Pentium 200 MMX find with Voodoo Banshee

[@Voyager_2]

This indeed bought back memory's. I build and sold hundreds of these cases in 1998. This was a fantastic time for pc hardware and gaming. Everything progressed so fast. Seeing the first 3DFX and the Riva 128 cards, the first PCI soundcards, the first USB devices (we called it the useless serial bus back then) The first A-open cdrom drives that were way less noisy then the competition. Wireless mouses and the scroll wheel became the norm. When you described the problems with the system, it was so recognizable as a memory problem. :-) Its very hard to find old AT cases in the Netherlands, nice one finding this time capsule.

[@cesaru3619]

cool story grandpa

[@CYON4D]

3dfx was surreal back in its day. It made the games look and run like a dream.

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah .... surreal pretty much nails it ... I still remember those lan parties where everyone was starting these games with the 3dfx spinning logo. We used to play a lot of carmageddon and I remember it also running very smooth. Wonder on what kind of cpu we were running it at the time. Must have been pentium 2 I guess.

[@gionder]

I''m a bit younger than necessary to have enjoyed this era of computers but being a tech fanatic i can certainly appreciate videos like this. I've been a computer maintenance tech for 11 years now and i did come across some AT boards and even a pentium II cartdrige-based. I was stumped by that because it was running windows 2000 and it belonged to the front desk of a local business. My first computer had a Sempron 3000, 512mb of ram and an FX5500 (can't remember the VRAM). It struggled with SimCity 3000 but i still played a heck of a lot of it anyway. RollerCoaster Tycoon was also one of my favourites. NFS Underground completely blew my mind when i first played it but it bogged my computer so hard it felt like i was watching a powerpoint presentation. Good memories... Thank you for the video! I wish you success

[@RetroSpector78]

Thx a lot for the comment ! These pentiums were my entire teenage life so it’s nice to revisit them :) But I also learned to appreciate a lot older stuff that I never had back in the day. Amazing how technology evolved. Too bad you didn’t get to experience that 3dfx voodoo effect, cause I honestly still believe that that was one of the most important milestones in modern computing history. It blew peoples minds to see these games come to life after buying a voodoo card.

[@con2botonesnadamas433]

Finally! This is the PC era I am fond of, Pentium MMX, Pentium II, Pentium III and...3DFX!

[@RetroSpector78]

con 2 botones nada más haha ... hope you enjoy it ... some more content like this coming your way.

[@RodrikStudio]

No mixing of SIM and DIM SDRam on this board, it's one or the other.

[@peachgrush]

Not only on this board, but actually on most motherboards with both SIMM and DIMM sockets. In most cases one can install both types of modules only if DIMMs are EDO RAM too, which is quite uncommon. Here we clealy deal with PC-100 SDRAM DIMMs, so either they get 5 V and quickly overheat, or cause timing problems.

[@fullmetaljacket7]

@@peachgrush I used to run a k6 with two different types of ram modules back in the day. I don't remember what motherboard model it was, but I'm pretty sure it had an SiS chipset. It was unstable, but it worked.

[@RetroSpector78]

@@peachgrush According to the manual of this board: "SDRAM Module can be used together with the SIMMs Module". The text is preceded with "caution" :) Not really sure what to think of that :)

[@peachgrush]

​@@RetroSpector78 Yes, I've heard of some rare boards which allowed mixing SDRAM and EDO RAM modules - but I have yet to see one :) Every board that I have encountered only allowed mixing EDO DRAM SIMMs with 5V EDO DRAM DIMMs and strictly prohibited installing 3.3V SDRAM DIMMs along EDO DRAM SIMMs. However, while googling for the issue I have encountered some remarks of such mixed configurations working properly on some newer (Super) Socket 7 boards - and as many cautions about possible stability issues with such setups. In your case, there are two possibilities. First, that you've got such a rare board that allows mixing EDO and SDRAM. Second, that some creative manual writer (or a Chinese-to-English translator) was not aware of the difference between what "EDO", "SDRAM", "SIMM" and "DIMM" refer to. Or he or she simply forgot to place one "not" between "can" and "be" ;)

[@peachgrush]

@@fullmetaljacket7 Please see my response to RetroSpector78's comment for details. Your comment is consistent with the reports I was able to find in some forums, of such mixed setups working on some newer (Super) Socket 7 boards, but not being fully stable. This is perhaps why it was not recommended to mix memory types back in the day :)

[@parrottm76262]

I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I first installed my Voodoo card. It served me well, and I miss the competition it gave that segment of the market.

[@RetroSpector78]

Agree ... took a lot of people by surprise. Was a great thing to have back in the day.

