Sounds like it will be a pretty sweet retro system. If you find you need more CPU speed for some reason, you can put flash a modified BIOS that adds Barton support. And with a socket wire mod, you can use the higher multipliers and get up to ~2.4Ghz with a mobile Barton CPU.

When I got my NOS KT7A board, the first time I powered it up, a good number of the capacitors exploded. If the caps have not been replaced on that board, do not be one bit surprised if they are bad.

They are easy to replace though, so not a huge deal.

Unfortunately I'm no good with a soldering iron so that would indeed be a huge deal for me. 🙁

It's done!

dat ass


Inside (click to embiggen)

The GeForce FX died a few seconds after I turned it on so it temporarily has a GeForce 2 MX sourced from my now-gutted Dell Dimension until I can buy a graphics card that does not suck. The case was a pain to build in and I hate the plastic toolless card retainers that are like the saddest, flimsiest, cheapest bolt actions in the world, but it looks the part.

It runs but Windows XP setup doesn't seem to recognize the IDE flash bracket even though the BIOS does. I'm going to install Windows XP on the hard drive for now just to make sure the hardware works.

Oh that case makes me moist. I love Supermicro boards and cases.

Also, holy fucking overkill on that power supply. But you already mentioned that.

You sure that psu has enough watts?

Nice case by the way, I really like it. I happen to have a very similar case but its a 14slot ipc case.

luckybob wrote:

Oh that case makes me moist. I love Supermicro boards and cases.

Did Supermicro also make this chassis? I can't be sure, but I think Chenbro makes their own cases.

luckybob wrote:

Also, holy fucking overkill on that power supply. But you already mentioned that.

It may say 750W on it, but in retro terms that's a 250-280W PSU. 😜

yea. I often wonder about the feasibility of building a 12v to 5v/3.3v "helper" power supply. I did something similar with my file server.

I guess that isn't a supermicro chassis. Its close: https://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4 … /SC742T-650.cfm

Nice to see it come together! That case brings back memories...

What a nice build you got there, always nice to see an overlooked processor architecture get some attention once again, the back of your case reminds me of the beige Dell Dimension towers.

Really nice machine, but the PSU is no no no, better try to find old one, as this does not fit at all on the theme of the parts and time...
For example look on old HP, Compaq workstations they have Delta PSU on them, that are more then well made...

That case is gorgeous!

Radical Vision wrote:

Really nice machine, but the PSU is no no no, better try to find old one, as this does not fit at all on the theme of the parts and time...
For example look on old HP, Compaq workstations they have Delta PSU on them, that are more then well made...

The very last piece of vintage computing equipment I'll trust is a PSU. I've seen way too many of them die.

If you want your build to have original look they are must have..
Also if you are talking about Power units like Codegen, KME, JNC and such crap yeah they die way easy then most others, while the Delta units are very well made from the HP workstations they have even japan caps and are very high quality ones so they just don`t die easy. Or the old EnermaX ones, they are very well made too.

Woolie Wool wrote:

Radical Vision wrote:

Really nice machine, but the PSU is no no no, better try to find old one, as this does not fit at all on the theme of the parts and time...
For example look on old HP, Compaq workstations they have Delta PSU on them, that are more then well made...

The very last piece of vintage computing equipment I'll trust is a PSU. I've seen way too many of them die.

There are pliantly of good old PSU's out there. Some newer ones that are far worse then some older PSU's.
Id say get a good brand, like a SPI, EnermaX or higher end Delta. Or at lest get a smaller PSU that fits the build better. That thing is a monster in the case.

luckybob wrote:

yea. I often wonder about the feasibility of building a 12v to 5v/3.3v "helper" power supply. I did something similar with my file server.

Out of curiosity what did you do for your file server? For some reason I didn't think about it before but this product actually kind of already exists for 5V anyway. In the car PC space there are DC/DC cards that can take 12V and if I'm reading the specs right put out 160W of 5V. Which would actually be great for socket A. As long as 5VSB is coming from the real power supply I can't think of why it wouldn't work. If only they had a 3.3V mode.

I bought 12 of the 2 amp 12v to 5v converters from china for like .75 each. I then used some pci-e power extensions and sata power spliters to wire up 2 hard drives to each converter. I did this for 24 hard drives. Its worked perfect for 8-ish months now.

The chinese dc-dc buck converters sold on ebay have adjustable output voltages and are usually built with the components from the sample circuit in the IC mfg's datasheet. Things to be mindful of are that you go out of ATX spec since it's not going to be part of PWR_ON and PWR_OK since it's an additional step after 12V stabilizes. Also you add in more switching noise to the system.

Well, I'm running the converters at 25-33% of their power. So I'm not driving these things hard by any means. i'm also just putting these into cheap hard drives. I put a big filter cap on both sides as well as a quick acting fuse. So if something goes horribly wrong, each converter will only eat 2 drives. And my raid is setup where I can lose 2 drives per array before shit gets serious.

Honestly modern power supplies are doing the same thing. The super efficient ones will generate 100% of their power as +12v, THEN make 5v and 3.3v from that. So, in theory, these manufactureres can make power supplies with high 3.3v & 5v rails by just dropping in more dc-dc converters.

Yes they're designed that way today, but they're sold as white box tested solutions. Nothing should go wrong with the ebay devices, but if it does a proper PSU would be cheaper than test equipment to troubleshoot.