Reviving an old 3DFX powered PC

[TorxT3D]

in on vintage pc crew thread.

ive actually been thinking about building a win98se box, and getting back my win 3.1 486 laptop.
i need those memories back asap, and to keep.

love this thread, you guys arent the only ones that actually interested in reviving old hardware.

 

[Bop]

That's great. Did you have a pure3d ii to hook up or the pure 3d original? Post some pictures once you get it going

Sure do, took some pics of that and the vid card collection in general:

The Canopus Collection:

Metabyte Wicked 3D (I think I have the eyeSCREAM H3D glasses still)

And some TRIBES!

 

[H-street]

awesome!!! did your 2500 come with the witchdoctor cable? can you take a good picture of just the cable itself? (i had to make mine)

 

[Vengance_01]

wow this thread brings back memories! I remember my old Voodoo Rush P1 133MHZ rig. I also remember my Kyro II card. It was not haft bad! Thats about when this sickness/addiction started!

 

[JustLong]

If I recall everything rigth below
That work just fine but just keep in mind that Bios and disk size play key roll in making everthing work.
Depend on the OS and your Bios have there a hard disks as practically limited the maximum partition size.
MSDos 7.1 with FAT32 137GB Windows 95B to WinME
MSDos 7.0 with FAT16 32GB Windows 95
MSDos 6 FAT16 2GB
MSDos 5 FAT16 512MB
MSDOS 4/7 and later allow FDISK to partition hard disks up to 2 gigabytes (GB) in size. However, the MS-DOS file allocation table (FAT) file system can support only 2 GB per partition. Because of this fact, a hard disk between 2+ and 8 GB in size must be broken down into multiple partitions, each of which does not exceed 2 GB with a max of 8GB as in one Primary and one Extended partition with max of 3 Logical partitions if I call rigth.
It also depend on motherboard bios in some caes you have no option but use a drive overlay software if your computer's BIOS is too old to recognize hard drives over a certain size. Other option is get a lot newer EIDE, ATA or SCSI controller depend on Slot bus you need which can be ISA, VLB, PCI slot.
MSDos 4 FAT16 128MB
MSDos 3 FAT16 32MB
MSDos 2 FAT12 16MB

Let also keep in mind that min older game installer did not work with big drivespace so keep that in mind as well

Thanks, this is a lot of good information to post. Nothing new to me though, which is why I was planning on just going with Win98 SE using a FAT32X partition. Also the hardware I have that will support 9x is a PIII 1Ghz and I'm going to use an 80GB SSD so I'm not too worried about hardware support.

 

[Garrgoyle]

in on vintage pc crew thread.

ive actually been thinking about building a win98se box, and getting back my win 3.1 486 laptop.
i need those memories back asap, and to keep.

love this thread, you guys arent the only ones that actually interested in reviving old hardware.

Yeah this thread rocks. Unfortunately I don't have 'any' old hardware anymore that isn't too broken to fix. But this thread has inspired me to want to crank out my old windows me os to see the old memories.

 

[Roach III]

I have a shop full of old P1, P2, P3, and some Athlon stuff. I've been repairing and upgrading them here lately for a computer yard sale. Everything must go!

 

[fps4ever]

I have my Win98/DOS pc boxed up if I ever want to get it cranked up again. Heck, I even have the PATA 250GB hard drive full of games ready to plug-n-play. If I remember correctly it's a PIII 1.4GHZ plus 3DFX Voodoo3 3000!

 

[virtuald]

Great thread.... you guys have inspired me to dig through old boxes for parts.
What I have put together is almost exactly the pc I had in mid 2000!

Abit BX6 v2 motherboard
PIII 650
I could only find 512meg of PC100
Diamond Viper v770 TNT2 AGP card
Diamond Monster 3D Voodoo 1 card
SoundBlaster AWE 64 Gold
Win98SE

 

[jojo69]

I have my Win98/DOS pc boxed up if I ever want to get it cranked up again. Heck, I even have the PATA 250GB hard drive full of games ready to plug-n-play. If I remember correctly it's a PIII 1.4GHZ plus 3DFX Voodoo3 3000!

Is that the PIII-S with the 512 cache?

I still maintain a number of socket 370 setups in legacy CNC driver roles, I have found that cache size is more important than those last couple hundred MHz

The PIII-S 1400, 512, 133, 1.4x kicks the living snot out of most of the P4s I have seen.

 

[fps4ever]

Is that the PIII-S with the 512 cache?

