My vintage machines I treat like my fully restored 2 door fast back Torana, it gets driven twice a month on the weekends its all […]
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My vintage machines I treat like my fully restored 2 door fast back Torana, it gets driven twice a month on the weekends its allowed to be on the road, lets me find out if any parts need maintenance or servicing but it also means the car doesnt get extra stress put on it that would come with being used daily. The vintage PCs are the same I use them sparingly, especially the older ones I have, the older equipment might not like being used everyday but I make sure to fire them up at least once a month if only to see that they still boot.
I have a Core 2 Quad monster machine that I guess isn't totally "Retro" even tho some of the parts in it are close to 12-14 years old at this point that I do use a fair bit, its a Xp/Vista/Linux/Win10 machine with a 4xSSD bay device that lets me run 4 operating systems on that one machine by turning off SSD drives I dont want to use. It does the majority of my retro software tinkering unless I need pure DOS or 32bit Win9x and its perfect for that job as the parts in it can be replaced pretty cheaply compared to the older 1990 - 2002 era hardware.
I call it the Quadzilla
-ASUS Striker II Extreme
-Core 2 Extreme QX9770 @ 4.6ghz AIO cooled
-16gb 2000 DDR3 @ 1600 - not a chance it'll run at 2000 with the OC due to the Northbridge not liking 16gb at such high speeds, with 4gb it'll happily do 2000.
-Quad SLI GTX 295 (Only under Vista and Windows 10, Win XP doesnt have support for Quad SLI)
-4 way SSD 5.25" bay device, allows SSD drives to be turned off, each drive can be setup with a different OS.
-Creative Xi-Fi Elite Pro
I have a Adaptec ASR 71605 1GB 16Port HBA RAID PCIe Controller that I want to throw in there but haven't had the time to sit down and figure out how to get it all setup or if it'll allow all 16 ports under PCIe 2.0, got several raptor drives I wouldn't mind raiding together. One day I will get around to finding out if it'll work in the Zilla, if not I can always setup a NAS box with it and the Raptors.
Quad SLI is fun but I might eventually switch them for a GTX 970 I have and use modded drivers for it under XP.
Its honestly a fun machine to use and if I didn't need my modern machine I could see myself being happy with just the Zilla.
As to duplicate parts ..ummm yes all of them except for the QX9770 and Striker II board .. its actually quite hard to buy either of them at a reasonable prices but I do have equivalent replacements that are cheaper.
*points sheepishly to shelves of parts and half built PC's
I honestly love trawling eBay and other auction sites and snapping up the deals you can find, its enjoyable even just browsing and checking out interesting and odd hardware is fun.