VOGONS


First post, by tayyare

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I put my hands on an Intel P4 socket 478 board (D865PERL) and decided to dismantle one of my PIII builds to rebuild it as a P4 system. This would be my first P4 retro attempt (not counting recent failed attempt at a P4 HTPC - Dell GX260 SFF).

I want this build to play with some hardware that I have but not installed in anything, especially Matrox Mystique 220 with Rainbow Runner Studio and ATI All in Wonder 9600 Pro. For all the other components I plan using whatever available on hand.

So the basic plan is, an XP + Windows 98 (or ME) double boot machine, booting PCI Mystique for Windows 98 and AGP All-in-Wonder for XP. I don't decide yet how to solve the RAM dilemma, though (buy the W98 memory patch or limit the amount of physical RAM to 1GB).

During the times (around 2004-2005), I had a P4 for a short time till the mobo died (about a little bit more than a year, just enough time to warranty period runs out) and then I went for a Athlon 64, so, to say the truth, my P4 era experience is mostly AMD based. This means I'm not well versed with this era, so here comes the questions:

- As far as I see, the difference between 865G and 865PE chipsets is only the built in graphics capabilities of 865G, which is not important to me. Based on this, can we say that an Intel D865GBF board has no significant plusses compared to a Intel D865PERL board? (my board comes with no 1394 or advanced sound options, but I don't care).

- I have a small selection of PCI sound boards. The only interesting enough ones from the bunch are Sound Blaster Audigy LS (SB0310) and Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Digital (SB0220). Are there any significant difference between them? Which one do you recommend?

- What is the performance difference in real life, between, say, a 3.0GHz CPU and a 3.2 or 3.4 GHZ CPU? A same speed CPU with 512K and 1M cache?

- All the drivers and documents still available from the Intel support site. There are both Windows 98/ME and Windows 2000/XP drivers for everything but SATA (SATA drivers are only for 2000/XP). Does that mean that I can't use onboard SATA for Windows 98 or else?

Last edited by tayyare on 2018-05-18, 07:40. Edited 2 times in total.

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000

Reply 1 of 19, by ODwilly

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A 512k P4 will run much cooler than a 1mb P4, a 3.4ghz 1mb P4 runs around 54-60c with a big 92 or 100mm (do not remember which) Zalmann HSF on my server. A 3.2ghz 512k P4 runs around 32-40c with the stock copper core Intel HSF. In my opinion the performance difference is minimal, you can find all sorts of benchmarks online but I would say the 3.2ghz 512k is a great sweet spot. Fast, cheap, and runs cool 😀 can not comment on the Audigy LS but I know the SB Live! is considered a great XP card by most people. I have never run into any issues with them myself, and they sound good. You could always solve the SATA issue by just using an IDE drive, otherwise a bootable pci SATA card is a good option. I am using a Promise TX2 in a build right now. For the chipset differences I think you summed it up pretty good yourself 😀

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 2 of 19, by PhilsComputerLab

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Good to see another P4 machine getting built 😀

Adding on the above post, SATA should work fine, you might need to set the controller into compatibility mode in the BIOS. But being able to use SATA drives without fuss is one benefit of the P4 platform.

Regarding sound cards, you will need one that works in both SE, that Audigy should do the job I believe.

Still, and this is just my take, I don't "like" Windows 98 / XP hybrid machines. I feel that DOS / windows 98 and XP / Vista hybrid machines work much easier.

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Reply 3 of 19, by tayyare

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ODwilly wrote:

A 512k P4 will run much cooler than a 1mb P4, a 3.4ghz 1mb P4 runs around 54-60c with a big 92 or 100mm (do not remember which) Zalmann HSF on my server. A 3.2ghz 512k P4 runs around 32-40c with the stock copper core Intel HSF. In my opinion the performance difference is minimal, you can find all sorts of benchmarks online but I would say the 3.2ghz 512k is a great sweet spot. Fast, cheap, and runs cool 😀 can not comment on the Audigy LS but I know the SB Live! is considered a great XP card by most people. I have never run into any issues with them myself, and they sound good. You could always solve the SATA issue by just using an IDE drive, otherwise a bootable pci SATA card is a good option. I am using a Promise TX2 in a build right now. For the chipset differences I think you summed it up pretty good yourself 😀

Thanks a lot. It's 3.2GHz/512K, then. 6 USD shipped, ordered right away. SL6WG, Northwood.

Only P4 I have on hand is a LGA775, so this was the first thing to buy (+ a stock Intel cooler). If I go for 1GB RAM (DDR400 512K x 2 on hand), I have no need to buy anything. 🤣

I have a small bunch of 40GB - 200GB drives, both SATA and IDE, and even a few 36-73GB SCSI. At worst, it is a matter of trial and error I guess.

