[sax-laden jazz music] Greetings folks, and this time on LGR, I’ve
got a technological craving that can only be satiated in a highly specific way. And that is with Socket 7: a particular x86
CPU specification introduced in 1995, supporting such classic processors as the Pentium MMX
and the AMD K6. The end goal here is twofold: one, I want
a system ideal for PC gaming and software from around 1996, ‘97. And two, I wanna redo the SBC build I did
here on LGR a while back. Or rather, use the Baby AT case that I built
it in, which is now mostly empty save for the drives and the power supply. Cuz yeah, toward the end of that video I came
to the conclusion that I should’ve chosen a more appropriate ISA backplane for the SBC
I was using. To quote myself: -"If I were to re-do this, I would use this
particular backplane. I don’t know, maybe I will. I might just take the whole thing apart and
do it all over again, because I’m a masochist!" Welp, masochism confirmed I guess. Cuz I’m redoing that entire SBC 486 in another
case, and instead today we’ll be using what’s left for something completely different: a
Socket 7-based PC running Windows 95! And my specific reasoning to build this exact
configuration is multifaceted. The first reason is that here on LGR I’m
constantly using the Woodgrain PC and the Megaluminum Monster to test different hardware
and software, and those use Socket 3 and Socket 370, respectively. But as time goes on, I’m increasingly finding
a need for a desktop in between a 486 and a Pentium III, something that specifically
runs Windows 95 instead of 3.1 or 98. And it’s gotta be at a speed that’s not
too slow but not too fast, in that sweet spot of hardware from 1996, ‘97 where particular
Windows 95 games and graphics card combos work best. And that’s where Socket 7 comes in, since
it’s right there in the middle of my main two 90s systems, ideal for early PCI 3D accelerators. Another main reason for this build is, of
course: pure nostalgia, an excuse to revisit some old memories. Like in 1997 when I got my second computer,
an Acer Aspire, with that white plastic case molded in a funky wavy shape. I loved that thing, it was a Windows 95 Socket
7 system with 32 megs of RAM and an AMD K6 processor running at 233 megahertz. One of these right here actually, a delightful
CPU introduced in April of ‘97 that competed directly with the Pentium MMX lineup from
Intel, with a 66MHz front side bus, 64K combined Level 1 cache, and supporting the MMX instruction
set. However, we’re not gonna use this processor
today. Instead, I’m going with a slower variant. It’s still a K6, just running at 166 megahertz. Cuz yeah, I’ve already got the Aspire running
at 233, so that speed is covered. And I would use that as a project box. But the thing is though, upgrading that machine
and swapping out parts inside sucks, with its irritating split motherboard and lackluster
integrated graphics chip. Which brings us back to this Socket 7 build
and a slower AMD K6, since it’s different, but not too different. Plus I can pick a motherboard that isn't crap. Yeah I wasn’t kidding about having a highly
specific craving here. I know precisely what I want outta this build
and that’s exactly what we’re gonna do. Starting with that 166MHz K6, paired with
this beautiful beast right here: the ASUS P55T2P4 from 1996, revision 2.3. A true classic that was well respected in
its heydey and retains a solid reputation even now, having become an old standby among
Socket 7 enthusiasts. There are dozens of us, dozens! And this particular board’s merits and pitfalls
are well-known and well-documented, making it a true pleasure to work with a quarter
century later. In addition to its support of all the exciting
Socket 7 CPUs, you’ve got support for a cool 64MB cacheable EDO DRAM via four 72-pin
SIMMs. Expandable up to 512 megabytes,
with the installation of a compatible TAG SRAM upgrade chip like this one right here. I’m only installing 32 megs of 60 nanosecond
EDO RAM for now though, since it's all I need for the software I plan on running. On-board Level 2 cache varies, with this example
having 256K from the factory. But that too can be expanded using a compatible
256K COASt module, or Cache-on-a-Stick, doubling the L2 pipelined burst cache to 512K. Doesn’t make a huge difference to gaming
performance but it’s nice to have. Also nice are the floppy and dual IDE controllers
built in, along with the standard headers for serial and parallel ports. And even one for connecting a PS/2 mouse breakout
port, most excellent. The keyboard still uses the older 5-pin AT
connector though, and it’s also the motherboard’s only integrated port. Finally there’s even a header for infrared
