Reply 20 of 28, by x0zm_
wrote:Nice, have been following this thread with interest, especially on the back of the P3/V5 build.
Speaking of which I see a V5 5500 PCI casually chilling out in the 'pile of crap' - what's the plan with that one? 😁
No idea. Those are all the V5's I bought from China while I was over there. I don't know what to do with them. That one's out of the anti static bag because I was testing it earlier in the day and was planning to return to it later. It's back safe and sound now 😉
Isn't necessarily a pile of crap in the sense that it's all crap, it's in the sense that I've been too lazy to actually sort it all out. It's a mix of stuff that I've bought in China, things I have to sort through from the family business and side of the road finds. There's just a lot of Slot 1 & Socket 7 boards, RAM, very basic S3 cards and early to mid 90s cases, and the few interesting things like V5 cards, software boxes, and server hardware.
Since I'll be moving (again, and hopefully for the last time) early next year, I don't want to go too far into sorting it all out only to have to pull it all apart again later.
Because of that, I'll likely carry through with some serious build consolidation and stay at 3 retro builds.
- DOS/95 - This build. That means it'll end up with the MIDI modules, of which I'm hoping to get more of. This whole setup is my most authentic and vanilla setup, with everything limited to no later than mid '96 with very few exceptions such as the aforementioned HDD, and an IDE DOM for automated backups. I have a lot of fun plans for this considering it'll be replacing a few builds, and it's not strictly for gaming like my other two are. This means I'll probably have to sell off my other two era appropriate builds parted out in the next six months. The machine I used for playing mods & demos has cooler sound hardware, but I'm not overly attached to it. The GUS never really did anything for me since I never grew up with one, for example. This build (or the case, rather) means more to me, considering how much time I spent around computers just like this one. Even if it's not 100% authentic to what it once was, I like it for what it is becoming.
- Win98/3dfx - The watercooled build. Mainly for fun as opposed to practicality. A build to experiment with modding and fabrication for things where there are no guides to follow. Nothing other than the hardware used is era appropriate. It stands alongside my main PC and shares peripherals. Why is it taking so long to update? Because there's a lot of fabrication work to figure out! No custom waterblocks, but getting close to it. 🤣
- Mid 00s/XP - Another watercooled build WIP that I haven't posted about, but is low on the priority list. More of an oldschool watercooled build using old parts, rather than forcing new parts onto old hardware. No reason other than it takes me back to how I got started with watercooling and parts are cheap.
There's the potential for a 4th, which is a dual PPro workstation build to tie in with this build, but that wouldn't be until after I move and work out how much space I have.
Abandoning the ZIP drive (and leaving the possibility for an external one instead), I picked up a set of these on eBay for the HDD. Paid a couple more dollars to get it locally as opposed to saving $2.00 on AliExpress and having to wait another 4-6 weeks for it to arrive.
Plus I only really need floppies. I get to use my favourite floppies of all time with them, which I got years and years ago by complete chance. After buying them at an absolute steal of $1, I really wanted some red ones (Top Secret), but none to be found since. Secret is cool enough. All brand new. I'm fairly certain they weren't meant to be sold at all, but oh well. 🤣