My pentium overdrive build

[Sphere478]

I heard there were some retro folks here. Dono how accurate that was but here is one of my many builds.

 

this came to me as a 486 40 sx with no l2 cache, 8? Mb of ram and 512k of video memory.

 

so far I have upgraded it to a pentium overdrive 83mhz, I can probably upgrade it to a amd 133mhz 5x86 but not sure if that would actually be faster or not as the PODs are pretty snappy on the 486 scene anyway

 

I got 32mb of ram working, but it had to be double sided. Single sided 16mb sticks didn’t seem to want to work.

If I can find some 32 chip 32mb sticks I could try that, but considering 4 chip 16mb sticks work, I’m not holding my breath. May need to run some missing address lines from the chipset?

 

the video is either isa or vl bus, not sure which. But I upgraded the memory from 512k to 1mb on it maxing it out I believe

 

the cache was not present. I installed 256 k maxing it out I believe.

 

for storage, I wanted to go as fast as possible. Since isa was the only bus available It was suggested to go scsi.

 

It’s not finished yet, but eventually I want to get windows 9x on it and play a few basic windows games. And of course dos games.

[pio]

We've got a little bit of everyone around here. Neat setup! Older than my stuff so far. Welcome to ehw! 

That setup would actually be a pretty good fit for Win95.  98 if you really wanted to go "newer" with it.  I've got a 98SE box running right now, but its P3 era Athlon, don't have my K6 running yet.  All I have to say is good luck with 3d, I've had absolutely zero luck in that department so far. -_-

Edited August 23, 2022 by pioneerisloud

[Sir Beregond]

Welcome to EHW! I don't have any retro stuff myself, but like Pio says, there's a bit of everything around here!

[Avacado]

Welcome to the forums! Really cool build. 

[ENTERPRISE]

11 hours ago, Sphere478 said:

I heard there were some retro folks here. Dono how accurate that was but here is one of my many builds.

 

this came to me as a 486 40 sx with no l2 cache, 8? Mb of ram and 512k of video memory.

 

so far I have upgraded it to a pentium overdrive 83mhz, I can probably upgrade it to a amd 133mhz 5x86 but not sure if that would actually be faster or not as the PODs are pretty snappy on the 486 scene anyway

 

I got 32mb of ram working, but it had to be double sided. Single sided 16mb sticks didn’t seem to want to work.

If I can find some 32 chip 32mb sticks I could try that, but considering 4 chip 16mb sticks work, I’m not holding my breath. May need to run some missing address lines from the chipset?

 

the video is either isa or vl bus, not sure which. But I upgraded the memory from 512k to 1mb on it maxing it out I believe

 

the cache was not present. I installed 256 k maxing it out I believe.

 

for storage, I wanted to go as fast as possible. Since isa was the only bus available It was suggested to go scsi.

 

It’s not finished yet, but eventually I want to get windows 9x on it and play a few basic windows games. And of course dos games.

Welcome to ExtremeHW

 

Nice Rig, I reckon that is so retro that it CAN play Crysis....A frame every year.

[Sphere478]

On 22/08/2022 at 22:27, pioneerisloud said:

We've got a little bit of everyone around here. Neat setup! Older than my stuff so far. Welcome to ehw! 

That setup would actually be a pretty good fit for Win95.  98 if you really wanted to go "newer" with it.  I've got a 98SE box running right now, but its P3 era Athlon, don't have my K6 running yet.  All I have to say is good luck with 3d, I've had absolutely zero luck in that department so far. -_-

I’m a bit of a k6 enthusiast.

 

can you give more details of the issues and all detailed specs of the system? Maybe I can help. Mobo model number processor full model including voltage and letters after rating video card being used. Os being  used. Etc

 

right now I am having trouble getting the gateway 2000 to install a os onto the scsi. I have a few ideas of things to try though.

[Sphere478]

On 23/08/2022 at 09:48, ENTERPRISE said:

Welcome to ExtremeHW

 

Nice Rig, I reckon that is so retro that it CAN play Crysis....A frame every year.

There is a guy on the other group I’m on that is working on playing minecraft on the slowest hardware possible. So far he has gotten it running on a pentium 90 (totally unplayable of course) but it loads.

 

that is almost basically what I have here. But I suspect he was using a s7 or ss7 mobo/chipset and probably more ram.

