Here's my primary workstation:

(ignore the Pee4 and ATI badges, those were left over from before I upgraded this machine long ago)

550 watt CoolerMaster PSU
ASUS A8N-VM CSM motherboard (Socket 939)
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
3 GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM (dual-channel)
ASUS GeForce 9500GT w/ 1 GB
Integrated audio
160 GB Western Digital Ultra ATA/133 HDD
Sony 16x DVD-ROM drive
Floppy drive (!!!)
Integrated 10/100 Mbps Ethernet
MSI 802.11b/g wireless LAN card
19" Hanns-G LCD monitor
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

^ Nothing special though, if I wanted to run 16-bit games/apps I would need the assistance of DOSBox. Or just use one of my other machines listed below.

On to some more interesting stuff...... here's a slightly more retro build I recently completed using some parts I got for free:

430 watt generic PSU
VIA P4XB-S motherboard (Socket 478)
Intel Pentium 4 1.8 GHz (Willamette)
512 MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM
32 MB ASUS V7100 Deluxe (GeForce2 MX) with VIVO and TV-tuner
Integrated audio
200 GB Western Digital Ultra ATA/100 HDD
Samsung DVD-RW drive
No network connection (yet)
Windows XP Pro SP3 + Windows 98 SE dual-boot (for obvious backward compatibility purposes)

Got the mobo and CPU for free, after my old workplace was throwing out some stuff. This would have been a typical off-the-shelf OEM configuration from around 2001-02. Gonna use this primarily for playing older Windoze games (pre-2003/2004 era). The TV tuner is kinda useless though, with the shutdown of all analog TV signals. This motherboard uses a chipset (P4X266) that got VIA into a bunch of legal issues with Intel back in the day, but nonetheless its performance and stability is very competitive (and in some ways better than) with that of Intel's 845D chipset. One thing I'm probably gonna add is a wireless LAN card so that I can get some kind of connectivity with my network, but for now I'm having fun transferring stuff via a thumb drive and external USB floppy drive. 😀

Also I'm pretty pissed at how hard it is to find and purchase DVD-ROM/RW drives with faceplates that AREN'T BLACK. beige is pretty rare on new machines nowadays but for the sake of making it look retro, c'mon......

Also interesting to note that there is a BABY AT version of this motherboard (may be the only P4 Baby AT motherboard floating around), but I'd be willing to bet it's hard to find:

http://www.ad-promotion-gift.com/promotional- … oard_36164.html

Now, moving up the chain:

(unfinished "retro" gaming rig)
250 watt generic PSU
ASUS P2B-VE motherboard (Slot 1)
Intel Celeron 400
256 MB PC100 SDRAM
32 MB Diamond Viper V770 TNT2 Ultra
Some no-name 4-channel PCI sound card
80 GB Hitachi Deskstar Ultra ATA/66 HDD running in 33 mode
10/100 Mbps PCI NIC
v. 92 56k PCI modem
Windows 95 OSR2.5 (for when I really need it) + Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (primary-use OS, along with DOS)

Gonna use this for older games as well as DOS games. This thing doesn't have an optical drive yet, which makes installing stuff kind of a hassle. Managed to install the OS using one I "borrowed" off another machine. The P2B-VE is a custom motherboard designed by ASUS for HP's Pavilion computers, so after being unable to find info on ASUS's site about it, I went to HP's site and there it was. It has an onboard ATI Rage Pro Turbo graphics controller with 8 MB of SDRAM, and can be disabled via a jumper. It also has an AGP slot as well, which was almost unheard of with motherboards with integrated graphics solutions back in the day. Might take out one of the PCI cards and add a Voodoo/Voodoo2 card later on for playing those old Glide games, though it's kinda hard nowadays to find one of those off ebay for less than $30. Also trying to see if I can find my old 5.25" floppy drive from my pile of old parts - got a ton of old apps on this medium still sitting in my closet.

Also the TNT/TNT2 was the last chip from NVIDIA that had proper, accelerated drivers for Windows 3.1x (though they're inferior and sorta wobbly compared to S3's Win 3.1 drivers, never thought I'd see myself typing that - i.e. garbage can appear on the screen after opening/closing lots of windows, and some text corruption as well), but I guess NVIDIA never meant it to be an official release anyway. Nonetheless it's fun for bringing back some old memories of the not-so-good-old days of Win 3.1.

Also funny that my primary workstation is the only machine with an internal floppy drive 😜