[@GraveUypo]

it scaled far, too! originally unreal ran pretty damn bad on my voodoo2, but as i upgraded to an atlhon 700, butter smoothery ensued. in fact as long as i remained in 640x480 that thing would hit 3 digits in that game, which was insane considering it ran at like 15fps with the pentium 233 mmx

[@hqqns]

You could put the parallel and serial connectors straight onto the case instead of using the brackets. You just need to push out the tabs on the case.

[@RetroSpector78]

I know, but would not work for the ps/2 port. And one would expect to being able to put them somewhere on top. Just think mainboard layout is a bit unfortunate.

[@peachgrush]

@@RetroSpector78 There were many PS/2 mouse port brackets with only this specific port on them, and placed in a way that would not interfere with even such unfortunate placement of motherboard connectors. And I was always really suprised how rarely I could see these case slots used for serial and parallel connectors.

[@10p6]

Nice video. In 1998 I had a Pentium 233 MMX and would play Jedi Knight over the phone line with my friend who had a Pentium 2 with Voodoo 2. He got awesome graphics smooth graphics, and I got slow very low res software rendered graphics so would usually loose. Then one day I got a Banshee and oh how the tides turned. :-) Great card for the price and time.

[@mikeall7012]

This brings back memories. This is a lot like the first rig I bought and upgraded with my own money. When I went to college my parents "recycled" it. Wish I had it now. It started out as a cyrix gx 200 and ended as a pentium 200 mmx with voodoo, a diamond vc, dvd card and drive and a slew of other niceties.

[@Joeyboots80]

I had a Voodoo 2 back in the day. It was my first discrete GPU. It blew my mind.

[@kirknelson156]

back in 98 i built a PII 400 with 2 voodoo 2 cards in SLI, it rocked, if your going to continue using that with win 98, add these 2 lines to the system.ini "MinFileCache=1024" and "MaxFileCache=4096". win98 had a file caching problem, it would cache all file reads and consume all the ram, and continue to cache to virtual memory, bringing the computer to its virtual knees. Happy gaming :)

[@maisonmallninja]

my parents bought me that CD burner (used...!) for Christmas when I was in 8th or 9th grade. I made a copy of my friend's Matchbox 20 album

[@kuro68000]

With HDDs of that era the sector size is always 512 so you can just divide the number of sectors by 2 to get the capacity. For some reason they always put the number of sectors instead of the capacity.

[@user-vn7ce5ig1z]

Sectors are still often 512 bytes; Advanced Format never quite "popped off" like they expected. 🤷

[@Xtcent]

About, the input sound at 14:07, I've had a similar problem, what was happening is that one of my power supply connectors were shorting out against the case. I advise you check your power supply properly for faults.

[@fullmetaljacket7]

I also had that exact same case back in 1993 with a 486dx2. I got a 3d blaster banshee for Christmas in 1998 I think. I was running a k6 at the time. I remember playing a lot of ut99 with it. Good times!

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah lots of great games for the 3dfx platform.

[@BollingHolt]

Man, that was a sweet find! You can tell that was a "well-loved" machine LOL.

[@mark12358]

Would you clean it properly now that it works? Best match for Pentium MMX would be an Intel chipset board, 430TX (better ram access times and i/o) or at least 430VX (cheaper but still good). In the '90s I had a business in IT, from DOS to NT Server. Good times!

[@RetroSpector78]

Most likely yes ... also have a 430TX to play with. Might be a fun comparison. But most likely the differences will be marginal in the bigger scheme of things. Think one AT mainboard even has onboard sound

[@georgemaragos2378]

Hi All, nice video. As a habit after many times of going around in circles back in the day, the advise for any Win 95/98 machine is to remove all add on cards and run it as a base machine. All you need it a video card and i would use a "spare" generic card eg a basic 8 or 16 bit ISA card say a S3 or trident etc, that way it can use the most common driver to get it up and running. Try and initially avoid top end card or Vesa local bus or PCI as they are more modern and would demand specific drivers. Once you have the machine running, then just change 1 card and set it up for its own drivers eg the video car you want to run finally or say start with a sound card or network card / modem / scsi etc. But the same rule of thumb, make one change and install driver and reboot a few times to insure it works before progressine to the next add on card. Recently i received a working Dallas RTC chip ( after many failed ebay purchases ) and used my best 2 connor IDE drives - both twins at 400 meg - wow i forgot how SLOW these 8 bit drives are, copying even small size files ( like the windows install into a directory took forever ) - my next oldest machine a Pentium 2 has a Compact flash to IDE adapter and that is FAST, the 2 x 2 g partitions took under 15 seconds to format 2 G each partition and the install of dos was very fast Regards George

[@randomreviews9016]

I had the exact same gateway p5-75 in the back, loved everything about it!