communication, as well as USB. Yeah, USB in 1996! This actually predates the final specification,
with the manual amusingly stating that “current operating systems don’t actually support USB” so it’s disabled until future support arrives. Obviously that happened, so now you can add
USB 1 ports using a breakout card like this, as long as the voltage pinout matches the
motherboard. One of the not-so-great “features” is
the inclusion of this Dallas clock chip, infamous among 90s PC enthusiasts due to the fact that
they’ve basically all died and aren’t straightforward to replace. As is often the case, it’s soldered in directly
to the motherboard as seen here, so you either have to modify the chip to install a coin
cell, or replace the thing entirely. The mod looks ugly in my view, so I decided
to just desolder the dang thing and replace it with a brand new battery. There are still new Dallas-compatible clocks
being manufactured, and they’ll do the trick but eh, there are better options nowadays. Like this fantastic little module from GlitchWorks,
being a drop-in replacement for the Dallas RTC that accepts standard CR1225 coin cell
batteries. Yeah, I bought a bunch of these a while ago
and haven’t looked back, it’s really an ideal replacement for the 12887 as far as
I’m concerned. The motherboard is also running the venerable Intel 430HX chipset, with three 16-bit ISA slots and four PCI 2.1 slots. One of which
has this nifty little expansion known as MediaBus 2.0. This allows for proprietary expansion cards
to be installed, like this graphics and sound card combo, taking up only one expansion slot
instead of two. Although this card uses an older MediaBus
spec so I won’t be using it for this build. And finally, there’s overclocking. The P55TxP4 series is notoriously overclockable,
with the ability to take bus speeds up to 75 and even 83MHz. A pretty unique feature back in ‘96, and
still quite desirable among retro enthusiasts. I won’t be messing with it in this video, though it’s something I hope to check out in the future. And finally then there's the BIOS itself,
which is a 90s icon. The classic Award Software CMOS Setup Utility
with all the features and options you need, with the BIOS itself easily being flashable
through software. Something I’m gonna go ahead and do, since
there’s a fantastic patched BIOS update available that adds support for newer CPUs
and support for hard drives over 32 gigabytes. Pardon the messy setup, I just had a buncha
crap out on the table to test components before going further. Anyway, yeah. Without this update, connecting IDE drives
larger than 32 gigs wasn’t really supported and caused problems with system stability. Of course, I’m installing Windows 95 where
32 gigabytes is the max officially supported size anyway, so you’d think it wouldn’t
matter. But in my case it does, since I had this old
160 gig drive lying around that I wanted to use, and without the BIOS update it wasn’t
recognized by the system at all, even with a smaller partition size. With the update it’s no problem, so I’ve
got it partitioned to 32 gigs for the OS and all my programs, which is plenty of space. I considered using this big ol’ beefy boy,
the Quantum Bigfoot. And while it would’ve been era-appropriate,
it’s noisy and too big for the case, plus the reliability has never been, ah. Reliably reliable. So I’m sticking with a newer partitioned
hard drive, and I’m also gonna be installing this CF to IDE adapter. That way I have a drive I can quickly swap
in and out as needed for transferring larger files to and from the internal hard drive,
without having to rely on it also holding the operating system itself. And to make it both accessible and appealing
to look at, I’m using this lovely 3D-printed enclosure I got from an LGR viewer named Mark. He reached out and offered to design this
drive carrier for me, specifically to fit this exact CompactFlash adapter that I wanted to fit in a 3.5-inch drive bay, and I think it turned out great. He’s got an eBay storefront too, I’ve
bought all sorts of useful brackets, adapters, and drive bays from him that are super useful
as someone without a 3D printer. Bout the only things left are sound and graphics
cards, and the possibilities are seemingly endless with PCI cards of the mid to late
90s. So in the interest of doing
something slightly different, I’m going with an Audician 32
for the sound card here. I don't wanna just use a Sound Blaster 16,
a 128, or a Live for the hundredth time, and I've already got an Aureal Vortex in my 98
machine. Plus I wanted something with solid support
