Hello and welcome!

You will be probably looking for a Socket 7 build with a Pentium 166-233 MMX CPU, those are quite flexible when slowing it down thru SetMul thanks to the TR12 registers they have. For DOS games, 16-32 MB RAM are the sweetspot.

The most compatible video card would be any S3 starting from the Trio64, just stay away from noname manufacturers. Alternatively, the Cirrus Logic GD-5446 will do the job. A Voodoo card as an add-on will help with early 3D games but those are right now expensive to get.

If you care about the FM synth then get any ESS AudioDrive or YMF-71x sound card which are good enough. You can start saving money from there if you want to add a real MIDI device and/or something better in the future.

With a Pentium 233 MMX, wouldn't a voodoo 2 video card be more appropriate/desirable?

lup31337 wrote on 2023-11-14, 13:14:

However, I want to pick certain parts that are hard to find and potentially expensive. The idea is to have a retro PC than I can play on, but I will probably get over it pretty soon. When that time comes, it would be interesting to have a collectable piece that appreciates in value over time.

I wouldn't recommend buying a retro system for the purpose of price speculation.

Retro hardware prices have gone up a lot due to nostalgia cycles and pandemic conditions driving demand. Once demand eases (especially the nostalgia cycle), prices won't hold. You're effectively "buying in" in period when prices are already high. That does not make for a good investment strategy.

The time to invest in anything where price is driven by nostalgia is before it becomes nostalgic.

The only pieces of vintage computing that will likely gain in value in the long run are pieces with legitimate historical value like the first Apple and things like that.

Pentium MMX is a good start since MMX variant has 32KiB of cache. For the graphics card Tri64 is a good choice as @Gmlb256 mentioned, you can also go for Trident ProVidia 9685 or 3DImage. But remember to buy a card with memory chips fully populated.

lup31337 wrote on 2023-11-14, 13:51:

With a Pentium 233 MMX, wouldn't a voodoo 2 video card be more appropriate/desirable?

Yes, with a single Voodoo2 card you can play the early 3D accelerated games without having to lower the resolution to 512x384 on a Pentium 233MMX.

V2 with 12MB? (Regarding resolution and textures size, does 8MB V2 have same limitations as V1?)

Some ideas:
* Miro Highscore 3dfx 6MB
* Banshee PCI

Lot more options with SuperSocket 7 (AGP) while keeping same CPU.

Any recommendations for a Pentium 233 Mhz motherboard?

Whatever you can find on the cheap. Local e-waste "shops" are usually the best place to start.

stef80 wrote on 2023-11-14, 14:08:

V2 with 12MB? (Regarding resolution and textures size, does 8MB V2 have same limitations as V1?)

The Voodoo2 with 8 MB is limited to 2 MB per TMU, having less room to store textures. That's the only limitation over the 12 MB version.

lup31337 wrote on 2023-11-14, 14:11:

Any recommendations for a Pentium 233 Mhz motherboard?

Gigabyte GA-586ATV, a motherboard that has the Turbo header for toggling 50 MHz FSB and a socketed RTC chip battery that can be easily replaced (or if you are lucky, a CR2032 coin battery).

lup31337 wrote on 2023-11-14, 14:11:

Any recommendations for a Pentium 233 Mhz motherboard?

This:

Whatever you can find on the cheap. Local e-waste "shops" are usually the best place to start.

People often over-focus on one particular board because that's all they hear about, but reality check: we're 25 years on from when you could choose from a range of these things side by side in a shop. Also we're past the time that everyone was dumping them everywhere, so you could get pretty much anything easily for free.

The only reason to focus on a particular board is if you have very specific requirements, in which case expect challenges finding - and paying for - it.

Instead, in case of Pentium 233MMX, look for any board that has support for it and matches any other requirements you may have. Choose the first that fits all (or enough) of them.

One consideration I would have would be form factor. Most Pentium MMX boards are AT, but that means you need an AT case, AT keyboard (or suitable adapters), AT PSU (or ATX with suitable adapters and switches), serial mouse and/or messing around with USB cards on PCI 2.0 or 2.1 slots (many will not work). Instead an ATX board makes life much easier - you get PS/2 and (almost always) USB which lets you use modern keyboards and mice with USB legacy support, you can use any modern case, you can use a brand-new PSU with only minor modification (-12V -5V mod for some ISA sound cards).