[@RetroSpector78]

It’s a p5-60 :) will be on the channel soon ....

[@ML-gx9rp]

Love these MMX builds,I have a few myself that I enjoy using..great video as usual 😀

[@RetroSpector78]

Thx a lot appreciate it !

[@ben56k]

I had this processor and graphic chip back in the day... good combo. Salute to this warrior maschine!

[@iHorus]

Liked the speakers, always wanted one of those when been a kid.

[@msthalamus2172]

I had this case when I was in college, with a P133 inside. I wish I'd kept it.

[@Lemonidas75]

I had the same case and CPU ... albeit with a Riva 128 & a Voodoo 2 card. This video really brings back memories :) Thank you!

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

So good to find good quality components in such an unassuming case!

[@RetroSpector78]

Exactly .... really enjoying the system now.

[@RetroGamerVX]

I had a 200mmx, my first pc, a friend says....who needs all that power! It was quite the party piece!

[@soviet_idiot]

My grandfather's 90s PC had this case as well. I played Doom and Dune 2 whenever my family visited.

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah the case has a very familiar look. I had 2 of those since I started collecting retro stuff this year, and had one when I was a kid also.

[@tom611]

I just crammed everything on the brackets into the punch outs on top on my Pentium back in the day (though that was more issues with expansion cards needing to go where the brackets fit). Even the PS/2 port got shoved up in one, even though it didn't quite fit the serial port punch out I shoved it into, and was secured on one side, but it worked. If you're good with a drill, it might be best to just drill three holes to mount it up in that area.

[@RetroSpector78]

tom611 check out my ibm 5155 to see how “good” I am with a drill :) think I might be better off ditching the ps/2 port and only using the serial via the punch out :)

[@noneed4me2n7]

I had almost that exact same setup at one time. Really brought on the member berries

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah it is a very recognisable setup apparently :)

[@Hutschnur]

I recently ran across a socket 7 board myself. It has cost 10 Euros and was in decent shape too. No bulgy capacitors, no battery leakage thanks to coin cell. I populated it with old stuff I still had laying around: a Pentium 233 MMX CPU, 10/100 ethernet card, SB Vibra 16, an ATI @work with 8MB and a Voodoo 1 card. I was a bit disappointed because some of my old games this machine was build for required better specs as they were released around '99/'00. From '95 to '99 I literally played no games and have none left from this era. So this is, in my case, a somehow strange PC. Too powerful for a DOS 6.22 machine, too weak to be my Win 98 gaming machine - as my build from that era was a K6-II 500 if I remember correctly. So what to do with it? Any suggestions? :D

[@RetroSpector78]

With this type of build you need to Stick with 1996-1998 era games. Anything beyond that will be challenging. This mainboard maxes out at 333mhz with an amd k6

[@yosuhara]

I guess this should be powerfull enough to handle all quake I/II engine based FPS's so plenty. And all build engine games of course (Duke nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior, Redneck Rampage), Doom engine games, etc. Plenty to keep you up at night :)

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

That system perfectly runs all the games from 1997 and most of the games from 1998. There are so many good 3d games from 97-98 that run perfectly of that PC like: NFS 2/3, Motoracer 2, Tomb Raider 2/3, Quake 2, Carmageddon 2, Fifa 98/99 Motorhead, Ultimate Race Pro, Sin, Kingpin, Star Wars Rougue Squadron, Klingon Honor Guard and many more. Could you please make a video with this system running those games ?

[@GraveUypo]

idk the banshee isn't that good, it was substantially slower than the voodoo2. surely it struggles in SOME of those games at least? carmageddon being one of them

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

@@GraveUypo If you look at my videos you will see that the Banshee is capable or running even much newer and more demanding games than Carmageddon 2. Carmageddon 2 really is no problem for the Banshee. The standard Banshee was slower than the Voodoo 2 only in games that used multitexturing but faster in games that didnt. Many companies even sold their Banshees with higher frequencies than the standard 100/100 mhz. The Gigabyte GA630 run at 110/130 mhz, the Monster Fusion at 105/120 mhz, those Banshees were as fast or almost as fast as a Voodoo 2 even in games that used multitexturing.

[@mima85]

That was pretty my setup too in 1997/1998. Pentium 200 but without MMX, a Voodoo Banshee which I added later, Seagate 2.1 gigs hard drive. After some time I upgraded the hard drive, the sound card and put an AMD K6-2 300 MHz CPU, I was very happy with it. I still have that old machine :-)

[@hartsickdisciple]

I love it. My first PC had a Pentium 233 MMX with a Voodoo Banshee PCI.