Edited August 24, 2022 by Sphere478

[Avacado]

3 minutes ago, Sphere478 said:

I’m a bit of a k6 enthusiast.

 

can you give more details of the issues and all detailed specs of the system? Maybe I can help. Mobo model number processor full model including voltage and letters after rating video card being used. Os being  used. Etc

 

right now I am having trouble getting the gateway 2000 to install a os onto the scsi. I have a few ideas of things to try though.

I think @PCSarge has a running SCSI array in his basement. Maybe he can help. 

[pio]

13 minutes ago, Sphere478 said:

I’m a bit of a k6 enthusiast.

 

can you give more details of the issues and all detailed specs of the system? Maybe I can help. Mobo model number processor full model including voltage and letters after rating video card being used. Os being  used. Etc

 

right now I am having trouble getting the gateway 2000 to install a os onto the scsi. I have a few ideas of things to try though.

So far I don't have the K6 running, its a K7 T-Bird, Athlon-XP, and a Socket 754 that all exhibit the same problems across a Radeon 9800XT, X800 Pro, and X1950 Pro AGP cards.  They all freeze up on 3d load, sometimes artifacting.  I'm about 99% sure the cards just have crusty grease on them and need to be properly fixed up.  I originally thought PSU, but I've since resolved that, the current one has 30a on the 5v rail, which should be plenty for a T-Bird (only AGP rig I have 100% so far).  I'm hoping taking them apart, cleaning, and re-greasing fixes the issues.  

 

They do play Quake though, so DOS games seem to be fine.  It's DX titles that cause issues it seems.

My GeForce MX-420 does similar, except it doesn't freeze the system it just artifacts.  All of the cards idle really hot too, so that's why I'm assuming its a heat issue.

Edited August 24, 2022 by pioneerisloud

[ENTERPRISE]

10 hours ago, Sphere478 said:

There is a guy on the other group I’m on that is working on playing minecraft on the slowest hardware possible. So far he has gotten it running on a pentium 90 (totally unplayable of course) but it loads.

 

that is almost basically what I have here. But I suspect he was using a s7 or ss7 mobo/chipset and probably more ram.

Ha, that is wicked. Back when I was younger and had little money, I used to really enjoy tweaking my older hardware to play certain titles. It was a fun challenge. If I could get extra performance from tweaking, it was such a thrill lol. 

[pio]

13 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

Ha, that is wicked. Back when I was younger and had little money, I used to really enjoy tweaking my older hardware to play certain titles. It was a fun challenge. If I could get extra performance from tweaking, it was such a thrill lol. 

I'm going to one day pull a $tillLegendaryU2k and run crysis on a pentium 2 (well, a K6) if I can ever get it to run. He said it was possible years ago and we made fun of him for it. Idk, different attitudes today I feel. Maybe we've all matured some.....  

[Sphere478]

On 24/08/2022 at 11:56, pioneerisloud said:

So far I don't have the K6 running, its a K7 T-Bird, Athlon-XP, and a Socket 754 that all exhibit the same problems across a Radeon 9800XT, X800 Pro, and X1950 Pro AGP cards.  They all freeze up on 3d load, sometimes artifacting.  I'm about 99% sure the cards just have crusty grease on them and need to be properly fixed up.  I originally thought PSU, but I've since resolved that, the current one has 30a on the 5v rail, which should be plenty for a T-Bird (only AGP rig I have 100% so far).  I'm hoping taking them apart, cleaning, and re-greasing fixes the issues.  

 

They do play Quake though, so DOS games seem to be fine.  It's DX titles that cause issues it seems.

My GeForce MX-420 does similar, except it doesn't freeze the system it just artifacts.  All of the cards idle really hot too, so that's why I'm assuming its a heat issue.

Try the oldest drivers you can find for them. Also a older OS (don’t install all the service packs.

 

at some point drivers are going to want specific cpu instructions also. You can’t go too new on the cards/drivers.

 

i have used a 9800 pro with a k6-3+ before though. It works good. But many agp slots on ss7 mobos are buggy

you might be surprised just how well windows 98se, ME, works. 9x/me has very little overhead.

 

with the NT OSs try sticking to low service packs.

 

 

 

Edited August 27, 2022 by Sphere478