in both Windows and DOS, with both a wavetable header and a real OPL3 chip on-board to get
the best of both worlds. And for video I'm going with two cards, the
first being a two megabyte S3 Trio64-based card for handling the Windows GUI and non-accelerated
2D games. It’s not something I’ve chosen for any
3D capabilities, because the real star of the show is this 3dfx Voodoo card. The Canopus Pure 3D, with a whopping six megabytes
combined memory on-board. This one's a donation from an LGR viewer named
Cristoffer, sealed up and never used until now. This is gonna be awesome, I love early Glide
mode games and I'm really curious how this particular card performs. And that’s most of the housekeeping prepwork
outta the way. Let’s go ahead and dive into the actual
build itself, and test out the system with some classic PC games! [music fades] Okay! First up, I'm going to get
the motherboard put in here, and thankfully it's one of those cases where the backside completely slides out. I don't recall if I actually did this on the
SBC build or not. But yeah, there's the whole motherboard tray
and just easily get things on there that way. And yeah, I've already gone ahead and installed
Windows 95 on here, just to make that easier. I mean you know you don't need to see that
installation, yet again. So yeah, this will be the C drive and then
the compact flash adapter thing will be accessible from the front. And as for the motherboard itself, yeah, just
got the RAM already on there. I'm not using any extra cache, 256k is fine. It doesn't really affect gaming or anything
I'm going to be doing on here and I don't have TAG installed because I only have
32 megs of ram, not doing 64 or over. As for the processor I've actually got a Pentium
133 installed on there right now. Just going to boot it up with this first and
then switch over to the K6 later. Just want to show something on here and one of the reasons why I want to switch over to an AMD K6. This tray is one of those where it
expects all these plastic standoffs to go behind the board. But this one's a little longer this way. And really, the only two holes that line up
with the metal standoffs, are these two right here. That's it. Like none of the other standoff screw holes
in the back of this will work. So the rest of this is just plastic pieces
sliding in here. Only three of them. That go in there like that and there's nothing
on this side of the board whatsoever. There's a couple of holes here for them but
there's nothing behind there and all my standoffs are too tall. Think what I'm gonna do is just put a
couple in there and clip them off just so it has something behind there. I just don't like things flopping around like
this. Okay. There we go, much more stable. Makes me feel better anyway. [silent, light screwing] All right. Dang it! Stupid sharp old cases! I swear, I need chainmail gloves working on
these things sometimes. Okay. Just a matter of getting all the daggum cables plugged in and I have made some attempts at cable management. At least zip-tying a bunch of things up and uh. Yeah, whatever. We'll, we'll do our best.
It is what it is. Wow, I just noticed too, even if I was to
install the cache module, it'll be right against this hard drive or it might actually be too
tall depending on the module. Yeah, thankfully most of this I can just continue
using as it was from the SBC build. Same power supply. Same brackets on the back, except I've added
the PS2 bracket since we have a header for that on here. Pretty much everything's the same otherwise. Oh yeah, I did replace the LED on the front of the case right here, because actually,
I blew the power LED on the other one because I plugged into something I didn't put a resistor
on and it was sending too much voltage. It was just sort of a hack job that didn't
work. So anyway, replaced the LED. Other than that, it's all same stuff. [jazzy time-lapse interlude] Okay. So two of them aren't going to connect at all. I guess really three, because there's no turbo switch function on the motherboard itself. It's just always in the fast mode, so won't
be plugging in that or the LED really. And the hard disk LED? There's no header for it in the main cluster
down there. So I'm assuming it's somewhere else. Okay, so it's JP20. Okay, so at least it's nearby. It's just somewhere... Other than the little main cluster
of thingies there, how weird. All right, ribbon cable time!
Blech. Great. Okay, we can finally get to some cards, kind
of. This isn't really a card, guess this is another
header. USB! Not that I really need it for the system but
it's on here. It might work. If I really cram it all in there.
