The only thing that takes up a lot of space here are my broken LCD monitors (dead pixels, scratched panels). I should throw them out. My motherboards and other cards doesn't really take up much space at all. Those can be tucked away in boxes, so it'll look tidy enough.

I don't have a wife or gf, so no aggro. 😀

kind of a bad picture, but here is my new Abit KG7-RAID motherboard, along with a Zalman copper cooler (has a fan that hangs over it via a handle of sorts) that I already have. RAM being used is a 1GB Corsair XMS Platinum 400Mhz DDR , A bit new for the system , but it was the highest quality RAM I have (its either this or cheap no name stuff), not to mention I can run the RAM with everything set to Max/Turbo without worrying.

from what I know and see ,this motherboard is new, or if it was used , it wasn't much.

Still waiting for an Athlon 1400 to put into this board , which I will use with my Voodoo 5500 , figured I don't have to worry about CPU speeds since I have the Netfinity for the older more speed sensitive games.

Not quite sure if an Athlon 1400 maxes out the V5500 , but Ive heard the ideal system for it is in the 1.2-4 Ghz range , so it should be ok.

Those low-profile heat spreaders always remind me of Rambus.

Did that board come with a northbridge cooler on it, or is that a custom job?

AidanExamineer wrote:

Those low-profile heat spreaders always remind me of Rambus.

Did that board come with a northbridge cooler on it, or is that a custom job?

The cooler's got Abit logo on it...

AidanExamineer wrote:

Those low-profile heat spreaders always remind me of Rambus.

Did that board come with a northbridge cooler on it, or is that a custom job?

its part of the board, which is nice, maybe not necessary, but certainly nice.

one thing I don't like about the board however is the location of the IDE and Floppy drive ports in relation to the Lian Li case Im using, where the Hard drives end up sitting exactly in front of the IDE3 & 4 ports. the V5500 kind of gets in the way too if I want to plug them into IDE1 or 2 (the DVD drive is fine though)

What Ive done instead is use an Adaptec ATA100 card which I got out of a Compaq workstation that couldn't be saved due to the custom faulty PSU, along with rounded IDE cables. means the IDE cables can be run along the bottom of the board as opposed to them wrapping around the video card and such, which should improve airflow (the ultimate setup would be to have a SCSI setup of course, but that's secondary and not cheap for a higher capacity drive).

Honestly, the best thing you can do in terms of a hard drive is to use a pci > sata card. Even the cheapest new drives today can easily saturate the old pci bus. Plus they are near silent and use a fraction of the power. Best part is, if you really want a fast system, grab a small used SSD.

5

luckybob wrote:

Honestly, the best thing you can do in terms of a hard drive is to use a pci > sata card. Even the cheapest new drives today can easily saturate the old pci bus. Plus they are near silent and use a fraction of the power. Best part is, if you really want a fast system, grab a small used SSD.

5

actually if I was going to get a SATA drive, I would get it for my WinXP machine, as Im using a 320GB IDE drive on it too (just what I had laying around) , when it has onboard SATA ports, in my mind it would be better to use a SATA drive with that, and use the 320GB drive in another machine (a single 320GB drive would replace the multiple ones in this machine)

Picked up an AT desktop case (with digital display) in great shape! It even has a yellow-snow-colored 5.25" floppy! 😒

Hmmmmmm...Perhaps yet another build on the horizon?? 😎

minus that yellow Disk drive, that case is actually pretty slick would be interesting to see what you do with it.

Artex wrote:

Picked up an AT desktop case (with digital display) in great shape! It even has a yellow-snow-colored 5.25" floppy! :blah: […]
Show full quote

Picked up an AT desktop case (with digital display) in great shape! It even has a yellow-snow-colored 5.25" floppy! 😒

Hmmmmmm...Perhaps yet another build on the horizon?? 😎

If I were you I'd put some early BX board that was on Baby AT along with a Pentium II 266MHz,a 8.4GB HDD (enough for a PII),128MB RAM,a NIC,nVidia RIVA TNT 16MB,Windows 98 SE and a nice 17* CRT along to it.

All of these fit nice in a AT case. I had a clean white AT case which originally stored a Pentium 150MHz,a Soyo SY-5TF and a few other things,in which I installed a Pentium II 400MHz,around 256MB RAM (not that much for a PII IMO),a Geforce 2 GTS,a CD-RW drive and a 8.4GB HDD. All of this fitted very nice with Windows 2000 Professional SP4. Motherboard was an Acorp 6BX\VIA\ZX86 btw.

Good idea... BUT, it's a two-digit display. 😀

Gonna have to be old(er) school than that.