[@RetroSpector78]

Fun times. 3DFX was a true game changer. Don't think we've seen anything that ground breaking since come to think of it.

[@invictus0x0]

Having had a couple of banshee based systems back in the day, Carmageddon didn't play well with banshee. if fact if I remember correctly they released a patch(for Carma) at some point to help stability and performance issues.

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah also noticed that ... will try to see what I can do about that ... either through software or a hardware upgrade :)

[@garyklinkert6737]

I have exactly the same case with a Pentium 200 mmx and voodoo2 SLI in it. Mine is a lot more yellow and missing the little black plastic surround for the Mhz display though..

[@potooczech]

My childhood ... so nice to see it again :)

[@macondodevelopment1291]

I watched this twice as I had the same set up back in the day and it brought back memories. The second time I watched it I counted how many times you mis-pronounces "three" as "tree" (yes I understand it is your accent). For each error I gave a Euro to the Friends of The Earth "More Trees Please" Campaign... Please beat around the bush when talikng about socket 7.

[@aprilkolwey4779]

For Seagate hard drives of this era, the approximate capacity is in the model number, from the second number to the last number. For example, given the drives in the video: ST32532A - approx. 2532MB / 2.5GB ST34321A - approx. 4321MB / 4.3GB Or to break one of them down even more (let's say the ST34321A)... ST: Seagate Technology 3: 3.5" 1/3-height 4321: about 4321MB (usually formatted, but some early drives used the unformatted capacity) A: PATA interface Or another random drive I have sitting around here, the ST3300555SS: ST: Seagate Technology 3: 3.5" 1/3-height 300555: about 300555MB / 300GB SS: SAS interface

[@JenniferinIllinois]

Love that cable management at the beginning. Hehehe...

[@Edman_79]

I'm also often trying to solve the missing bracket problem. So, I ordered plenty of blank standard metal PCI brackets and then I drill and cut to the precise measurement. It always works well, though it holds only on the connector screws. I was never able to find a suitable donor card for the bracket transfer. The same goes with the motherboard I/O where it can't be bought. Ordered some blank plates, then I drill and cut as needed. Btw. may I ask what kind of equipment do you use to record your videos?

[@RetroSpector78]

I'm not that good with a drill :) fortunately most of my cards come with brackets. I'm just using my iphone 10 to record video.

[@SHTFFuel]

Hello....great video to remember.Your PC tower just like my old PC but different hardware....my CPU is cyrix 133 mhz.ram 98mb and s3 trio3d graphic card....as I remember,when you use turbo,I think that button not function but I has a function with that display number,Thanks for that old PC....I miss that.

[@amberselectronics]

My grandpa had the same case as well, that was a throwback. Nice find, those voodoos are getting hard to find.

[@RetroSpector78]

They are pretty expensive, that’s the problem...

[@FOIL_FRESH]

lmao this is essentially the same build as what i have laboriously pieced together over the last 12 months and i've only just finished it this week by getting a nice AT case. socket 7 mvp3, 166 mmx, pci banshee and awe64 ct4520 but i also added a yamaha card for OPL and midi in windows. really great system as it is WAY more powerful and sounds so much better than the cyrix my family had in '96 :D thanks for the vid

[@RetroSpector78]

Was lucky to get everything in 1 shot. Great little machine

[@clavius5734]

What is the type of the IBM monitor? Its lovely!

[@xces120]

I'm really looking forward to seeing you play Quake on that computer.

[@TheCrystalGlow]

Seagate has always made their model numbers with ST2/3xxxx where anything after those numbers I mentioned denotes the capacity. They still do it today with modern drives. Like a western digital caviar 21200, 2 denotes series/version number and last 4 equals capacity.

[@RetroSpector78]

Indeed. Should have thought of that .... still weird that on that one hard drive they write a million different numbers, all except the actual storage capacity :)

[@PROSTO4Tabal]

Hey retrospection, you don't need to sacrifice bracket from other cards, just buy plain one with no opening. Measure, drill, shave and you got your own custom. This is what I did with quantum 3d voodoo2 on my quicksilver II qrcade

[@kilrahvp]

My first monitor I got for free as it was going to be dumped in 97 or so was that same IBM one 😍 Supported surprisingly high resolution/refresh for its age - worked great with my P133 first PC built from handed down parts from various sources

[@RetroSpector78]

It's a nice monitor and fits nicely with pentium or even 486 based systems. Mine only goes to 800x600 but then craps out at 1024x768 :)

[@kilrahvp]

@@RetroSpector78 OK interesting, then it was probably a slightly different model in the same enclosure (including the whiter power button!) I remember driving mine at 1024x768 standard, or 1152x864 but at a slower refresh rate that started becoming flickery....

