Hello everyone! 😀

I haven't posted here before, although I have been visiting these forums quite a few times! Therefore I thought it was time to come out from the shadows and say "Hi!", and what better way to do it, than to show you all my faithful retro PC? 😀

This is an old IBM 300PL (The tower version) from 1999 which I bought about a year ago from a nice, local guy who had taken good care of it, but had no use for it anymore. Until then I had been looking for a machine which I could use to play my favorite PC games from the 90's. I was a bit torn between what PC to get, and what specs it should have. After considering things for a while, I decided that I wanted to get a Windows/Late DOS gaming PC, running Windows 98SE. Back in the day we got our first PC in 1995 (An IBM Aptiva with a Pentium, 75 Mhz CPU 😀) and so mainly I was aiming for it to run games from around 1992/1993 to 1999/2000.

The specs are as follows:

Intel Pentium III 866 MHz Slot A (originally came with a 667 Mhz PIII, which I upgraded)
256 MB Ram
20 GB Seagate U5 HD
Quad Speed Creative CD-rom Drive
5,25" Inch Mitsumi Floppy Drive (Rather out of place for a Windows/Late Dos gaming PC, but I just love those old drives 😁)
250 MB Iomega ZIP ATAPI Drive
3,5" Stock IBM Floppy drive
3Dfx Voodoo 3 3000 PCI /w coolerfan attached to it and latest BIOS version
Diamond Monstersound MX300 (Aureal Vortex 2) + attached Roland SCB-7 Wavetable DB
...and a network card 😀

As some of you may have noticed, this is a pure PCI setup - unlike the desktop version of the 300PL, there are no ISA slots in this machine. There is an AGP slot, but it uses the NLX bracket so I haven't really used it. I had a few concerns that it would have some issues with DOS games in general, but I must say that I'm very much impressed with the Aureal Vortex 2 and the Voodoo 3 compatibility under DOS. All the DOS games I've played so far (mostly FPS and strategy games, along with some adventure games) have been running great, and some even better than they did on an ISA setup I had prior to this. The Roland DB works beautifully as well under DOS (especially Duke Nukem 3D sounds incredible). I know that there will be some old DOS games that just wont run, or run very well on this machine, but since this area isn't the main focus of my interest (nor the scope of this machine), I believe that I'll survive 😀 Eitherway, I've added some pictures for those of you who wish to have a look 😀

I'd also like to use the oppurtunity to say thanks for the advice and answers to my questions that I found by searching these forums - it's what compelled me to join eventually! 😀