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000

Reply 4 of 19, by tayyare

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philscomputerlab wrote:
Good to see another P4 machine getting built :) […]
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Good to see another P4 machine getting built 😀

Adding on the above post, SATA should work fine, you might need to set the controller into compatibility mode in the BIOS. But being able to use SATA drives without fuss is one benefit of the P4 platform.

Regarding sound cards, you will need one that works in both SE, that Audigy should do the job I believe.

Still, and this is just my take, I don't "like" Windows 98 / XP hybrid machines. I feel that DOS / windows 98 and XP / Vista hybrid machines work much easier.

I have the same feeling, and actually what I was planning was a 2000/XP combo, but I recently realized Rainbow Runner Studio has no 2k drivers. Actually that part of the plan also limits my XP memory (to 1GB under STP), so maybe I will scrap the Windows 98 part of the project at the end, but to say the truth, having a P4 board with full native Windows 98 support still gives me the temptation to try, at the moment. 😊

Hmm, I just realized I didn't check LS for W98 compatibility. I have the original CD that came with it, so will check back this evening.

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000

Reply 5 of 19, by ODwilly

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Looking forward to hearing how this build goes! I just finished an matx 478 P4 build that I intend to use to convert some VHS tapes to DVD using an old AIW card and then it will get a Geforce 4 ti4200 after that. I am only using mine for XP and it is booting from an SSD using some guides I found online. Just found my digital camera so hopefully I will be able to post pictures soon.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 6 of 19, by stuvize

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The D865perl is somewhat different than the average 865 Springdale board it is very much like the D875PBZ it has ICH5R raid controller but no PAT because of the 865 chipset. Most people underestimate these boards it will be very fast with the 3.2Ghz Northwood

Reply 7 of 19, by tayyare

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ODwilly wrote:

Looking forward to hearing how this build goes! I just finished an matx 478 P4 build that I intend to use to convert some VHS tapes to DVD using an old AIW card and then it will get a Geforce 4 ti4200 after that. I am only using mine for XP and it is booting from an SSD using some guides I found online. Just found my digital camera so hopefully I will be able to post pictures soon.

I already have a quite nice (to me 🤣) pure XP box (Opteron 180, Asus A8N-SLI Premium, Zotac GTS 250 1GB, 4GB RAM, Audigy 2 ZS, two RAID 10 arrays) which has a practical real life meaning and everyday usefulness. As a secondary/spare rig and for playing non-GOG, physical media (and even many Steam) games of 2002-2008ish. My proposed Pentium 4 is more for some hardware fun and making use of a 100% idle PIII as something more fun.

I already photographed two builds (a twin build - PIII Tualatin and MMX 233) and need to find some time to prepare a post about them. I will picture that one too, of course. Need to wait at last a month for the cheap CPU to arrive from China, though. 😈

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000

Reply 8 of 19, by tayyare

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stuvize wrote:

The D865perl is somewhat different than the average 865 Springdale board it is very much like the D875PBZ it has ICH5R raid controller but no PAT because of the 865 chipset. Most people underestimate these boards it will be very fast with the 3.2Ghz Northwood

I generally find Intel boards as somewhat "industrial" (i.e.: boring) but you are right. This board looks quite solid, and with all the support that is still around natively, it is very tempting to use in a build.

P.S. What is PAT? 😊

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000

Reply 9 of 19, by ripsaw8080

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PAT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_acc … tion_technology

I have an old D875PBZ system, 3.2 GHz Northwood P4, 1 GB memory (two 512 MB sticks of Corsair 2-2-2-5 in dual-channel mode), Radeon 9800 Pro, Audigy 2 ZS, WinXP. It's good for games of its era. I remember when I first got the motherboard that PAT was not working -- enabled in BIOS settings but CPU-Z showed it as disabled on the chipset -- Intel eventually pushed out a BIOS update that got it working.

Reply 10 of 19, by stuvize

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PAT is "performance acceleration technology" it reduces latencies in the northbridge, supposedly 875 chipsets only have that capability some 3rd party boards like the Abit AS8 I just got in the mail have BIOS settings to activate it. I had a D875PBZ that just failed 2 years ago after 8 solid years of service probably the best board I have ever owned

Reply 11 of 19, by tayyare

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stuvize and ripsaw, thanks for the info.

