that's a Palomino 2100+, last 0.18...

Great Build!

I have a Coolermaster ATC 201 with the window which i am going to transfer my Barton 3000 too when i get time. The really are beautifully built cases.

Agreed! Timeless classic!

I love the ATC201 - I could never find one cheap enough. Make sure you post some photos!

That case reminds me of my friend's 2004 build (Athlon64, 6800 GT ... the rig to envy at that time) but iirc it was a Thermaltake Tsunami instead. If that was a copycat of this Wave Master model, I didn't know at the time.

£12

I'd go pick it up at that price myself!

Nice system! I love the wavemaster .. I have the same case lying around to do a build with at some point 😀 I have a 939 board and an Athlon X2 spare so maybe I will put that in there. Silver case with a door is a great way to use these beige CDROMs without causing too much eye strain 😉

What OS do you plan to run on this machine, XP?

SBB wrote:

Nice system! I love the wavemaster .. I have the same case lying around to do a build with at some point 😀 I have a 939 board and an Athlon X2 spare so maybe I will put that in there. Silver case with a door is a great way to use these beige CDROMs without causing too much eye strain 😉

What OS do you plan to run on this machine, XP?

Currently Running Windows XP Home Edition, SP2 which was exactly what I was running on my Barton setup .

Last night I swapped over hard drives for a Samsung Spinpoint PATA 160Gb, hardly any difference in the benchmarks assuming the controller is the limit here but the seek time is vastly improved, 13ms over 17ms.

I've bought a number of upgrades which are due to arrive shortly 😀

I'd kill for a case like this 😁

foey wrote:

Currently Running Windows XP Home Edition, SP2 which was exactly what I was running on my Barton setup . […]
Show full quote

SBB wrote:

Nice system! I love the wavemaster .. I have the same case lying around to do a build with at some point 😀 I have a 939 board and an Athlon X2 spare so maybe I will put that in there. Silver case with a door is a great way to use these beige CDROMs without causing too much eye strain 😉

What OS do you plan to run on this machine, XP?

Currently Running Windows XP Home Edition, SP2 which was exactly what I was running on my Barton setup .

Last night I swapped over hard drives for a Samsung Spinpoint PATA 160Gb, hardly any difference in the benchmarks assuming the controller is the limit here but the seek time is vastly improved, 13ms over 17ms.

I've bought a number of upgrades which are due to arrive shortly 😀

What is the reason to run SP2 over SP3?

19/07/2016 *Small Update*

So this evening I upgraded the processor. I have a few more upgrades waiting to be posted! All excited to finish this build!

AMD Athlon XP 2500 Barton Processor...

The case was a real asset here. In other cases I would of either had to remove the motherboard or the PSU to get the leverage I needed to take off the CPU cooler. Three screws and a couple of cables to unplug and the tray slid out.

The CPU runs a fair bit cooler - which is great as the British weather is very hot currently! 😀

Connected to the 5900 Ultra, I've got a DVi to HDMi cable which runs to one of my two DELL U2414h. Pictured is Unreal Tournament running at 1280x1024 @ 4:3 mode on the monitor. The camera does not capture how sharp it looks. Colours look great on the IPS screen.

Sitting proud next to my main workstation (Antec Solo II - Love this case, i5 2500+)

Love early to mid 2000s aluminum 😀

SBB wrote:

What is the reason to run SP2 over SP3?

I tend to use SP2 due to generally smaller memory footprint and less bloatware...

SBB wrote:

foey wrote:

Currently Running Windows XP Home Edition, SP2 which was exactly what I was running on my Barton setup . […]
Show full quote

SBB wrote:

Nice system! I love the wavemaster .. I have the same case lying around to do a build with at some point 😀 I have a 939 board and an Athlon X2 spare so maybe I will put that in there. Silver case with a door is a great way to use these beige CDROMs without causing too much eye strain 😉

What OS do you plan to run on this machine, XP?

Currently Running Windows XP Home Edition, SP2 which was exactly what I was running on my Barton setup .

Last night I swapped over hard drives for a Samsung Spinpoint PATA 160Gb, hardly any difference in the benchmarks assuming the controller is the limit here but the seek time is vastly improved, 13ms over 17ms.

I've bought a number of upgrades which are due to arrive shortly 😀

What is the reason to run SP2 over SP3?

It was what I was using back with my Athlon XP build and the last time I installed SP3 on my Pentium 4 rig it was a tad less responsive. I was originally going to install SP1 but needed the LBA fix for drives over 128Gb.

It runs very nice, however you forget when your multitasking that the Athlon has only one core once it starts crawling! 😀

Looks good and pretty period correct,cheers 😀

A couple of updates...

I wanted to replace both Optical drives with something a little special. The DVD-ROM was a budget brand and hardly worked and the CD-RW drive I had in there was very loud, although did function.

I always remember the special blue TDK drive back when they first came out. They were just a standard IDE CD-RW drive but the tray was blue! Transparent blue! After checking on ebay I found one in the UK but was up for £20. I offered them £10 and accepted straight away. Probably a little overpriced for a standard CD-RW drive... but it's blue... right 🤣

Next up was a favorite of mine, I had the tray version of Pioneers DVD-ROM drive but not the slot. The slot drive looked so much "cooler" in the day - so again I managed to find a boxed one! Complete with even a floppy disc (Assuming DOS drivers) Kudos for the owner in keeping the complete box, I have to say I don't think I've ever kept a box for a optical drive before!

