First post, by looking4awayout
- Rank
- Member
Hello everybody, I'm a newcomer in the forum, despite I lurked as a guest since a very long time.
You can call me Looking4awayout, I'm a computer repairman from Italy who always got a thing for old computer systems. However, unlike most, I'm not into gaming, or at least I'm not into that anymore as I used to be as a kid. Instead, what I enjoy most from vintage computers is to push them to their limits, their extreme limits, and see if they still can be capable and productive in present days, without resulting to overclocking or watercooling but keeping the pieces as stock as possible, just like what would the average user do.
So, inspired from Oldtech81's videos on Youtube and from what I learned through experience, I can safely say that there are a lot of obsolete machines that with the right expansions, can still be used as modern productivity platforms and can still be used as daily drivers, despite their ancient architecture. Of course, 8 bit and 16 bit computers are out of the league with my concept, because we know that 8-bit machines capabilities as full-fledged "daily drivers" nowadays are quite limited, while 16-bit platforms can still have a lot of vitality, so it would be an "easy win".
But enough with sophisms, time to introduce you my long time work-in-progress, a computer I like to call the "Ferrari Coppermine".
The Ferrari Coppermine started as a Dex (Italian OEM, no longer in business since a decade) Pentium 3 800EB with 128MB of PC100 RAM, a 20GB Seagate 5400RPM hard drive, onboard Soundmax audio, an ATI Rage 128 graphics card, two LG optical drives (both broken) and an extremely unstable installation of Windows ME and an MSI 6309 V2 Lite motherboard. It was purchased in year 2000 and came with a Windows ME product key sticker applied on the rear. The computer was brought to our store with the hope it could receive a rejuvenation with the installation of Windows XP, but my father, who's the boss in charge (since the store is family owned) deemed it not worth to be upgraded as too much obsolete, so the owner traded it with a brand new Asus laptop with Windows 8. It happened in 2013.
Fast forward to year 2015, I accidentally killed my previous retro PC, a Pentium MMX 233Mhz by installing both EDO and SDRAM sticks, so I had to find a replacement. And what could be the best replacement, if not that Dex, that was languishing on the shelf since two years, waiting to be scrapped?
So, I brought it home and begun to fiddle with it. I have replaced the puny Cooler Master heatsink with a bigger AVC one coming from a scrapped Athlon XP, replaced the two broken optical drives with a Matsushita combo CD/DVD reader, installed a TEAC 5.25" floppy drive salvaged from the MMX PC, replaced the 20GB Seagate HDD with two Maxtor 160GB and 200GB 7200RPM, upgraded the BIOS version to the latest one available, installed a 256MB Geforce FX5500 paired to a 3DFX Voodoo1 taken out from the MMX and a Sound Blaster Live as a graphics card, expanding the RAM to the amount I had back then, which was 768MB. The keyboard, a Chicony KB-5181 and the mouse, a Logitech MB-82-9F and the monitor, a Sam*Tron 1554-V 15" CRT monitor from 1997 were from the MMX build.
So, I proceeded with the installation of the OS. First, I've installed Windows 98SE and fully patched it, then Windows XP Home SP3 and then Lubuntu 14.04. After installing them, I noticed that the computer wasn't that slow to use for other things besides classic gaming, so I concentrated myself to expand it further, and first thanks to a scrapped Compaq Evo laptop, I managed to upgrade the CPU to a Pentium 3 1GHz E, the one with the 100MHz FSB. The performance boost was like a transition from night to day, and I got keen on keeping upgrading it.
I connected it to the internet with a US Robotics 5423 USB WiFi dongle, and then, thanks to Ebay, I continued my work of pushing it up to its maximum limits while keeping it as much retro as possible and even making it, at least in look, older than it looks. I've replaced the CPU with a P3 1000EB with 133MHz FSB, replaced the graphics card with a Geforce 6800GT 256MB, taken the Voodoo1 out as it died of old age (most likely a reflow might make it spring back to life, but I don't have time nor interest to revive it at the moment), installed a NEC USB 2.0 PCI card, replaced the Sound Blaster Live with a Yamaha sound card that offers DOS drivers and supports Lubuntu out of the box with no additional hassle and then I did the most important thing after the graphics card replacement: I maxed the RAM out to 1,5GB.