[@achaycock]

I think someone else has mentioned this, but I would like to clarify. It is ill-advised to mix memory types. You could buy EDO RAM in the DIMM form factor and initially I thought this was likely to be what was used, but apparently it was not and this likely caused the issues. Now what would be interesting is if you swapped the memory around. I suspect that the 32MB DIMM would be perfectly stable on its own and moreover, marginally quicker. If we're honest, it is unlikely to make the system appreciably faster, but certainly technically faster. I would be interested to see if I am right. I have to be honest, I kind of cringed when you stole the bracket off the S3 Virge, Number 9 cards were the top-dog at one point (1993-94 I kind of recall), so as much love as I have for the Banshee, I also love the Number 9. Still, nice to see this machine be ressurected. I have a Pentium 200 with a Banshee and it has me searching for an MMX overdrive again (Socket 5 Compaq, it needs the MMX luvvin').

[@GuybrushThriftweed]

I never knew about the Number 9 back then but now I have 3-4 or so. I would never sacrifice it too even though they sit in a box.

[@RetroSpector78]

Really ? Is there a difference between a Number 9 S3 Virge card and any other S3 Virge card ? Was not aware of them ... And still think it's nicer to have a banshee firmly attached to this PC case as opposed to the Number 9 sitting in a box :)

[@v3g374]

@@RetroSpector78 Yes, number 9 is quite rare. :-)

[@enilenis]

I didn't know that both ram slot types could be populated simultaneously. I assumed it was one or the other. I don't think it's bad memory, but the fact that memory types aren't supposed to be mixed.

[@l337pwnage]

My thoughts as well. I would even try with just the 64, and then just the 32, to see which one was faster. My memory is fuzzy(lol), but IIRC even 32 was usually enough around then.

[@Sharkiuli]

i had a pentium 1 at 166Mhz MMX, never OC it, played games like Delta Force 1, Commandos behind enemy lines, Age of Empires, Starcraft , Warcraft, Diablo 1 & 2 ( only after upgrading the storage), NFS 2, MK4... there were so many good games

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah .... actually forgot computers like this could run out of storage :) A lot of these games take up several 100MBs and most systems like this only had about 2 to 4 gb hard drives.

[@SeltsamerAttraktor]

I was already about to type a comment on how you reaaally should remove that SD RAM module, as, usually, RAM types do not mix. But you eventually found that out yourself =) The module might still be good or may have been good before someone put it in there.

[@Captain_Char]

the machine I had had the same thing we thought we could put some SD in it back then to upgrade it, sadly not the case

[@Inject0r]

There were a few cases where I had some issues with combined types of memory. There were more occasions where it ran flawlessly though. The memory should have somewhat the same performance levels in terms of latencies and frequency. Just search for it in the manual. :)

[@Cacowninja]

What brand of computer is this? I have one version and yet it doesn't have any markings on it for that sort of thing.

[@Fiilis1]

Oh man. Voodoo Banshee was my first 3D card.

[@RetroSpector78]

It's a great card .... enjoying it so far ... was a bit unsure of using it in this 200 mmx system but seems to be a very good match.

[@Renegade666]

im surprised you didnt use the provided blanking plates on the case for the parallel and serial ports to free up the slots. Theyre next to the PSU, you could easily remove the ports from the original plate and put them there to save room

[@jadetraveler]

I had a pair of PC speakers that looked similar to that. Do you remember what brand/model those were? I think there were a few different brands that made PC speakers like that. I think I even had the same PC case at one point.

[@yosuhara]

Most of speakers in this design I see / saw around is SurfSound brand

[@jamesgrimwood1285]

I had that PC case too 😁 I think it had my 486 in it, which gradually upgraded to a Pentium before I got a full tower case (because bigger is better, right?).

[@1Soniccool]

The company 3DFX is now defunct and NVIDIA acquired the 3DFX assets. Now there are 3DFX emulators that emulate a 3DFX card with your GPU.

[@AndreiNeacsu]

That's a pretty cool find. The only thing that could have made it better would have been the motherboard to have an Intel 430TX chipset. PS: you can pop-out the blank plates on the back of the case (next to the keyboard connector) and screw in the serial, parallel, etc. ports individually. That's what I did in 1997.