[chuckles] It is still blocking this top PCI slot. If I move this down. Of course, now we got all these cables in
the way. [laughs in 90s cable management] There we go. All right, we're going to go with the S3 at
the top. Okay, there's that! The Voodoo card, that is going to be passing through that S3 card, into here and then out to a VGA monitor. And unlike a lot of other
Voodoo cards, check it out, the video-in is this right here. Which is not S-Video,
that's what this is. This is an input. So it came with this little
breakout deal here. I'll just plug in there and then this right
here plugs into the S3 that goes to the monitor. So a little different than any of the other
Voodoo cards that I have actually, before this. Interesting way of making it all fit in there
because they wanted all those extra ports. Okay, video input dongle
for the Voodoo goes right here. And then that plugs into the S3's VGA. And then that's that. The graceful setup of a Voodoo 1 pass through. And finally for the sound card. So this is the thing, I mentioned that the
wavetable header on here is a positive, and it is, but this is such a short card like,
this way. I didn't really think about it because I was
like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to use an SCB-55 by Roland, get a proper sound canvas in there,
but the thing is, now you can probably see the problem just immediately, right? Look at that, it's gigantic compared to the
actual Audician 32 Plus card itself. So that's not going to work. Of course, I've got other wavetable cards
like this awesome little thing here, the Yucatan FX Reptile Paradise. Kind of one of those
Turtle Beach Cancun-style things. A lot of the same parts actually. Got a Roland GS-inspired sound set on there. But even though it's as small as it is, look,
it's still too big for this little card. So that's not going to work either. I don't have anything that's smaller than
this, that has the capabilities that I want. So we're just going to go without wavetable
for now. I do have another wavetable card that is smaller
on the way. So I'll just install that whenever I get it. Knowing my luck, it'll show up as soon as
this video goes live. [chuckles] Yeah what I've got on the way is actually kind of like a really, really tiny version of this sort of thing. It's the Dreamblaster X2 GS. It was recently released in Serdaco's shop. It's in the mail, just who knows when it'll
get here because it comes from Belgium. And that's all the cards, and pretty much
everything that's just the CD audio header. I should have plugged that in first. Dang it. All right, there we go. Now that's everything!
[chuckle of contentment] Ahh, right. So, I'll get it set up, boot it up with Windows
95 and show you what's going on with that Pentium chip that's in there. And then, we're going to switch over here once you see why I want to switch over to it. Well, one of the reasons other reasons is
just because I like the K6. So yeah, let's boot it up,
see it do its thing. Alright, time to turn it on. Mmm. LEDs. [PC beeps]
Beeping. Drives spinning. And there we go! Yeah. I got that Windows 95 installation already
going like I said earlier. Though I don't have the drivers for- yeah,
here's the sound card. I don't have the Voodoo drivers on there. I do have the S3 going cuz I had that
testing earlier and copied over what I think are the latest drivers to the CF card there. So we'll see if we can get that going. Well yeah, I was afraid of that. I think I actually have to do the installation
of the software first. Should at least be able to get the Voodoo
going here. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a setup thing, so. Do it this way, Yamaha SAx! Sweet. Hopefully, that's all we need.
[chuckle] I mean, I know it came with driver discs and
stuff. I can pretty much always get newer ones online
which is what I did. Thanks, PhilsComputerLab! There we go. Nice. I do have speakers on this little monitor.
[Windows 95 startup sound] Excellent. I do have some things disabled. I only got one COM port going at the moment. The printer port is disabled. But yeah, I don't have anything plugged into
those so I don't need them. There's the S3 Trio, doing its thing. Yeah. Voodoo graphics, game port, sound system,
got some DOS-compatible thingies going here. I don't know if it's actually pre-set them up. Doesn't look like there's any software. Maybe that's what the other disc is, for the
Yamaha card, I seem to remember... Seeing -- well, okay. I thought there were like applications or something
somewhere, I'll have to look into that. Well anyway, that's everything pretty much
going. Obviously.
