Retro 3dfx Voodoo1 and Voodoo5 5500/6000 Builds

erek

erek

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Over Christmas Break I finally got into a proper enough mindset (adjusting to the peace and quiet of my new residence / first ever house) to start on some rough draft builds surrounding the 3dfx Voodoo1 (acquired on these forums), Voodoo5 5500 (acquired on these forums) and the Voodoo5 6000.

My first goal is to experience the night and day difference from CPU Only acceleration and the Voodoo in Tomb Raider 1. Initially I was going to try to have the Voodoo1 and Voodoo5s all in one build:

Draft Voodoo5 Build Specs

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (Barton/512K)
RAM: 512MB
MOBO: EPoX 8K3A
Windows 98 SE
PSU: Antec 380W (Earth Watts)
Monitor: ViewSonic VP140
HDD: Maxtor WD400
Sound: Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS
GPUs: Voodoo5 5500 & 6000



Q3A Timedemo demo001 = 76.1 FPS average


But after some long discussion online with a fellow enthusiast and some other commentary I remembered my Childhood PC which is a HP 4443 would be much more appropriate for the Voodoo1. This PC has a lot of sentimental value to me coming from my dad who dug it out of a dumpster and commissioned for it's resurrection before giving it to me as a gift back in 1998. Also the CRT is an eMachines (Walmart bought) from my grandmother, so giving this machine another lease on life and proper burial is very meaningful. I learned a lot on this machine and without it wouldn't be this far along in life and career.

Draft Voodoo1 Build Specs (HP 4443)
CPU: AMD K6-2 333 MHz
RAM: 2x 128MB
MOBO: ASUS SPAX-M
HDD: Seagate Medalist 3GB
Monitor: eMachines 15" Color CRT (1024x768 Max)
Windows 98 SE
Sound: Soundblaster Vibra16XV ISA
GPU: 3dfx Voodoo 1 (Diamond Monster 4MB)



Tomb Raider 1 runs pretty well with the V1, but does dip to the teens sometimes in FPS.


(These are all drafts still, especially the Voodoo5 build. Both builds need better Sound boards. Awaiting the Voodoo1 Passthrough cable.)

I just want to thank the Hard|OCP community and those who i've dealt with to acquire the Voodoo1 and Voodoo5 5500 that i'm finally making proper builds surrounding them to enjoy and experience an era of 3D gaming just before my time! (my first 3D accelerator was an nVidia GeForce2 MX / MX200. never owned a 3dfx before).
Had an awesome time keeping busy, scrounging, and scavenging for legacy parts in my affects. Just awesome to see what a great game Tomb Raider 1 was, it surprised me, just had to tweak my controls for WASD, etc.

Thank you all
 
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RogueTrip

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Welcome back.

Does that HP machine cache all the ram ok? I remember having a socket 7 board that had less performance after so much ram was installed.

I bought alot old hardware including 3dfx cards years ago. I did sell a set of STB voodoo II's last year to a member on [H].

Lately I have been thinking of assembling a Pentium 233MHz w/MMX with a Voodoo 1 and AWE64 Gold. Dunno what to use a primary video card. maybe a G400max or a TNT2.


Got my Pentium 3 1400s build just hanging out in the basement with a Geforce FX3000 flashed to a FX5900 and a SB Live with 64gb SSD. Need to get that going again soon.
 
erek

erek

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RogueTrip said:
Welcome back.

Does that HP machine cache all the ram ok? I remember having a socket 7 board that had less performance after so much ram was installed.


Lately I have been thinking of assembling a Pentium 233MHz w/MMX with a Voodoo 1 and AWE64 Gold. Dunno what to use a primary video card. maybe a G400max or a TNT2.
Click to expand...

Don't know about "the caching of the ram", i suppose it's performing OK, but don't know.

I was considering getting an AWE64 Gold ISA to replace the Soundblaster Vibra16 in that box.


not sure what's best as a sound card for the Athlon XP Voodoo5 build. Any recommendations?
 
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Dr.Nut

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I bought a NIB Canopus Pure 3D 6MB a few years back because I wanted one so badly in 95 or 96 (can't remember exactly) to play Tomb Raider on my Pentium 90 oc'ed to 100MHZ. It wasn't as speedy as I had hoped, but it did look pretty. I'll fire it up again and try out the Glide version of Descent 2.
 
erek

erek

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GiGaBiTe said:
Recap that V5 5500 before those shitty 90s electrolytics go off, its not fun cleaning that mess up.
Click to expand...
That Gigabyte board you serviced years ago needs recapped again too :(

do you send PayPal Invoices at all?
 
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SamirD

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If any of the games you are wanting to play are using midi for music/sound, I would HIGHLY recommend the awe32 with the wavetable option and then get the yamaha wavetable for it. This is what we had on our Cyrix p166+ build back in the day and the music from decent was so mind-blowing and captivating that I just wanted to record it to wav just to listen to. This was when paired with the Cambridge Soundworks Microworks before Creative bought the company and cheapened everything.
 
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GiGaBiTe

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erek said:
That Gigabyte board you serviced years ago needs recapped again too :(
Click to expand...

I remember you posting a pic of it awhile back where other caps had started to fail on it. I still have that second dead board in my scrap bin, been harvesting parts off of it to fix other stuff.

erek said:
do you send PayPal Invoices at all?
Click to expand...

All the time.
 
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erek

erek

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Got my 3dfx Voodoo Pass through cable in today! Working solidly for the 3dfx Voodoo1 Rig!!!

passthrough.jpg
 
Starfalcon

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Well plus the Gravis was only supported on a few games. The good old days when you buy some top end piece of hardware and a year later it is EOL and no longer supported.
 
