Dell that works great with Voodoo 5 5500.

[arkenstone]

Hi again to all you 3DFX fans.

Its been quite some time since my last post.  First of all I would like congratulate Mr. Rottentreats on his latest Voodoo 5 6000 aquisition! Awesome!!

I had seen it on Ebay just by accident and could not believe one of these was up for sale.  I also wanted to add that some time ago, Rottentreats made me two great 3DFX screensavers!   Its really cool to see the 3DFX logo floating around on my screen instead of using generic Windows screensavers.

Nonetheless, I just wanted those interested, that last fall, I completed my project using a Dell computer to run a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP, so I could run all the Glide games and even older DOS games.   As Tualatin suggested I went with an Intel 815E chipset with a PIII 1.4.  Later chipsets used by Dell only have 1.5V AGP.   The 815E is in a Dell GX-150.  I installed two new hardrives, new memory, and two new Sony Optiarc DVD drives.  

Being that this chipset only has PCI slots, I could not use an original ISA Sound Blaster 16 Wave-Effects for TRUE DOS Legacy sounds found in older games.   All new soundcards only emulate Legacy sounds, and emulation mode sounds really crappy.  I really had to do my homework on this one, and found that the hard to find Jaton SonicWave SR-4 or SR-6 PCI was one of a few cards ever made that does NOT emulate Legacy Support.  This PCI card supports both Legacy and all newer games.  The sounds are crisp and clear with no static like the old ISA Sound Blaster, and the sounds are original!  I installed Win98SE as the OS.  It runs great with no crashes at all, not like my Dell with bloatware Vista.  I had forgotten how easy old Win98 was to opperate.  With less memory tied up by the operating system, all Glide games run superfast at the highest resolutions.  Installation of Glide and DOS games is glitch free!!!!  So I hope that this info helps out anyone else wishing to build a retro rig using a Dell that has networking and some newer capabilities and reasonable speed.

Thanks again to Tualatin and Rottentreats.