[canyon.mid begins playing] Yay, things are working. All right well, I'm gonna go ahead
and continue screwing around with stuff. Software and whatnot. Make sure everything is all configured and
then we'll try out some games. I'll be back in an amount of time. Probably tomorrow morning. [tada! shutdown sound] I mean, for you it'll be immediate but you
know whatever. Ooh! That message. Yeah, no soft power button here. Neat!
[piano music fades out] Okay! So yeah, here it is next morning and I have
been screwing around with this quite a bit last night, and in weeks prior actually. Like
I said, I kind of set up a version of this just out on the table to test things. And make sure it all worked and messing around
with it and more last night, it's actually working a little better than it was then. So, some of the things I was thinking that
were going to be an issue weren't, so that's fun. But anyway, we'll get to that. So, in terms of the software for the Audician
32 sound card, this is all that it installed when we got those drivers going. It was just the basic updated drivers. So that's, you know, it's fine.
That's this stuff. But I knew that there was some more to go
with it. So I installed the CD that came with it in
the box and it didn't add much. You got this little Audician 3D sound enabler. Whatever that does. Just sort of emulates spatial sound around
you in stereo. And then you got this YStation32, which is
cool, not as impressive as a lot of the others that I've seen in terms of these music player stacks. I still don't have a wavetable thingy and
I going to plug one of those in. Maybe I'll do a Blerb update on that or something
but yeah you got FM synth, MPU-401 output through the game port, and a soft synth. So that does sound a little different. [canyon.mid plays a little differently] Yeah, it's kind of your typical GS General
MIDI kind of thing. But it's doing it through software, whatever. Just going to leave it on the OPL3-SA for
now. Really quick though, since I still have the
Pentium 1 installed in there at the moment and haven't gotten the K6 going yet, let me just show you one of
the reasons I want to upgrade to it. And that is Ubisoft's "POD" from 1997. [light chuckle]
And I mean, that's all you get. Again... You just don't get much. It just doesn't run. Looks like it'll start and it crashes. Just straight back to the desktop. So that is, unfortunately, not uncommon at
all for this game. There are just so many tiny, little quirks
and weird things that can go wrong. This is actually neither the same error that
I was getting when I had it just on the desk setup outside of the case. Some weeks ago, look at this, I was getting
a completely different error then. A "system out of memory" error. Or just some kind of memory-related thing. I don't know if that means RAM or video or
what I -- it just does weird things. This is one of those games where it is so
particular about your hardware and your software and drivers and versions of Windows and everything. So I have just always had better luck with
the AMD K6, especially a range between around a hundred and thirty-three to two hundred
thirty-three megahertz. So yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and install that,
just swap out that Pentium 1. And this also will give us MMX capability
so we can install the MMX version of the game. And I got, this is cute little thing. Look at this. Thermal Master! Just a teeny little Socket
7 cooler with a little pad on there. I'll get rid of that. And use some Arctic MX-4 cuz I got
some of that lying around from my previous build so, whatever. Swap this out really quick. And test a bunch of games. [jazzy processor removal music] Oh, look at that little guy. Crappy old thermal paste. Yeah, Intel Pentium. No MMX here. And then goes the K6. Wonderful. And of course, I will need to
change a jumper setting on here because it is a different thing. If I recall, it's just this one right here
that needs to -- or is it this one? One of those has to be moved to the left or
to the right. Eh I'll check the manual. [jazz tunes continue] And that's that. [computer quietly powers on] Ayy. There we go, AMD K6-166. That simple. Okay. [CD-ROM drive closes rudely]
Hey! Give me that back. I need that. Daggone it! [Windows 95 startup sound] Okay, gonna give POD a try once again. So I'm just installing the regular game, not
accelerated with MMX. Okay, that's that, let's try it again. And there we go! And it even says Pentium MMX. It's kind of funny that I can't get that working
on an actual Pentium, albeit without MMX. I just always had better luck with, you know,
certain CPUs, certain versions of Windows, certain graphics cards, all kinds of different
things, sound cards, it all makes a difference. Not too much to adjust in this version in
terms of graphics, it's just kind of is what it is. Let's go to Plant 21. There we go. [in-game announcer]
"5... 4... 3..." And there's POD working. "Go!"
