Haha, my first computer I bought was a Pentium 4 IBM Thinkcenter 8183. It was a great workhorse and I still have it but it's destined for the junk heap since I noticed it now has bad caps on the board. 😒

meisterister wrote:

I'm currently using a dual 1GHz coppermine box as a server at work since I couldn't be arsed to set up one of our P4s. It has 1.5 GB of ram and a hard drive larger than the BIOS can support. To be honest, that machine is actually quite fast, even when browsing the web.

A dual 1GHZ P3 should be faster than a single P4 for a server

Intel i7 4770 @ 3.9 Ghz
8 GB DRR3
GTX 970 4GB
2TB HDD
Pretty modern, don't use my W98 computer for internet/work 😜

obobskivich wrote:

King_Corduroy: That Core 2 machine is more of a sleeper than it has any right to be... 🤣 Very nice! 😎

Hehe it just got a bit more sleepy. 🤣

King_Corduroy wrote:

Hehe it just got a bit more sleepy. lol […]
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obobskivich wrote:

King_Corduroy: That Core 2 machine is more of a sleeper than it has any right to be... 🤣 Very nice! 😎

Hehe it just got a bit more sleepy. 🤣

That's the fastest "Pentium Pro" PC on the planet! 🤣 🤣 😎

Here's mine sitting under my work bench. It's a 2002 Gateway 500s, Pentium IV @ 2 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 XT 256MB graphics card connected to the 19” NEC LCD flat panel with 1280x1024 resolution monitor with a DVI cable. Upgraded front panel with HDD activity light and Reset button. Added DVD player/drive to existing CD burner/drive. Intel Pro 100 Network interface card. Added High ouput fan to case. Upgraded Power Supply to 300 Watts. 2 hdd's plus good sound system. My regular desktop is an Asus Maximus V Extreme with Core I-7 @ 3.5 Ghz.

Hey King, what optical drive is that in your sleeper system? Can't quite make it out, but it looks like it says 6x or 8x speed? cdrom/dvd?

I'd say my workshop computer is my oldest daily-use system. It's a circa 2005 Dell Dimension 4700.

Pentium 4 2.8GHz HT (775)
2GB DDR2-400 RAM
160GB Samsung SATA HDD
ASUS GeForce 210 Silent video card, 1GB VRAM
Windows 7 Pro 32-bit

Of course, my main rig is still my C2Q Q6600-based system. For now, anyways, since I bought some upgrades for it yesterday off of eBay.

King_Corduroy: Are those USB ports behind the Pentium Pro sticker? Or just another sticker on the side? Also, I had a crazy idea (and I have no idea if this would even be feasible) - what if you integrated a slot-loading laptop optical drive behind the bezel of a 5.25" diskette drive? 😎

what if you integrated a slot-loading laptop optical drive behind the bezel of a 5.25" diskette drive?

I'd rather have a real floppy drive. At least my 775 board has a floppy controller. I am not sure if it supports 5.25 inch though

rick6 wrote:

Tell me that you have a ati 4670 AGP to go with it!
I actually tried to manage not long ago with a Athlon XP 2600+ oced and a nvidia 7800GS, 3GB of ram and even some websites rendering looked painful but i guess that if you can handle with that it can still be useful. Problem is that a single core x86 can get 100% often most of the time than not.

I am using a mere Matrox Parhelia 128 AGP. I did have an NVIDIA 6600 or 6800 (forget which) in there for quite some time, but something odd happened at some point which made scrolling text, webpages, PDFs, etc. very slow. Same problem occured with my 6200 card. I did attempt to eradicate all NVIDIA drivers and reinstall, but it did not help. I beleive some single event took place which caused this problem with all GeForce cards, but I do not know what it was. One day, I'll format and hopefully have this issued resolved, but seeing that this is my everything computer, there is hesitation to perform a format. I do not like having to reinstall everything and set all settings to my preferences. This will take days.

smeezekitty wrote:

Wow awesome! Respect.

I only have 3 GB of RAM too. There is 4 GB installed but with 32 bit address space limitation and the PCI-E aperture, it is only 3 GB usable

I deplete it very often

I rarely use more than 2 GB. What is it that you are doing with the computer that consumes more memory? Isn't there some address extension scheme you can implement to use the full 4 GB? I have the extra 1 GB matching module, but I removed it because I did not feel like playing around with making all 4 GB useable.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

3GB of ram isn't bad, I consider 2GB to be an absolute minimum if you're running Windows, 1GB if you're on a lightweight Linux distro. I'm more amazed that you're getting by with dual 1.4GHz Tualatins. They may have been impressive CPUs for their time, but I imagine they must really struggle with the modern web. 😜

A lot of this 'getting by' is largely dependent on what the intended purpose for the machine is. In my case, I do not play games and rarely watch online videos. I disabled Flash in web browsers for the most part. I do not involve myself with online social media. I also do not feel the desire to run the latest offline software. I still have, for example, Adobe Illistrator CS1, Photoshop 5.0, Matlab 7.2, Labview 8.2, AutoCAD 2004, Acrobat 5.0 (not reader), Office 2003, etc. What software are you all running which demands new computers?

