First post, by gn0me
I'll just state up front that I'm basically a grey beard. Not the oldest, I suppose but I modified my first PC in 1992 at the age of 10, and built my first custom PC in 1996 during junior high school. This build represents a vision of the ultimate PC I wanted during my high school years circa 1999-2000, and shortly after. I'm also taking some liberties due to the age of certain period correct components.
All the equipment has been purchased, just waiting for it to arrive in the mail before I get to building, so I figured I would get the build log started.
Motherboard: Supermicro Super P6DGE dual slot 1 -> This will be likely upgraded with a better Slot 1 or a S370 board
Processors: Intel Pentium III 600 x2 -> Future upgrade to a pair of 1GHz Coppermine CPUs, either Slot 1 or S370
Memory: 512mb PC133 SDRAM x4 (2GB total)
Graphics: Aopen Geforce3 Ti200 128MB AGP 4x -> Restricted by 2x AGP on motherboard
Graphics: ATI Radeon 7000 PCI -> Secondary and Tertiary monitors
Communications: D-Link 10/100/1000 NIC
Multimedia: Turtle Beach Aureal Vortex w/ Dreamblaster S2
Storage: Compact Flash to IDE PCI mount, 32GB CF card -> Boot Drive
Storage: 2x 5.25" to 3x 3.5" Hot Swap
Storage: 3x 500GB SATA HDD -> Mass Storage
Storage: LSI MegaRAID 4x SATA controller
Connectivity: PCI USB 2.0
Storage: Power Supply: 650w 80+
Storage: Chassis: Antec Sonata III
Depending on DOS game support using VDMSound, I'll be using Windows 2000 or XP for SMP support. If I don't like how all of this plays out, I'll get a single slot 1 motherboard and run windows 98. If that's the route I go down, I'll swap out the Turtle Beach for my ISA AWE64, as I'm also in the middle of building a rackmount version of a mt32-pi, and ditch the Dreamblaster S2.
Keeping the above for posterity. Decided to make a shift in project goals after realizing that I really wanted to run Windows 98 natively, which makes the dual slot motherboard useless due to lack of SMP support. I had considered installing Linux and using a combination of DosBox + DBGL and PlayonLinux to support the games I wanted to install but.... it's just not the same. So back to the drawing board I went, hopped onto eBay at 3am (which is always the best time to make irresponsible purchasing decisions that you can chalk up to sleep deprivation later) and came up with the following build:
Motherboard: Asus P4T i850 Socket 423 Pentium 4, seems to be a decent overclocker so hopefully I can squeeze a bit more out of the cpu
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 1.8 GHz
Memory: 256mb PC800 RIMM x4 = 1GB total. I'll also be applying the 9x mem patch: (https://archive.org/details/PATCHMEM)
Graphics: Aopen Geforce3 Ti200 128MB AGP 4x -> Reusing since I've already purchased it and it fits the timeframe still, but the mobo opens up all of the 8x AGP GPUs in the future
Graphics: 2x STB BlackMagic Voodoo2 12mb in SLI -> A friend of mine is selling them to me well below market value. Couldn't say no! Also purchased hard PCB SLI bridges from Serdaco
Communications: Startech 10/100/1000 NIC -> I discovered the previous D-Link NIC was not Win98 compatible, this one is
Multimedia: NOS Voyetra Turtle Beach Montego A3D Xstream (Aureal Vortex) w/ Dreamblaster S2 -> Couldn't resist the urge! DBS2 for now, X2GS in the future
Removable Media: Basic 1.44" Floppy drive
Removable Media: E-IDE DVD-RW
Removable Media: Iomega Zip Drive 250MB capacity w/ NOS sealed 8x 250mb Zip Drive disks
Storage: Crucial BX 120GB SSD w/ Sata to IDE adapter board -> Boot drive, I already have this on hand so might as well use it
Storage: Samsung 870 EVO 250GB SSD w/ Sata to IDE adapter board -> Game drive, already on hand
Connectivity: PCI USB 2.0 w/ Internal headers -> Already purchased
Power Supply: EVGA Non-modular, sleeved 650w 80+ -> Already on hand
Chassis: Antec Sonata III -> Already on hand
I think with my previous build I was trying to do too much with a single unit, this build is a much more single purpose gaming PC and I think will be more enjoyable overall. I could have easily gone with a socket 478 motherboard, but that kind of felt like cheating. Besides, I don't plan on playing any games much beyond 2002, maybe 2003 with this PC.
The Antec is a temp case, I have a mod plan mostly conceptualized. Just need to plan it out a bit more, then I'll be modding a modern case to fit the theme I've chosen.
More progress once all parts have been assembled!
1990-1997 DOS/W95: micron millennium mme/p200mmx/64mb/matrox millennium II 6mb/orchid righteous 3d 4mb/sb16 & dream blaster s2