Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

I remember when I worked at the shop in fort worth. We had this investment company (small one) that contracted our work. (2010?)

The owner hired his old (really old) man as the it guy for this...like 5 person company.

They had a VPN connected between the lan and the old mans lan at his house. He backed up the dell xeon poweredge onto like 4 PPro servers at his house. You could tell this old guy had lost his skills. sooo much unnecessary crap. I know the cloud concept was kind of new then but shit, you could achieve the same backup with an expensive raided NAS, not these desktop-based servers.

last time I worked for him he refused to pay because he said *I* knocked their internet offline. I was going between the company and his house trying to figure it out when I noticed a bunch of guys were working up in an elevator. I wondered if the internet was down because they were doing maintenance on it or if the elevator work cut it off at his floor. The guys at work were already up the shaft and no one was around for me to question them if there was an interruption, an the old guy was impatient and telling me to come drive him home

LOL.....I can relate....I've encountered more than a few like that in my 27 year career.... You brought a similar individual to the front of my memories, and I could have gone the rest of my life without remembering what a pain in the ass this guy was...

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

I picked up 2x quadro4 400 64mb GPU's....which are basically geforce 4's with dual processors....and 4 monitor support. They're a little newer than this board, but they're PCI.....and well I only paid $7 for them, and have driver support all the way back to NT4.....We'll see what one of these can do....surely it'll beat a Matrox Millennium.

[brethin]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

I picked up 2x quadro4 400 64mb GPU's....which are basically geforce 4's with dual processors....and 4 monitor support. They're a little newer than this board, but they're PCI.....and well I only paid $7 for them, and have driver support all the way back to NT4.....We'll see what one of these can do....surely it'll beat a Matrox Millennium.

It should by a good bit, those are awesome retro cards.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

wow good score with the quadro4s there. those gf4 ti based cards are going for 30-40 bucks on junkbay!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Finding the sweet spot slowly. Put bigger fans on the CPU's of the PR440FX, since it has headers for them on the motherboard...

...and a closeup of that famous VRM:


Testing an adaptec aaa-131u2, a controller that can be a little fickle with older hardware....but it worked without issue on this board.



2x 36gb 10k RPM drives in a mirror. I normally stripe them.....but I just didn't this time....



majorgeek's 'unofficial' SP5 for Win2k installing...



The MSI MS-6107 fanless sinks got the fans originally on the PR440FX, since this board doesn't have fan headers on the motherboard.



This time around I also went down to FF3.6.27, as its far happier with this lame old GPU....it actually functions very smooth, all things considered with this all-around gutless system! More when the GPU's get here.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Now, it should be possible to run at least most SNES emulation without being slow.
And even PlayStation 1 games should run fine, but I expect Gran Turismo 2 to be the toughest! The graphics hardware should exceed the requirements for Gran Turismo 2, for Direct 3D 7 and possibly Direct 3D 8.1, but I dunno about the CPU.

Perhaps, for old skool games, like I mentioned, would be better with a Voodoo 2!

[kc8adu]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

i guess i have been lucky.
worst ones have been foreign hotel/motel owners.
every stinkin one of them is an ungrateful cheap SOB.
had one who went off the deep end when i offered to program his new UNT for half what johnson controls quoted him.
ok find someone else or bend over for jc.
his business partner later apologized and was happy to have me do the job.
but he was the lone example.
now when those guys contact me i am permanently too busy.

LOL.....I can relate....I've encountered more than a few like that in my 27 year career.... You brought a similar individual to the front of my memories, and I could have gone the rest of my life without remembering what a pain in the ass this guy was...

[kc8adu]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

i have 2 of those dual ppro boards rat-holed.
had 3 but a client lost a server to lightning and i used one to revive it.
having old hardware saved back=WIN!

[Heihachi_73]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Now, it should be possible to run at least most SNES emulation without being slow.
And even PlayStation 1 games should run fine, but I expect Gran Turismo 2 to be the toughest! The graphics hardware should exceed the requirements for Gran Turismo 2, for Direct 3D 7 and possibly Direct 3D 8.1, but I dunno about the CPU.

