Keep an eye on Gumtree, I've gotten a 486 for £2 and a Slot 1 Dell for £11 (5 years ago admittedly)
Apart from the Dell not having Ram or a HDD, they were complete systems. the people selling them were just clearing out old junk. Anything beige is work a look.

Unless part of the attraction is building it from scratch.
If it was me and was just starting out, I would avoid the overclock and stick with a 100 Mhz FSB CPU. Just about any Win98 game that wont run on XP will be more then happy on a 500Mhz CPU which can be had for cheap. (as reference "My Teacher Is An Alien" only needs 100Mhz and that's not getting into the speed differences between P3,P2,P1, etc)

I wouldn't worry about Voodoo just yet, they aren't cheep and if you get a Voodoo 1 or 2 you need a 2D card anyway.
Geforce 4 is probably a good pairing, the ti's will be limited by the CPU no matter what you go with, the MX's will give good performance and great compatibility and pretty cheap.

Well it has been a while and things have been busy for me, mainly parts have been arriving and I am rather happy with how the build is going so far.
I finally got the Asus P3B-F 440BX Rev 1.04 which I was rather surprised with the condition...it was like new, couldn't see any sign of use on it at all.
1x WD 120 IDE HDD
1x Sony 2mb floppy drive "rev 2" MP-F17W-80D
1x 750mb Zip drive because why not ?
1x- Sony DW-Q28A drive.

I also purchased a box of 30- IDE cables for about £9, most of them were brand new unopened master / slave connectors and floppy connectors. I think it was a good buy and so far I regret nothing yet ^^
Took a few pictures if anyone wants to see, also yes I have made sure all IDE connections are in the correct way 🤣 Red cable near power supply on pin 1 😜

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KhWLTkawkAA … e1h0IYlcdKQkaGH

Nice 😀

Reminds me of when I bought a box of around 240 floppy disks for $10!

It is certainly more than I needed, but I'd rather not pay ripoff ebay prices.

canthearu wrote:

Nice 😀

Reminds me of when I bought a box of around 240 floppy disks for $10!

It is certainly more than I needed, but I'd rather not pay ripoff ebay prices.

Indeed while looking for IDE cables i saw listing after listing of "new" cables for £5 each 0-o

call me paranoid but I tend to believe the IDE cables from the 80-90s are of better quality of the ones i see online listed as "new" today.

Hey I need a bit of advice, what PSU should I be buying for my build ?

At the moment i need something with 3 x molex for HDD, CD, Zip drives
20-pin power
1x flopper connector.

Since I have ISA slots im wondering if newer power supply's will have an issue with them .

Auron359 wrote:

Since I have ISA slots im wondering if newer power supply's will have an issue with them .

It depends on the sound card you're using. Some (particularly older non-Creative) ISA sound cards use the -5V rail which is absent on newer ATX power supplies.

From what I've heard, ATX adapter cables with a -5v rail exist, so that may be an option if you have a sound card that needs the -5v rail and are struggling to find a good older power supply.

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

Auron359 wrote:

Since I have ISA slots im wondering if newer power supply's will have an issue with them .

It depends on the sound card you're using. Some (particularly older non-Creative) ISA sound cards use the -5V rail which is absent on newer ATX power supplies.

From what I've heard, ATX adapter cables with a -5v rail exist, so that may be an option if you have a sound card that needs the -5v rail and are struggling to find a good older power supply.

Well i am still looking for a decent ISA sound card, so many options it is hard to know what to choose 😖

All i have is a Nvidia 6200 512mb AGP card because i gotta test the board somehow, any opinions and what sound card would be a good pick ?

Some P3B-F have 2 ISA slots. Or you can add a second ISA slot yourself.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Some P3B-F have 2 ISA slots. Or you can add a second ISA slot yourself.

Mine has 2 ISA slots luckily, just in case i want to add more than just a sound card for DOS gaming. Still looking for a PSU but not sure what is even good for a retro build.

Well i have hit a bit of a problem 🙁

Got a PSU that uses the -5v rail and has enough molex for my setup at 400w
Everything worked fine...got into the BIOS and was setting things up when i lost signal on my screen. I turned the of off but now when i turn it on i get nothing... nothing on the screen and NO beeps.

No beeps / blank screen
My CD drive wont open
LED on motherboard is solid green ( think that means it is working right )

I am a little worried it might be i fucked up the BIOS, would mean replacing or re flashing the Eprom ship 🙁
But I am also hoping it means it could be the PSU that is the problem... will have to try my AX1200I just to be sure

Until then anyone have any suggestions ???

definitely try a new PSU.

BIOS is probably fine.

May I ask the make and model of the PSU you were trying to use.

canthearu wrote:

definitely try a new PSU.

BIOS is probably fine.

May I ask the make and model of the PSU you were trying to use.

it is an Antec SL400P 400W PSU.

Old Antec PSUs are notorious for bad quality capacitors. I've been burnt pretty hard by this, losing a few power supplies back in the day to this. Check your PSU and see if any of the large secondary side capacitors are bulging or leaking.

