A rare beast indeed, nice job getting it going again! I've been curious to see one of these in action and yeah, for a slower V3 2000 with only 8MB RAM performance is understandable. Still so cool to have on-board! I wonder if it responds to overclocking in the same way as a dedicated card, I pushed my V3 2000 card as far as I could back in the day.
Thank you! Yeah, seems like it overclocks similar to the standalone cards. K2s Retro Workshop that I mention in the video actually ran some overclocking benchmarks at the end of his video, and it looks like it runs quite nicely. Haven’t tried it on my board yet though!
Seeing the back of this computer brings me back to my youth days. Seeing those connectors just makes me feel the way I did back then. Optimism, joy, a feeling of wanting to explore the possibilities. I guess it was around 2000 when we got fiber optics. 10/10 and I had my first modern computer that was my own and that I picked out. Thinking back of the wild wild web of the time makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Napster, Kazaa, Limewire etc. What a time to be alive. I used to carry that computer to LAN parties too. We'd play games for days and just have a great time.
3dfx was pushing desperately every button to catch up with nVidia TNT2 at that time. They were a GPU supplier at first, but after acquiring STB Microelectronics they also release their GFX cards. They cut the GPU supplies to other vendors. After that, you could get a Voodoo accelerator from 3dfx only. That more profitable but hard to do decision was their last mistake I think. With GeForce 256's release their fate had ended
This really takes me back, i bought a Voodoo 2 as my very first GPU back in 98. Even know i have a pretty powerful system with a Ryzen 5900x and an RTX 3080ti now, i still play the old school games i grew up with like Hal-life, Quake 1,2 and 3 once and a while.
the editing of this video is so enjoyable to watch, love the way you work with this old tech. You deserve to have a like and subscribe, please do more :D
Of course I made it till the end, this video was awesome! 😎 Maybe you can check the frequency, enabled MTUs and the fill rate of the voodoo3 to understand why it scores about 1/3 of what it should in 3Dmark 2000
Great work saving a gem like that! thats a nice motherboard 😊I need to learn soldering to repair some of my old boards. It's been 20+ years since I had Teknik class in school.
Packard Bell sure did a lot of fun stuff with this machine. From making the case open backwards, to the hidden bays. And did you also notice there's only ONE USB port on the back, despite the board having two? As for the PSU outputting 3.4v - apparently that's one small caveat of those that run a sense wire on the 3.3v - the voltage rises slightly. I have a Sun Pro OEM'd unit here (Rhino RX-500Y) that always runs the 3.3v rail like that.
Yes, haha, the blanked out USB port is weird! Maybe they had another mobo option with only a single USB and they just used the same IO shield or something. Interesting tidbit about the 3.4v, had no idea!
I got one of these (with a 450 mhz celeron) almost 20 years ago as it was dead. I never found out what was wrong with it, but found that pressing the power button repeatedly hundreds of times slowly got it back into life. It would then work as normal until it was unplugged. I remember the hard drive containing a large library of MP3 music, many of which I've been unable to find online later.
Most of the time it isn't worth saving an old prebuild rather than replacing the motherboard...but when the motherboard it has includes a Voodoo 3, even a slow one, that means that it is definitely worth saving.
Nice video and nice find on this machine! So glad you got it working too. I can still vaguely remember when this machine was on sale here in the UK in PC World. The Gateway computer we had at the time had a Voodoo 3 3000 in it and I remember being impressed that Packard Bell were adopting 3DFX cards in their machines. I had no idea though it was integrated onto the motherboard though and had no AGP port for future expansion. I would have been more dissapointed at the time if I'd realised that, however, as others have stated in the comments, I do find it kinda cool now from a nostalgic point of view. It's also amusing that it's a mATX motherboard in a relatively large ATX case. I always liked the Packard Bell cases of that era too. The Club series cases were like a smaller mATX version of these Mulitimedia series cases, and the Platinum series cases had a more serious look about them, which I felt gave them a similar look to Dell and Gateway of the era.
Oh yeah. I remember late Friday nights playing Counter Strike and StarCraft on my Gateway 2000 with a 3Dfx Voodoo. My Dad would fall asleep on the couch nearby watching antiques roadshow. Classic
Interesting bit of computing history. So integrating higher-end discreet GPUs into motherboards is an older concept than I thought. Even these days, integrated discreet GPUs are pretty rare in desktop systems, they're pretty much exclusive to laptops. As for those bad capacitors, it's always best to replace all same brand caps, even if only some of them look bad.
Good to see this old Packard Bell PC coming back to life. I still have two Win98 3dfx systems running. One has a Voodoo 3 3000 and the other has a Voodoo Banshe. Hope they will keep working for long years :)
Great video man. I owned this machine back in the days. My dad bought me one when I was young. I used to play Soldier of Fortune, Red Alert, Unreal, Delta Force 2 and so on. Such great memories. Now I own 2 of them, managed to buy them. Had to replace some caps on one of them but they were running fine. Man I love these machines.
8:51 I did bought an original CD of 98 SE before but was not able to install it in my XP machine. I did use 98 before but not on my computer, I did not used it long unlike the XP Professional. Hearing that boot up sound IS AN EARGASM TO MY EARS!
You should get yourself an ATX power tester. Those are gold if you attempt such things more often, and don't cost the world either. Note that especially the digital versions have issues with different ATX versions, such as the number of PINs and the presence / absence of secondary 12V and -5V line.
That brought back some memories, a cousin of mine had such model back in the day, I helped them set it up and install the PC when they got it. It came with a collection of software and games which where included by Packard Bell, from what i recall some of the titles where Encarta Encyclopedia, greetings card software, Games Blade Runner and Freddi Fish. They also had A2 racer but not sure if that was a pack-in or they got that loose. For reference this was in the Netherlands, I believe some of the included titles could differ per country/region.