Then, I have replaced the Sam*Tron monitor with an even older model, a 14" Crystal CM-1402E early SVGA "8514/A compatible" monitor from 1992 kept at 640x480, and replaced the Chicony KB-5181 keyboard with a NIB BTC-5060XT I bought from Ebay back in 2012 and never used since because it was apparently an XT only keyboard (I found out it was an autosensing XT/AT keyboard only by accident), and here's the current setup:
- -Intel Pentium 3 1000EB 1GHz | 133MHz FSB
-Maxtor 160GB and 200GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drives
-Inno3D Geforce 6800GT 256MB AGP
-Logilink USB 2.0 PCI Card (NEC chipset) with internal USB port for cache drive
-Yamaha YMF724 sound card
-Crystal CM-1402E SVGA "8514/A Compatible" 14" CRT monitor
-BTC 5060XT 84 keys XT/AT foam-and-foil keyboard
-Logitech MB-82-9F 300DPI serial mouse
-US Robotics 5423 USB WiFi dongle
I'm positively impressed by how the computer is fast and snappy despite the very obsolete architecture. Of course, I had to do some compromises in order to make it as much lightweight as possible, by tweaking the BIOS, disabling special effects, themes, unnecessary services, playing a lot with browser settings and installing Eboostr to build the cache on a 4GB flash drive permanently connected to the internal port of the USB 2.0 card, but using this computer doesn't make you think you are using a Pentium 3, but more of a Pentium 4.
Being a totally insane retro enthusiast, the series of upgrades aren't finished yet. In September, I plan to buy a pin modded Pentium 3-S from South Korea and see if it runs on my computer (and now much of a performance boost I'm going to get), and then finding out if it's possible to load the serial mouse driver in the XP safe mode. After that, I think my quest will be over and I will be finally able to enjoy a PC that's been really "built to last".
Here are some other shots of the Ferrari Coppermine, this time the guts:
And the rear:
The motherboard is an MSI 6309 V2 Lite, from 1999. No capacitor on the board is leaking, luckily. Since the salvage, I have installed two additional fans to provide extra cooling and replaced the old 230W PSU with a P&O 550W one that seems to be adequate. The PC works quite well so far, usable and smooth, although the monitor sometimes gave me some issues due to the fiddly connector, but after I have straightened the pins, disconnected and reconnected it to the graphics card, it's no longer giving issues so far. Curiously, the red pin is actually shorter than the other ones.
I wonder how fast will it run with the pin-modded Tualatin, in future, and one day I'd like to try to install a SATA controller card and hard drive, to see if I can give it extra performance, but the latter is just an idea since the two IDE drives work very well, despite they come from a computer that was used as a bittorrent workstation, so it was constantly downloading programs from the internet.
Until then, this is my first step in the VOGONS scene. Gaming wise, I'd like to keep this computer as an all-in-one solution. So, Windows 98SE for DOS and 9x games, Windows XP for more recent games and emulation -along with daily desktop use- and Lubuntu for the same daily use as XP, while learning how to use Linux.
So, long story short: can a retro PC be still useful and productive for daily use? Yes, it can! As long as it can be expanded to the maximum limits and as long as you have enough patience to do all the required tweaks to improve its performance and reduce the amount of RAM and CPU usage, there's still a lot of life to squeeze out of these obsolete architectures, and the Pentium 3, in my opinion, is the best retro architecture for this scope, since it's old enough but not too obsolete to make it still a viable option for desktop and good oldschool gaming.
Until then, this is Looking4awayout, signing off. 😉
My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3