I'm watching a number of 3dfx cards on eBay, just not so quick to bid as they aren't all that cheap (at least, not by my standard and budget!). Hope to build up that part of my collection later in the year.
Take your time! Most sellers are trying to get the weight of the card in gold. Just wait, look for bundles, search the offerings piece by piece. Often you find sellers who don't know anything about Voodoo or 3dfx. These are the ones where you get the cheap cards. And, as I said, simply wait. There are many cards out there. 3dfx is way overrated/ prized.
The first test system I'll be setting up is a 486 VLB system, specifically for testing VLB graphics cards.
I still got two 486 under construction. They are a little like Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. One is a VLB/ ISA- system with an ECS UM486V AIO/ AMD Am486 DX2-66 (@83MHz) and 8x4MB SIMM-RAM which shall be built as a VLB/ SCSI- system, the other is a Chaintech 486SPM with SiS496/497 PCI/ ISA- Chipset/ AMD Am5x86-P75 (@160MHz (at the moment)) and 96MB FPM-RAM. This one is being tortured with everything I got. I've had a water/peltier-cooling running on it, and I had promising results at the PC-Player benchmark, but all this was eating up my time. Hours of searching after every silly little bug. If you want just a running 486- system, no problem, but if you want to start experiments, these machines can be a pain in the ass.
Have yet to see an affordable socket 4 board with VLB, that would be better. I then plan to slowly work my way through building a number of retro systems, working my way through different sockets from oldest to latest, with the fastest possible CPU for each system.. My priority is to be able to test graphics cards for the website I'm working on (I'll add that to my sig when I have finished listing all current AIB cards).
I did some oldie graphics-card testing one year ago >
http://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f204/benchmarking-aelterer-grafikkarten-967067.html
The writing is in german, but the pics and results are understandable. Have a look. One advice do I have for you: Buy or build yourself a benchtable. It's much more efficient when it comes to change the graphics-card three times in an hour. At the VGA-test I didn't have a benchtable, but soon after that i built one and I don't want to miss it.
I've made a 60mm oldie aircooler- roundup with the benchtable and it helps alot. You can download the roundup as a pdf there >
http://www.file-upload.net/download-8327491/60mm-Oldie-K--hler-Roundup.pdf.html
Same as before, writing in german, but colorful pictures and diagraphs
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I think the hardest part will be getting reasonable cases at a good price which can be easily packed away when not in use.
The day will come, and you want fine old cases for your fine old hardware. I always like to take the Chieftech CS601/ 901/ Dragon. Much room, solid as a rock and not to expensive.
Not too bothered about getting age appropriate cases or PSUs though - for PSUs I'll use modern energy efficient units with adapters where needed.
It's not as easy as it seems. Modern PSU's have got a strong 12V lane, while oldie hardware needs more power on the 3.3V & 5V lane. My favourite is Enermax. I've got a hole bunch of them, from 330W to 565W.
Reliable and, if you wait for the right offer, not expensive. For most of the oldie Enermax-PSU's I paid not more than 5€.
edit: no post without pic
. Normally I'm an AMD- guy, and there are many possibilities to build nostalgic, cool & rare systems, but I wanted this board because the 1-CPU Version was the board in my 1st self built PC (next PC was with an 1000MHz Thunderbird).
This is the dual CPU- version and with 2 slot 1 > socket 370 adaptors its possible to run Pentium III-S processors up to 1,4GHz. But first the crossfire- system has to be completed.