Late 90s Abit BH6 retro rig – first boot was a heart attack but she’s alive now! (dual sound, Voodoo2 SLI, TNT2)
Posted by RetroHardwareGames@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 23 comments
Hey everyone,
Just got this late 90s beast up and running.
Abit BH6 with Slot 1 CPU gave me the classic “no POST” scare on first boot up after being pulled out of storage
Lucky a simple fix or reseating the CPU before it would boot.
Also took the moment to throw some extra RAM in as well
Classic retro PC moment 😂
Now she’s fully loaded:
- ESS AudioDrive + Creative Sound Blaster 16 (dual ISA sound glory)
- 3dfx Voodoo2
- Riva TNT2
Anyone else running a similar 440BX era setup?
What games are you throwing at yours these days?
frenchretronerd@reddit
Beautiful machine ! I just finished assembling a similar one (Dream build 1998) except I'm running a TNT and a Sound Blaster Live! with a PII 450 as I was targeting the best hardware to date as of 31/12/1998 and not a machine specifically compatible with DOS games. Otherwise, V2 Sli, and BH6 as a base :)
RetroHardwareGames@reddit (OP)
nice one :)
yes this system has had many iterations over years and this was the last configuration it ran but I always like to keep some backwards compatibility for DOS. My bread and butter was always the Sierra, Lucasarts classics
frenchretronerd@reddit
I have a 1997 machine for older stuff like that :D P233 MMX, Matrox Millenium + Voodoo 1 and ISA sound card. But I really started my PC journey in 1998 when I was 12 (You can see the rebuild of my first PC in my profile, DELL XPS R350). I never played the DOS games in the time they were released and I started playing all the newer titles coming after 1998 (or some oldies I got in magazines).
RetroHardwareGames@reddit (OP)
Those Dells were iconic back in their day and ahhh the old Mpeg-2 decoder cards awesome for the time but could be problematic if the system had IRQ conflicts
Dad and myself back in the voodoo 1 days grabbed our cards from a local computer market that was around when they were new, decent cost back then but made a massive difference overall to game play at the time and ran them for a while
I didn't move to the Voodoo 2 until probably the 2nd retro machine I built
Originally ran a voodoo 1 card as I managed to acquire 4 of them from someone who parted out some old arcade cabinets
Also came with some Cirrus Logic CL-GV5446BV video cards as a set
trq2023@reddit
That’s an absolute dream build, especially with the legendary BH6 and those Voodoos. I feel you on the Slot 1 struggle; I’m always way too anxious about snapping something when reseating those CPUs. Honestly, seeing that ESS AudioDrive in there is great, as I personally find them much more reliable than the SB16 these days. It’s the perfect foundation for some late 90s longplays. Great to see this beast up and running again!
RetroHardwareGames@reddit (OP)
Appreciate the comments :)
Yeah it is a bit of a Frankenstein build but was working for everything I asked of it.... so far anyway.....
IggyDrake64@reddit
I got an intel 440BX setup, similar board, Abit BM6, the socket 370 version. (400 Mhz Celeron)
loved it, but it was working fine until one day it started not booting sometimes and then soon after not anymore and nothing works to get it running now. The pci cards (gpu is ATI Rage 9600 PCI) work, as does the ram
I'm wondering if it's the caps... I want to try replacing them and see if that works, cuz now i only have an Athlon XP 1800+ sys that works, but I'd rather it be the Celeron, cuz it's older.
RetroHardwareGames@reddit (OP)
Ah the struggles of aging hardware, I also was curious initially if it was a cap issue with no post as the board has been around a while now and has been in storage for 6 years
Thankfully it was ok but I will no doubt add it as a project to complete at some point and give it a full clean and recap
I'm sure with a little surgery yours will come alive once again
DrNick42@reddit
Fantastic build and I love the case aesthetic. Great hardware selection for both DOS & Windows games and dual Voodoos' very cool. You also get good flexibility this way - some DX titles will run better on the TNT2, whereas anything that's more Glide optimised like Unreal will love the V2 SLI's.
