In 2016, to help myself out of a rough emotional spot, I decided to make good on my plan of making an old MS-DOS gaming rig. (One that would work with my VR setup)

At least, that's how it started. I had a bunch of parts, but no case and no power supply.

My best years in experiencing gaming were from 1992-2004. After that, I never really was able to get interested in modern gaming.

I started with a 200 MHz Pentium (actually a 233 MHz CPU limited by the clock speed of the motherboard), with:

• An 8MB ATI Rage All-in-Wonder
• An 8 GB hard drive
• 40MB of Memory (I think...)
• Sound Blaster 16 CT1740 Sound Card
• Intel EtherExpress 10/16 or D-Link DFE-530TX Ethernet Network Card

At the time, I was running a computer at 1997 specs, and that was good for MS-DOS gaming.

Eventually I realized that in order to run later games, I needed lots more power, speed, and memory.

So, I saved my money. I tried one motherboard, but it was buggy, and didn't like the video card (ATI Radeon 7200) I tried to install in it.
I tried another. It worked, but updating the BIOS to the latest version was impossible with my chip reader.

With a new job, and searching for a motherboard with the maximum possible amount of everything, that idea came closer and closer until I was able to get a nice Chaintech 6BTM motherboard. It accepted the video card, and memory that I had laying around (I believe). I tried finding an updated hacked BIOS that allowed hard drives higher than 80 GB, then using XTIDE, until someone mentioned that Windows/DOS is unstable with any systems around 120 GB in size, so I gave up and decided to use 80 GB hard drives.

After a few video card missteps, I have the following specs and additions for my computer rig:

Main System

• Chaintech 6BTM Motherboard (Intel 440BX) with fully-updated BIOS:
  -1 AGP Slot
  -4 PCI slots
  -3 ISA Slots
• 4 RAM Slots (448 MB total)
• 3.5" Floppy Drive
• 5.25" Floppy Drive
• Rewritable CD/DVD Drive (only to read CD/DVDRWs)
• 3 80GB Hard Drives (Two for video recording and storage)

Cards

• ATI Radeon 9000 All-in-Wonder Video Card (The low-profile version was the only one I could find after writing this entire spec sheet)
• S3 Trio Virge 375 (For MS-DOS Gaming + VR Testing)
• (My Sound Blaster Audigy seems to have blown out, because I can't get proper stereo MIDI music or 4.1 surround sound)
• Generic 4-Port USB PCI Card
• D-Link DFE-530TX Ethernet Network Card (This card is in a bit of a jam right now, because the ethernet port needs to be replaced)
• Forte VFX-1 Headgear VIP Board (connected to the S3 Trio Virge), with VFX-1 Headgear VR Helmet
• Sound Blaster 16 CT1740 Sound Card (For MS-DOS Gaming)

Additional Peripherals:

• 1 Samsung DVD-VCR Combo
• 1 Direct-Dubbing DVD-VCR Combo (Recording direct to VHS from DVD)
• 1 2006 Sony Blu-Ray Player
• 2 LCD monitors, one connected to the S3 Trio Virge, one to the ATI Radeon
• TV-VCR Combo for Composite Video Output from computer
• VFX-1 Headgear VR Helmet
• Microsoft Sidewinder Force-Feedback Joystick
• 4.1 Surround Sound Speakers

And a grand majority of all these items were either bought on a budget, or already in my computer collection.