Hey EVGA friends

Here my latest retro build, which is a project in progress, ut so far all is turning out just fine.
It's a Matrox /3Dfx related build, the Matrox part is done, but the 3Dfx part will be added at a later time, currently trying to hunt down two Viewtop Vulcan2 Voodoo2 12MB's or  Gainward Dragon 3000 PCI 12MB's, not easy but  it will be worth it if I get either sets in this very build, such builds aren't easy in 2021 , keep in mind it's a good 22 to 25 years after the actual parts were made, the parts in the system date from 1997 to 1999, hence that, it's more of a Vintage PC thana  Retro one as some parts exceed the 25 year age mark.

So yea! a second Retro/Vintage PC project and yea why not, I always wanted to try out a nice AMD K7 Slot A based build using the AMD 750 Irongate chipset with the AMD AM754 Viper South Bridge, pairing that with a Matrox G400/G400MAX + 2x V2 12MB's in SLI, slowly but surely it is getting it's shapes made.
 
Nighthawk
 
AMD Athlon Thunderbird 700Mhz Slot A (Might replace this with an older Orion, Argon or Pluto core at a later time)
3x 256MB PC-133 Legend / Hynix @ PC-100
MSI MS-6195 AMD Irongate AM751 Chipset
Matrox Millennium G400 MAX AGP 32MB 128Bit SGRAM Rev.A (PCB Date not known yet)
2x Viewtop Vulcan2 12MBs in SLI or 2x Gainward Dragon 3000 PCI 12MB's in SLI or equivalent (Still working on this part.)
Samsung 3.5" FDD Drive
1x 40GB Seagate Barracuda V 7200 rpm HDD Main drive
1x 80GB Western Digital Caviar SE 7200 rpm HDD Storage drive
LG 40x/16X CD/DVD RW Drive
NEC 5 port USB 2.0 PCI Card + Front Panel 3 in PCI Card 2 in Front Panel
3-Com 3C 905C 10/100Mbit Ethernet PCI Card
Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold CT4390 4MB ISA PCB Date 3197
2002 A-Open H-600-B ATX Case
A-Open 350 Watt PSU or equivalent.
Compaq S710 17" Blackshade CRT from 2001
Reso @ 1024x768x32 ! 85Hz | 0.22.5 Dot Pitch
 
Win2K Pro UK + SP4
Matrox Power Desk for G400/550 series for Win2K Pro
Fast Voodoo 2 Drivers Win2K/XP for the V2 PCI 12MB's

Here some pics of the build I had done before I shipped the mainboard to Australia for a donor bios & repair & testing by my friend SWZSSR from x-3dfx & RETRO machines which is run by my friend Victor Bart


Here some pics of the MSI MS-6195 K7 Pro it's self, it's fully recapped as well:




More pics of the system and it's parts when they arrive and a G400 MAX is also coming with it btw as gift of kindness by SWZSSR himself.
The left pic is a shot of the G400 MAX with it's Soltek Golden Orb remake Looks nifty right


Here the sound card which I already have laying here a Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold CT4390 from week 31 of year 1997:




And yea  from here on I will post updates of the build log til we get to testing games and playing fabulous and memorable midi tunes  :)
I already have the entire  Duke Nukem 3D Soundtrack in high quality stereo Midi format ready for testing.

The good news it's all packed and ready to go, this will be a fun build and great system to play with but also use for Midi music and other retro feels.
As wallpaper this one will be used of course

Night Stalkers by Peter Chilelli


The name of the system and the wallpaper is in dedication and memory iof the first Stealth Fighter the Lockheed F-117A  Nighthawk
it's my favorite Stealth Jet of all time so I put it's name to good use with this classic build, a time Nighthawks were still in service.
For it's mascot I will buy a scale 1:72 diecast Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk model with the 2008 Farewell Livery, from Hobby Master.



 
For odd reasons abload.de which I always have been using for my gallery picture is very slow atm.
Which may explain lag when trying to view the photo's.

Nike_7688
Looks awesome! Also, I...may have forgotten AGP was a thing lol
 
Edit: Also also...F-117A was an awesome craft

Hey thanks  AGP stands for Accelerated Graphics Port , this was the predecessor for PCI-Express what we all are using today.

Vintage setups can be worth allot.

Chaos_21
Vintage setups can be worth allot.