As for the 'investment' thing. Basically, you're too late for this time period. That would have been the thing to do 15 years ago when these things were too old for desktop use anymore, were common as muck and even high-end, popular-brand and now much sought-after systems and components were being dumped. If you want that, rather look at the Conroe (Core2) period. Look in the e-waste, be picky about boards and cards, save them for 15 years and profit. For 1990s stuff, accept that the big value increase has already been and gone and you are the one who will have to pay someone else's profit.

dionb wrote on 2023-11-14, 15:15:

-12V mod for some ISA sound cards.

I think you meant -5V rail that a handful of ISA sound card actually uses. 😀

well i suppose a S7 based system might appreciate in value eventually, but wouldn't bet on it. It would play a lot of DOS and 9x games though, but then if possible why not a P2/P3 era machine where in the motherboard has pci, agp and isa? that would play the same games (and some more) and might have handy things like usb too

dionb wrote on 2023-11-14, 15:15:

If you want that, rather look at the Conroe (Core2) period. Look in the e-waste, be picky about boards and cards, save them for 15 years and profit.

I wonder if people saving hardware from the 2000s onward in the expectation of future profit will have the opposite effect.

Prices are driven by supply and demand. If current prices for vintage hardware cause people to start hording things with expectation of future profit, that will only preserve the available supply which will keep future prices down. The rise of comic book collecting in the 1990s is an example.

Things tend to become valuable when people don't expect them to become valuable and don't make efforts to preserve them.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-11-14, 13:54:

I wouldn't recommend buying a retro system for the purpose of price speculation. […]
Show full quote

lup31337 wrote on 2023-11-14, 13:14:

However, I want to pick certain parts that are hard to find and potentially expensive. The idea is to have a retro PC than I can play on, but I will probably get over it pretty soon. When that time comes, it would be interesting to have a collectable piece that appreciates in value over time.

I wouldn't recommend buying a retro system for the purpose of price speculation.

Retro hardware prices have gone up a lot due to nostalgia cycles and pandemic conditions driving demand. Once demand eases (especially the nostalgia cycle), prices won't hold. You're effectively "buying in" in period when prices are already high. That does not make for a good investment strategy.

The time to invest in anything where price is driven by nostalgia is before it becomes nostalgic.

The only pieces of vintage computing that will likely gain in value in the long run are pieces with legitimate historical value like the first Apple and things like that.

Agree. IMO getting any of the run of the mill PC parts, even those that are relatively expensive nowadays (certain motherboards, 3dfx cards etc.) are most likely one of the worst investments one can make. First, vintage electronics may give up the ghost any time. Second, current market won’t last as it more or less saturates and finally shrinks and most hobbyists who are interested in these items aren’t willing to pay hundreds or thousands of beans for these in any case. Rarity doesn’t make something valuable in the end, there needs to be people who are actually willing to pay big money of these items.

There are systems which most likely will be valuable, but it won’t be PC components. Yes, first Apples and some rare prototypes (Commodore 65, Amiga Nyx prototype boards etc) may at least hold value as they are more or less museum pieces. But again, any normal PC component that has been manufactured in hundreds of thousands or millions units won’t be some miraculously collectible thing far into the future.

If OP doesn’t think that he will be interested in fiddling with the system that long, there is even less sense going after something that is currently considered expensive just for the sake of it. More correct approach would be build something that does the job, but is actually as affordable as possible. In this way, the loss won’t be that big when OP gets bored and decides to sell the system. I’d suggest getting into more expensive stuff only if hobby really starts to interest more and even then not because expecting something to hold or gain value, but because item is interesting for some other reason.

