Anybody enjoys tinkering with old PCs to find out how slow they are?

[RebateMonger]

your talking to a an Original Voodoo2 SLI owner.

I miss 3dFX.

I had Voodoo 1, Voodoo 2 SLI, Voodoo 3, and Voodoo 5. I had to sell the Voodoo 5 because it wouldn't work with new motherboards when Intel lowered their AGP voltages. I also sold the Voodoo 1. I still have the pair of Voodoo 2 and I kept a couple of Voodoo 3 in case I want to run old games that require a Voodoo card.

 

[Oxaqata]

Edit

 

[WT]

I just recycled an IBM PS2 66mhz desktop box a month ago. Shoulda tried to load Win7 on it first.

 

[wwswimming]

i got an Asus A8V from a neighbor.

then a friend gave me an Asus A7V.

they're collecting dust, but they're collecting dust TOGETHER.

i wonder if someday when we have AI, will robots have pictures of these old machines on their walls, like "Our Ancestors" ?

now ... to find an Asus A9V.

 

[yottabit]

All of you! A quick question regarding this topic.

What was a good video card back in the Pentium III days? I can't remember what was hot when I got my P3 800 Mhz.
Mine has a Radeon 7500, and it had a TNT2 on it's early days. Man that rig rocked for UT and NFS Porsche.

Maybe a Geforce 2 MX? Although both the cards you stated I think were from the early and late end of that time period

I didn't get too much gaming done during the PIII era... I was a poor young kid. I put up with some HP 500 Mhz Celeron that I stuck a 32 MB Savage 3d PCI card in (worked great for Unreal and Quake, etc). My next rig was a 1.4 Ghz Athlon Thunderbird with DDR and a Geforce 3 Ti200... man did that thing fly in comparison. That was a great graphics card too, it overclocked sooo much.

Then I built a P4 rig and bought a Radeon 9600XT and remembered waiting forever for HL2 to release, as it kept getting pushed back and back, because I got a free voucher with my card for Half Life 2 and CS:S (did anyone else have that experience?), along with tons of other stuff. I actually ended up getting hooked on the original Counter-Strike because of that, because it was the only thing I could play before CS:S Beta came out

 

[WT]

Back in the day, I upgraded from a Celeron 300A@450 to a Celeron 566@850. I had a GeForce2 Pro 64mb card (the reference was 32mb, so this cost me a bit more - $150 IIRC).

That setup ran the snot out of UT and lasted me for about 2 years until UT2003 made it seem tired. Those were the last Intel CPUs I used for about 6 years. Last two video cards I bought cost me $400+, so gaming has definitely been a pricey hobby when its all said and done.

 

[BTA]

In 1997/1998 anything with a Pentium II was considered good and the only really viable gaming solution was the 3Dfx Voodoo paired up with a decent 2D card like the Matrox Millennium, ATI Rage Pro, or the Nvidia Riva128 (which had decent 3D but too small framebuffer until the Riva128ZX came out) I remember this because that was my freshman year of college and this was all new to everyone at the time.

Pentium II's with a 100MHz FSB didn't come out until mobos with the Intel 440BX were available. Way back when, Abit (are they still around?) made the BH6 which I think largely gained its fame due to Anandtech and people with Celeron 300A's overclocking to 450. Those were fun times...

Yep, good ol Celeron 300A. I had that setup. I think I went to an Nvidia TNT when it first came out and ended up putting my Matrox G100 and Voodoo2 SLI's back in. Those Matrox had the clearest 2D VGA output you could find. Good stuff. It's really too bad they were never able to make a solid break into the 3D business. The G200 I think was their best card and it was pretty anemic.

Abit isn't really around anymore in any worthwhile form. The BH6 was one fine MB though.

And I don't know how some of you guys used to run ATI cards. Back then their drivers were complete shit and caused problems left and right.

Anyone remember Quantum Fireball hard drives? Big 5-1/4" deals that died all the time. Compaq loved those pieces of crap. Slow as mud too.

I also remember getting PC's with major issues that seem like a hard drive failure, and dreading opening it up to find the big C shape on it...Connor I think the brand was. I think Maxtor or Seagate bought the company at one point and was still shipping the old stock with the new brand label, but you could still identify them by the C shape.

 

[brandonwh64]

I have a Celeron 667 Socket A with motherboard and 512MB of PC133 setting in my floor and it also has a quantum fireball 20GB HDD. The only thing about this old pc is it doesnt have a AGP slot so if i installed a video card it would have to be the OLD pci

 

[pukemon]

Hehe, I love hearing about the old times - I replaced the card with a ATI 128 Ultra (can't find a thing about it). Was 64 or 128mb RAM the standard back then?

