Well thanks to you guys pointing me in the right direction, I decided to get a zalman multi connector that took a regular 4pin power connector and branched to 2 5v and 2 12v leads. although the product is for 3 pin fans, each connector only has two pins, so it was really pretty simple to jam the geforce3 fan onto it.
upon firing up my computer, i was really really pumped when i didnt hear the vga fan at all... it just spins very quietly now. that combined with a cheap 80gb seagate drive fixed my dustbuster computer up real nice.
and you're right zyzzyx, i can still hear it a little bit, and sometimes i do think that i'd like to replace the case fan to try for absolute silence... but you know, i'm pretty psyched that i can even think when next to this computer now.

i guess that's good enough.
thanks for your help
ben