mainly for being unusual (at least I haven't seen one before). Might be good for late 90's OS9 machine.

My initial hypothesis was correct. This turned out to be total waste of money. Drivers on mac are so poor that it doesn't offer almost any 3D acceleration at all. Tried Unreal Tournament, only ran in software mode. Quake 2 ran in OpenGL mode, but unit of measurement was not the usual "frames per second", instead it was "seconds per frame". Frame rate was something like 0.1fps.

Really a shame. VGA output quality on this thing is outstanding. Really enjoyed it on my CRT. I guess this is more business oriented multi monitor card than gaming.

Are there good Windows 9x drivers? If the Blade 3D shares similarities it should be a good 98se card.

Using it on PC would require flashing the card firmware, if suitable firmware even exist. I'm not going to risk bricking the card experimenting with it, I'll just keep it in my collection as it is.

My float is twitching...

What is a lot with an original Matrox Millennium PCI, Trident 3D Image AGP, and a couple of Savage 4 AGP gonna be worth these days?

Lots of caveats there. The Matrox cards are nice for DOS compatibility, but even those are not immune to strange issues that can occur in older hardware that simply went unnoticed.

My Matrox Millennium displays vertical bars and doesn't always fit the screen

Yeah might let this one slip by, I'm thinking the Matrox might be nice in an early Pentium, but the other stuff I'll run probably once and not really give a home to. Looking like the deal might pan out to about the same as buying the cheapest one of each on eBay anyway.

Today I received a small lot. 90€

The highlight are two Voodoo 3 AGP, a nice looking 3D Prophet 8500 LE and a YMF724. Everything seems to work.

The lot also contained 6/7 other graphics cards (agp/PCI/pcie). An AM3 motherboard, 30+ ram sticks and some cables.

I bought this Soltek Qbic barebone pc in mint condition, motherboard is sl-b7a-f socket 462 with nforce2 IGP chipset.
it came in original box with manuals and of course bulged caps.

Oh ... so I went for it.
GPU's :

• Voodoo3 2000 AGP
• 3dlabs Oxygen VX1
• 2x Ati rage IIC
• MGA-G100A-E
• Dragon 4000 Banshee (3dfx) - artifacts in bios
• Savage 3D (Titan 5000)
• S3 Trio64V+ PCI
• Gainward 6600GT 256MB (AGP 8x)
• GF FX5200, needs caps but posts
• Guillemot 3D Prophet DDR+DVI (Geforce256, no post)
• 2x Voodoo1, have not tested

Three PSU's
Half a dozen working IDE HDD's. No idea about sizes.
A load of coolers, mice etc
A couple optical drives
3pcs Pentium4 1,6A GHz and one Celeron 2,4GHz

Motherboards:

• Asrock N68-GS, supposedly broken. AM2+/AM3
• Gigabyte K8VM800-rh Socket 754 motherboard, supposedly broken. Caps are gonsky
• Asrock K7S8X. SocketA SiS 746FX Has CPU and RAM

Complete systems without storage. Not have has been tested yet, no idea about CPU. Just listed mobo/chipset and if something other nice

• Digital personal workstation 500A. Has some nifty stuff
• Fujitsu Scenic-T i815E
• Abit AN-M2HD AM2 with GF GT330
• IBM Aptiva 2170, SS7. Diamond S2 vision 968
• Epox P55 VP3 SS7, GF2 MX200
• Trigon 5114Vu Via MVP4, SS7. Elsa Gloria Synergy-8 (3Dlabs permedia)
• Kaimei KM-T5-T1, 430TX sockett7. Some MGA gfx with both D15 and HD15
• Asrock M3N78D AM3, some sapphire
• MSI KT6V, SocketA. This one had a PNY Quadro FX VCQFX3000G in it
• A new in box, possibly never used machine with Abit KU8 (ULI M1689 )Socket 754 with a Matrox G550

This cost me 7hrs of time (driving) and 350e. Not really sure if it was worth it.

Depends on Finlands gas prices. But I think it was worth it.

If the Voodoos turn out to be OK. 😉

oh2ftu wrote on 2023-08-13, 15:37:

This cost me 7hrs of time (driving) and 350e. Not really sure if it was worth it.