Recently I purchased and completely recapped an Antec Smartpower 380W PSU, and it is a very good supply now, but that was pretty expensive.

canthearu wrote:

Old Antec PSUs are notorious for bad quality capacitors. I've been burnt pretty hard by this, losing a few power supplies back in the day to this. Check your PSU and see if any of the large secondary side capacitors are bulging or leaking.

Recently I purchased and completely recapped an Antec Smartpower 380W PSU, and it is a very good supply now, but that was pretty expensive.

I connected my AX1200I to the motherboard and for 1 long beep followed by 3 short beeps, GPU not detected. put my 6200 in again and it booted into the bios normally, but connecting the Antec PSU gave nothing as before.
Looks like the PSU has died or something has gone inside it, shame since the person i bought it from said it was fully tested. Will have to return it and find another one that used the -5v rail.

Auron359 wrote:

I connected my AX1200I to the motherboard and for 1 long beep followed by 3 short beeps, GPU not detected. put my 6200 in again and it booted into the bios normally, but connecting the Antec PSU gave nothing as before.
Looks like the PSU has died or something has gone inside it, shame since the person i bought it from said it was fully tested. Will have to return it and find another one that used the -5v rail.

The AX1200i might not be a great PSU for an old computer either. It's regulation might be out given the really low load of old computers and the crossload of an old 5V system, but it could also just be fine. I'd probably just check quickly with a multimeter to make sure everything was good regulation wise.

-5V isn't really that important in this era except for some ISA sound cards. I'd do a search for what sound card you intend to use, see if it needs -5V, and if it doesn't, just get a small modern PSU to run the system.

Auron359 wrote:

canthearu wrote:

Looks like the PSU has died or something has gone inside it, shame since the person i bought it from said it was fully tested. Will have to return it and find another one that used the -5v rail.

The Antec Smartpower I bought was advertised as fully tested too. But since I knew what I was getting into when I purchased it (that it's caps were likely on the way out), I was just happy that the PSU was in good working condition when I got it. Means I am able to just replace the caps and not also try to fix the supply.

canthearu wrote:

Auron359 wrote:

I connected my AX1200I to the motherboard and for 1 long beep followed by 3 short beeps, GPU not detected. put my 6200 in again and it booted into the bios normally, but connecting the Antec PSU gave nothing as before.
Looks like the PSU has died or something has gone inside it, shame since the person i bought it from said it was fully tested. Will have to return it and find another one that used the -5v rail.

The AX1200i might not be a great PSU for an old computer either. It's regulation might be out given the really low load of old computers and the crossload of an old 5V system, but it could also just be fine. I'd probably just check quickly with a multimeter to make sure everything was good regulation wise.

-5V isn't really that important in this era except for some ISA sound cards. I'd do a search for what sound card you intend to use, see if it needs -5V, and if it doesn't, just get a small modern PSU to run the system.

I only used the 1200I just to see if the motherboard with post or not, once it got to the BIOS i turned it of. glad to know it is the PSU as it has taken me a while to gather the parts for this build.
As for the -5v i have no idea what sound card i will use tbh, may collect them all if price isn't to bad 🤣

how many watts should I be looking for in a PSU ? no idea how much power is needed for everything i have.

Auron359 wrote:

how many watts should I be looking for in a PSU ? no idea how much power is needed for everything i have.

P6-based CPUs (including the Pentium III) generally aren't power-hungry so I'd say the video card is the main factor in terms of sufficient PSU wattage. Most OEM PIIIs used 200W power supplies so anywhere between 200W and 350W is what I'd look for.

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

Auron359 wrote:

how many watts should I be looking for in a PSU ? no idea how much power is needed for everything i have.

P6-based CPUs (including the Pentium III) generally aren't power-hungry so I'd say the video card is the main factor in terms of sufficient PSU wattage. Most OEM PIIIs used 200W power supplies so anywhere between 200W and 350W is what I'd look for.

Well as it stands this is my current setup

P3 500mhz in a Asus P3B-F motherboard.
1x floppy
1x zip drive
1x CD drive
1x IDE HDD
1x case fan
AGP Nvidia 6200
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

That should be everything 🤣 I did order another 400W PSU and if this fails then i will be annoyed.

Fresh experience with P3B-F: This week I ran a whole bunch of DOS benchmarks with this board (and a couple of others too) and to my surprise it ran flawlessly at 150MHz FSB and 100MHz AGP. The BX was designed for 100MHz and the VGA was an old Riva 128 (Asus V3000 to be more precise). Depending on the stuff it was running the whole config drew 65-70 Watts measured at the wall and it was with a late 1.75V Coppermine-T CPU in a Slotket, running at 1125MHz. I was really impressed how well this setup took overclocking. And at this power consumption even PSU doesn't seem like a concern, any modern ATX unit should pump out this much on its 5V rail. (I used an FSP Bluestorm II btw which could feed a 1-GHz Slot A Athlon and an overclocked Palomino in a KT7A, though.)