Retro 3dfx Voodoo1 and Voodoo5 5500/6000 Builds

Staying with Windows 98 SE. looked up some reviews and that solidified my decision:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/580/5

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auntjemima said:
That card is good for that generation. You won't be disappointed.
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it was a lot of Riga moral to get the drivers installed!

you have to have a copy of the original Audigy 2 ZS Installation CD and install the WDM drivers (as default through the GUI)

then run the Creative Driver Updater Utility to switch to the high performing VXD drivers!

spent an entire evening working through issues until i watched this video:

 
If too OT feel free to move.

I note you are still using older spinning disks... did you consider using SSD's? I know no support for TRIM an such. I've got a few Win98 & Win 2k rigs (and lappys for that matter) that I've been considering "upgrading" with SSD's as those spinners will go eventually.
 
Evil Scooter said:
If too OT feel free to move.

I note you are still using older spinning disks... did you consider using SSD's? I know no support for TRIM an such. I've got a few Win98 & Win 2k rigs (and lappys for that matter) that I've been considering "upgrading" with SSD's as those spinners will go eventually.
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doesn't feel pure enough to go SSDs in my humble opinion :-\

i already question how it seems i'm going with the almost, most high-end hardware for some of the builds

like it's unrealistic in 1997-98 for the Voodoo1 build to have 256MB of ram... 64MB was more practical...


also for the Voodoo5 build the Audigy 2 ZS was the best, i remember wanting those types of cards but could never afford them, so it's a little unrealistic and unauthentic of an experience even as it is?
 
erek said:
doesn't feel pure enough to go SSDs in my humble opinion :-\

i already question how it seems i'm going with the almost, most high-end hardware for some of the builds

like it's unrealistic in 1997-98 for the Voodoo1 build to have 256MB of ram... 64MB was more practical...


also for the Voodoo5 build the Audigy 2 ZS was the best, i remember wanting those types of cards but could never afford them, so it's a little unrealistic and unauthentic of an experience even as it is?
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I Hear ya. Some years back I bought a handful of SATA to ATA drive adapters as I was getting concerned about the age of the spinning disks in some of my older rigs.
 
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Evil Scooter said:
I Hear ya. Some years back I bought a handful of SATA to ATA drive adapters as I was getting concerned about the age of the spinning disks in some of my older rigs.
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i've got a WD400 for the Voodoo5 build, opinion? Evil Scooter

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"Both Fujitsu and Western Digital showed that they are absolutely able to build technically competitive hard drives. I still remember the staff of a local computer shop going on about several hard drive companies just because they were not selling high capacity drives. This review shows that there's more to hard drive technology than only high capacities. After all, the average size of IDE hard drives is still less than 30 GB."

Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ide-hard-drives-20-gb-platter,275-12.html
 
I still have the WD 80JB I used with my XP system, still worked fine last time I fired it up. I also second staying away from the IBM drives, they were really fast...but they all will die eventually. I had a lot of friends end up with dead drives, heck I even had my 18 GB SCSI Ultrastar die from the click only after about 20 hours of use. At least for my RMA I got a brand new 36 GB drive to replace it which was a massive upgrade.
 
Starfalcon said:
I still have the WD 80JB I used with my XP system, still worked fine last time I fired it up. I also second staying away from the IBM drives, they were really fast...but they all will die eventually. I had a lot of friends end up with dead drives, heck I even had my 18 GB SCSI Ultrastar die from the click only after about 20 hours of use. At least for my RMA I got a brand new 36 GB drive to replace it which was a massive upgrade.
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I used to run a lot of 18k SCSI drives back in the day. So many Adaptec HBAs.
 
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I recently fired up an old 40 gig with drive i took out of service about 15 years ago.
Came right up and tried booting windows xp.
I have some 450 meg conner hard drives that haven't been powered on since the 90s. I imagine the chances of these working are mutch lower.
 
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Here is my current Retro Gaming PC Build...

Running Windows 98SE with memory > 1GB RAM patch and allocation for a 512MB AGP Aperture size.

- MSI K7N2 Delta nForce 2 motherboard
- 2GB OCZ DDR 400Mhz 2-3-2-4 @1T in Dual Channel Mode
- Athlon XP 2800+ OCed to 2.5Ghz
- Gainward nVidia GeForce 6800GT AGP 3.0 256MB (Running nGlide in Windows 98SE and Windows XP for Glide Games)
- 160GB 7200 RPM IDE drive (Windows 98se, Windows XP and a data drive all partitioned)
- Creative Audigy 2 ZS, using SB16 emulation for DOS based games
- D Link Wireless G PCI card (managed to get it working in Windows 98SE too!)
- 56k Modem (why not for old times?)
- 3.5" Floppy Drive
- LG 16X DVD/CD Reader

I have an old Voodoo3 and an ATi Rage 3D PCI IIC for those games even older that require DOS to run and 3DFX, but my board is not a universal AGP slot. I have a Soyo KT880 which is, but it needs to be re-capped on the power phases to the CPU for it to work, as of right now it just turns on and nothing happens sadly. :(

EDIT: picture attached as promised...