Voodoo 2 was legend. I had one back in the day. It only did the actual 3D part. The 2D part was done by the integrated graphics. Kinda SLC before SLC was a thing (Not really, but lets put it that way so the kids understand what i am talking about lol)
In late 1997 ny dad came home with our first computer. Its was a Packard Bell 133mhz processor with MMX (clocking it to 166mhz) A 1.5 MB graphics card 1.8 gig hard drive And a whopping 16mb Ram. The screen had built in speakers. A stand alone microphone and a remote. It ran on Windows 95 and killed everything we threw at it. 2000 bucks for this beast ❤❤
I remember a friend buying this computer new. And we install Quake 1 and setting the video to the 3DFX and playing the game with flawless graphics....damn! Wish I could to that today. Great game for it'd time.
A great video. It really takes me back as my family had one of these exact machines (including the funky CRT with the side mounted speakers) as the family PC when I was growing up. I remember it came bundled with Diablo and Alpha Centauri.
I would enjoy seeing a video of this guy getting upgraded to 16 MB. What's the processor limit for that motherboard in terms of the processor? I know slot 1 went much higher than 600mhz. I also doubt that 256 MB was the RAM ceiling as well? Anyways, nostalgic AF. Thank you!
The bus runs at 100Mhz stock, but the BX/BZ chipset is know for running well overclocked to 133Mhz, which should allow running later and faster PIIIs. The RAM ceiling was officially 512MB, but I’ve heard that 1GB is possible with 2x512mb sticks. Problem is that those kinds of upgrades would likely require a different BIOS, and I like to keep it stock with the Packard Bell boot logo and everything. But I’ll definitely do a video if I ever upgrade the VRAM!
@@OddObsolete I'm sure PB would've sold this motherboard with a better BIOS so they could sell faster processors on the same motherboards. More profit that way. I've always been a performance junky more than a product purist. Great system though.
Very interesting motherboard... Makes me wonder if they ever made a laptop flavor. Apparently 2 versions of that motherboard, V1 had 8mb and V2 had 16mb for the voodoo
It probably sold in my native Netherlands. As the advertisement in the beginning is in Dutch. There were a lot of Packard Bell's being sold back then. I seem to remember they were generally being targeted as family PC's.
I know everyone says this but I miss the sounds of turning on a PC from that era. It always made me feel like I was doing something important lol. Like starting a rocket engine. :D
Lol this is a funny video, I've had the EXACT same PC as my first computer back in 1998 !, The PIII slot processor (Katmai core if I'm not mistaken), 64Mb of SDR-SDRAM and the Voodoo 3. I've had a lot of fun with it back in the day, I played a lot of Unreal Tournament and C&C Red Alert 2 with it :)
I had this exact pc when I was a kid but I had the P3 450, the onboard voodoo 3 was abit of a pain to get running in a few games. I had issues with games like redguard and Diablo 2, I remember the textures would do weird things like overlap or not be on the correct spot. But I remember all the kids in my street being jelly I had a pc that could play dvds lol
Excellent video... I must say if you are going for the 8MB to 16MB SGRAM path and this is a custom Intel i440BX which must be a FSB 100Mhz and Intel Pentium III 600Mhz... why not go full 1Ghz PIII FSB 100Mhz? would completely max this already custom and extremely rare Packard Bell into legendary status. I also feel that the Voodoo 3 chipset itself was a bit of a let down compared to the competition of the time but maxing out this Packard Bell to 16MB SGRAM, (you already maxed the SDRAM from 64MB to a mighty 256MB) and an Intel Pentium III 1Ghz would just sweeten the deal... let me tell you that I had a 600Mhz PIII and own two PIII 1Ghz but they are 133Mhz FSB for the latter and the speed is VERY palpable indeed.... Afterwards the whole Voodoo 3 driver or probably some fan made drivers? would fix the benchmark issue and help provide some neat benchies or custom ones in 2022 or assuming you cannot get it finished, into 2023. Thus testing the old games that ran on Glide and PC-DOS games should definitely be an excellent experience. I also like that you did not use a SSD and instead went for a mighty Hitachi DeskStar HDD 160GB, I have one of those too, very good drives. Also I recall that a PC magazine I have did run a story on unfinished motherboards that featured a 3DFX chipset but they made it seem like such a 3DFX powered motherboard was never in production and the sample they had way back in the early 2000s did not work... I suspect that the PC magazine was clueless about this Packard Bell given how they often preached for custom PCs anyway and probably Packard Bell did not have just a great performance name but also the fact that Atari Games (the arcade game maker NOT the separate entity that made computers and gaming systems) did indeed have some type of custom motherboard featuring a 3DFX chipset around 1996 which probably means it was based on 3DFX Voodoo 1 or before the Voodoo 2 which isn't saying much but "seemed" like a powerful arcade machine based on a custom computer motherboard.
That's a very nice find 😎 get some UT GOTY and pod on the go or GTA 1 with glide enabled would be sweet and some duke and quake ..... I have seen that case design before and bottom mounted screws holding side panels on or topside with plastic cover hiding screws seemed to be a thing at one stage 😎 super cool video ........tech tip cut down paint brushes work we'll
Amazing video...maybe you should consider brand new power supply for retro pcs, it's a low cost and can take care of old hardware better. I actually doing that with my retro-pcs to take care of all this old components
My first pc was a Packard Bell but it was a lowly 486 sx-33 with 4mb ram, 170mb hdd, cirrus logic 1mb video card, no optical drive and no soundcard. I bought and installed a Soundblaster Pro 2.0 in it(my first ever upgrade to a pc) and I found it to be a decent upgrade from my Amiga 500+