While waiting for the parts to arrive, I completely disassembled the old PIII. Can you believe that much stuff coming out from a single ordinary mid tower case? 😊

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Here is the afore mentioned case:

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PSU is a good old ATX AOpen 300W unit with -5V. I will probably change it in the near future with a more modern mid range PSU like Thermaltake TR2-500 or similar. The (very) high cfm Silverstone fans will be changed as soon as possible, though; they sound like a C-130 Hercules. 🤣

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000

Reply 13 of 19, by tayyare

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It apparently took about 2.5 years but finally it's complete and working. Yay! 🤣

It was very frustrating from time to time, but on and off, I finally make it work. Final configuration is like this:

Intel D865PERL mainboard (version with 100Mbit LAN, simpler onboard sound, no RAID and no firewire)
Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz Prescott SL7KB CPU
Kingston 1GB x 4 DDR400 RAM
Matrox Mystique 220 4MB PCI display adapter with Rainbow Runner upgrade kit
ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro 128MB AGP display adapter
Sound Blaster Live! SB0060 sound card with LiveDrive II and additional connector brackets
Adapted AHA-29160N PCI SCSI controller
Generic NEC Firewire I/O card
2 x Maxtor Diamondmax 10 200GB IDE HDD drives
2 x Maxtor Diamondmax 10 200GB SATA HDD drives
Mitsumi 3.5" 1.44MB floppy drive
LG GSA4040B IDE DVD-RW drive
TSST SD-R5372 IDE DVD-RW drive
Aopen FSP300-60ATV 300W power supply
Asus Vento TA-D5 chassis
2 x Thermaltake 120mm A2492 case fans
Intel stock CPU cooler

It's a multiboot machine with two instances of Windows 98 (one for ATI, the other for Matrox), Windows XP and Windows 2000 (not installed yet) all in their own HDDs (hence four of them). The boot procedure is somewhat awkward since it requires you to go into BIOS and choose the primary display card (PCI/AGP), drive operation mode (legacy/enhanced), and boot drive, each time you want to boot a different OS. SCSI card is there for a SCSI HDD drive for ghost images and other backup files like OS setup and drivers. Unfortunately, I run out of my stash of 140GB SCSI drives, so I'm looking for a new one.

For the sound card, my intention was using the existing Audigy LS, but sometime ago I scored a SB0060 complete with all the brackets and a LiveDrive II so I used it instead.

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Some Notes:

- This mainboard has two PATA channels and two SATA connectors for a total of 6 drives and supposedly full Windows 98 support... which is apparently not so full. You can select "legacy" or "enhanced" modes from "Driver Setup" but Windows 9x won't boot if "enhanced" is selected, and you cannot have all 6 of your devices if "legacy" is selected. With legacy mode, maximum 4 of your 6 drives will be enabled. You can select to enable 2 PATA channels, or one PATA channel and SATA drives.

- ATI All-in-Wonder is a total bitch with fast P4 CPUs and XP SP3. As a display card, it works perfectly, but it's capture feature is a fraking low-res slide show. There is no way around this. There are tens of pages of dedicated forum messages about the issue and all they say is "no, it won't work as expected"

- Rainbow Runner capture is unexpectedly good for its age.

- Making Windows 98 run with 4GB of RAM installed is actually quite easy if you can find out exactly how to do it. With the method I use, Windows 98 only sees 1GB of RAM, but 4 GB is there and ready to use if you boot with Windows XP or 2000. Here is the procedure:

1. With only 1GB or less memory is present on the mainboard, run Windows 98 SE setup and complete the installation.
2. Download HimemX, rename it as "HIMEM.EXE" and copy it into your Windows folder.
3. Remove the line that loads Windows HIMEM.SYS and add the line below to your CONFIG.SYS file:

DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.EXE /MAX=1048576 /NUMHANDLES=64 /VERBOSE

4. Add the following lines into your SYSTEM.INI file "386Enh" and "vcache" sections. 40000 here means 1024MB, you might enter some other number for other amount of memory like 20000 for 512MB:

[386Enh]
ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1
MinSPs=16
MaxPhysPage=40000
DMABufferSize=64

[vcache]
MaxFileCache=261120
MinFileCache=32768
ChunkSize=4096

5. Download W98IOPAT.EXE and copy it into your root directory (where IO.SYS is located). Run it, it will patch your IO.SYS file.
6. Download Q253912.EXE and run it. It will patch your VCACHE.VXD file.
7. Install your 4GB RAM and have fun! 🤣

Now you can run windows 98 SE with 1GB RAM in a machine with 4GB installed, and you can also boot it in safe mode. 😊

Finally, here are some pictures:

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I'm not any good at cable management 🤣

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Last bracket is custom made, SB Digital DIN Bracket and USB bracket combined.

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000

Reply 14 of 19, by chinny22

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Good work on cracking the 4GB issue. I gave up on my similar P4 Win98/XP PC and got the rlowe patch.
I've Since used it on another 2 builds so feel I've gotten value out of my purchase but always feel like I took the easy way out.

I guess the "full support" is if you use raid (if this motherboard has it) I was surprised how well the Win98 drivers worked with my Asus P4P800.
and boy that's a lot of stuff hanging off the live drive. I like how you have to run a cable from the soundcard to the livedrive, then a bunch back down again. at least a din connector on the soundcard would have been nice creative!