[@RetroSpector78]

That works, except for the ps2 mouse port :)

[@VicGreenBitcoin]

Oyeh, the Pentium MMX, love it!

[@RetroSpector78]

Same here.

[@Blurredman]

I didn't think you could populate both SIMM slots with SD-RAM ?

[@CMDRBlueeagle66]

I loved my Voodoo Banshee!

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah ... enjoying it also so far ....

[@andymate2006]

Oh wow. My first computer had the exact same PC tower case but my PC was a Pentium Pro 166MHz.

[@lrochfort]

I said it on Reddit too. That 14L10 was a brilliant monitor

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah ... wait till you see it here with the Aptiva !

[@DxDeksor]

Carmageddon in 3Dfx mode is pretty demanding. Even with my Pentium II 450MHz with Voodoo II SLI, it still struggle a little. However you can still play it in software rendering mode and it'll run ok on a pentium (or even slower).

[@RetroSpector78]

Weird because I played that many many many times when I was young and can’t remember it being it sluggish :) wonder what system I ran it on at the time. Never had an SLI setup.

[@DxDeksor]

Well in software rendering it runs better than the 3d accelerated mode actually (one reason being the software rendered mode runs at 320x200 resolution vs 640x480 in 3d accelerated mode which is 4 times more work, even though the 3d card helps a lot). On the other hand, this game is playable without issues on my Pentium III 1GHz (in software rendering mode and in 640x480 !)

[@RetroSpector78]

Deksor we were all using voodoos back in the day ... I clearly remember the 3dfx wow effect we had (also in carmageddon)

[@徐子翔-c9o]

What’s the maximum of RAM can it be installed? And how about upgrade the processor to K6 series?

[@RetroSpector78]

K6 333mhz with 256mb ram would be the maxed out config, providing it is true that you cannot mix memory. Manual only states : “Board accepts EDO (128mb) & SDRAM (256mb) memory.”

[@RetroSpector78]

But don’t have a k6 333 unfortunately

[@徐子翔-c9o]

RetroSpector78 Can’t it install a K6-2 or K6-3? Or just overclock the FSB to 100?

[@MessalineApghar]

The problem isnt a bad sdram. Its that you were not supposed to mix 30 pin simms and edo. It was set up for both for flexability but it was for one or the other.

[@icqme8586]

How does the Banshee scale with CPU speed? My only 3DFX card is a AGP Banshee and I'm unsure what to pair it with.

[@RetroSpector78]

Doesn’t scale all that well... think an early pentium 2 would be the fastest cpu I’d pair it with. But even for those there are better options.

[@DoRC]

There are knockouts in the case for the parallel and serial ports.

[@RetroSpector78]

I know but still think the mainboard layout could have been a little bit better.

[@osgrov]

Hah, that case.. :) I have built many PCs in that case. It was one of the standard cheap OEM cases you could get in the mid 90s, when I was working at a small PC builder shop. We mostly sold 486DX2-66s but later on Pentiums as well. If memory serves me, it didn't cost us more than about 25 euro and came with a PSU pre-installed, 200W I believe was our standard model. On a fun note, this (~1993) was when AMD got really aggressive. We got the Am486DX2-66 *really* cheap, and sold so many systems with them.. Great chip, and it was identical to Intel's, just a lot cheaper. :)

[@JohnnnyJohn]

Those speakers are so rad!

[@RetroSpector78]

Thx .... there are lots of variants on this design ... got a couple of others as well.

[@techtomek5062]

Was it possible to combine different RAM modules types on this motherboard?

[@kyles8524]

Nice, I used to collect 3dfx cards, I have about 41 in total ranging from the voodoo1/rush and the way to 3 3dfx voodoo 5's with various card in between and one unfortunately not working voodoo 5 6000 and one working quantum 3d aalchemy system(if anyone is unaware of what that is its basically a computer system with 32 vsa-100 chips compared to the voodoo 5 5500's 2 vsa-100 chips or the voodoo 5 6000's 4 vsa-100 chips)

[@RetroSpector78]

Kyle S wow impressive... my voodoo 1 card is literally the only “retro” hardware that I kept. Found it in the attic last year and that got me into retro computing :) 41 ... jeezes .... how long did it take you to collect those ? Here they are extremely difficult to find

[@kyles8524]