I still maintain a number of socket 370 setups in legacy CNC driver roles, I have found that cache size is more important than those last couple hundred MHz

The PIII-S 1400, 512, 133, 1.4x kicks the living snot out of most of the P4s I have seen.

Yes it is. I purposley got it for my retro build (I think it cost me $20) plus a motherboard that could OC. If I remember correctly I had it up to 1.7GHz at one point? Those things were uber fast back then!

 

[jojo69]

fokking BEAST dude! I once got one for $15

which I fully expect to pay for a 1366 gulftown someday...lol

 

[KatalDT]

Woo, Blastside!

I used to camp at my entrance as a heavy, and launch mortars all the way across and into the enemy team's little rearming station in their entrance. Racked up SO MANY kills that way.

 

[H-street]

i've decided they are going t have a special "Hoarders" episode for us type lol..

while at my father in laws i found a couple of "Gems" that i'm going to get glued together.

System 1

AMD K6 - 200Mhz
32MB of Ram
3Gb HDD
S3 Virge Video
Some Opti Sound Card
52X CDRom
Dos 6.22/Win95

System 2

Intel Pentium 120Mhz
Unknown amount of Ram
1083Mb HDD
ESS Audio Sound
S3 Virge Video
Quad Speed CDrom (woot!)

This is an old AT formfactor (the fatty keyboard plug) - and yes i have the keyboard
This also has the Turbo Button and the little LCD display that changes numbers to show how fast you are going!

 

[FadedSpark]

OH GOD! AT form factor PSU connector can go die.

 

[AMD-T64]

Well this thread gave me the urge to build retro rig as well. I have a Asus P3B-F and a P3 850 in the mail. Might even snag a P2 for the heck of it. Been thinking about doing this for a while. Can't wait.

 

[GushpinBob]

How old would count as retro? I've got a couple of Coppermine CPUs and a floppy drive here and there, but the oldest system I can actually piece together atm is an ASUS P4P8X with a P4 Northwood 2.8GHz processor and a Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB.

 

[KublaKhan]

LOL - wow - blast from the past. I had a Voodoo 3 up until last year when I gave it away in the Freebies thread.

Still have several P3 CPUs (and one Abit motherboard). If I ever get to feeling nostalgic I'll throw it all together. Good to see some great (old) hardware put to use!

 

[shspvr]

"Retro" is anything that's 10 years old or older that run under Win9x and Dos yours would be more of Modern Retro Game mean some Game will not work rigth or will not run under XP compatibility mode all option "Win9x,NT,2000".
Good thing you board is an Intel 865 chipset that last chipset that can be use with Windows 9x OS and AGP Bus
Just becare full in which Video card you get
1: nVidia GeForce 6 series, ForceWare ver 81.98 was end of the line driver
2: 3dfx Voodoo 4 4500 downlaod 1.04 or 1.04.01 beta was end of the line driver
3: ATI Radeon X1900 series, Catalyst ver 6.2 was end of the line driver
And Sound Blaster Audigy 2
And if want you could also add one or a pair Voodoo 2 for SLI with nVidia or ATI for Glide Support Games
Beware you can only use a 4/8x Video card in that motherboard
If I going to rebuild that for Win9x only I get faster 3.2GHz processor all need 512MB to no more then 1GB system memory and get a NVIDIA GeForce 6800 up to Ultra over that Radeon you have
That cover lot game start 1996 on up that where made for Win9x and DirectX, OpenGL
Some Dos game may work but I wouldn't on it the system just way to fast and power and your board dosen't have ISA for rigth support when comes to most pure dos game

 

[H-street]

I got the Pentium 120 up and going finally.. i had to hack open the ODIS CMOS battery (it was encased) .. i soldered two AA batteries in serial to get the 3v its working great now (you can't quite make them out in the picture, they are between the ISA and PCI slots

for some reason i can't get the Turbo LCD to light up but still working on it

i booted up DIG and Dark Forces,
my Wolf Game requires 600k conventional memory (oh the joy begins!), right now my setup only has 488k of free conventional! hehehe ahh the old days

the only thing i'm missing for it is a Serial Mouse.. going to see if i can find a serial mouse on ebay or something for really cheap.

 

[Zohar78]

If anyboyd with a 3dfx v5500 would like the quake 3 demo with motion blur, im sure i can find the disk... It was very neat.

 

[thehoj]

Cool! Now we're really starting to get old with that 72-pin ram.. And was that L2 cache on the side in those sockets? I think they used to install that L2 cache on the motherboard, sort of independent of the CPU.