583769_20220125_094546.jpg
 
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III_Slyflyer_III said:
I have an old Voodoo3 and an ATi Rage 3D PCI IIC for those games even older that require DOS to run and 3DFX, but my board is not a universal AGP slot. I have a Soyo KT880 which is, but it needs to be re-capped on the power phases to the CPU for it to work, as of right now it just turns on and nothing happens sadly. :(
Click to expand...

I do recapping if the capacitors are genuinely bad.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
I do recapping if the capacitors are genuinely bad.
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I'm pretty confident that is it based on issues of that timeframe. The capacitors of a very specific size on that motherboard are all "leaking" and puffed out. Most are on the CPU power phases; but some of the same size are elsewhere on the motherboard as well.

The motherboard started having powerup issues even back in 2006 when I took it out of service. If I turned power off to the mobo, it could sometimes take 30 minutes to get it to post again. Obviously, no luck now so many years later. Pretty much just a green light will turn on and it sits there stupid with 0 post screen and 0 mobo speaker noise.

I could get pictures later if you wanted to take a look...

I would much prefer to use that Soyo KT880 board for my retro rig for the universal AGP slot and it also had SATA ports! Arguably better than my nForce 2 board for features; the only downside was the AGP/PCI bus was not locked, so it would move with the FSB. Also I loved the fact it had custom CPU cooler mounting ability as I still have my old Zelman 9700 CU on that mobo. That thing was solid copper and kept those AMD CPUs nice and cool.

I guess once I got nGlide working on my current Retro PC, I kind of just sidelined the idea of re-capping my old Soyo KT880. It would have been fun to use my old Voodoo 3, but my FPS are maxed the way I am setup now... lol.

Let me know if ur interested in pictures I guess, can't hurt to explore the idea.
 
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III_Slyflyer_III said:
Let me know if ur interested in pictures I guess, can't hurt to explore the idea.
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Pictures would be good.

The sooner that bad caps come off the board the better, the electrolyte is seriously corrosive. The past several boards I've gotten in for recapping had so much leaked that it damaged nearby components and required removing and replacing some of them. I've had to wash boards half a dozen time to get the near invisible electrolyte off the PCB to stop it from shorting out different parts of the board. I keep a stock of generic *good enough for testing* caps to see if something is worth recapping. If it doesn't come up with those, it has more problems than caps.

They're especially fun when they're in screens and do stuff like this:


The Macintosh Portable is also a peach to work on. SMD, Axial and Radial caps buried next to everything.
 
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thedream829 said:
Would an SSD or Velociraptor work?
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i wanted to explore an original Raptor, but that's not IDE, apparently it's SATA

think my EPoX 8K3A is IDE only

---

I've got a Maxtor Atlas 15K II SCSI Ultra 320 drive, but my controller,LSI Logic LSI21320, isn't support in Win9x as far as i can tell
 
erek said:
i wanted to explore an original Raptor, but that's not IDE, apparently it's SATA

think my EPoX 8K3A is IDE only

---

I've got a Maxtor Atlas 15K II SCSI Ultra 320 drive, but my controller,LSI Logic LSI21320, isn't support in Win9x as far as i can tell
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You'll be wanting an Adaptec HBA.. they are supported all the way back to DOS... lol... ASPI!!!
 
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erek said:
i wanted to explore an original Raptor, but that's not IDE, apparently it's SATA
Click to expand...

There are ways to get SATA drives working on older IDE only boards.

There are IDE to SATA bridges, but they tend to be temperamental.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/154372204735

Another popular option at the time was Promise's Fasttrak line, like the S150 TX2, which gave you two SATA150 ports and two IDE channels on a PCI card. They seem to be hard to find these days, and hideously expensive though. I have a TX4310, but it doesn't seem to support Windows 9x like the S150 TX2 does. There are a couple of generic Chineseium controller cards with Silicom Image chipsets that did have Windows 9x support though.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/144376405585
https://www.ebay.com/itm/392055108019
 
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I set up many retro Pc's using compactflash cards as the hard drive. A CF to ide adapter is about 10 bucks. Cf cards are free if you have an old digital camera :)

I never tried to use this kind of setup to game on, but it worked great for computers that were in machine tools, cranes, factory floor applications etc.