@@RetroSpector78 well Im 33 now , but when i was like 13 i had a pentium 1 90mhz system and bought my first 3d card which was an sis 6326 4mb and it was okay, it got me to be able to play motocross madness and camageddon 2 and use 3d acceleration for jedi knight dark forces II then upgraded to a voodoo2 which at the time I was ignorant and thought the megs of the card dictated performance but I was blown away by the performance of it.Ever since then Ive been collecting video cards and have been collecting not just 3dfx but all types of them like matrox,ati,SIS,S3,nvidia etc etc etc agp and pci cards I dunno probably 5 totes filled with them, and still have a athlon 64 based system so i can benchmark old cards against each other without a bottle neck of a cpu,it was an old hobby and its all in totes now but I never threw any of it away.I have a few ati rage fury maxx cards similar to the voodoo 5 5500 with 2 gpu's but I can get only one of the gpu's to work and further looking into it i guess you need a specific motherboard.So I could never benchmark them against my voodoo 5 5500's for performance.aalchemy system is cool but you dont get any better performance out of it benched against a voodoo 5 5500 cause no games is going to use 32 vsa chips but I got it for like $450 and kind of wish I could just have the 450 now and no aalchemy system and get myself a rtx 2070 or something lol

[@sburton015]

I remember having an AST advantage adventure PC that we bought from Walmart in early 1997. It had a 66 mhz 486 dx2 cpu with 8 mb of ram, a 540 mb hard drive, and had Windows 95 version A, I believe the version of Windows 95 from 1996. Even today, I do still have my oldest Toshiba laptop from 1998 with a 266 mhz Pentium cpu with 96 mb of ram and on that, I have Windows 98 second edition.

[@RetroSpector78]

Really like win98se as an OS. And on a decent laptop with an active tft it can be very enjoyable.

[@sburton015]

@@RetroSpector78 laptop is actually a Satelite 330 cds with it's original 4.1 gb hard drive. I could even do some limited web browsing on IE5.5 and use Microsoft chat to go into chatrooms, kind of like the old AOL days of the internet.

[@jorgemtds]

I also had a 233MMX with a Banshee. Good memories 😀.

[@RetroSpector78]

yeah great gaming platform back in the day ... lots of classic 3dfx games released during that time.

[@francoisfritz198]

My p233mmx on Biostar p5ata main board, don't run quietly when sdram/edo or fpm ram are installed at the same time. Now I've found two pc100 sdram sticks who are accepted by the other components! 😀. Take care

[@BilisNegra]

You could use both EDO and SD RAM at the same time? What craziness is that? You can't even use DDR2 and DDR3 simultaneously in the somewhat rare mobos that include slots for both!

[@RetroSpector78]

I thought that some mainboards supported this type of setup. Could be wrong, but there does seem to be some debate on the subject. However I am perfectly fine with having “only” 64mb :) would never have mixed them but the pc came to me in that setup.

[@MasterDrood]

Gorgeous, thank you for creating this content I know how hard is to create content.

[@RetroSpector78]

Thx a lot ! Appreciate it ... does take some time get everything right :) the fact that you need to record everything makes the entire process 3x longer. And that excludes editing / voice-overs :)

[@MasterDrood]

@@RetroSpector78 I indeed know, I own my small channel in Spanish, and getting the parts, making the recording, voice over, editing and any other special fx consumes a lot of time. This is why I thank you for taking the time to make this awesome videos

[@Geomanb]

The SDRAM could also be some rare kind of EDO memory in „SDRAM-form factor“ like IBM used in the PC GL 330. them it can be mixed

[@RetroSpector78]

Not really sure ... didn’t look like anything special, and to be honest don’t think the original builder would have taken that into account :) the manual did say something about them being possible to use together.

[@Geomanb]

@@RetroSpector78 I wanted to delete my comment, because later on in the video it is clear that this specific board has a SDRAM-Slot. I've got such a config too, and I decided to go with SDRAM only. Mixing is forbidden according to the manual and results in strange crashs like shown in your video. The IBM 330-mainboard is a rare case, and has indeed nothing to do with your system.

[@FOIL_FRESH]

also i think these voltages on the different RAM types are also different so mixing ram is really not good.

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah... judging from the state of the pc the builder at the time didn’t seem to mind. Was surprised that memtest didn’t detect any errors.

[@futurepastnow]

This is very similar to my Win95 system, which has a 200MHz K6 and a 3D Blaster Banshee. But this poor system was obviously assembled by someone who had no idea what they were doing :( Nice to see it in better hands and running.

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah ... going to enjoy it for a bit and will probably do a second video on it.

[@3DfxAslinger]

A not so bad chipset from VIA for the Socket 7. My Voodoo 1 system (also a Pentium MMX, FIC PA2010+ mainboard) with 128 MB installed SDRAM memory has the same VIA VPX585. 🙂

[@RetroSpector78]

yeah I'm pretty happy with it so far. Lovely machine.