Believe it or not but most boxes came with 32MB in 1997. My super duper compy came with a whopping 64MB, and I thought it was pretty awesome when I upgraded to 128MB in 1998.

And I had an 8.4GB IBM Deathstar. Yeehaw!

 

[pukemon]

Yep, good ol Celeron 300A. I had that setup. I think I went to an Nvidia TNT when it first came out and ended up putting my Matrox G100 and Voodoo2 SLI's back in. Those Matrox had the clearest 2D VGA output you could find. Good stuff. It's really too bad they were never able to make a solid break into the 3D business. The G200 I think was their best card and it was pretty anemic.

Abit isn't really around anymore in any worthwhile form. The BH6 was one fine MB though.

And I don't know how some of you guys used to run ATI cards. Back then their drivers were complete shit and caused problems left and right.

Anyone remember Quantum Fireball hard drives? Big 5-1/4" deals that died all the time. Compaq loved those pieces of crap. Slow as mud too.

I also remember getting PC's with major issues that seem like a hard drive failure, and dreading opening it up to find the big C shape on it...Connor I think the brand was. I think Maxtor or Seagate bought the company at one point and was still shipping the old stock with the new brand label, but you could still identify them by the C shape.

I kinda miss my BH6+Celery300A box. But I replaced it with a Duron 700 that went all the way up to 1GHz with air cooling. Think it was some Gigabyte board with a VIA KT133A chipset.

I have a PCI Matrox Millennium II 4MB in my spare parts box... Also have an 8MB ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP... amazingly they still work. Had a 12MB STB Voodoo2 back in the day.

ATI driver's sucked back then? They kind of still do. ATI's drivers and Windows Update's driver just don't play nice together, at least for Win7-x64. Grrrr.

I think you're thinking of the Quantum Bigfoot drives that with 5.25" form factor, but were only 1" tall and spun at 3600RPM. I think I remember those in Packard Bells and Compaq Presarios...

Ah yeah the Conner Filepro series. Yeah those were garbage. Seagate bought them mainly for their tape backup drives which were actually pretty decent at the time.

Now that I think of it, even the cheap crap today is better than the regular crap of yesteryear. Kinda sad when you think about it.

 

[pukemon]

All of you! A quick question regarding this topic.

What was a good video card back in the Pentium III days? I can't remember what was hot when I got my P3 800 Mhz.
Mine has a Radeon 7500, and it had a TNT2 on it's early days. Man that rig rocked for UT and NFS Porsche.

The original Nvidia Geforce and the original ATI Radeon were considered good.

And then there was the Intel i740... they really milked that graphics core for all it's worth.

 

[BTA]

I kinda miss my BH6+Celery300A box. But I replaced it with a Duron 700 that went all the way up to 1GHz with air cooling. Think it was some Gigabyte board with a VIA KT133A chipset.

I have a PCI Matrox Millennium II 4MB in my spare parts box... Also have an 8MB ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP... amazingly they still work. Had a 12MB STB Voodoo2 back in the day.

ATI driver's sucked back then? They kind of still do. ATI's drivers and Windows Update's driver just don't play nice together, at least for Win7-x64. Grrrr.

I think you're thinking of the Quantum Bigfoot drives that with 5.25" form factor, but were only 1" tall and spun at 3600RPM. I think I remember those in Packard Bells and Compaq Presarios...

Ah yeah the Conner Filepro series. Yeah those were garbage. Seagate bought them mainly for their tape backup drives which were actually pretty decent at the time.

Now that I think of it, even the cheap crap today is better than the regular crap of yesteryear. Kinda sad when you think about it.

I gotta be honest, I said "back then" just to not piss off the fanboys.

And yes you are correct, it was the Bigfoot. Wasn't there a Fireball too? Maybe it was a 3.5" model...was it Maxtor that bought out Quantum? And now that you mention it I do remember the Connor tape backups and yeah they were one of the few consumer tape backup drives that worked fairly well. And by fairly well I mean barely...which is better than any other options at the time.

Backups consisted of Zip drives and floppies for most people...if you were bleeding edge you might have had a CD burner (installed neatly under your 16X CD Reader). If you were a total badass you might have dual Plextor CD drives, a reader and a 4x burner. SCSI of course.

 

[BTA]

Anyone remember Trident?

Or early Winmodems...and always suggesting to customers that they get a hardware ISA modem?

 

[AnitaPeterson]

All of you! A quick question regarding this topic.

What was a good video card back in the Pentium III days? I can't remember what was hot when I got my P3 800 Mhz.
Mine has a Radeon 7500, and it had a TNT2 on it's early days. Man that rig rocked for UT and NFS Porsche.

The Geforce2 GTS

I remember paying $300 for my first one... but I used it for eight years.