[engines revving] Of course, no 3D acceleration here. It's just the MMX software rendered mode. But hey, it's not bad. This is not far off at all from how I played it back in the day. Software rendered on the AMD K6-233 with 32
megs of RAM in Windows 95, so it always brings back memories seeing the game look and run
like this. This is just -- it feels like proper POD.
233 was a bit quicker, of course. So, got a few more frames, but not like significantly
better, from what I recall. I don't know. It's -- Pentium MMX! Or in
this case, the AMD K6 version with MMX instructions. All right, so that is that. Working very nicely. Also, this is kind of a fun little thing here. If we open CPU-Z then go over to the bench
and we can compare it up against the Pentium 133 and just kind of vaguely see the difference. And there we go. In blue is what we had before more or less,
and the purple is the K6-166. So, I mean, it's a pretty significant difference
actually even though there's only a 33 megahertz difference in the main clock speed. It mean it's a substantial upgrade. I really enjoy these old K6 chips. Aw man. Such memories. Uh yeah, so I've got a lot of things installed
on here. Just all kinds of stuff. I don't know how much of it I'm actually going
to be showing in this video. We'll go through a fair number of them, but,
of course, just real quick. We've got to.
[chuckles] I think I've already got it set up, so... [Duke Nukem 3D starting up] [gameplay begins] Yeah! Look at it go. I mean we are only on 320x200. We're not pushing the resolution or anything
yet, but we could if we wanted. And yeah, even though there's no wave blaster
going in there for the wavetable, audio music, or whatever, it's fine. Because the OPL3 sounds as it should. Makes me happy, man. This thing is an awesome setup for mid to
late 90s games of all kinds really. Of course, I got Quake. Not GLQuake. It's just regular old Quake. [zombies moaning, weapons blasting] Yeah. Looks awesome. Software rendering, I quite like it. I mean, you know. Yeah, all kinds of awesome stuff you can do
with different graphics cards with a setup like this. And I do want to do so. Right now, of course, I just have the 6MB
Voodoo card going here. That classic animation it plays when you start
up a Glide mode game. Let's go ahead and do that.
Actually, one of my favorites from back then. Just the demo for Tomb Raider 2. Yeah!
[chuckles at pointy polygons] Played this one particular -- the Venice demo. A ton back then but, yeah, there are all kinds
of different cards I'd like to try on here from PowerVR, Rendition.
[pistols firing] Matrox, S3. I've got a lot of them, there's a bunch more
I still want to get at some point. Stupid sniper, get outta here.
Hate that guy. There's a dog coming up. There you are, doggy!
[barking, gunfire] But yeah, even just the classic Voodoo, I
mean, it's a great place to start. Always is. This guy sucks. Stop beating me! Awful! Fine, I will go in the water, you turd. Anyway, look at this, 3Dfx Glide
goodness. I think actually -- you know what, this might
just be running in Direct3D on the 3Dfx card because I didn't see the splash screen at
the beginning. So, let's move over to something that I know
for sure will run in Glide mode. Need for Speed 2 SE for 3dfx, mm. One of the biggest reasons
I wanted a Voodoo card in the first place. Look at that logo! I love that little spinny animation thingy. -"Electronic Arts!" Dude. I mean, I played the crap out of NFS2
just in software, and then SE in software. But! Yeah, it looks good. Obviously, it is one of those games that really
shines with 3dfx, because... ...yeah, it does. All the graphical effects. [music blaring] [announcer]
-"3... 2... 1... Go!" It's so loud. Oh my word. Okay. But yeah, like the rain, the fog, the shiny cars. And performance is still not like, incredibly
amazing but holy crap this was amazing at the time. It was so much better in software mode. *Than* software mode. Not *in* software mode. Now, I actually kind of prefer -- good grief
-- the look of software mode in NFS2 in many ways just because it's kind of what I grew
up with of course and I'm used to it. The 3Dfx mode is so much darker. It's just more shadowy and gray, but it's
awesome nonetheless, and I thought it was amazing back then, however, you don't get
an in-car view. That is one trade-off. And uh. There's other trade-offs. But you put it in the menu
you get the little spinny thing that you got in Need for Speed 3 as well. I hate there's not much leeway with
the speaker adjustment on this monitor. I like the monitor, but man, they're so...
so overly sensitive. Course, another one I've gotta try, because
1997: Quake 2. And this uses, I believe, OpenGL?