Reply 15 of 19, by tayyare

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chinny22 wrote:

Good work on cracking the 4GB issue. I gave up on my similar P4 Win98/XP PC and got the rlowe patch.
I've Since used it on another 2 builds so feel I've gotten value out of my purchase but always feel like I took the easy way out.

It took a few hours searching and reading but there are quite extensive information around there about this. The small problem here is, there is really too much information. In a few hours I managed to finally put that procedure together though. Actually just loading the HimemX and making the MaxPhysPage and MaxFileCache entries is enough under normal conditions, but other steps and patches required to be able to boot in safe mode.

There are also some other procedures for creating a RAMdisk with the unused RAM and moving the swap file to it but I did not interested in it, becuase it sounds like more trouble than gain.

Rleowe patch has the advantage(?) of allowing all 4 of those gigabytes to be used also by Windows 98, but this was not my intention (why should it be? 🤣). As long as Windows 98 can boot in a system with 2-4GB RAM physically installed, it's ok even if it can use only around 256MB of it.

This, in my mind, actually elimnates the single most important issue in making W98/XP multiboot retro rigs.

chinny22 wrote:

I guess the "full support" is if you use raid (if this motherboard has it) I was surprised how well the Win98 drivers worked with my Asus P4P800. and boy that's a lot of stuff hanging off the live drive. I like how you have to run a cable from the soundcard to the livedrive, then a bunch back down again. at least a din connector on the soundcard would have been nice creative!

Unfortunatelly my D865PERL is devoid of all optional features, including RAID (in addition to simpler audio, no firewire, less USB ports, and no gigabit LAN). Besides, there is no w98 drivers from Intel for RAID, even if I had the option. Available ones are for w2k and XP. I heard that there is also a chipset SATA support patch by rlowe. Maybe I will check that.

On the LiveDrive, there is another connector for "future upgrades". Apparently, they were thinking about adding even more cables and brackets 🤣

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000

Reply 17 of 19, by tayyare

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appiah4 wrote:

That is a lot of cards. 🤣

I don't like empty slots, bays, etc. 🤣

Purpose of this build is utilizing both Mystique+Rainbow Runner and ATI All-in-Wonder at the same time, from the very beginning. SB Live with all the bells and whistles is a must between the two display adapters which also have all their bells and whistles equipped, so this makes 3 cards already. Add the two required input brackets, which makes it 5. In th first plan, the remaning two slots would be occupied with firewire card (a must, don't you think? 😊) and a gigabit etnernet card (on board is 100Mbit). But my initial plan of 3 IDE HDDs went up to 4 IDE HDDs and a SCSI backup HDD, so here comes the SCSI card, and 7 slots occupied. Task is complete! 🤣

I planned first, a multiboot machine with three HDDs; one is a backup/setup files disk, one with Windows 98 SE (for Mystique) and the other with XP (for ATI). Then I've seen that XP is almost no go for a fully featured ATI, so I decided to use the third HDD for a second copy of Windows 98 for ATI. So with a backup disk, the number of disks went up to 4. Then I decided to use the fourth disk for Windows 2000 (a more modern OS for ATI again), so number of disks went up to 5, and exactly at that moment you naturally feel the need for a SCSI controller instead of gigabit LAN (beacuse my other two IDE ports were already occupied with mandatory two DVD drives 🤣 )

Long story short, I do because I can 🤣

Actually, this one is not supposed to be a practical machine, but more of a hardware fun project. My practical retro rigs (PMMX, PIII, Opteron) are (relatively) less crowded.

Except HDDs. I love HDDs 🤣

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000

Reply 18 of 19, by appiah4

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tayyare wrote:

Except HDDs. I love HDDs 🤣

Can't say I do, especially the archaic stuff.. I collect them, but whenever possible, ı use CF cards for DOS and OS/2 builds.

I haven't used a CF card for a Win9x build so far, but I am considering using an 8GB card for a Win95 install at some point. I need to learn how to configure the system to minimize the wearout from page file usage etc. some day.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 19 of 19, by tayyare

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I don't collect computer parts. I generally buy them either if I need them for a build I'm working on, or as spares or upgrades for existing builds, I also buy a few interesting things for their potential for a later use (like that Mystique+Rainbow Runner or and that ATI AIW) from time to time but this is rare. Of course I also have things that I will possibly never ever use, but these are almost always free things that came from relatives and friends.

Except HDDs. I love HDDs 🤣

Joke aside, I just checked and see that I have 70 HDDs, 22 of them not in use, 11 of them in use as external/portable ones, and the remaining 37 of them are installed in a total of 11 builds.

Cards and HDDs took too much space in spare parts closet. Why not just store them inside the builds? 🤣

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000