Hi dear community,

After four years of research, tinkering, testing, and pure nerd determination, I finally built my dream Super Socket 7 machine. It’s not just any retro PC… it’s an ultra-tiny, ultra-cool, early-2000s time machine packed into a super-slick transparent case.

The mainboard I am using is an early 2000s industrial motherboard. It’s got an onboard ESS sound chip, onboard L2 cache, and after some BIOS tinkering, it now fully supports an AMD K6-3 like it was born for it. It is very rare to find an industrial board with onboard sound and L2 cache. The form factor is also unusual, PC104 boards usually plug into a backplane. This is a standalone board that even has an onboard PCI slot.

And the expansion options?
The board has a PC/104 connector (basically ISA in disguise) so I can still hook up classic ISA cards like an AWE64, plus one PCI slot that currently powers a re-engineered Voodoo 4 4500. Although this card is overkill for the system, this was the smallest card I could find at https://www.zxc64.com/vsa100_based/

The result:
A tiny, rugged, ridiculously capable retro beast that blasts out childhood memories… but instead of sitting inside a huge beige tower, it lives inside a miniature transparent case that looks straight-up futuristic. Small body. Huge retro soul 😀

I am seriously considering to commercialize this idea, but I first wanted to see what you guys feel when you see this. Does this resonate with you? The hardware is not easy to source, it almost feels like every computer will be hand made for its new owner.

Specs:
AMD K6-3 450 MHz @ 100 MHz FSB. Potential to run at 500 MHz
256 MB SDRAM
512kb L2 cache
ESS soundblaster compatible
Voodoo 4 4500 PCI with HDMI output
64GB CF card, easily accessible from the back
USB
1 x PCI slot
1 x PC104 connector (ISA slot)

Thank you for your time and honest thoughts