System 2

Intel Pentium 120Mhz
Unknown amount of Ram
1083Mb HDD
ESS Audio Sound
S3 Virge Video
Quad Speed CDrom (woot!)

This is an old AT formfactor (the fatty keyboard plug) - and yes i have the keyboard
This also has the Turbo Button and the little LCD display that changes numbers to show how fast you are going!

 

[thehoj]

Better start loading some of those device drivers into himem.sys, and start using extended memory. You should be able to get into the low-mid 500K range with some tweaking.

i booted up DIG and Dark Forces,
my Wolf Game requires 600k conventional memory (oh the joy begins!), right now my setup only has 488k of free conventional! hehehe ahh the old days

the only thing i'm missing for it is a Serial Mouse.. going to see if i can find a serial mouse on ebay or something for really cheap.

Damnit.. You're encouraging me to do something stupid.. I'm going to have to dig up an old 286 with some 30-pin ram for some old msdos 6.22 commander keen action.

 

[shspvr]

H-street 2 check your motherboard back then some boards did come ps2 pin connector on them so all need is a PS/2 Port Expansion Adapter, or you could go with PS/2 to Serial Mouse Adapter, that way you can by new PS/2 optical mouse like the Logitech SBF-96, iMicro M0-5013P, SPEC Research HY300 beware of the USB to PS/2 Mouse Adapter model Mouse they don't alway work rigth so just make sure it wired for PS/2 plug.
You can even swap out the AT Keyboard to PS/2 Keyboard with an AT to PS/2 Adapter.

 

[CompuG##K]

So I was browsing through the thread and I thought I would show off some of my stuff.

The oldest 3dfx equipped system I own is a Gateway2000 P5-66. This features a Socket 4 motherboard that uses the first generation 0.8 µm 5v Pentium processors. This particular system once featured the Pentium 66mhz chip, but was later upgraded to the Pentium Overdrive 133mhz chip, which was the fastest Socket 4 Pentium produced.

It is paired with a Joytech Joymage Apollo 3Dfx, which is a Voodoo Rush based card.

It also came equipped with 32mb of ram, up from the 16mb this system was originally sold with.


When I got it it from a random yard sale it was in pretty rough condition, but look at all those drives

The guts include the Voodoo Rush (which I had laying around and added to replace the standard generic 2d video card), a Sound Blaster 16(which was also laying around in a box of old cards), a 3com Etherlink III ISA network card (found it in the same box of old cards, amazingly it still works ) and a pair of 1.1gb WD hard drives (also added to replace the single 450mb drive).

The Pentium Overdrive with its integrated cooler.

133mhz designator

The days when sound cards were larger than video cards...

Up close with the dusty Voodoo...

The dual chip design used by this particular Voodoo Rush, 4mb video ram off to the left.

When I got it running again I loaded up Windows 95 on it, not B version mind you but the original release version of Windows 95 and then added in the Plus pack and various other bits including Internet Explorer 5.5, which is the latest version that will run on the Win95 original release. It's a period system running period software. As I said before the network card works to my amazement and I was able to get all my classic DOS games to run without a hitch. It runs most first generation Glide games with no problems. Even Unreal runs somewhat decent on it, but the lack of an MMX processor is probably dragging down the video card.

I'm working on building another Voodoo system to bridge the gap between this system and the K6-2 500mhz/Voodoo3 system that I have. It will probably run a Pentium MMX 200 or possibly it will use the IBM 6x86 PR200 that I've had laying around for a while. I'm on the hunt for one or two Voodoo2's to go in this system.


It's crazy that I find more joy in fiddling with old systems than building modern ones. Is it just me, or are newer PC's too easy to build? There's no challenge in it anymore. You just throw them together and slap on an OS and send it on its way. I much prefer the fiddly tweakiness that older PC building required.

 

[E^vol]

Unfortunately I have nothing constructive to add. But WOW!!! This thread brings back memories... Thanks guys.

 

[toddfx]

Here is the birth of my Win98 gaming rig. She's about a week old now:

Celeron MMX 433 MHZ Socket 370 on Bryant Motherboard R1
512 PC100 SDRAM
2x Orchid Righteous 3DFX Voodoo2 12MB
Intel 82810-DC100 Graphics Controller - 3.0MB [EDIT: Upgraded the drivers and now dxdiag reads 7.5MB!?] (soon to be upgraded to Matrox G200)
Fujitsu MPF3102AT 10GB HDD
Win98SE

So far she's got: GLQuake, Quake II, Doom, Doom II, Duke Nukem 3D, Wolfenstein 3D, Hover!, Dune, Star Control 2, WinUAE, NEStopia, SimTower, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Midtown Madness, Monstertruck Madness, Age of Empires, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Driver, Everquest Project1999, and believe it or not I finally got GTAIII is running at about 20 FPS.

