So, decided to snap a few pics and write down the specs of my retro systems when I had them out for cleaning and general inspection. Yes, I know, the photos are terrible. Should of course have checked them before putting the computers back in their places and reconnecting everything, but too late now. I'll try to remember to update the pics the next time I clean the computers 😀

Anyways, here we go:

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The DOS/W98 monster:
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This baby is my main retro rig, mostly built to play some of my old late era DOS favorites (read: the Build games, Tomb Raider, etc) with acceptable framerates in resolutions you could only dream about back then, and also whatever old Windows games that won't play nicely with XP. It's basically only about performance. Probably about as fast as it becomes if you want ISA, and stay at consumer grade mobos.

Mobo - Chaintech 7AJA2. A nice KT133A board, supporting ATA100, and 133 MHz FSB through a completely undocumented jumper. Its caps are cheap ones though, had a feeling I'd have to recap the board at some point, and now I found one of them with a bulging top. Nice to discover it before anything died on me this time 😀

CPU - Athlon XP 2400+ 133MHz FSB (AXDA2400DKV3C, Thoroughbred). The fastest possible CPU would be a 133MHz FSB XP 2600+, but can't justify like ten times the price of the 2400+ for a minimal speed boost.

CPU heatsink - Got no idea what it is. A 3rd party one I bought ages ago. Looks good though, and is effective enough. It came with a nice cast aluminum frame fan, but opted for a more silent running one a while ago.

RAM - 512 MB Samsung PC133 SDRAM. Overclocks excellently, if I ever feel like doing that. It's a single stick by the way, would it be a better idea performance wise to use 2x256 MB?

Graphics - Nvidia P83 128M (Geforce4 Ti 4600) with the legendary Zalman VF900-Cu heatsink.

Secondary graphics - Diamond Multimedia Monster 3D II (Voodoo 2). Might move this to the 440BX rig, V2's doesn't play well with Athlons without custom drivers, and it's far older than the rest of the system.

DOS sound - SB Awe 64 Gold (CT4390). No memory expansion.

Windows sound - SB Live! (CT4830). The two sound cards are connected to the receiver through a homemade passive mixer, no switches etc. Convenient and works extremely well.

Storage - Some Seagate 40GB ATA100 drive, probably a lot newer than the rest of the computer. Think it's from some middle 00's business machine. DVD reader.

NIC - cheap noname card with Realtek RTL8139 chipset. Got better NICs performance wise, but I really like those Realtek ones. No problems whatsoever, and there are lightweight drivers without bloated manager software, etc, for just about any OS.

Case - Cooler Master Elite 361. One of the smallest full ATX towers, if you can live with a bit unorthodox PSU placement, and only one 5.25" slot. Great for retro purposes, though it might be a little bit too modern looking for the purist. It's easily converted to a desktop case if you rather want that.

PSU - Recapped Chieftec HPC-360-202, delivers 35A on the 5V rail.

OS - Windows 98 SE with the system update part of latest unofficial service pack. I know, could just as well have used v2.1.

Wishlist - Pretty happy with this one as it is.

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The compatible rig:
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This one is for playing the slightly older games that won't cooperate with my main retro rig. The deal here is maximum compatibility and stability. Want to upgrade it to a more flexible SS7/K6-III-build, if I get my hands on a good SS7 board at a reasonable price.

Mobo - Gigabyte GA-586HX rev. 1.53. As the name suggests, it's a Socket 7 430HX board. I do not have the extra TAG modules needed to cache more than 64 MB RAM. The unpopulated USB header is an oddity, there is no pinheader to connect an USB port to. I've tried to enable USB in BIOS, and W98 detects the controller. Perhaps just a question of soldering in a pinheader the next time I take the computer apart? Planning to replace the FSB frequency and multiplier dipswitches with pinheaders at some point, and move the dipswitches to one of those expansion slot covers or the front panel, to be able to underclock without opening the case. Guess I'll just solder in a pinheader for the USB ports while I'm at it. If it doesn't work, no big deal, it's not like I really need those ports.

CPU - Pentium 200.

CPU heatsink - Some socket A cooler (perhaps a stock Athlon Thunderbird one?) and a home made custom fan shroud, enabling the use of a 70mm fan fed with ~7 volts. Practically noiseless.

RAM - 64 MB 60ns EDO RAM.

Graphics - S3 Trio64+ PCI. The image quality is really bad on a LCD monitor. Got a Matrox Millennium 4MB card somewhere in my stashes, but then I'd have to sacrifice some compatibility, right? Might still be a better option?

Secondary graphics - Diamond Multimedia Monster 3D (Voodoo 1).

Sound - SB32 (CT3670), expanded with 4 MB RAM.

Storage - 16 GB 266x CF card, through an CF-IDE adapter. Using a hacked bios to get past the size boundaries. Also threw in some random floppy drive and a CD reader, mostly cosmetics to get the right 90's look 😀

NIC - 3com 509B, ISA.

Case - Some random ugly off-white Baby AT tower, very typical of its time.

PSU - Seventeam ST-230WHF. Obviously an AT PSU. Inside, it actually looks very well made. High quality components, generously dimensioned heatsinks, etc. Quite surprising, as it's from a time when next to no one cared about the PSU, and just went with whatever crap that was bundled with the case. Should probably recap it though, as a safety measure.

OS - Windows 98 SE with the system update part of the latest unofficial service pack.

