Decision 1: Video card

Decisions, decisions. As I said in my previous post, my original Win98 machine had a Voodoo Banshee card in it. A Quantum-3D Obsidian, in fact (why did I get rid of that card?!?). But, no longer having that card, I need to decide what to install in this machine. I’m not wanting to spend a ton on this project right now, and I have a few decent cards on hand, so – into the box I go!

I quick dive into the sea of shiney comes up with 4 cards (the original ATI Rage is on the left): A Matrox Millennium.. 2? I think. A 32MB Nvidia Riva TNT2 AGP, and a 256MB PNY Nvidia GeForce FX5200 AGP. Also, whilst not technically a graphics card, I found I had this ATI video input card, complete with breakout cable, which might be a fun addition.

Obviously, the FX5200 is the clear winner here. This chipset get a lot of hate on forums, YouTube, etc., but I don’t think it’s a bad card, unless you expect too much out of it. However, this card needs some work before I can use it, as shown by Bulgey McBulge-face here

So, for now at least, in goes the TNT2.

This is a Creative-branded card, so it fits well with all the other Creative devices that will live in this box (it also has an on-board Creative/Ensoniq AudioPCI chipset, which is a nice surprise). Ah, back when GPUs had 2 pixel shaders. 🤣

I’ll get some caps on order to fix the FX5200 at a later date.