I like slot 1 systems too, probably one of my favourite eras of hardware. I have a similar system: Slot 1 P3 Coppermine 600Mhz, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP & SB AWE64 Gold. Also have some Adaptec SCSI going on to add more interest. It's dual booting 98SE + Win2k.
RetroHardwareGames@reddit (OP)
Sounds like an awesome setup would love to see a thread on it if you have one :)
The evolution of computing in that era was so swift that it was common to need multiple systems to span a back catalog of games and software
We are fortunate now though that many have experimented, created projects and software to overcome some of the obstacles of that time period that we can now easily emulate or apply specific hardware to get a broader range of compatibility across a longer period
GGigabiteM@reddit
Is there a reason you have an ESS card alongside the SB16? The latter is a much better sound card, especially with the Yamaha XG wave blaster board attached to it.
starcube@reddit
Yeah, scratching my head on this one.
GGigabiteM@reddit
It gives "I have an F-350 with a Yugo engine" vibes.
Same with the TNT2 with SLI Voodoo2s. The TNT2 is going to be fighting with the Voodoo2 cards for precedence, unless you're running a Glide game.
RetroHardwareGames@reddit (OP)
I did a clean out of hardware when the system was last setup and was testing some cards I parted with ATI Rage 128 and some Geforce cards etc and the TNT2 was in there
Was the last card I tested and just left it in the system
I should mention this system was running dual purpose for a long time with 2 HDDs
1x Dos 6.22 and Windows 3.11
1x Windows 98 SE
So the Voodoo 2s were generally for the DOS side over the TNT2 and Win98 most games tested used the TNT2
I did at one point run 2-3 different systems for different purposes but space became a limitation and I made it more cumbersome
For speed sensitive DOS games it was also a simple disable cache and change frequency via BIOS without ripping the system apart many times
It will get a new configuration in the future and a more streamlined use case moving on
starcube@reddit
What about the redundant sound card?
RetroHardwareGames@reddit (OP)
It will be removed when I next dig into it
My DOS HDD has failed and needs replacing so will strip it out then and the card will likely be sold off
RetroHardwareGames@reddit (OP)
The SB16 I have has the hanging note bug
I went looking for another card in my old stash but didn't find a better SB card to run but did find the ESS so gave it a whirl and was testing with SB compatibility with OPL3 and no hanging note on the ESS while using the SB for MT32 compatibility with Sierra games via line in (I think it was) on the ESS card
Bear in mind this system has been in storage for 6 years and I haven't reconfigured it since this experimentation
GGigabiteM@reddit
There is a fix for the hanging note bug, but it's a bit involved. You have to replace a PLCC EEPROM with modified firmware. The firmware also fixes a few other bugs with the SB 16.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfPsxBj-7EE
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=48732&start=880
I'm kicking myself for giving away my SB 16 a few decades ago. I just have a few AWE64 cards now.
RetroHardwareGames@reddit (OP)
Yeah I have seen Bits und Bolts video about it
Software TSR as well to help with it but the better way would be to replace the EEPROM
burritoresearch@reddit
From the era of a 440bx chipset motherboard it would be much more common to have some form of 32-bit/33MHz PCI sound blaster card. Using an isa sound card in that is weird. It's like what someone would do if they took their old sound card out of a Pentium 150MHz and put it in their new p2/400.
RetroHardwareGames@reddit (OP)
The SB16 card has been in around 4 machines with various configs it just has been kept as most of the games I was playing was the early 90s dos era so preferred the SB over other "compatible" cards in the PCI space
This won't be the final configuration of the system, just good to have it back out in a space to be used
The other configurations this card has been in
486 DX2 66 and DX4 100 system
P166 build
P233 MMX build
AMD K6/2 450 Build
thejpster@reddit
I have a BE6. Looking at your photo, I think the main changes are that I get a High Point HPT366 IDE controller as well as the one in the 440BX chipset.
Great boards.
RetroHardwareGames@reddit (OP)
yeah I have a second configuration I use to run which was an AMD K6/2 500 on an Asus P5A mainboard with the same Voodoo 2 SLI setup but an S3 Trio graphics card and just the soundblaster card