How do I have it set? 3Dfx OpenGL, yeah I'm gonna do that. Of course, the original Quake also has its
famous GLQuake mode for some 3D acceleration. This looks like software! What is this? Yeah, it went back to software. Okay, well, whatever this is a kind of a cool
comparison. So, look how bad this runs in just software. This is going to be running straight off of
that S3 card. The Trio 64. [laugh of low framerate] Oh, man. Like, I honestly kind of like the way it looks. I'm a fan in a weird way of how software mode
has aged and some of the crunchy, just everything, the textures and, yeah. The thing is though -- switch over to 3Dfx
OpenGL. Yeah, look at that! [assorted Quake 2 ambiance] Totally different aesthetic, but that lighting. So cool! Obviously, it's still not totally silky smooth,
but again, doesn't matter. 1997.
This was amazing! [repetitious gunfire] I don't trust your body! Coming back and shootin' me
from the floor. Aww. You know, spent
too long gibbing that guy. That's how it goes. Anyway, Quake 2! It was fantastic back then,
still a lot of fun now. Goes without saying. Of course, we can run all kinds of non-3D
things just fine as well. Good ol' Jazz 2 here. It still does take some advantage of better
hardware. You're gonna have these slow menus and whatnot,
but... still, K6-166 is plenty. We will still have some slowdown. Better CPU and graphics would certainly
help but I mean, yeah, more than playable. Whoops. Yeah, it's like whenever things get kind of
dark that overlay that it uses for the spotlight effect there, I remember that. That can slow down on all kinds of different
systems. I tried to shoot ya. There ya go. In fact, I remember cranking it down to like
512x384 or something. Yeah that. Yeah, that definitely helps. But whatever. Still more than playable. Another one I wanted to
try out is Interstate 76. Typically, you run into issues with textures
with Voodoo 1 cards if they're over 4 megabytes. [funky grooves]
Yeah! So yeah this is the upgraded Gold version
of the game. 3Dfx capabilities and such. But yeah, anyway, usually if it's over 4 megs
of video RAM combined. Then you run into some issues, like, I know
in 8 meg Voodoo 1 cards, it just freaks out. However, this is a six-megabyte one, I've
never tried that and we'll just see if we get the proper textures, like, on the road
and the ground and street signs and stuff. Usually, those are messed up. Huh! I mean it's...
Looking good actually. Yeah, you often see like street sign textures
on the road and just weird things that are in the wrong color. All corrupt and stuff. This doesn't look like that, so. Awesome. Get over here, you punk. It's running pretty good too. Oh, man! Launched me. [laughs, car horn honking]
Uh-huh. Yeah, I mean, you know, the expected slowdown
and things are going nuts. There we go. Okay now there is a little bit -- you see that? The steering wheel? That's the kind of stuff that you often can
get on Voodoo cards of over 4 megs combined memory. So I don't know if that's like just a temporary
glitch or if that's just actually a thing we're running into. Either way though -- dude, Interstate 76. That is pretty awesome. I've actually never seen the game run that
decently, you know, and looking correctly on a 3dfx card. I've actually always been trying it on like
a, say, Voodoo2 or Voodoo3 that is either 12 or 16 megs combined memory and, I just, I've never tried it on one of my Voodoo 1 cards. One last thing to try, mostly last, I want
to see if I can get 3Dfx mode going in POD because we had this earlier, just the "Large
Installation for MMX." And, of course, here it is just normal. Both of these are software rendering. But you
see it has all of these different cards and modes available, but it actually doesn't detect
the Voodoo card and it won't let you install it unless it detects it. Now you can force that by copying over a Glide
library to the correct spot in your hard drive but my question is: will the updated version
of POD detect this particular Voodoo Card? Hey, it does. Look at that, "Large Installation for MMX
with 3dfx card." It detects all kinds of things. Let's install
it and see if it works on here. Because this is, kind of like Interstate 76, one of those games that just has weird issues
with different Voodoo cards and usually get some textures
crapping out in a different way than you do from Interstate 76. We'll see. Okay, the moment of truth. It has copied over the correct executable. Let's see. That is a good sign, man. I do not often see that.
