The start of a EPIC Dual Pentium Pro Build

Elf

Storybook / Retired, ex-staff
Feb 4, 2019
792
252
63
Mountain West (US)
Interesting daughter board for carrying the two CPUs, I don't think I have seen that arrangement on anything x86 before! Although, I guess you could consider the cartridge type Pentium II processors to be somewhat similar.
 

Irinikus

Well-known member
Dec 16, 2019
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The really cool thing about this particular board is that you can get daughter boards which allow it to support dual Pentium’s/Pentium Pro’s/Pentium II’s, allowing for excellent comparison’s between them!
 
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Irinikus

Well-known member
Dec 16, 2019
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The Intergraph Intense 3D 3400 + Lynx4 will be the weapon of choice as far as graphics for this system goes: (It's the best PCI-based system from Intergraph that I'll be able to fit into the system)



I already have the Lynx 4 Geometry Card:



It's performance isn't as good as that of the voodoo2 setup that I'll be installing in the single Pentium Pro setup, but it is a Pro card! (But it does run at twice the colour depth!)

 
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Irinikus

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Dec 16, 2019
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So these are the components that I'm getting from Poland for this build:



This is a really cool motherboard, but it does come with one rather large limitation in that it can only really be supported in certain full tower cases, due to the orientation of the CPU card!

The CPU's face upwards and therefore require clearance from the drive bays and very few cases have that available clearance!

Funny enough the Vobis highscreen colani 486 Computer Case is one of the few capable of the job. I now need to find someone in Germany willing to ship one to me, as most sellers aren't willing to do so!!! :(

If I manage to get one, I will have to perform an expert RetroBright job on it and apply UV stabilisation once complete. (I have already done some research on this.)
 
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Irinikus

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Dec 16, 2019
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I had a huge amount of drama with this board today, as there was a hidden connection fault in the plug which connects the ATX to AT converter cable to the ATX plug on the power supply!

I wanted to send it back to the seller as a faulty board, but as it turns out it was a power coupling connection problem!

Here are some pice of it connected up and booted to BIOS: (For some reason it doesn't like the Matrox G450 card, so I've had to slot the Dynamic pictures Oxygen 202)







The CPU's are currently clocked @ 133MHz, as the system isn't fitted with active cooling.

Thus far I've only been able to find a non-alpha Windows 95 driver for this card, and of cause, this won't do! (Any help in this would be much appreciated!!!)
 

Irinikus

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Dec 16, 2019
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I now have windows NT4 SP6 installed with the Oxygen 202 driver!



And 3D StudioMax R3 is up and running on the system:





The Oxygen card has special settings for various 3D packages, including StudioMax:

 
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MatzeLoCal

New member
Sep 1, 2021
2
3
3
I've just committed to buying this little monster: (I will only start working on it once I've completed my EPIC single Pentium Pro build!)





I have the same board but with Dual Pentiums. Back then I used it for my BeOS daily driver. My plan was to upgrade just the daughter boards … but then I bought a new Asus Board with Dual PII@350 for my final BeOS machine.
I still have the computer in the attic …but not sure if it still working
 

Irinikus

Well-known member
Dec 16, 2019
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South Africa
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I may end up considering one of these cases for this build, as it will show off the hardware nicely. (Especially if off-white in-case lighting is used! NO RAINBOW COLOURS!!!!)

It has the right number of card slots to accommodate this mother board. (A mixture of the old with the super modern!!!)

I would have to make up a custom mother board holder to interface this AT board with the ATX mounting points in this case. (A piece of Plexiglas of the appropriate thickness could be used to achieve this.)









The only problem is that it's a bit pricy! (So I'll only start to look at this once my current socket 8 build is complete)
 

Irinikus

Well-known member
Dec 16, 2019
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The weapon of choice as far as the motherboard goes is an ASUS P/I-P65UP5 Baseboard with a C-P6ND CPU card!



It's now powered with one of these fully modular 750W Power Supplies: (It will suit the case that I plan to purchase for this system!)



I currently have it setup on my desk in this fashion, while I acquire the necessary additional parts that I'm going to need: (I've installed XP onto it just to carry out a blender test in order to compare it to the Pentium II Overdrive, as soon as this test is done, it will get Windows NT4 SP6!)







Here's the Blender Test Result:



It did it in 23 minutes and 59 seconds!!! (The Pentium II Overdrive did it in 29 minutes 7 seconds and 51 split seconds!) So it's quite a bit more powerful than the Pentium II Overdrive!
 
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Irinikus

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Dec 16, 2019
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This machine will be getting this GUS once I receive it: (As I have been able to obtain a Gravis Ultrasound PnP driver for windows NT4)







As far as a SCSI RAID setup for this machine goes, I wouldn't mind installing one of these little monsters:

 
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Irinikus

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Dec 16, 2019
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South Africa
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I've just realised that this motherboard has a serious limitation in that the RAM bank situated below the CPU card limits the number of full-length cards you can have slotted!!!!



One way to get around this is to give the system its full complement of 512MB (as this board only apparently supports 512MB of RAM) by slotting 4 x 128MB SIMM's

Here's my solution to the problem:

 
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Irinikus

Well-known member
Dec 16, 2019
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South Africa
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NT4's as boring as hell (as nothing seems to run in it) so I tried Windows 2000 professional, but it's not happy with the driver for the Dynamic Pictures Oxygen 202, so I'm unfortunately going to be reverting to NT4!!! :(

While I had 2000 installed I managed to get an ATTO disk benchmark in, and the current SCSI drive setup's dismal: (So this will definitely have to be swapped out!!!!)

 
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Irinikus

Well-known member
Dec 16, 2019
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South Africa
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This is the base graphics card that I'm using for this build (The Dynamic Pictures Oxygen 202)



This is the current setup:



I'm going to have to wait until I have a pair of Voodoo2's and the GUS before I can do anything interesting with it!
 
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Elf

Storybook / Retired, ex-staff
Feb 4, 2019
792
252
63
Mountain West (US)
Interesting, I definitely don't remember seeing the S-video and composite outs on the regular Voodoo IIs. Do these not need a separate 2D card, or do they still do SLI?
 

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