Hewlett Packard Vectra VA 6/200MT Pentium Pro Build - Another One Off Of My Bucket List

My last blog post was about my HP Vectra 286/12 and how I never owned an AT class 286 computer until then. Well one other computer type I never owned until now is Socket 8 Pentium Pro. These were terribly expensive back in the mid 90s usually in the $4000-$5000 range and those were entry level models. The Socket 8 platform was built around the Pentium Pro CPU. It was the successor to the Pentium. It has some very advanced features was definitely designed around 32-bit Operating Systems. It could run 16-bit code, but unfortunately it did so slower than the Pentium CPU at the same clock speed. Intel would correct most of that with the Pentium II that came next. I got my current system on eBay for a very reasonable $200 plus $30 shipping. The asking price for a Socket 8 motherboard and CPU alone is usually much more than that, so I was very happy with this deal. Here are the specs of the computer as I bought it:

Midtower case with four 5.25" plus three 3.5" drive bays. Three exposed 5.25" drive bays and one hidden 3.5" bay available

180W AT power supply with thee free power leads (all 4-pin Molex)

Intel 200 MHz Pentium Pro processor in socket 8 with a clip-on heatsink and a plastic ventilation duct for air drawn in by a rear case fan.

Intel 440FX chipset motherboard

64MB pf EDO RAM in 4 of the 6 72-pin SIMM sockets. Memory is upgradeable to 192MB by using six 32MB SIMMs

4 PCI slots and 4 16-bit ISA slots, staggered so that with the current 3 cards installed 3 slots are still open.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 ISA sound card, CT 2970

CNet ISA sound card, 10Mb/sec, with RJ-45 and BNC connectors

Original Matrox Millennium PCI graphics card with 2MB WRAM

Quantum Fireball 2.5GB IDE hard drive, 5400 RPM, ATA-33, 512MB cache

1.44MB 3.5" floppy drive

Hitachi CDR-7930 8X IDE CD ROM drive

2 PS/2 ports, 1 parallel port, 2 DB9 serial ports


Here are the upgrades I put in:

Pentium II Overdrive @333MHz

192MB of EDO memory 6x32MB 72-pin SIMMs

ET6000 4MB PCI video card

3dfx Voodoo 2 12MB PCI 3D graphics card

Orpheus 1 ISA sound card with PCMIDI and DreamBaster X2 wavetable card

3Com 3C905B 10/100 PCI network card

CompactFlash to IDE adapter

8GB CompactFlash Card

The Pentium II Overdrive makes the computer much more usable for Windows 9x. I am currently running Windows 98 SE. This was an upgrade CPU from Intel for Socket 8 Pentium Pro users and really adds a lot of performance to the computer. The addition of the Orpheus 1 sound card and 3dfx Voodoo 2 3D graphics card really makes this computer a wonderful retro gaming platform for both DOS and Windows 9x. In fact this has become my go to computer for that above all my other ones. Not many people would go for this type of computer for their retro gaming platform, but I just wanted to be a bit different have some fun at the same time. If you are interested in learning more about the Pentium Pro here is a link to a Wikipedia article on it as I won't bore you with the technical details.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Pentium_Pro

Here is an article on the Pentium II and the Pentium II Overdrive CPU:

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Pentium_II

This is probably my favorite build to date as it is something different that a lot of retro enthusiast just don't seem to have that much interest in. Being different can also be very fun too:)





 


Speedsys 4.78 benchmark results









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