First post, by cj_reha
- Rank
- Oldbie
Hi all 😀
Here's what I like to call The Full House. It's named the way it is as I have utilized every single drive bay, external and internal. My goal is to cover as many formats of removable media during the late 80s and 90s possible and to use it to play games from that area.
The insides are quite messy at the moment, a byproduct of using so many drives, and I need to do some good cable management, but I have at least made a good path for the air to travel 🤣
This machine is not exactly a "ground up" build, as it is technically an upgraded machine, but the only remaining original component in it is the motherboard. It originally came as a Pentium II 400 with 256 MB PC100 SDRAM, and over the past 4 years has turned into this. 😊
The specs are as follows:
Intel Pentium IIIE Coppermine 600 overclocked to 690 MHz. Removed from a Dell tower I was parting out.
512 MB PC133 SDRAM. Removed from multiple junker Slot 1 systems I was using few years ago.
ABIT BE6 Slot 1 440BX motherboard. The last remaining original component of the pre-upgraded PC.
ECS Elitegroup AG315P-64 AGP video card, 64 MB video memory. Bought from a flea market for $5.
Two 80 GB hard drives, a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus and a WD Caviar. Removed from XP-era systems from different sources.
Sound Blaster AWE64 CT4520 ISA sound card. Bought from a flea market for $3.
Promise Ultra66 IDE HDD controller card. Removed from a Dell tower I was parting out.
Adaptec AUA-5100B USB 2.0 PCI card. Removed from an AOpen Windows XP tower that came from a school.
Kentek 680Watt ATX PSU. Bought brand new in box from eBay for $30-ish.
Evercase ECE4252 mid-tower ATX case. Bought NIB at a local PC shop for $30 at a case closeout sale.
Disk drives:
Noname 16x40x DVD-ROM drive. Bought from a flea market for $10.
OptoRite 52x32x52x CD writer drive. Bought new in box from a flea market for $10.
Generic HDD caddy. Removed from a junker Celeron s370 system running Windows XP.
TEAC 5.25 1.2 MB floppy drive. Removed from a junker 386 machine purchased off of eBay.
Mitsubishi LS-120 SuperDisk/3.5 floppy combo drive. Removed from a Gateway tower found at a thrift store, swapped with regular 3.5 drive.
Iomega Zip 250MB IDE. Given to me by a friend with a box of random parts.
Overall, an awesome Windows 98 SE system I plan to use for a wide range of gaming spanning almost a decade and a half.
I will take suggestions for part upgrades in the future if anyone wants 😀 I do plan to swap the ECS card in there with a proper Voodoo5 someday, but I need to find a cheap one first. 🤣
Join the Retro PC Discord! - https://discord.gg/UKAFchB
My YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDJYB_ZDsIzXGZz6J0txgCA