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Deibit's Retro PC - Y2K - Win98SE - Voodoo3

deibit

deibit

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I always thought that I would never get involved in a project to setup a retro machine made for the XXI century.. but here I'm :D

Currently it's a work in progress, I'm going to add pictures as the project goes forward.

The project focus in the year 2000, mostly Windows games... 3DFX era.

Games: Deus Ex, Diablo II, Falcon 4, MDK, NFS2, NFS Hot Pursuit, Quake, Quake II, Rainbow Six, Resident Evil, Serious Sam, Sin, Test Drive 4 - 5, TOCA2, Tomb Raider, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Wing Commander: Prophecy, Wipeout XL, X-COM, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter... etc etc...

My current project:

Case: ATX Linkworld 6012-G1 , good modern case for retro projects, ATX 2.01, 7 expansion slots, it's also good for AT motherboards (I use it for one of my 386 projects)
Motherboard: The allmighty Abit BH6. Probably the best Y2000 motherboard and one of the best motherboards ever made --> http://soggi.org/motherboards/abit/BH6.htm
CPU: Pentium III 450 Katmai, not the fastest CPU this motherboard can support, but gives the best balance for my project Pentium III 650Mhz Coppermine + Cooler Master TS2-5020B2 cooler
Memory: 3 x 256MB Infineon ECC CL2, Maxed out memory (let's see if the MoBo supports it)
Soundcard: Sound Blaster AWE64 CT4520, Pretty much standard at that time
MPU401: HardMPU, intelligent MPU reproduction to connect to my MT-32 and SC88 --> https://github.com/ab0tj/HardMPU
Graphic Card: STB 3DFX Voodoo3 3000 AGP, that's the reason for this project,everything else in this setup goes around this card
Ethernet: Intel PRO 1000 GT
SATA Controller: Promise FastTrack S150 TX4
HDD: 2xSamsung 250GB SATA in RAID0
OS: Windows98SE
 
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looks like the board supports the 768MB ECC without problems... full MEMTEST86 pass without issues:

CIl4KGu.jpg
 
Got a link for that SATA controller? I guess it's PCI based, is it?
 
Its discontinued unfortunately, but you can get it pretty cheap at eBay.. there's the raid version (S150) and the no raid version (without the S)

The good thing is that it has drivers for windows98, and should also work in DOS. Its PCI yes :)
 
What do you mean with the CPU is not the fastest but "the best balance for your project" ?
 
The voodoo3 matches well with mid range PIII, Voodoos are known not to scale too well with CPU upgrades above their optimum baseline.

Anyway, I got a 650 PIII really cheap today, so I guess I'm going to upgrade the CPU after all :D
 
Had some good time with my Slot 1 Pentium 3 and Voodoo card, all installed on a Asus P3B-F... :D
 
oh man, don't tell me it has the turbo button? 8o

How many Mhz is it showing?
 
:evil:

nah, turbo buttons died with the first Pentiums.... but you will see them when i present my 386/25 project :P
 
Lol @ the turbo button! I remember my first PC was a x386 that ran a wopping 5mhz, but the turbo would bump it up to 7!!
I felt like it was blazing fast back then!
 
Of course it was blazing! Didnt you notice how the cursor was blinking much faster? 8o
 
Turbo buttons actually where not made for boosting things up, but to slow things down in order to make older games runable in newer systems (some developers used CPU speed to control timing... bad bad..)

by the way that 5-7 speeds sound kinda strange for a x386.. it's more like a x286 and then would be like 6-8-12... :)

Anyway, the speed shown on those display was totally fake, the turbo signal had only two states, on (normal cpu speed) and off (slow down)... what was shown in the displays was parametrized through dip switches, so could set whatever you wanted... :)
 
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