I'm also desperately trying to get an N64 emulator working, but am still testing options. Most games run between 85% and 100% speed, but the audio is really choppy.

Other bits:

-Just bought a Matrox Millennium G200 8MB PCI card, and will be getting the 8MB upgrade module once I get the G200 in the mail and can confirm if it is SD or SG. I am guessing SD, as my research leads me to believe SGRAM was only fitted on the AGP version, but I am hoping not! Unfortunately it is coming from UK so hopefully it won't take any longer than the estimated 4-8 business days...if the damn seller would ship it already.

-I purchased a new Socket 370 CPU cooler but haven't installed it yet. For now I have a 50mm just blowing on the stock heatsink

-I have an Amiga 1080 monitor that I intend to use, but need to haul it up to Chicago from St Louis. Will need to figure out the connection situation too.

 

[GushpinBob]

When I got it it from a random yard sale it was in pretty rough condition, but look at all those drives
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj177/Nerdyg33kzor/DSC02902.jpg[IMG]
[/QUOTE]

I love how the P5-era Gateway desktops had the useless turbo light that was always on. Our family had a 90MHz model back in the mid-90s.

 

[Artex]

Anyone have a Roland SCB-55 daughterboard or an Orchid Righteous 3d (Voodoo 1) they are willing to sell? Also looking for a complete Gateway 2000 P5-75 tower system with Ensoniq Soundscape S-2000 or Elite.

I posted these on the For Sale/Trade forum as well, but I thought I'd start here too.

 

[RogueTrip]

-Just bought a Matrox Millennium G200 8MB PCI card, and will be getting the 8MB upgrade module once I get the G200 in the mail and can confirm if it is SD or SG. I am guessing SD, as my research leads me to believe SGRAM was only fitted on the AGP version, but I am hoping not! Unfortunately it is coming from UK so hopefully it won't take any longer than the estimated 4-8 business days...if the damn seller would ship it already.

Be careful of the ram upgrade. I have a AGP SG-RAM G200 (really a G250). I ordered what was said to be a SG-RAM module but once I got here it turned out to be the SD-RAM version. Seller sent a full refund but still sucks. Not that the card is great anyway



Some update on my rig. I finally dropped one of my Voodoo 5 5500 AGP's back in the Win98 rig listed. Last night I removed the original heatsinks from the card then installed a couple northbridge heatsinks w/ MX2 paste and a 90mm fan that replaces the 2x 40mm fans. Already had some ramsinks installed on it. Still all i'm currently playing on this rig is Kiss Psycho Circus and Carmageddon 1. LOL

Here's a few benchmarks with the system...
3DMark99 (Default settings)
- 11566 3Dmark
- 21812 CPUmark

3DMark2000 (Default settings)
- 5581

3DMark2001SE (Default settings)
- 2319


I swear 3Dmark2k used to get around 7xxx!! Gotta figure that out.

 

[shspvr]

Be careful of the ram upgrade. I have a AGP SG-RAM G200 (really a G250). I ordered what was said to be a SG-RAM module but once I got here it turned out to be the SD-RAM version. Seller sent a full refund but still sucks. Not that the card is great anyway

There is how ever two ver of G200 one with SDRAM 4 chip and other SGRAM 2 chip There really is no G250 what they called G250 in nothing more then overclock G200 and my book it not G250 I would called it G200+.
Check ebay by looking for SGRAM

 

[RogueTrip]

There is how ever two ver of G200 one with SDRAM 4 chip and other SGRAM 2 chip There really is no G250 what they called G250 in nothing more then overclock G200 and my book it not G250 I would called it G200+.
Check ebay by looking for SGRAM

Yep, I received a 4 chip SD-RAM from a ebay seller when they stated it was SG-RAM. The G200A and G250 are also a smaller fab process which also removed the need for a heatsink I may need to dig it out again as it could be a G200A.

 

[shspvr]

Yep, I received a 4 chip SD-RAM from a ebay seller when they stated it was SG-RAM. The G200A and G250 are also a smaller fab process which also removed the need for a heatsink I may need to dig it out again as it could be a G200A.

I wasn't ware of that it got a die shink
Any this good to hang out with old stuff
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/

 

[GushpinBob]

Grrr...typical Creative and their piss-poor support. Turns out they don't offer any Soundblaster Audigy 2 drivers on their site that include Win98 compatibility. I lost the driver disc for my card long ago, which I believe included drivers with said support.