Artex wrote:

Good idea... BUT, it's a two-digit display. 😀

Gonna have to be old(er) school than that.

Okay:

Intel 486DX2-66 on Socket 3
Shuttle HOT-433
64MB RAM (seen some 486 systems with that amount and I find it okay)
Windows 98 SE
1.7GB Seagate Medalist HDD
CD-RW drive
3.5 and 5.25 floppy drives
15" old CRT

Is this good? 66MHz can be displayed,since it's 2 digit.

I'll have to take a little stroll through Computer Narnia (aka. My Basement) this weekend and see what goodies I can pull together. Gotta de-yellow some items first with some 'do not get in your eyes' high % hydrogen peroxide + cream + light first.

PcBytes wrote:

Okay: […]
Show full quote

Artex wrote:

Good idea... BUT, it's a two-digit display. 😀

Gonna have to be old(er) school than that.

Okay:

Intel 486DX2-66 on Socket 3
Shuttle HOT-433
64MB RAM (seen some 486 systems with that amount and I find it okay)
Windows 98 SE
1.7GB Seagate Medalist HDD
CD-RW drive
3.5 and 5.25 floppy drives
15" old CRT

Is this good? 66MHz can be displayed,since it's 2 digit.

A 66 MHz 486 and Windows 98 don't sound like a good mix; I'd not go beyond 95 on a setup like that.

mean to post this in here but, couldn't find it at first, some ram i bought for cheap.

Artex wrote:

Picked up an AT desktop case (with digital display) in great shape! It even has a yellow-snow-colored 5.25" floppy! :blah: […]
Show full quote

Picked up an AT desktop case (with digital display) in great shape! It even has a yellow-snow-colored 5.25" floppy! 😒

Hmmmmmm...Perhaps yet another build on the horizon?? 😎

Reminds me of an old case I had - it was my old MMX system, and the case had the same front setup, loaded with 3 1/2" floppy, tape drive, 5 1/4" floppy, and a dual optical combi that started as CD-ROM & CD-RW, later DVD-ROM & CD-RW.

Hard disks? TWO, internal drive bays beside PSU - only thing was, to reach the RAM, had to eject both bay assemblys

PcBytes wrote:

Okay: […]
Show full quote

Artex wrote:

Good idea... BUT, it's a two-digit display. 😀

Gonna have to be old(er) school than that.

Okay:

Intel 486DX2-66 on Socket 3
Shuttle HOT-433
64MB RAM (seen some 486 systems with that amount and I find it okay)
Windows 98 SE
1.7GB Seagate Medalist HDD
CD-RW drive
3.5 and 5.25 floppy drives
15" old CRT

Is this good? 66MHz can be displayed,since it's 2 digit.

I'd say that is a great system. Somebody surely put 64 MB RAM in it after the fact since Windows 98 really needs it.
I plan to try 128MB in my 486 machine soon

smeezekitty wrote:

PcBytes wrote:

Okay: […]
Show full quote

Artex wrote:

Good idea... BUT, it's a two-digit display. 😀

Gonna have to be old(er) school than that.

Okay:

Intel 486DX2-66 on Socket 3
Shuttle HOT-433
64MB RAM (seen some 486 systems with that amount and I find it okay)
Windows 98 SE
1.7GB Seagate Medalist HDD
CD-RW drive
3.5 and 5.25 floppy drives
15" old CRT

Is this good? 66MHz can be displayed,since it's 2 digit.

I'd say that is a great system. Somebody surely put 64 MB RAM in it after the fact since Windows 98 really needs it.
I plan to try 128MB in my 486 machine soon

Similar story here, have a 586 laptop with 8mb of soldered on RAM and have sourced a 128mb module. It has 95, not sure if i should upgrade to 98 or not, 95 might be able to run some obscure apps that 98 can't. also thinking about dos, win 3.11 and SLITAZ, oh an 30-60gb IDE SSD. and also a screen that doesn't blur when there is movement.

Again, I wouldn't run anything beyond Windows 95 on a 486-based system myself, or even an earlier Pentium.

Today's tech-related flea market finds:

That FM radio in the shape of a desktop PC was a childhood favorite, I used to have one so I couldn't resist picking it up. 😵

EDIT: The Toshiba laptop works. 266MHz MMX Pentium, 160MB RAM, 6GB HDD. Sound is a bit crackly and through the left speaker only. Boots up to Windows XP SP0... installed in 'Standard PC' mode (no power management of any kind)... with the hard drive running in PIO mode. The definition of pain. 🤣 Cleaned up the cute radio (before and after) and couldn't resist doing something like this: