The start of a EPIC Dual Pentium Pro Build

Irinikus

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@Irinikus have you seen this smp patch for quake 3 (and other idtech engines)? Well worth a try on your dual cpu machines, it seems to give a significant boost to fps

We found a dual Cpu patch (SMP) that works on old games. \ VOGONS
I've just got my hands on a patched version of Quake 3 allowing it to operate in an SMP mode: (The Dual Pentium Pro setup isn't built yet so I'm running it on my Dual PIII build and am still running the GT 430 for now)

I now get: 151.1FPS with maximum settings @ 1024x768

In the past the system achieved a maximum of 103.2FPS with this setup using the same settings!!!

It gives the system a huge performance boost! (And also offers SMP for voodoo cards!)

You can download it from a link in the description of this YouTube video:

You just need to copy the Quake 3 PAK files into the baseq3 directory to get it up and running!
 
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Irinikus

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I'm considering this chassis for this board, as it has a form factor that's pretty much incompatible with 99.9% of PC cases. (That CPU card seemed like a good idea, but it's almost impossible to fit into anything)





It would be an awesome way to showcase this system!

This is an extremely expensive chassis, so I'd only consider it if I can get the Voodoo5 5500 running on this board. (This is not going to happen this year though!)

What also kind of limits the kind of chassis I can use for this build, especially if I wanted to use a retro chassis, is the length of the longest card I'm going to be fitting into this system:



It dwarfs a GTX 690 in terms of its length!!! (Even if you remove the securing bracket!)
 

Irinikus

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After doing some searching I finally found the PDF manual for this series of cards and copied this pic of the card's layout:



So this is the version of the i960 present on this board:





It will do 80MB/s, so it's fast enough for a dual Pentium Pro! (I'm going to have to fit it out with 5ns EDO RAM though!!!)




 
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Irinikus

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This year I'm going to go ahead with this build:

The InWin X-Frame 2 has the perfect number of slot positions to properly accommodate this motherboard, but as the board has an AT form factor, the standard tapped standoff holes are in the wrong positions to accommodate this board. Rather than drill and tap new holes into this expensive motherboard tray, for now I plan to make use of period correct plastic standoffs, which I'll neatly epoxy into position, as the double-sided tape that they come fitted with won't offer a permanent solution.

I have a nice 1.22MB floppy drive as well as a SCSI DVD-ROM, both with black bezels, which I'll slot into the lower drive bays. (Seeing that it's a dual Pentium Pro, it will definitely need a floppy drive!)



I really hope that once I've flashed the BIOS to the latest revision, the Voodoo5 5500 PCI will fire up in this system!

I was able to get two of these drives for a very good price:







And these two CPU coolers: (NOS)



And 512MB (4x128MB) of this RAM: (Because of the PCI slot arrangement on this board, I'll only be able to slot 4 SIMMS and have everything fit!)



On this base board, PCI slots 4 and 5 share the same IRQ and the Media-Bus card card needs to go into slot 5, so I'm going to have to slot the SCSI RAID card into slot 2 (This is a very long card so it will block two of the RAM slots unfortunately!)



I'm probably going to slot a USB 2 card into slot 3.

And the Oxygen 202 will be replaced by the Voodoo5 5500 PCI if I can get the latest BIOS revision to fire it up:

 
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Irinikus

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15K RPM drives tend to get pretty warm, so I intend mounting them in these positions on the back-side of the X-Frame 2: (The drives will be exposed to the open air, but I will setup a fan arrangement if necessary.)



The pictures shown, show the internals of the actual drives I've ordered.

I intend to orientate the X-Frame 2 vertically on its stand
 
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