[laughs recalling years of troubleshooting] Seriously, if you've never gone through the
rigmarole of trying to get this game working on different systems. Oh, dude. All right. Sound is a little garbly, but uh... [garbled menu sounds] See, now here we have the graphics options
we can go through. Can't max the resolution but we can lower
it, change draw distance and such. The kind of garbly sound is unfortunate. Maybe it'll clear up once we're actually in
the game. There's the 3D spinning cars that you get
in 3dfx. Oh! Nice! So nice. Aw, dude! It does have some of the garbled textures
though, that I was kind of worried about. Not many though. [pleased chuckling] It's awesome seeing it run at all on an old
3dfx card. Okay yeah, see there. Look at those textures, those are a little
bonkers. Not what it's supposed to be at all, obviously. Unless you're just going for an even more
abstract-looking racing game from France. So how about, let's try Beltane? That one I remember being a good example of
things being ridiculously wrong. No, that looks pretty decent. Sometimes you'll get like these things just
covered in like stripes. Black and white stripes. Pink stripes. Orange and blue. I've seen all sorts of weird things cuz
I've tried this game on seriously every single system that I build that is even remotely
capable of running it. This is one of the better results. It's actually better than I
thought it would be. The speed is good though.
I'm glad to see that. Sometimes it doesn't quite figure out what
your CPU is doing, and it'll go at like twice the speed, even on a slower
CPU just like this one. But no, this is pretty much ideal in terms
of performance. Augh, that's awesome. So I think if I were to swap out the Voodoo
1, the Canopus, Can-ah-pus -- I don't know how to say that. That one! That's in there, for a 4 meg one?
It'd probably be even better, but I'm happy with this for now. [laughs over garbled sound effects] Even with the garbly sound. Even with that. This is just awesome. Okay. I got a couple of little finishing touches
and we'll be done with this build for this video. [jazz music begins] All right! And the final thing I want to do is stickers! Because I got another shipment in, ordered from Geekenspiel. Look at these decals. So I got a lovely "AMD K6
MMX Enhanced Processor" sticker. [whispers] Look at that. And the other one here, of course, some "Designed for Microsoft Windows 95" stickers made to look like the old style of those you get on OEM machines
back in the day. And yeah, if you remember, I still have that
badge that it came with. I mean, it also said 'food' on there at one
point, but I like that ECM badge. I'm keeping that and the Energy Star thing,
that's awesome. Normally I would stick like an LGR case badge
or something on here but... [jazz tunes continue] Mm, yes! [growling voice] Satisfying! [music fades] Right, so with that, that is the AMD K6 Socket
7 build complete! At least for now, since this really is a never-ending
project box. One that does precisely what I wanted in terms
of performance and capabilities for DOS and Windows 95 games circa 1997. Yeah the case is yellowed and cramped, but
it brings me back to working on random clone PCs back in the day. And I actually like how it looks so it’s
fine. A tad slow, but that’s the idea! I’ve got faster retro gaming rigs, I didn’t
need speed. I needed slow without being too slow, really
showing the difference an early 3D accelerator can make. And hopefully it’ll provide a nice base
system I can use for testing certain bits of oddware and random software in the future, along with various 90s upgrades I wanna try out. For now though, I’m gonna continue enjoying
some Glide mode POD, and I hope that you enjoyed watching this all come together! Do check out my other build videos if you
like this kinda thing, or stick around for more LGR things already in the pipeline. And as always, thanks for watching!
