First post, by blougaville
So this was a fun and fairly unnecessary project! The PC on the right has become my retro workhorse. It has the CD drive, floppies, two sound cards plus the intelligent mode MPU401 clone, I'm using System Commander to quad boot different OSes...basically, it's pretty well equipped to handle any bit of retro computing I might "need" to do.
I don't have any romantic attachments to spinning drives so all of my builds utilize SSDs and few have optical drives at this point (with the help of Vogons user doogie, I've spend a lot of time setting up a PXE environment so I can boot any floppy image or install any vintage OS over the LAN). So, with an extra Asus P5A board sitting around, I got to thinking about how far I could slim down a SS7 system to the bare minimum of what I consider important in a retro gaming PC without any filler. For me, this meant the smallest case possible, a video card with good DOS compatibility, an actual ISA sound card with wavetable header, and a NIC card in lieu of any removable media.
I really like the Fractal Design Node 202 Mini-ITX case for modern builds, so I bought one and started hacking it apart. Here's a random photo of how it's intended to be used with a Mini-ITX mobo and a full sized graphics card:
After a lot of cutting, brainstorming, making stupid mistakes and going back to the drawing board a few times, here is my cluttered end result:
You may notice lots of strange things like how the SFX PSU had to be rotated in an unintended way in order for the board to clear it, or the fan shroud made of foamcore, or the custom made ISA extension ribbon...I'll post some more pictures detailing the process below but first here are the specs for both systems!
SS7 MID-TOWER:
Asus P5A rev 1.03
AMD K6-III+ 450Mhz
Single 128MB PC133 CL3
3DFX Voodoo3 3000 AGP
120GB Samsung Evo 850 SSD w/SATA-to-PATA Adapter (DMA Mode)
SB AWE64 Gold ISA (for DOS)
SB Audigy2 ZS (for Win98)
Intelligent Mode MPU401 ISA Clone (MIDI)
DVD/RW Drive (IDE w/SPIDIF CD Audio-Out)
3.5" Floppy Drive
GoTEK 3.5" Floppy Emulator
3Com 3X905C-TXM NIC
Syba SD-V2-5U (NEC 720100 Chipset) PCI USB2 Card
NOTE: All front USB ports work by mounting a USB hub inside the case and connecting it to the inward facing port of the USB2 PCI card!
DOS+WFW311/95/98SE/NT4 (Managed with System Commander 2K)
SS7 CUSTOM MINI-ITX:
NOTE: I didn't have an I/O shield so I dremeled a blank one, only mangling it a little bit. The USB cable protruding out the back and series of adapters running through the inside of the case is simply so I can have one front accessible USB 1.1 port in case I ever need it.
Asus P5A rev 1.03
AMD K6-III+ 450Mhz
Single 64MB PC100 CL2
NVIDIA Quadro NVS280 (According to other Vogons users, it's essentially a GeForce4 MX440)
120GB Samsung Evo 850 SSD w/SATA-to-PATA Adapter (DMA Mode)
ESS AudioDrive 1868F w/DreamBlaster S1 on Wavetable
3Com 3X905C-TXM NIC
Windows 98SE