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Dan_D

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thedream829 said:
I wish I kept all of my old rigs. Sighs.
Click to expand...
I'm glad I didn't. I'd need a separate room in the house just to store them all. Plus, I often sell off the parts to help offset the cost of newer ones. In fact my current build is literally the only one that's ever co-existed with the previous one. Although, I did have to put the original GPU back in the old one as the 3090 was moved over to the current one. The primary reason I did this is because custom water cooling with hard tubing takes time to build out and I wanted a smoother transition rather than a day or two without a primary rig. It allowed me to take my time. I'm probably going to sell off most of the previous rig as I don't have a use for it.

I do have some parts of some of these rigs. I still have my Skulltrail board and CPU(s) combo. It's the coolest thing I've ever gotten to keep as a reviewer and it served as my gaming rig for several years. This is very unusual for me as I tend to build a new machine or heavily upgrade my machine annually.
 
w1retap

w1retap

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Very nice Erek. I like the Voodoo setups and the Ultrasound cards. For the Ultrasound cards, those usually need a Baby-AT case, or a long enough ATX/M-ATX case that doesn't have drive cages in the way with enough length to it.

Here's mine and how it fits in the standard size Baby-AT case:
gpa3C0D.jpg

K5yYRtL.jpg
 
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thedream829

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Dan_D said:
I'm glad I didn't. I'd need a separate room in the house just to store them all. Plus, I often sell off the parts to help offset the cost of newer ones. In fact my current build is literally the only one that's ever co-existed with the previous one. Although, I did have to put the original GPU back in the old one as the 3090 was moved over to the current one. The primary reason I did this is because custom water cooling with hard tubing takes time to build out and I wanted a smoother transition rather than a day or two without a primary rig. It allowed me to take my time. I'm probably going to sell off most of the previous rig as I don't have a use for it.

I do have some parts of some of these rigs. I still have my Skulltrail board and CPU(s) combo. It's the coolest thing I've ever gotten to keep as a reviewer and it served as my gaming rig for several years. This is very unusual for me as I tend to build a new machine or heavily upgrade my machine annually.
Click to expand...

I always tell myself I'll upgrade my rig but I never do. I end up building brand new every time. Only thing I do upgrade is the GPU. I gave all my old rigs to friends and family members instead of selling them off.

Skulltrail was super badass. I remember I wanted that so badly.
 
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Dan_D

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thedream829 said:
I always tell myself I'll upgrade my rig but I never do. I end up building brand new every time. Only thing I do upgrade is the GPU. I gave all my old rigs to friends and family members instead of selling them off.

Skulltrail was super badass. I remember I wanted that so badly.
Click to expand...
Due to things like the cost of the case and watercooling hardware, I upgrade rather than build entirely new. This time I did it because I wanted to make a case change and the new case wouldn't support my old radiators. Plus, it had the above mentioned benefits of allowing me more time to do the upgrade, etc.
 
erek

erek

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GiGaBiTe said:
I might have a couple of older cases that will fit full length cards if you need one. I can also recap your AMD board again if you want.
Click to expand...
this HP 4443 is my Childhood PC from my dad and the CRT came from my grandmother, so sentimental value is high. don't want to transplant or modify the build, just upgrade the existing machine


need some time regarding the recap job
 
erek

erek

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Regarding the Voodoo5 build:

"So Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS (2004) isn't considered too new for period appropriateness with the Voodoo5 (2000)?"

Re: "Actually the Audigy 2 is still very close to the Soundblaster Live although it came out years later. The sound quality in games one the best you can get.



So actually nothing speak against using it."

https://www.voodooalert.de/board/fo...ooalert-vorgestellt/&postID=481988#post481988
 
w1retap

w1retap

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Thanks.

BTW, I use a SB Audigy2 ZS in my Voodoo 5 build as well. It's an excellent card.
 
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TheGardenTool

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erek said:
Regarding the Voodoo5 build:

"So Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS (2004) isn't considered too new for period appropriateness with the Voodoo5 (2000)?"

Re: "Actually the Audigy 2 is still very close to the Soundblaster Live although it came out years later. The sound quality in games one the best you can get.



So actually nothing speak against using it."

https://www.voodooalert.de/board/forum/index.php?thread/21552-sämtliche-3dfx-pcs-von-voodooalert-vorgestellt/&postID=481988#post481988
Click to expand...

I think the dream card would be an Aureal Vortex SQ2500 based card but at the same time A3D 2.0 wasn’t as widely used as EAX.
 
Starfalcon

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Yeah I got a SB AWE64 gold back in the day when they were worthless, think I paid the guy $10 plus shipping for it. No plans to let that leave my collection as it wont be easy to replace.
 
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GiGaBiTe

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erek said:
they're very expensive now :(

https://www.ebay.com/itm/115163523966?hash=item1ad047eb7e:g:FwUAAOSwP8RgfcLF&LH_BIN=1
Click to expand...

Yeesh. I used to pick up old Dell Pentium 4 systems with those cards in them all the time, they were a factory option in many of their desktops like the GX2x0 series. I always pulled the cards and junked them though because they were a nightmare to get working properly for little benefit. The drivers sucked, and you had to use 3rd party drivers for Vista and onward due to Creative stripping advertised features from the cards in the drivers. They were also bloated, buggy and caused excessive CPU usage in an era where you couldn't afford it. The Pentium 4 was already terrible, bogging it down with crappy drivers wasn't a great benefit.
 
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erek

erek

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The audigy 2 zs for the voodoo5 / Athlon XP build is supposed to arrive today. I have been pondering. Is windows 98se or windows XP the best operating system for this? It has 512MB of Ram which is a lot in 98se but small for xP (does it matter?)

(also hearing recommendations for Windows 2000)
 
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