If you want to install windows xp on a compact flash card, get an "industrial" card. WinXP will not allow you to install on removable media. The "industrial" cf cards do now show as removable to windows xp.

Not sure if win2000 or win9x versions do that check. Dos doesn't.
 
Evil Scooter said:
You'll be wanting an Adaptec HBA.. they are supported all the way back to DOS... lol... ASPI!!!
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those Adaptecs were the most desired, but so expensive back in the day :(

i never got one... had 2 LSIs and one time an Mylex AcceleRAID 352 but unfortunately had two mismatch (generations) Seagate cheetah 15K.2 and 15K.3 drives, so the performance was horrible in RAID0 on a 32-bit 33MHz PCI bus
 

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i tend to use kingspec or transcend IDE SSDs when repairing older things. or an IDE DOM if you have a very tight space and only need a few GB.
 
Zedicus said:
i tend to use kingspec or transcend IDE SSDs when repairing older things. or an IDE DOM if you have a very tight space and only need a few GB.
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the flash storage media makes the build feel weird and non-era appropriate for me :( just can't do it
 
erek said:
the flash storage media makes the build feel weird and non-era appropriate for me :( just can't do it
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understandable, a lot of the junk i have to maintain its not an issue, old printers, an old windows CE navi, old computers hooked to DOT MATRIX printers, a computer hooked to an alignment rack. and while i might miss the sound of the thrashing HD, no one else cares. plus, in some of those environments, the SSD is more likely to survive the conditions better anyway.
 
erek said:
those Adaptecs were the most desired, but so expensive back in the day :(

i never got one... had 2 LSIs and one time an Mylex AcceleRAID 352 but unfortunately had two mismatch (generations) Seagate cheetah 15K.2 and 15K.3 drives, so the performance was horrible in RAID0 on a 32-bit 33MHz PCI bus
Click to expand...
I had bins full of them... which I just recycled a little bit ago. Same with 15k drives... I might still have a few laying about... lol.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
Here is my current Retro Gaming PC Build...

Running Windows 98SE with memory > 1GB RAM patch and allocation for a 512MB AGP Aperture size.

- MSI K7N2 Delta nForce 2 motherboard
- 2GB OCZ DDR 400Mhz 2-3-2-4 @1T in Dual Channel Mode
- Athlon XP 2800+ OCed to 2.5Ghz
- Gainward nVidia GeForce 6800GT AGP 3.0 256MB (Running nGlide in Windows 98SE and Windows XP for Glide Games)
- 160GB 7200 RPM IDE drive (Windows 98se, Windows XP and a data drive all partitioned)
- Creative Audigy 2 ZS, using SB16 emulation for DOS based games
- D Link Wireless G PCI card (managed to get it working in Windows 98SE too!)
- 56k Modem (why not for old times?)
- 3.5" Floppy Drive
- LG 16X DVD/CD Reader

I have an old Voodoo3 and an ATi Rage 3D PCI IIC for those games even older that require DOS to run and 3DFX, but my board is not a universal AGP slot. I have a Soyo KT880 which is, but it needs to be re-capped on the power phases to the CPU for it to work, as of right now it just turns on and nothing happens sadly. :(

EDIT: picture attached as promised...

View attachment 436341
Click to expand...
The MSI K7N2 is such a great board (all variants)...
 
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erek said:
i've got a WD400 for the Voodoo5 build, opinion? Evil Scooter

View attachment 433368

View attachment 433369

"Both Fujitsu and Western Digital showed that they are absolutely able to build technically competitive hard drives. I still remember the staff of a local computer shop going on about several hard drive companies just because they were not selling high capacity drives. This review shows that there's more to hard drive technology than only high capacities. After all, the average size of IDE hard drives is still less than 30 GB."

Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ide-hard-drives-20-gb-platter,275-12.html
Click to expand...
Those IBM death-stars were quick drives.
 
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Zyklon808 said:
Definitely let us all know it's status when it arrives!
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got 2D to boot, but 3D its having some difficulty. wonder if it's just dirty or something, this while trying to launch quake3 arena. machine hard locks

1645148465831.png
 
erek said:
got 2D to boot, but 3D its having some difficulty. wonder if it's just dirty or something, this while trying to launch quake3 arena. machine hard locks
Click to expand...

That the Voodoo5?

Could be a few things:

- Bad caps.
- Failed BGA joints on the VSA-100.
- Bad RAM.
- Dead VSA-100 ASIC.
- Random component knocked off the board somewhere.
 
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Sad to see a Voodoo5 with such an issue but luckily these days there are many people who could fix it. Best of luck figuring it out! (likely memory or VSA-100 related as already mentioned by others)
 
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