Hmm they can be yea, especially when all the parts are recapped and rare like I have here, it took me a few years to find the parts in top quality, but in the end it will be wiorth bringing them to life and reliving my classic gaming days from the 1990's.
To use the actual hardware from way back then has always been my ultimate goal, this won't be my last vintage PC build either considering some parts are from 1997 as well.

XrayMan
 
Hah. A relic, but a nice relic.  ;)

Hell yea man and thanks!

Always I have loved Retro & Vintage PC's, the more the merrier, still much to explore and learn from, but also plenty of great things to explore as well


Still seeking a good retro Joystick like the Thrust master ProF16 with separate throttle & Rudder system and with a gameport so I can connect it to the AWE64 Gold, still a lot to do tho, but got the confirmation that the mainboard CPU, Ram, G400 MAX and some other parts are in transit  from South Australia to me here in Netherlands so roughly 2 weeks from now I will know more.

The main reason I build retro & Vintage PC's is to maintain the golden era of PC gaming from the 1990's and also to relive them, besides new-gen hardware is too expensive for me which all the contacts I have from x-3dfx  they give me the advantage to buy good quality recapped retro/vintage parts for decent amounts.

There are many times I might even leave New-gen completely, it's unaffordable and shows no interest to my main goals.
So instead I will use  my Opterons for my communities and current gen games & Software and after this Athlon K7 Slot A build I want to do a nice 486 DX2 build or something in that range, with the mainboard of my first computer which still works btw, it's from 1991/1992.

It currently has a Cyrix 486 DLC 33Mhz CPU with a Math-Co processor & 8x 1MB EDO Ram for a total of 8MB, max ram =- 16MB for this board a Sapcewalker mainboard I believe it is.
The Cyrix 486 DLC 33's perform slightly slower than an intel i486-SX 33Mhz but faster than a SX-25Mhz 
the 486 DLC 33 from Cyrix was an interesting choice, the best performing  486-DX 33 was the Green CPU Super 33, very hard to find on par with an Intel DX 40 to 50Mhz in some area's.

Many cool things will be coming from me and Project Irongate which became Nighthawk is the current system I am working on now, this is at least fun and affordable.

Wow, that sure is retro, thanks for sharing. 

rjohnson11
A beautiful retro PC from days done by. The Athlon Thunderbird CPU in this retro rig is awesome.

Hey many thanks man, I will surely do my best as always though!
it does me lots of good to see people still remembering the good old days hah xD
Here that same Athlon Thunderbird 700Mhz Slot A CPU in my MSI MS-6191 Micro ATX Mainboard with it's original Thermaltake Golden Orb for SLot A / SECC PII CPU's

This little mainboard I also have laying around for an other project named: Project Raptor.
No Velociraptors were harmed during this photo session

EVGATech_GabrielT
Wow, that sure is retro, thanks for sharing. 

Hey anytime  bud, and since not many retro or vintage PC's are seen here I was like time to do something about that
A Gainward or EVGA GeForce3 AGP 64MB DDR + ViVo is also something I am looking for, for the V5 PCI Mac system, then I can use the NV20 as main VGA and the V5 PCI Mac as slave VGA.

aka_STEVE_b
I almost forgot how awful the colors were in our PC rigs back in the day .... 
 
Cool idea for a build though.

To me they were more of beauty back then than we have now, especially build quality & function was alot better.
The capacitors were bad true that but they are easy to replace with server grade capacitors so you still have many good options to get more out of your system thanks to a good recap.
But hey each to their own right

Thanks tho, it will get some color in there lots of gold btw

Definitely a great look back at what was high end years ago. It’s one thing I do like about seeing retro builds is how things have changed.

That nice nasty green brings me back

Nice setup, a friend of mine got the 1GHz Athlon when it came out, I wonder if he still has it.

You always post the most interesting retro content.

Hey all!

Well last night on August 19, 2021, I been up all night trying to think what went wrong when using the G400 MAX, after finding out that it's driver was causing certain instabilities
Things such as the sound cutting out in games to random freezes, but deep down I knew there was a way to find a more probable solution and there was!

Thus I Went back in time to some distant memory and I was like well... now I do remember clearly that the 3dfx Voodoo3 series runs very well with AMD Systems ...
So maybe with this Slot A setup I have before me as well and that appears to have been just it!