Wishlist - Happy with this one too, would be nice with a bit better image quality though. My S3 Trio64+ is terrible in that respect. Is there any alternatives giving better quality without sacrificing compatibility? Ultimately I want to go SS7. That's more of a completely new build than an improvement though.

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The "XP rig":
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This computer acts as my secondary rig now. Quadruple booting W10, W7, XP and Debian on it. The next time I build a new computer, and my current main rig becomes secondary, it'll become a completely dedicated XP machine.

Mobo - Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi. Modded to accept socket 771 processors, and patched BIOS with microcode for stepping E0 s771 Xeons.

CPU - Xeon X5470 (Quad core, 3.3 GHz, 12M cache) socket 775 modded. Running at default clock now, but it does 4GHz easily. Also keeping a spare Core2 Duo E7500 for compatibility reasons, if the Xeon somehow causes trouble in the future.

CPU heatsink - CM Hyper TX3 Evo.

RAM - 4 GB PC5300 DDR2, crappy OEM sticks I've scrounged somewhere. Need to upgrade to faster, higher quality memory at some point.

Graphics - Asus EN9600GT (GF 9600GT, 512M, passive cooling). Will replace it with the Radeon HD7970 from my main rig, once the GF 1080 OC I've ordered is delivered. Will need something with a DP port, to be able to connect it to the same KVM switch as the main computer.

Sound - Using the onboard sound now, works well enough. Got an SB Audigy (SB0090) that I'm considering to install.

Storage - Intel 520 SSD 120 GB, WD Raptor 36GB (XP boot drive) WD Caviar Green 1TB, Plextor PX-716A DVD burner. There's really no point in having a separate drive for XP, will probably repartition the SSD and get rid of the Raptor at some point. Can always do the TRIM stuff from W10 now, and use SSD Toolbox once it goes XP only.

NIC - Onboard Marvell Yukon Gbit Ethernet. Works well enough. Got a few spare Intel Gbit NIC:s, might plug in one of those at some point.

Case - Antec VSK-4000. Cheap crap, but does its job, and actually looks decent too. I like those minimalist designs, as any Scandinavian would... 😁

PSU - Cooler Master G650M. A pretty solid PSU considering the price, it's not using the best possible caps though. Will probably recap at some point.

OS - W10, W7, XP and Debian.

Wishlist - That would be a completely new computer, so I can dedicate this one for XP. It's in the far future though, my main rig is an i7 3770k based one, if noone presents anything groundbreaking the coming CPU generations, it won't become obsolete for quite some time.

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The 440BX rig
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Put this computer together from spare parts just for fun. It also conserves some precious storage space to keep the parts in a case that otherwise would be empty. Beefed it up some and brought it into service when I found the bad caps on my main retro rig's mobo.

Mobo - Abit BH6. Owned this board since it was new. Remember loving it for its CPU configuration menu, was great not having to fiddle around with jumpers when overclocking anymore.

CPU - 1.1GHz Coppermine PIII on 100MHz FSB in a very basic slocket (SPC-370). Also got a few other options here:

- S370 PIII 1 GHz 133MHz FSB (Coppermine).
- S370 Celeron 667 MHz (Coppermine).
- Slot 1 PIII 550MHz (Katmai).
- Slot 1 PII 450 MHz (Deschutes, doubles as a 233 MHz PII with FSB underclocked to 66MHz).
- Slot 1 PII 350 MHz (Deschutes).

The great thing about Slot 1 is that CPU swapping is almost as easy as changing game cart in the good old NES 😁

CPU heatsink - A modded Compaq S478 heatsink, customized for use with a slotket. More about it here. Gonna make a custom shroud for 80 mm fans for it.

RAM - 512 MB PC133 SDRAM.

Graphics - Asus V8420 Deluxe 128M (Geforce4 Ti 4200) with Zalman VF900-Cu heatsink.

DOS sound - Sound blaster 32 (CT3600). No memory expansion. Should get a pair of 30-pin SIMM's. Used to have a bunch of them, but must have thrown them away at some point. I know I did a big cleanout before moving ages ago, threw away some computer stuff I thought I'd never use again.

Windows sound - SB Live! (CT4830). Got a CT4780 too, with a CD SPDIF connector installed, and also some IC's that the 4830 doesn't have. Couldn't find a WDM driver for it though. Please tell me if the 4780 is a better choice for some other reason than the extra stuff I'm not using, and I should put some effort into finding a compatible WDM driver 😀

Connected both card's outputs to the receiver through a passive mixer, the same way as the Athlon rig.

Storage - Some random 40 GB WD drive. I believe it's from some early 00's business machine, just as the drive in the Athlon monster. Some random DVD reader. Gotek floppy drive emulator.

NIC - 3com 3C905B-TX. An old classic, works great, not much else to say about it.

Case - Cooler Master Elite 361. Once again, a great case for retro computing.

PSU - Corsair CX500.

OS - Windows 98 SE with the system update part of latest unofficial service pack.

Wishlist 30-pin SIMMs for the SB32. A better slocket to play with. Perhaps even a Tualatin 1.4GHz + adapter, if it's possible to get it running on that ancient mobo. Already got two paired Tualatin 1133 MHz CPU's scrounged from an old dual CPU server scrapped due to a dead onboard SCSI controller, however, would be a shame if I managed to kill one of those when experimenting, and split the pair. I'd rather see them go to someone needing them for a dual CPU setup, in exchange for a higher clocked Tua to play with.

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Well, that's all. Oh, and any ideas and suggestions on how to improve my builds are of course always more than welcome 😀