Perhaps, for old skool games, like I mentioned, would be better with a Voodoo 2!

Back in the day (circa 1999) I used to run Snes9x on a Pentium 166 overclocked to 200 MHz, a Pentium Pro should wipe the floor with my old machine clock for clock.

An ancient version of MAME should also run reasonably well but it all depends on the arcade hardware being emulated (e.g. Pac-Man is much lighter on system resources than Mortal Kombat). Personally for such an old machine, I wouldn't go higher than 0.106 as that's when a major core upgrade happened, but YMMV depending mostly on the video card and the game itself (you might be able to get away with versions up to 0.179 with a mid-2000s AGP card, as MAME took its next performance hit when 0.180 was released as deprecated DirectDraw/Direct3D code was junked in favor of newer code that mostly only works with modern PCI-E cards, rendering almost all AGP video cards useless unless they were happy with non-power-of-two textures - if your video card doesn't support certain things like NPOT textures, MAME will dump you in GDI mode, but can be forced to OpenGL in most cases although some cards hate OpenGL for some reason e.g. mid-2000s ATI Radeon cards and run a lot slower compared to an identical D3D mode).

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

The GPU's came in. Huge improvement! FF12 is still sucky but much better, but I blame that more on the lack of processing power. 3.6.28 seems to be the pentium classic happy place.

I'm also working on a couple more GPU combinations. One is a Matrox G450 + a voodoo2. The Matrox GPU is great for 2D stuff, and the Voodoo2 can certainly pick up the 3D slack with OpenGL stuff....great Quake1 system, with a dual head 2D GPU. The voodoo2 was given to me in a junk box, I found the g450 on ebay for $15 shipped. Yes, this combo is more pentium2 era....but with something I'm working on will make this era appropriate....Ratdude figured it out....

Another GPU is the nvidia fx5500 256mb PCI. Cheap and plentiful!

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Back in the day (circa 1999) I used to run Snes9x on a Pentium 166 overclocked to 200 MHz, a Pentium Pro should wipe the floor with my old machine clock for clock.

An ancient version of MAME should also run reasonably well but it all depends on the arcade hardware being emulated (e.g. Pac-Man is much lighter on system resources than Mortal Kombat). Personally for such an old machine, I wouldn't go higher than 0.106 as that's when a major core upgrade happened, but YMMV depending mostly on the video card and the game itself (you might be able to get away with versions up to 0.179 with a mid-2000s AGP card, as MAME took its next performance hit when 0.180 was released as deprecated DirectDraw/Direct3D code was junked in favor of newer code that mostly only works with modern PCI-E cards, rendering almost all AGP video cards useless unless they were happy with non-power-of-two textures - if your video card doesn't support certain things like NPOT textures, MAME will dump you in GDI mode, but can be forced to OpenGL in most cases although some cards hate OpenGL for some reason e.g. mid-2000s ATI Radeon cards and run a lot slower compared to an identical D3D mode).

I was happily running SNES games on the IBM Aptiva (C32, IIRC) Pentium 133 box at my family's back in 2001, IIRC. Ironically, the CD-ROM drive was manufactured in China! I think I just had a heart attack! (JK)
Because it was rare for major PC components (pre-1999) to even have a lick of China! (excluding tiny cheap ass speakers, LOL) It certainly wasn't like 2002, where by then, China was all over the place in the PC world!
It wasn't even 1998, when my family got it, IIRC, LOL! The PC was made in 1996, IIRC! A Mitsumi 6X CD-ROM, IIRC. I guess that's why it seemed meh.

But even the speakers, which were better ones, even though without a subwoofer, were also manufactured in China. That was a surprise, too, but not as much as with the CD-ROM drive!

I think that a lot of SNES games are at least fairly playable even on a 486 DX 100, (maybe 66 Mhz or 75 Mhz as well) if not an SX as well.