 

[betasub]

What was a good video card back in the Pentium III days? I can't remember what was hot when I got my P3 800 Mhz.
Mine has a Radeon 7500, and it had a TNT2 on it's early days. Man that rig rocked for UT and NFS Porsche.

TNT2 was the mid-range option: Geforce2 GTS (and similar, Ultra etc) were the high-end, a big leap forward from the original Geforce256. I remeber the GTS model I bought being advertised as breaking the GigaTexel per Second mark! w00T!

 

[pukemon]

Anyone remember Trident?

Or early Winmodems...and always suggesting to customers that they get a hardware ISA modem?

Errr I do... and am I feeling old? Now get off my lawn!

I had an ISA Trident 8900 with 256KB (yes that's right KiloBytes) of RAM on a 386. It was a generic "VGA card" meaning it could do 640x480 with 256 colors! w00t!

I usually recommended people to get external modems because they were 100% hardware and just plugged into your COM port. And how USRobotics Sportsters all had a very distinct beep/static/connect sound to it.

 

[BTA]

I still know datacenter guys who refuse to use anything but the black USR external modems...the long ass ones.

In fact I pulled a 14,400 USR modem out of a parts box when i started my current job because the shitpile one in the laptop they gave me wouldn't remote into anything successfully. The USR works great still hehe. It's a little yellowed now though. What amazes me more is that we still have sites here that I can't get to over our network...sigh.

 

[stevf]

all this new tech - got one of these boat anchors at home IBM 5100 - unfortunately doesnt quite work atm

http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5100.html

 

[rancherlee]

I still have my "windows 98se" box yet. MSI K7Pro, Athlon 700, 512 meg ram, and a 64mb Radeon. I still use it for older games than Windows XP didn't like such as alot of the older Sim City games. I remember being the ONLY person that could run Q3A 1024x786 with all the eye candy cranked up at the Lan party while everyone else was stuck running 640x480 or 800x600 on there TNT 2 Ultras!

 

[garritynet]

Old PCs are surprisingly usable for most people. I get old computers whenever I have the opportunity, fix them up and give them away. I do it for free because I'm nobodies tech support/punching bag.

 

[imported_NoGodForMe]

My old machines always went to my parents. But now they're obsolete and the machines are coming back to me.
P2 - 450 (windows 98). Still boots, costed me 5k to build back in the day. Has a 9 gig SCSI drive (Seagate 10k), 2 Voodoo cards, 8x Rocket CD Burner. This was top of the line back then.
There's really nothing this machine can do today. It's really sad that something still works, yet it can't run anything.

And my current gaming machine runs on an Asus AV8, only play Tribes2 on it, none of the newer games interest me. But I'll eventually upgrade.

Just like old cars that end up in a crusher, there are places that recycle old PC parts for the copper.

 

[pukemon]

My old machines always went to my parents. But now they're obsolete and the machines are coming back to me.
P2 - 450 (windows 98). Still boots, costed me 5k to build back in the day. Has a 9 gig SCSI drive (Seagate 10k), 2 Voodoo cards, 8x Rocket CD Burner. This was top of the line back then.
There's really nothing this machine can do today. It's really sad that something still works, yet it can't run anything.

And my current gaming machine runs on an Asus AV8, only play Tribes2 on it, none of the newer games interest me. But I'll eventually upgrade.

Just like old cars that end up in a crusher, there are places that recycle old PC parts for the copper.

Can't run anything new, but what's wrong with the old stuff? Sometimes it's fun to pull out the old games from 10 years ago. Kinda like dusting off the ol' N64 or original Playstation from the closet.

 

[Tsavo]

I have an old Pentium Pro dual that still works...probably.

Paid an arm and ten legs for it back then.

 

[Arcanedeath]

Good video back in the P3 days for Nvidia at least started w/ the TNT 2 -> TNT2 Ultra -> Geforce SDR -> Geforce DDR -> Geforce 2 ATI had the 7000 series and the 8000 series, mainly the 8500 the the 7000 series is rebranded orginal Raedon's. For the most part if i recall correctly anways.

 

[CuriousMike]

My first box when I was a Junior in High School was an IBM XT clone that had the turbo button to go from 4.77-> 10mhz.

I saved a whole summer of McD's wages to buy a used 10MB harddisk complete with MFM controller card.

Hercules "graphics" on monochrome monitor.

I bought one of the earliest ATI cards that would output CGA/EGA onto a monochrome monitor so I could game... without color.

Next machine was 286/12, then some 386 clone at 40mhz... Pentium 1 120mhz, then the ole 300A @ 450 ! I remember spending $265 at Frys for a Voodoo2 12MB.... "DAYUM!"

The hardware got faster, the boot times got slower.