Speaking as someone who once spent 10 hours of driving time for a CRT monitor and a 286 desktop, I think you did fine. 😉

oh2ftu wrote on 2023-08-13, 15:37:

Oh ... so I went for it. GPU's : […]
Show full quote

Oh ... so I went for it.
GPU's :

• Voodoo3 2000 AGP
• 3dlabs Oxygen VX1
• 2x Ati rage IIC
• MGA-G100A-E
• Dragon 4000 Banshee (3dfx) - artifacts in bios
• Savage 3D (Titan 5000)
• S3 Trio64V+ PCI
• Gainward 6600GT 256MB (AGP 8x)
• GF FX5200, needs caps but posts
• Guillemot 3D Prophet DDR+DVI (Geforce256, no post)
• 2x Voodoo1, have not tested

Three PSU's
Half a dozen working IDE HDD's. No idea about sizes.
A load of coolers, mice etc
A couple optical drives
3pcs Pentium4 1,6A GHz and one Celeron 2,4GHz

Motherboards:

• Asrock N68-GS, supposedly broken. AM2+/AM3
• Gigabyte K8VM800-rh Socket 754 motherboard, supposedly broken. Caps are gonsky
• Asrock K7S8X. SocketA SiS 746FX Has CPU and RAM

Complete systems without storage. Not have has been tested yet, no idea about CPU. Just listed mobo/chipset and if something other nice

• Digital personal workstation 500A. Has some nifty stuff
• Fujitsu Scenic-T i815E
• Abit AN-M2HD AM2 with GF GT330
• IBM Aptiva 2170, SS7. Diamond S2 vision 968
• Epox P55 VP3 SS7, GF2 MX200
• Trigon 5114Vu Via MVP4, SS7. Elsa Gloria Synergy-8 (3Dlabs permedia)
• Kaimei KM-T5-T1, 430TX sockett7. Some MGA gfx with both D15 and HD15
• Asrock M3N78D AM3, some sapphire
• MSI KT6V, SocketA. This one had a PNY Quadro FX VCQFX3000G in it
• A new in box, possibly never used machine with Abit KU8 (ULI M1689 )Socket 754 with a Matrox G550

This cost me 7hrs of time (driving) and 350e. Not really sure if it was worth it.

That was definitely worth it
the 3D labs GVX1, the digital workstation & the voodoos 🤤

oh2ftu wrote on 2023-08-13, 15:37:

Oh ... so I went for it. GPU's : […]
Show full quote

Oh ... so I went for it.
GPU's :

• Voodoo3 2000 AGP
• 3dlabs Oxygen VX1
• 2x Ati rage IIC
• MGA-G100A-E
• Dragon 4000 Banshee (3dfx) - artifacts in bios
• Savage 3D (Titan 5000)
• S3 Trio64V+ PCI
• Gainward 6600GT 256MB (AGP 8x)
• GF FX5200, needs caps but posts
• Guillemot 3D Prophet DDR+DVI (Geforce256, no post)
• 2x Voodoo1, have not tested

Three PSU's
Half a dozen working IDE HDD's. No idea about sizes.
A load of coolers, mice etc
A couple optical drives
3pcs Pentium4 1,6A GHz and one Celeron 2,4GHz

Motherboards:

• Asrock N68-GS, supposedly broken. AM2+/AM3
• Gigabyte K8VM800-rh Socket 754 motherboard, supposedly broken. Caps are gonsky
• Asrock K7S8X. SocketA SiS 746FX Has CPU and RAM

Complete systems without storage. Not have has been tested yet, no idea about CPU. Just listed mobo/chipset and if something other nice

• Digital personal workstation 500A. Has some nifty stuff
• Fujitsu Scenic-T i815E
• Abit AN-M2HD AM2 with GF GT330
• IBM Aptiva 2170, SS7. Diamond S2 vision 968
• Epox P55 VP3 SS7, GF2 MX200
• Trigon 5114Vu Via MVP4, SS7. Elsa Gloria Synergy-8 (3Dlabs permedia)
• Kaimei KM-T5-T1, 430TX sockett7. Some MGA gfx with both D15 and HD15
• Asrock M3N78D AM3, some sapphire
• MSI KT6V, SocketA. This one had a PNY Quadro FX VCQFX3000G in it
• A new in box, possibly never used machine with Abit KU8 (ULI M1689 )Socket 754 with a Matrox G550

This cost me 7hrs of time (driving) and 350e. Not really sure if it was worth it.

Didn't your wife decide that you didn't want that lot though? Do you have a nice couch? 🤣

weedeewee wrote on 2023-08-13, 17:26:

That was definitely worth it
the 3D labs GVX1

What do you consider that to be worth? I think I have 3 in boxes, 2 of which are sealed. Can't check for a few days though.

debs3759 wrote on 2023-08-13, 18:22:

weedeewee wrote on 2023-08-13, 17:26:

That was definitely worth it
the 3D labs GVX1

What do you consider that to be worth? I think I have 3 in boxes, 2 of which are sealed. Can't check for a few days though.

You lucky ....
I know it was a pricey card back when it was still new. Wonder how much that price would be in todays currency.
edit: wait.. it's a VX1. dangit 🙁 nevermind, I'm misremembering which exact 3dlabs card it was.