IMO, retro pc hardware isn't worth getting as an investment. It's like comic books. It takes years to go up in value and your effort is probably better placed elsewhere. Unlike comic books, hardware is a lot harder to get rid of and shipping costs will eat into your profit if you sell it on eBay. If you aren't sure if you'd keep using it, I'd recommend starting with a thin client. You can get them for cheap and some of them can run DOS natively.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-11-14, 18:01:

If OP doesn’t think that he will be interested in fiddling with the system that long, there is even less sense going after something that is currently considered expensive just for the sake of it. More correct approach would be build something that does the job, but is actually as affordable as possible.

I would just advise against getting a retro system in the first place. With older hardware a certain amount of technical acumen and maintenance may be required to ensure it is working reliably in the first place.

I'd suggest something like PCem instead. It can give some of the feel of using older hardware including things like boot-up sequences.

Then in the OP decides they still like the idea of playing with retro hardware, at that point maybe take the plunge into the real thing and buy an older pre-build rig or something.

lup31337 wrote on 2023-11-14, 14:11:

Any recommendations for a Pentium 233 Mhz motherboard?

Let me throw a crazy suggestion out there: how about looking for an OEM system from one of the more modular OEMs, e.g. Dell or Gateway? (I would suggest staying away from some of the other OEMs that soldered a lousy video chip to the motherboard, etc.)

With a bit of luck, that gets you a complete system that you can upgrade one or two components on if you feel like it, but I think it's going to be much cheaper than trying to find some good components for a system from the socket 7 era.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2023-11-14, 18:58:

If you aren't sure if you'd keep using it, I'd recommend starting with a thin client. You can get them for cheap and some of them can run DOS natively.

Maybe it's different in bigger markets, but when I looked at thin clients, I found that the models with the most established DOS/Win9x reputations were... also priced quite high. And then there are tons of $15 thin clients that are... of very dubious retro usefulness.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-11-14, 17:49:

Things tend to become valuable when people don't expect them to become valuable and don't make efforts to preserve them.

That may be the truest statement I've ever read.

Part of the issue is that the mindset is completely different. Take, say, my Dell PIII 700 that, despite being quite emotionally attached to, I e-wasted over a decade ago. It's a PIII 700 with maxed out RAM, a meh video card (ATI 9100 I got as an RMA for a card in my main system), a meh sound card. At the time I e-wasted this machine, I had had... three... newer systems as my main desktop, all of which could run XP dramatically better and could run Vista/7. And how exciting is, say, a SB Live Dell edition when my main desktop has an X-Fi? It's the machine that soured me on 98SE. The last use I had for it was as a server, but even for that, well, it was showing its age. At the time of e-wasting it, I was starting to be drowning in 45nm C2D/C2Q machines with 4-8 gigs of RAM. Did it occur to me that, 10 years later, this thing would make a cool nostalgic retro machine running the very OS I absolutely hated running on it 20 years earlier? No. And that that OS that I hated... would actually be quite fine for those retro tasks that don't require any serious multitasking? No.

Similarly, I hang out in vintage Mac forums. One of the thing that's astounded me there is the enthusiasm for 9" 68000 compact Macs. My family had a floppy-only Mac SE as the sole computer until 1995 (a good 3-5 years past its prime), by 1996 we couldn't get rid of it. No one wants a B&W machine with 2 800K floppy drives. Today, people without that trauma think they're cool, you can max out their RAM for dirt cheap compared to 1994-era RAM pricing, and you can get a BlueSCSI for a laughably low-price compared to an external HDD back in the day so that problem is solved. Oh, and all the software you could ever want for it is sitting on Macintosh Garden as basically abandonware.

And, it's worth noting, there are unexpected kinks in the road. To take one obvious example, Microsoft killing that CD/DVD DRM lateish in the Windows 7 era. That suddenly means that, unless you can find another copy of the same game on a place like GOG or Steam or you are willing to explore some... seedier ways... of bypassing that DRM, a game you thought was playable on your modern system no longer is (unless you stop keeping up with your patches on your modern system). So that, in a way, creates an unexpected need for a retro system you might not have had 6 months before.

The other thing I would add is the rise of international shipping and marketplaces like eBay make it much easier to match buyers and sellers. Maybe someone really wanted a 1 meg of RAM, 2x800K floppy Mac SE in summer 1996, but with the technology of the time, I sure had no way of finding them.