I rarely use more than 2 GB. What is it that you are doing with the computer that consumes more memory? Isn't there some address extension scheme you can implement to use the full 4 GB? I have the extra 1 GB matching module, but I removed it because I did not feel like playing around with making all 4 GB useable.

Firefox with 100+ tabs
GIMP photo editing
VSDC video editing
Audacity audio editing
2007 - 2013 video games (often with firefox in the background)

I had been using PAEPATCH but then it started blue screening on me

Right now it shows 2.12 GB of RAM in use

Compaq Evo N610c, P4M 2.2 GHz, 768 MB RAM, Ati Mobility Radeon 7500 32MB VRAM. That machine has been with me since 2007 I think, but I have "swap/upgraded" many components, it was a 1.8 GHz machine. With 1 GB RAM, it run Windows XP like nobody business, and Linux too, but with the actual amount, is a bit sluggish. That's the notebook for quick looks when sitting on my main computer. My travelling notebook ain't old, C2D 1.6, 2GB, Ati x1400 so it doesn't count.
Some times, for DOS games and Win9X games, I use a Compaq Armada 1750, Pentium2 366 MHz, 192 MB RAM, Ati Rage Pro AGP 4 MB. Awesome machine, capable of even running Quake2 on OpenGL. The first time I had one, was in 2001 or 2002 I think.
Both machines where old at the time I got them, but they where for free, since my father knew a guy who bought wholesale, and I repaired the notebooks that came on those wholesale. I repaired 10, and kept 2 or 3. I guess it wasn't free after all, but what ever...
On a side note, I used to leave an iBook G4 1.2 GHz, 768MB near the toilet for a quick browsing during busy time. But since I got a tablet... it's been doomed to the closet. I want to have linux on it, but so far, lubuntu and debian with lxde are quite slow. Maybe a custom made Puppy PPC Remix would work.
Cheers!

obobskivich wrote:

King_Corduroy: Are those USB ports behind the Pentium Pro sticker? Or just another sticker on the side? Also, I had a crazy idea (and I have no idea if this would even be feasible) - what if you integrated a slot-loading laptop optical drive behind the bezel of a 5.25" diskette drive? 😎

Lol no I think I'll just finish it off with a white 3.5" diskette drive.

Also yeah on the side there next to the pentium pro sticker are two convenient (and out of sight) USB ports.

I used to leave an iBook G4 1.2 GHz, 768MB near the toilet for a quick browsing during busy time. But since I got a tablet... it's been doomed to the closet.

😲
OMG
I might spend a lot of time on the internet..but the toilet is one place where I don't!

That was an interesting admission

smeezekitty wrote:

:exclamation: OMG I might spend a lot of time on the internet..but the toilet is one place where I don't! […]
Show full quote

I used to leave an iBook G4 1.2 GHz, 768MB near the toilet for a quick browsing during busy time. But since I got a tablet... it's been doomed to the closet.

😲
OMG
I might spend a lot of time on the internet..but the toilet is one place where I don't!

That was an interesting admission

Some times, I feel addicted to the internet, so I take some time away from it, as a method of self cleaning; the second day is the worst! I feel kinda sad about that iBook, such an interesting machine, a bit good looking, and it's obsolete! However, the most beatiful machine I have is a Powerbook G4 12" 900MHz, but I don't use it daily.
Cheers mate!

fyy wrote:

Hey King, what optical drive is that in your sleeper system? Can't quite make it out, but it looks like it says 6x or 8x speed? cdrom/dvd?

That is actually a DVD-RW Drive that I took the face off since it was black originally with white lettering. I replaced the bezel on the drive (With a bit of filing down on some obstructing ribs and such) with one from my original Packard Bell 8X CD-ROM drive which unfortunately was DOA when I bought that computer. I had held onto the drive face with the hopes that I would find another drive it would fit on to put back in the packard bell but this is a much cooler use for it. 🤣

Here is a close up picture. I just love that it says "Provides quick program & data access".

The shape of the bezel on those drives is unique to Packard Bell computers from the 90's. They all used something like this on all the different models, so you can easily pick out a Packard Bell CD-ROM drive. 😜

Two pentium M systems, both with MSI Speedster i915 boards.
One of them has a Pentium M 755 overclocked to 2.66GHz and a GTX 260 video card; I use this one as a "background noise" PC in my workshop. Handles everything from music playback to 1080p YouTube just fine.

The other one has a slightly slower M 745 @ 2.4GHz and uses the onboard GMA 900 graphics; I use this one as a file server. It currently has 12TB of storage in it, most of which is taken up by non-recompressed Blu-Ray/DVD/HD-DVD rips. The excellent sounding 24/96 albums from HDTracks are starting to claim a sizeable chunk of storage as well.

It used to be an IBM Thinkpad T42 for fieldwork until I sold it early 2014.

Love the way you made it look so old school King_Corduroy. 🤣