[@pc-sound-legacy]

I like the Medalist logo on the HDD. But I am not a big fan of these older VIA Chipsets - had too much trouble with them back the days.

[@CptJistuce]

That system looks suspiciously like what I call a storage system. You stick a board you aren't using into a case you aren't using, then tuck parts you aren't using into it for protection. It explains why the SIMM and DIMM slots are both populated, all the headers are just flopping around, the CPU doesn't appear to have heatsink compound on it, the CPU fan is missing, the motherboard doesn't have standoffs, and that ridiculous "no bracket" video card.

[@DxDeksor]

Cool ! Not that early 16 bit PCs are boring, but a change of topic is nice from time to time ^^

[@RetroSpector78]

Indeed .... although I really like the xt’s and 286 machines, these pentiums are the things that really got me into computers.

[@ThehakkeMadman]

I was so proud when in late 1997 a K6 200 "monster machine" replaced my lame 486-DXII 80... problem was, the Diamond Monster 3D I ordered was not avaible for some weeks so the smart-ass guy from the store who sold the PC got me an ATI Rage2 instead... god, what a letdown. But later on I finally got a Voodoo2 (miro HiScore² 3D) and it was like heaven! In 1998 Unreal was released and I was hyped, so I got the game. But still I had no Voodoo Chipset in my PC (vanilla Unreal couldn't even use Direct3D so the pain using the ATI Rage was no option at all) so I upgraded from 32Mb Ram to 64Mb. So the game ran in 512 resolution... in window mode!

[@shmehfleh3115]

I had that exact case, too. I had a Pentium 75 in mine, not exactly a powerhouse.

[@daw7563]

Solution to the com and parallell port. Remove them from the bracket and mount them in the case cutouts above.

[@lazibayer]

A Virge is still too valuable to sacrifice in my opinion lol

[@LadislavAlexa]

Note: Clean the system board from dust before removing the CPU. :)

[@RetroSpector78]

Ladislav Alexa thx for the tip... there will be a part 2 ... wanted to get this out there before the (busy) weekend. Will take a note of it.

[@RETROCENGO]

Highly enjoyable video, you just got yourself a new subscriber 😁 and a like. Keep up the good work. -Retrocengo

[@RetroSpector78]

Thx ... like your amiga stuff also. Those are also on my todo list ... have a couple of amiga 500’s, 1200, c64, c128, vic20.... but these pc’s are taking up most of my time at the moment.

[@RETROCENGO]

RetroSpector78 Thank you, looking forward to your Amiga videoes😁

[@iraklispap1369]

usually edo or sims cannot be matched with sdram. i have a zida tomato 5dtx motherboard and manual quotes that you can use either edo or sdram but never combine them. maybe the sdram has no problem at all

[@kfiatooh666]

I guess t wasn't DIMM module's fault - those motherboards simply didn't support mixed SIMM and DIMM modules. I was surprised when noticed both installed, but I just assumed that there was some motherboard that supported both together. It seems there was not ;)

[@RetroSpector78]

I still think some mainboards do.

[@pascalmariany]

Love it! I had the same monitor back in the day! :-)

[@bboytyby]

I always loved to play with turbo buton pressed. And my 486dx2 66mhz jumped to 100mhz

[@RetroSpector78]

And did it do anything in terms of cpu speed ? This one here is just for show

[@devil5051000]

Banshee had faster clock rates, more RAM but only one texture mapping unit. Voodoo2 had slower clock rates, less RAM but two TMUs. Who was the winner? In games that uses multi texturing (and of course benchmarks) the Voodoo2 wiped the floor with the Banshee. If the game used only single texturing the Banshee was faster (both in 800x600p of course) Overall I prefer the Banshee, because it can run higher resolutions then the Voodoo2 and you avoid the image quality eating loop cable from your 2D card to your Voodoo2. But Voodoo2 12 MB in SLI mode was a beast in 1024x768 nevertheless. Had two of them from Creative Labs running with a PII 333 with 128 MB RAM back in 98. That thing rocked. :)

[@sampa8378]

Where did this thing come from? Who put it together like that?

[@RetroSpector78]

Don't actually remember :) Think I picked it up with another PC I really wanted ot have and never looked at this one. But glad I did now.

[@RetroSpector78]

BrackynMor I assume everything was thrown in and placed into storage. Don’t think the pc was ever used like this

[@Blehstor]

you obviously cleaned everything before recording no?

[@danotten3344]

From Memory, EDO and DRAM require different voltages, so I say that is why the DRAM wasn't working properly ??

[@wishusknight3009]

The DIMM may be fine, but mixing simms and dimms will be an issue for signaling.