My "Y2K birthday build", which I have decided to name "Bug" after ... well... I'm sure know, has finally begun! And with this, I present version 0.1.

So far, it's in a temporary case I had lying around from an old inherited PC. Does the job but I'm on the lookout for a Coolermaster ATCS 200. Sadly, they only pop up every few months.

Motherboard: Asus CUSL2-C. TECHNICALLY not era correct for my birthday by a couple of months, but the original CUSL2 was, and I'm not splitting hairs here. Northbridge was TIMless so applied some of that under its lil ali heatsink.

CPU: Pentium III 1000MHz, of the lidless variety. Even lapped the cooler to ensure as much of that 35W TDP is dissipated as possible. And to see if I could. Lapped it to a nice shiny 1000 grit. Overkill? Definitely. Do I care? Nah.

RAM: 256M of something. Came with the MoBo. Will up it to 512M of something decent in due course.

GPU: Had to settle until I can find what I want. Originally wanted a voodoo 5. Noped out of there at the price. Right now it has a GF2 MX (not MX 200 or 400 which were 2001) while I wait for a GF2 Ultra to appear somewhere this side of the pond. Will eventually have it running with a voodoo2 for those glide games that demand it.

HDD: Some Maxtor 20G thing I had lying around. Will move to CF when I get round to it. Will still need spinnies for disk images in the long run but they don't need to be era correct (or could just use another CF, if they come big enough).

HDD Controller: Promise ultra100 ATA TX2. Got it for a great price, with manual, all disks, and ultra100 cable.

FDD: Mitsumi. Would like to get a Teac eventually, but that is low priority.

Next steps:

-Wait on the PSU I actually ordered to arrive, which got lost in the post so I'm getting another one. Aopen 300W with the -5V and -12V rails, and plenty of ampy-juice on the +5V.
-Actually get the case I want eventually. And the pci slot covers to arrive.
-SOUND CARD. On the build I'm basing it on, he uses both Creative and Terratec sound cards. I have no idea why you'd want multiple sound cards. Someone explain please? I've also seen a few times mentioned on here about off-brand sound cards being better than the "main" ones. Any suggestions there? I like the Sound Blaster Live! Platinum with its front panel, but expensive and uncommon so hard to justify.
-Need some ODDs, probably get separate DVD and CD drives, because reasons. DVD and CD burner maybe if period correct?
-Decent HDDs and CFs.
-GF2 Ultra, voodoo2 in the long run.
-Zip drive, because I like them.
-Ethernet card. I run enterprise grade router and firewall hardware so I'm happy to just totally block all incoming/outgoing traffic to it's MAC, but I also have a mate desperate to play some Nightfire with me when this gets built. LAN PARTIES!
-Pentium III foil sticker for the front of the case... What?

And finally...

Get windows 98SE on the thing and actually play some of those games kicking me in the nostalgia nuts.

You may now all pick your jaws up off the floor. Stunning piece of computing history I know.