I am very aware that a new(er) generation is rising. Not only because of the age difference, but also on how my generation has experienced the PC era. The 286/386/486 timeline were only the first steps for us (me) but the true "peak" was in the Athlon era. Thunderbirds, AthlonXP's etc formed the golden years for us with exciting games, OS'es, lan parties, the arrival of fast and stable internet connections ...
I had the most fun with my Celeron 400/500's, my P3 700 and my Athlon 900/XP1900. So anything from those 5 years, maybe a bit longer, formed the wonder years. Being 15/16/17 years old, not having to worry about life in general. Only thing we HAD to do was go to school 😁

AzzKickr wrote:

I am very aware that a new(er) generation is rising. Not only because of the age difference, but also on how my generation has experienced the PC era. The 286/386/486 timeline were only the first steps for us (me) but the true "peak" was in the Athlon era. Thunderbirds, AthlonXP's etc formed the golden years for us with exciting games, OS'es, lan parties, the arrival of fast and stable internet connections ...
I had the most fun with my Celeron 400/500's, my P3 700 and my Athlon 900/XP1900. So anything from those 5 years, maybe a bit longer, formed the wonder years. Being 15/16/17 years old, not having to worry about life in general. Only thing we HAD to do was go to school 😁

Agree'd being 29 myself, I remember our first computer was bought used in 91, had a green screen and my dad did work on it. It wasn't until we got our first family computer in 1997 I really got to use the computer. It was an IBM Aptiva with a Cyrix 166, 32mb of ram, a 3gb Hard Drive, and Windows 95.

I really came into my own however in high school in 2001, when I bought an XP 1700+, Geforce2 MX 400, 256mb PC133, FIC Motherboard (think it had a KT133A chipset. That's when I really got into it. So for me the oldest computer games I even really played would be

SimCity 2000, Civilization II, Colonization, Duke3d.

The oldest games I actually played on my first PC, being a 286, were Wolfenstein 3D, Ken's Labyrinth, Commander Keen and Duke Nukem 😀

So to explain why this build is taking so looooong: I have been quite busy in migrating to a new main rig. Well, not completely new of course. I almost never buy a rig completely new; waste of money. I bought me a mint condition Acer Predator Crusader II system. I immediately upgraded it with a GA-X58A-UD7 board, running a XEON X5650, paired to a brand new and shiny Gigabyte R9 390 😀 😀 😀 (had to buy that one new because that's the only model that fits the chassis).

So anyway, that has taken a lot of time obviously but I'm in the final stages now where I have it up and running the way I want. In between migrating from old main rig to new one, I scored some cool hardware. As stated before I'm going to build 2 systems at once, both extreme high-end for their time; one AthlonXP 3200 paired to the MSI GF3Ti500 and one Athlon64 X2 3800+ coupled to the MSI GF4Ti4800. They will both be true MSI machines as the XP will be running the full blown hi-end black and beautiful MSI Delta2 Platinum board, while the A64 will be running on an awesome MSI Neo2 Platinum board.

I still have to check the condition of the GF4 and the Delta2 because they are not perfect. Hopefully they still run...

On top of that I still have an Abit IC7-Max3 system aside, running a P4 3.0 . Some sticks of DDR550 memory are ready to be popped in and last but not least I managed to buy a brand new, never used, boxed with all accessories, Abit FX5900 card. So that will make a sweet rig too. But probably not for anytime soon. Both Athlon builds will surely require a hefty amount of time to assemble and setup properly.

Furthermore I scored a cool time period correct Pentium II chassis. I can put in my PII or PIII in this one, running a pair of Voodoo2's. So that's nice to look forward to.

And then I still have to find the time to do some cool upgrades to my Dell XPS 720 H2C too. Talking about luxury problems 😁 😁

Hey dude

Hows it going with your progress? No update for a long time now but i would be very very interested in hearing 😀

I just signed up to these forums to respond, ive just read this thread and been blown over how alike we both are with retro hardware! We must have been seperated at birth or something.

I also created a thread very similar to yours just recently on another forum, as im going through the same motions as you. Check it out https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18758098

I also have a performance bmw, this is all very strange eh

Anyway be good to hear from you 😀

Great minds think alike 😁

I'll get back to you soon. Midnight local time and need to get some sleep 😀

AzzKickr wrote:

So bad news guys: after about 6 minutes at 385F, all capacitors suddenly popped. So the dead remain dead this time !

crap ...

385f is way to hot. Should never go over 350f
I bake at 325f max

Xplo wrote:

Hey dude […]
Show full quote

Hey dude

Hows it going with your progress? No update for a long time now but i would be very very interested in hearing 😀

I just signed up to these forums to respond, ive just read this thread and been blown over how alike we both are with retro hardware! We must have been seperated at birth or something.

I also created a thread very similar to yours just recently on another forum, as im going through the same motions as you. Check it out https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18758098

I also have a performance bmw, this is all very strange eh

Anyway be good to hear from you 😀

I have had other priorities I'm afraid so I had to put it all away again. It will probably be some more time before I get to actually build stuff too. As a 33 year old father of two, full daytime worker, and a house to renovate + my BMW I have little time to spare. For now I had to revert to storing it again and hunt for bargain deals 😀

Bought some more supercool stuff in the meantime though 😎

Looking forward in sharing the mind !

Jade Falcon wrote:

AzzKickr wrote:

So bad news guys: after about 6 minutes at 385F, all capacitors suddenly popped. So the dead remain dead this time !

crap ...

385f is way to hot. Should never go over 350f
I bake at 325f max

One says this, the other one says that, ...

I gave it a go and failed 🙁

It was a one-of-a-kind card and hate f*cking it up, but I tracked down some cool other ones in the meantime to lessen the burden 😁

AzzKickr wrote:

One says this, the other one says that, ...

I gave it a go and failed 🙁

It was a one-of-a-kind card and hate f*cking it up, but I tracked down some cool other ones in the meantime to lessen the burden 😁

You can always solder new caps on the card.

Not any more ...

AzzKickr wrote:

Not any more ...

Tossed it out?

Yeah it was fried. Soldering new caps wouldn't have solved the original issue either.

Although I made some wonderful new additions to the collection I still feel bad about it.

On-topic: I'll suspend the thread for now. I'm building other machines first 😀