Both fitted, I'm happy. Period correct currently as well. Enjoy the photos...

I did also find a Hercules 9800 Pro. I owned this card brand new and bought it from Overclockers.co.uk when they had their special on them. I was replacing my ti4600 at the time. It was my first proper ATi 3D card. I was blown away. The Hercules card looked the business as well.
I was overjoyed to see one in the UK listed and purchased for £10 in shipping. However, whilst it posts, the display goes all broken as soon as the Windows XP loading screen comes on. The card is dead 😒 😵
A real shame as It would of been nice to do a back to back on the same system to test against the 5900 Ultra. I'll keep looking.

##
Next up on the list

- IDE Rounded Cables
- Replacement CPU Cooler

I hated that case because of the damned door. It always got in the way, and would swing open at the worst times. It was eventually wrenched off completely when it swung open and caught in a doorway while I was carrying the case.

Quick update time.

I wanted to get some decent RAM for the system. I had Kingston Hyper X DDR400 in my previous AMD XP rig.

I managed to find a stick of Crucial Ballistix 1 GB PC3200 DDR400 SDRAM on ebay for £6.

I also replaced the standard IDE Cables with rounded ones, again ebay. Not the best photo!

I also had another play with the previously thought dead Hercules 9800 Pro. It worried me that the display was fine in the BIOS and during the post. I booted it up on another Machine (PIII 1Ghz, AGP) and it worked fine. I tried it in the Athlon XP machine and booted into life. Unsure what happened in my previous attempt. It was not however without problems.

I installed the latest drivers which were actually quite slow but ran. I then tried older drivers, namely the Omega which I used back in the day with the card - however all of them had issues in 3DMark. Lines and triangles displaying throughout the scenes. After trying 5 sets of drivers and even a new build (to ensure no previous driver issues) it turned out to be an issue when Installing the drivers with "Fast Writes" I disabled and 3DMark looks fine.

However, the fan is almost dead - needs replacing, the GPU runs very hot as a result and I'm still having problems with 3DMark 2001. 2003 runs perfect, 2001 on the 9-11 test reboots the PC. I'm going to wait until I replace the cooler to investigate further despite a 80mm blowing on the headsink as a temporary measure. I've gone back to the 5900 Ultra.

Just playing around with Overclocking the CPU. This seems to be the sweet spot. Any more and I get AGP issues (No dam divider on the motherboard)

I also can't get UXTheme to work. I've tried the latest version of UXTheme and replacing the .dll manually with the SP2 Version - still no joy.

This would be nice for your 9800pro:

Arctic ATI Silencer 1 Rev. 2

(Maybe hard to find these days...)

melbar wrote:

This would be nice for your 9800pro:

Arctic ATI Silencer 1 Rev. 2

(Maybe hard to find these days...)

performance Pc's might have one. I got one for my 5950 ultra there.

*Update time*

I was on the lookout for two more items to get a step closer to my 2003/4 build. I found them! Very lucky!

First up I found a very very clean Abit NF7-M motherboard. I couldn't find the -S which I previously had so settled on the NF7-M (With integrated Geforce 4) bar the graphics card - it's almost identical.

As you can see, the board was pristine. Looked like it had never been used.

The listing came with a Barton XP 2500+ and 1Gb of DDR333 Ram - all for £16. The Abit NF7 was a classic board back in the day for it's overclocking abilities - it was often paired with a Barton Processor and a 9800 Pro.

Next up was a replacement cooler for my 9800 Pro. The fan on the Hercules card was almost dead. I replaced the fan on my Hercules card previously with a Artic Cooling Rev1. It worked very well. Thanks for the suggestions above, I had no idea they made another revision - just as you posted I found one brand new unboxed on ebay which went for £9 inc shipping.

I kept the small heatsink at the back of the card but had to re-use the bolts from the old cooler to bring the prong/screws up to clamp on tight. It works very well, instantly cooler.

All fitted and tests perfectly. All of the problems I had in the previous board have gone away. I had to disable "Fast Writes" to get the card to display without issues. With the NF7 it works perfectly with fast writes enabled.

Benchmarks are quicker with the NF7 thanks to the Nforce chipset. Will post some figures shortly.

Specifications As of 10/08/16

CPU AMD Athlon XP Barton 2500+, 1.83Ghz
Motherboard Abit NF7-M Motherboard, n-force 2
RAM Crucial 1Gb PC4000 (250mhz) DDR CL2.5 RAM
Primary Graphics Card 128mb ATi Hercules 9800 Pro / Artic Cooling Silencer 1, REV2. Omega 3.8.252 Drivers
Sound Card Creative Sound Blaster Audigy
NIC O/B nForce Adapter 10/100
Storage 160Gb Samsung SP1654N 7200rpm PATA Hard Drive, 8mb Cache
Optical Pioneer DVD-ROM DVD-103 Drive
Optical TDK CDRW 401248B
Extra Creative Audigy Live Drive
PSU Antec 450w PSU
Case Cooler Master Wave Master
OS Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 2

Overclocking the Processor to 3200+ (@ 200fsb) but needs a little tweaking still to make 100% stable) Currently it's at stock. I still have a couple of bits to add, really want to replace the CPU Cooler and add a fan controller.

Currently playing through UT2004!