CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2011 3:34 am Post subject:

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 4:51 am Post subject:

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 4:55 am Post subject:

I raided my old equipment/PC storage. I "think" I can see my old fast SCSI box ( still need a few hours of digging to get to it ) If it's the right box it'll be a dual PIII 500/512k cache and 4x AGP slot ( that's where Gary's M450 card will come in )
There should also be between 512 -1gig or ECC ram in there and a 10 000RPM 18GB hard drive, 40x CD 68pin SCSI reader, an 8x CDburner and a set of PCMCIA slots in the ISA interface (if I remember correctly )

I had forgotten about this box, it was my fast system in 1999, after I upgraded it so much by 2003 I had enough parts to rebuild most of the original box but I never used it again and there it sat forgotten.

I also found an IBM desktop dual Pentium pro box at the office in a storage closet. No RAM or processors so if you can find your pair of P-PRO chips I'll resurrect that one. I believe it has a Matrox G200 PCI card in it. If not I just found a 4MB ATi Rage + PCI card AND a ISA Soundblaster AWE 64

I love finding the old stuff.

A Rogers · Joined: 14 Feb 2011 Posts: 133 Location: Toronto On

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 5:11 am Post subject:

A Rogers · Joined: 14 Feb 2011 Posts: 133 Location: Toronto On

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 5:22 am Post subject:

Hmmmm I know I have quite a few old boxs laying around. I wonder if I could get all my Win95 games up and running on the VooDoo2's...

I remember owning a PIII 800 box that was built out of spare parts. I can't remember what became of it though. Probably in that equipment storage room Very Happy

A Rogers · Joined: 14 Feb 2011 Posts: 133 Location: Toronto On

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 5:41 am Post subject:

Ohhh the best 2D was my Matrox G400 Dual head MAX 4x AGP card. That was a $999 card in 1999 and was absolutely spectacular when paired with my Princeton Ultra95 19" monitor.

When I replaced it with the $1500 Geforce TI4800 VIVO, IEEE1394,128MB BGA, 8X AGP card with 3D glasses ( yeah it was THAT cool ) I was disappointed in the 2D, it was such a let down as compared to the G400 MAX. Faster 3D ( somewhere around 70-80fps in Quake3 ) but bad desktop performance and clarity.

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 6:27 am Post subject:

The Matrox G400 was my gaming card from Oct 1999 - April 2002, they only offered 1 driver update the whole time but that enabled "bump mapping" in Quake 3 engine games and added about 3fps overall.

It was a toss up between the Viper Ultra 770 32mb card and the Matrox. I bought both. The matrox was way faster. The Viper 770 ended up doing duty in the Celeron 300 C box just for 2D ( which it wasn't great at ) The dual VooDoo2's took care of the 3D

That G400 card was the last best Matrox card. The G450 came out at a slower clock rate and with 2 different cores. As I recal reading....with the dual monitor setup on that card you could do 1600x1200 on output 1 but only 1280x1024 on output 2.

Princeton Ultra95 special order, I have 2.