First post, by Woolie Wool
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I likely won't be able to afford all the parts I need for months since i spent way more on the Athlon Thunderbird rig than I originally intended, but I figured I might as well post about my plans and solicit advice on how to make the build even better than it otherwise would. This thread will periodically be bumped as I work towards collecting the parts.
This is going to be a period-correct theme build, and the conceit behind it is that it was supposedly originally built in 1996 and sold for somewhere in the neighborhood of $12,000 as a Windows NT workstation for video editing, and was purchased by some rich nut who wanted to have the baddest-ass DOS gaming rig ever to play 3D-intensive games like Descent II, MechWarrior 2 Mercenaries, Quake, etc. I grew up using a 486DX2/66 with 8MB RAM and a 8-bit Sound Blaster, and by 1996 the machine was really struggling with newer games (if they could even be installed; there was no CD-ROM drive). I read through catalogs my mother had shipped to her and the readme/catalog files of various shareware games and dreamed of all the exotic hardware games were supporting now--the "586" Pentium, the Sound Blaster AWE32, the Gravis Ultrasound, and most mysterious of all, an even faster Pentium called the Pentium Pro. 8-year-old me knew the Pentium Pro had to be the most awesome CPU in the world. I looked at the hulking Pentium Pro workstations costing so many thousands of dollars and dreamed.
But they don't cost that much anymore! So I'm going to build my own, a computer that would have made my child self have a heart attack and die from its overwhelming majesty. Please tell me if anything about this build can be improved. I want to stick mostly to workstation and professional parts that happen to be good for playing games, not dedicated gaming gear (though I'll use a Voodoo since back then it was the only 3D card worth having for games).
This is the case I will use (seller's photo), a Chenbro SR20503. Probably not the nicest full tower in the world but it looks correct and I've already bought it and it's on the way, new for $50.
I've purchased an NOS Pentium Pro 180 MHz but I may end up not using it if I can find a suitable board that's pre-assembled with a 200 MHz Pentium Pro (or two). Is it true that the 180 and 200 MHz models have incompatible bus speeds and require different motherboards?
I'm going to use a socket 8 E-ATX motherboard with 64 MB of EDO RAM. Suggestions on good board makes and models would be highly appreciated because I don't know shit.
For video, I'll be using this Matrox Millennium MGA 2064W I have here and add a 6MB memory daughterboard, for a total of 10 megs of video RAM, with a medusa cable going into a 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics (not yet purchased).
For sound, my first choice will be a Terratec EWS64L (even though it's from '97), but if I can't swing the cost I'll settle for an AWE32 unless you guys can recommend me a good pro-quality SB compatible card that won't cost $200 or make me want to kill myself setting it up.
Hooked up to that will be a Roland SC-88, which I own, but it's on its way from Japan so I can't photograph it yet so here's the seller's photo. I originally wanted an SC-88 Pro but they're vastly more expensive for, AFAIK, virtually no improvement for gaming and not period correct.
Here's the D-Link DFE-538TX 10/100Mbit network card; again a seller's photo because it's on the way from Canada.
For storage, I plan to have a 3.5" floppy drive, 5.25" floppy drive, Iomega Zip drive, 8X CD-ROM drive, two 2GB hard drives, and some bulk backup solution (Iomega Jaz? DAT?), with as much of it as possible hooked up via SCSI because of course a 22-year-old computer that cost more than a new subcompact car would have SCSI. What SCSI options were available in 1996? I know there are multiple incompatible standards.
The power supply will be a StarTech ATXPOWER300 300W unit. It is not old, but looks it and has the 5V rail to match, and 300W will be plenty for this machine.
The machine will boot MS-DOS 6 and Windows NT v4.0. Not sure what I'll actually be able to do with NT4 because I've heard NT workstations weren't actually useful for much actual work even in the day. I guess it will run Quake II? Nevertheless I'll keep it for authenticity's sake.