Anyway, I did a google search for drivers with Win98 compatibility and found this: http://download.cnet.com/Creative-S...ows-98SE-Me-2000-XP/3000-2120_4-10198811.html (pay no attention to the green "Download Now" button; they offer direct downloads again).

I tried installing the drivers from the executable, but I got the typical "This software is not supported in your version of Windows" shens (fffffffuuuuuuuuu-). However, I was able to extract the executable's contents with 7-zip, and install the drivers via the Device manager.

Now I've got sound (yay! ), but no Creative software to access many of the Audigy's features. The setup file doesn't seem to provide a way to install them and I'm at my wit's end trying to find them on Creative's site. If anyone is willing to upload an image of the Audigy 2 ZS install disc, that would be greatly appreciated.

 

[GushpinBob]

Oh, and here are my specs for my old rig, even though it's a bit recent to be genuinely retro.

ASUS P4P8X
Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz processor (Northwood, non-HT)
512MB PC2100 RAM
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS
40GB WD 7200RPM HDD

Decent system with many parts from my first PC build. Can run Windows versions all the way up to the Windows 8 CP, though I guess this would disqualify it from being an actual retro rig.

The board offers great flexibility when it comes to compatibility. I've got the USB2 and SATA controllers are disabled for now since Windows 98 doesn't offer native compatibility for the two, neither am I using any drives that are SATA compatible. I can turn on SATA later and set it to emulate IDE if I get any larger drives in the future.

No 3Dfx hardware atm, unfortunately, so for any games that use Glide I'm going to have to rely on wrappers for the time being.

 

[H-street]

yea that was the crappy thing about the sound blaster drivers/software.. lose your CD and your hosed.

i don't think i have my audigy2 cd either.. i have the audigy 1 cd..

the best i've seen happen is someone would be kind enough to ISO it for you and let you get it from them.

 

[xDezor]

Darn. Threw my driver CD out last year when I moved.

 

[Tzzird]

ahhh the nostalgia! this thread definitely brings back memories.

 

[Roach III]

Here is the birth of my Win98 gaming rig. She's about a week old now:

Celeron MMX 433 MHZ Socket 370 on Bryant Motherboard R1
512 PC100 SDRAM
2x Orchid Righteous 3DFX Voodoo2 12MB
Intel 82810-DC100 Graphics Controller - 3.0MB [EDIT: Upgraded the drivers and now dxdiag reads 7.5MB!?] (soon to be upgraded to Matrox G200)
Fujitsu MPF3102AT 10GB HDD
Win98SE

So far she's got: GLQuake, Quake II, Doom, Doom II, Duke Nukem 3D, Wolfenstein 3D, Hover!, Dune, Star Control 2, WinUAE, NEStopia, SimTower, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Midtown Madness, Monstertruck Madness, Age of Empires, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Driver, Everquest Project1999, and believe it or not I finally got GTAIII is running at about 20 FPS.

I'm also desperately trying to get an N64 emulator working, but am still testing options. Most games run between 85% and 100% speed, but the audio is really choppy.

Other bits:

-Just bought a Matrox Millennium G200 8MB PCI card, and will be getting the 8MB upgrade module once I get the G200 in the mail and can confirm if it is SD or SG. I am guessing SD, as my research leads me to believe SGRAM was only fitted on the AGP version, but I am hoping not! Unfortunately it is coming from UK so hopefully it won't take any longer than the estimated 4-8 business days...if the damn seller would ship it already.

-I purchased a new Socket 370 CPU cooler but haven't installed it yet. For now I have a 50mm just blowing on the stock heatsink

-I have an Amiga 1080 monitor that I intend to use, but need to haul it up to Chicago from St Louis. Will need to figure out the connection situation too.

Dude, those pictures are absolutely exquisite. If you don't mind my asking, What camera and settings are you using to take those?

 

[toddfx]

Dude, those pictures are absolutely exquisite. If you don't mind my asking, What camera and settings are you using to take those?

Hahaha well believe it or not...

...iPhone 4S.

I always have the HDR option turned on, which lets the phone save two versions: one regularly exposed image, and one with a two exposure mashup (HDR) which can help knock down some over-bright highlights. Only sometimes does the HDR version look better though. Often times they turn out very milky and without contrast. It can be great for shooting computer monitors or other scenarios that have a very bright light source in a dark environment though.

Most of these were under natural sunlight coming through the window, but you can tell which ones were under a desk lamp.