Nintendo 64=Forget it, you need at least a 700 Mhz CPU or near there. And you'll be lucky to play Harvest Moon 64 at 500 Mhz or near there with some slowness. (and that's with the recompiler!) (interpreter requires more CPU!)
And thus, Nintendo 64 emulation, is mostly a Pentium III class or higher project.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Neither of these boards would POST with the FX5500, both beeped 'no video' error codes at me. I thought the card was DOA, but I did try it in something newer (a VP6 I had laying loose), and it POST'd right up. Must be some kind of compatibility or PCI compliance issue....ohh well, $26 gamble and the card was new in box...ohh well, I'll save it for something else.

The G450 PCI on the other hand performs very nice, all things considered......more whenever I tinker with these again....

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

One of these finally got built.....





....from NT4 & FF2.0.0.2....

It's the MSI MS-6107
2x 200MHz P-Pro CPU's @ 233; 512k L2
512mb RAM
Matrox G450 PCI 32mb GPU
SB16 audio
Adaptec 2940W
9.1gb 10k RPM Seagate Cheetah
6Plex Plextor CDROM
ISA 10bt NIC
WinNT 4 SP6a

Shittin' in tall cotton now....but no collection is complete without a P-Pro system in the woodpile somewhere....and I get extra cool points for it being a dually.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Ok, a few pics to wrap up one of these builds....

Innards!






Nice old desktop style beige case that I had a sleeper build in at one point....but I thought this was a far better build for this case!



POST screen


Gotta love NT!





Not sure when I'll get around to the other build.....but atleast one is finished!

[stj]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

i skipped the Pentium era,
i went from 486DX4's to AMD K6-2's and then Athlons.

[momaka]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

but no collection is complete without a P-Pro system in the woodpile somewhere....and I get extra cool points for it being a dually.

Not gonna lie: that build is indeed super cool!
And that beige case is a total awesomeness. The way you styled it with the CDROM is perfect - just screams reliable workhorse from the 90's.

It would be interesting to see what games it can handle from that era and how well.

I find it funny how in CPU-Z, there is absolutely nothing under the "Instructions" field. Not even MMX!
Truly an amazing museum piece (and functional, at that), showing how far CPU architecture and design have moved in ~25 years.

On a side note, do you have any use for ISA / PCI 50-pin SCSI controller cards? We have a bunch at work that I think are going to end up being scrapped. Can try to save a few if you have a use. I already saved a few other retro "goodies" that I'm thinking you might find more useful/interesting (for a retro build) than I.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Not gonna lie: that build is indeed super cool!
And that beige case is a total awesomeness. The way you styled it with the CDROM is perfect - just screams reliable workhorse from the 90's.

It would be interesting to see what games it can handle from that era and how well.

I find it funny how in CPU-Z, there is absolutely nothing under the "Instructions" field. Not even MMX!
Truly an amazing museum piece (and functional, at that), showing how far CPU architecture and design have moved in ~25 years.

On a side note, do you have any use for ISA / PCI 50-pin SCSI controller cards? We have a bunch at work that I think are going to end up being scrapped. Can try to save a few if you have a use. I already saved a few other retro "goodies" that I'm thinking you might find more useful/interesting (for a retro build) than I.

...and this build got a little more 'retrofied' today.....in ways you'll appreciate! Pics coming soon!

Yea, I'll take those.... Nothing SCSI should ever be destroyed!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Something that's been sitting in the attic for a while....After letting it warm up, it was a little out of focus and dark....I let it run a good hour to make sure everything was reformed & up to temp...

Cracked open!!





Diddling around with the screen control and brought it back into focus.



I forgot how difficult it is to photograph a CRT monitor....and this is @ 85Hz refresh! ...but for all of you who make fun of my old test equipment!!



Much better.....but LCD > CRT...but to keep everything period-specific....



Back together....but still doesn't photograph well.... That's 1280x1024 @ 85Hz. It will do 1600x1200 @ 75Hz, but for a 17", that's just too high (things are way too small).



So much retro awesome!!



Of course a butt shot...



This build is just a cool one!!

[momaka]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

...and this build got a little more 'retrofied' today.....in ways you'll appreciate! Pics coming soon!

Something that's been sitting in the attic for a while....

Oh I see what you mean now.

Yup, it truly is appreciated.
Love it when old CRTs come back to life.