Here the name & Specs for this post:

-----------------------
Nighthawk
 
AMD Athlon Thunderbird 700Mhz Slot A (Might replace this with an older Orion, Argon or Pluto core at a later time)
3x 256MB PC-133 Legend / Hynix @ PC-100
MSI MS-6195 K7 Pro AMD Irongate AM751 Chipset for AMD Slot A
3dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP 16MB Rev.A 3199 (Eur PAL variant, mint in box)
Vantec Spectrum Cooling PCI Slot Cooler for V3 3500
Samsung 3.5" FDD Drive
1x 40GB Seagate Barracuda V 7200 rpm HDD Main drive
1x 80GB Western Digital Caviar SE 7200 rpm HDD Storage drive
LG 40x/16X CD/DVD RW Drive
NEC 5 port USB 2.0 PCI Card + Front Panel 3 in PCI Card 2 in Front Panel
3-Com 3C 905C 10/100Mbit Ethernet PCI Card
Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold CT4390 4MB ISA PCB Date 3197
2002 A-Open H-600-B ATX Case
A-Open 350 Watt PSU or equivalent.
Compaq S710 17" Blackshade CRT from 2001
Reso @ 1024x768x32 ! 85Hz | 0.22.5 Dot Pitch
 
Win2K Pro UK + SP4
AmigaSport 3.0 for Win2K/XP by AmigaMerlin for V3 3500
-----------------------

So yea everything is top notch not and dead stable, this is probably one of the more complicated builds I did regarding the instabilities I came across in the end  once you find a way to tame the beast , this becomes one of the best retro classics I ever built up to date.

The G400 MAX will be kept for an other retro PC project, also these cards are better opted for Win98 SE as well so no loss in the end, it's a nice card for a Pentium !!!/E 650Mhz Coppermine build something Slot 1 based, maybe sometime in the future, but for now I am going to enjoy this Athlon Slot A build, since much of fine tuning to be done and upgrading some of the parts etc.
And along side that I am just going to take it easy from here on, yet this system I have built as of recent, well it was a very worthy one to do.

Enjoy the photo's & Screenshots, this will be the main gallery of this project for now, I might remove the other one just to avoid confusion.

Here the entire system + 1995 Roland E-14 Keyboard, not the Night Stalkers by Peter Chilelli wallpaper that I used for this build  :)

 
Here she is in her full glory, all neatly built and it gives solid stable performance with all round workloads:

This is a system that has an age of roughly 22 years and 4 months, yet making a clean build like this, makes it feel like new again.
The mainboard was fully recapped and that does pay off tbh.

Here is how I actively are cooling the heatsink of the 3dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP 16MB, that with the help of a Vantec PCI Slot cooler.
This dual fan card I placed in PCI Slot 02 with one slot space between the V3 3500 and the Vantec Slot cooler, this way it has the chance to cool the V3 3500 properly.
The second photo shows this clearly and this way my V3 3500 never overheats anymore.

 
Here all the installed parts & components, all neatly done with no driver issues at all

 
This photo I took yesterday at 08:00 AM, after a nights work getting the system installed with the V3 3500, the second shot shows the 3dfx Advanced Features tab

 
Here the other settings for 3dfx Advanced features:


3dfx Color & 3dfx TV settings


3dfx Edge Anti Aliasing settings for Direct3D, OpenGL & Glide

 
Here the Box of the V3 3500 TV AGP 16MB Rev.A1 3199



Here the 3dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP 16MB Rev.A 3199 top & rear view:




Here the Vantec Spectrum Cooling PCI Slot cooler



Here the Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE 64 Gold CT4390 Rev.A 3197 sound card



And here the Matrox Millennium G400 MAX AGP 32MB 128Bit SGRAM Rev.B 4399 with Soltek Gold Orb cooler.
This card I will keep for a P3/E  Slot 1 rebuild in the future  :)
Even though I will try and fix it's driver issue, maybe there is a more stable driver for Win2K Pro with the system I am using now.



And lastly a video I made of this system in action:

EVGATech_GabrielT
Some of this stuff sure brings back memories, Thank for sharing. 

Hey thanks Gabriel  :)
Yea and that is also the drive I have when making these oldies come back to life with fully recapped mainboards and fully renovated parts.
Still plenty of retro projects are planned on my end this way I can give this place a stroll through time

mandalor28
Man, now I really need to rebuild my old PC. I've got my Voodoo 2 sitting in an electrostatic bag in a drawer. I think what's stopping me is I sold all my old PC games like an idiot thinking I'd never want them again so I'd have to hunt down things to play.

Look for garage sales and the like. That is usually where you'll find old stuff. 

Man how far technology has come is really impressive.

Great memories. Thanks for the retro build.