I forgot how difficult it is to photograph a CRT monitor....and this is @ 85Hz refresh!

It is in a bright room. But if you increase the exposure time on your camera and take a picture at a dim or mostly dark room, the image on the screen will come out pretty nicely.

Much better.....but LCD > CRT...but to keep everything period-specific....

Oh, you know I will say that I very strongly disagree here.

To be fair, though, I think it really depends on your application.

For regular desktop use, I'd also take an LCD any day, as it is much easier to see in an office/well-lit/work environment.

But when it comes to gaming and watching videos... nah, LCD doesn't come even close. I've tested high-end "professional" Dell LCD monitors, ultra-low response gaming monitors worth several $k, and even bleeding-edge OLED monitors at my previous job. Of these, I consider OLED as the only one that actually beats a properly-calibrated CRT in terms of natural color rendering with true deep black colors. And then there is also the "motion-rendering" aspect. A CRT will always look smooth and never produce any visible "tearing" on the screen, because the full image is not actually rendered on the screen, but in your eyes/head. With LCDs, you really need to go with the 120 Hz or higher panels with very low pixel lag. And even then, they will screen-tear some if not using v-sync. Problem is, only gaming monitors tend to offer that high refresh rate and ultra-low pixel lag combo... but these monitors tend to have terrible backlight bleeding and color rendering.

So you can't really have the best of everything in one single monitor technology - not yet, at least.

Anyways, enough rambling on that matter from me.

Back together....but still doesn't photograph well.... That's 1280x1024 @ 85Hz. It will do 1600x1200 @ 75Hz, but for a 17", that's just too high (things are way too small).

Ugh, why 1280x1024 on a CRT? That's a 5:4 resolution. Proper 4:3 for 1280 pixels wide is 1280x960. Not that it should matter much for desktop use... but it just itches my inner OCD when I see that 5:4 resolution on a CRT.

That aside, I wouldn't go past 1152x864 on a 17" (16" viewable) CRT. Text just becomes too small for my eyes to read, especially with older software that doesn't really know how to scale up to high resolutions too well.

1280x960 @ 85 Hz (or even 100 Hz, if it can do it) will be absolute killer on this CRT for gaming, though. Been there and still doing that on my current CRTs.

So much retro awesome!!

This build is just a cool one!!

No doubt about that.

Yea, I'll take those.... Nothing SCSI should ever be destroyed!

Wish I could do something about that one.
My company threw out a big box of various interface cards (of which at least half was PCI/PCI-X/ISA SCSI 50-pin cards) - some still in their unopened anti-static bags. I saved a few aside, but didn't see how I could take the whole box just like that. Upper management probably would have been okay if I took the time to explain to them what I'd do with these (and if I could find them, as they are always in some sort of meeting.) We bring our scrap electronics stuff to a recycler that doesn't pay us anything.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Ugh, why 1280x1024 on a CRT? That's a 5:4 resolution. Proper 4:3 for 1280 pixels wide is 1280x960. Not that it should matter much for desktop use... but it just itches my inner OCD when I see that 5:4 resolution on a CRT.

That aside, I wouldn't go past 1152x864 on a 17" (16" viewable) CRT. Text just becomes too small for my eyes to read, especially with older software that doesn't really know how to scale up to high resolutions too well.

1280x960 @ 85 Hz (or even 100 Hz, if it can do it) will be absolute killer on this CRT for gaming, though. Been there and still doing that on my current CRTs.

You're correct.....just force of habit I suppose....I rarely deal with CRT's anymore....and pretty much all LCD's that aren't widescreen are 5:4. I do have a 15" 4:3 LCD here, but its ancient and hideous to look at.

My company threw out a big box of various interface cards (of which at least half was PCI/PCI-X/ISA SCSI 50-pin cards) - some still in their unopened anti-static bags.

That just hurt my soul a little..... :-/

We bring our scrap electronics stuff to a recycler that doesn't pay us anything.

...where they'll be shredded...uhgg... I only send the true 'trash' to the recycler....the stuff that's broken and not repairable.... I do my best to repurpose/re-home anything that still works.