This thread has a list of some known cards that require the -5V line. It doesn't seem like the SB16 is in that list.

If a ATX PSU will be more reliable than an AT one is more dependent of the manufacturer than the fact that it's ATX. In any case a good quality PSU should give you trouble free operation for many years, whether it's AT or ATX.

devius wrote on 2021-09-06, 20:04:

This thread has a list of some known cards that require the -5V line. It doesn't seem like the SB16 is in that list.

If a ATX PSU will be more reliable than an AT one is more dependent of the manufacturer than the fact that it's ATX. In any case a good quality PSU should give you trouble free operation for many years, whether it's AT or ATX.

Thanks for the thread reference. I've gone for a new, high-quality PSU (Seasonic Prime PX Fanless 500).

gerry wrote on 2021-09-06, 19:26:

on capacitors, some people change them all, I don't - it usually isn't necessary, if the computer has no problem why risk making one by changing stuff like this?

testing capacitors is worthy, especially if something is amiss with the component / pc

Well, I might consider recapping the SB16 and S3 in the near future. I need to give my wife some time to cool down first though 😁

"New projects again?!"

"Well... this is technically the same project..."

gerry wrote on 2021-09-06, 19:26:

most DOS games work ok under windows 98se, I have 98se running on a P166mmx with 64mb ram and it works just fine, games that a difficult under windows tend to also be difficult under DOS anyway!

I will most likely go for Windows 98 SE then, as we have pretty similar builds. I might pester you with a PM when I don't know what I'm doing.

Bought two identical (except the color) PS/2 keyboards.

How about some easy retro modding:

Azarien wrote on 2021-09-15, 20:29:

Bought two identical (except the color) PS/2 keyboards. […]
Show full quote

Bought two identical (except the color) PS/2 keyboards.

kb1.jpg

How about some easy retro modding:

kb2.jpg

Very nice.

Hi all
I recently built myself this Overkill XP system with parts from my loft stash , it's my 2nd retro build after the 98se one I built earlier this year.
Had a few headaches getting the 7970 to work in XP but eventually swapped the motherboard to another z77 and it works great now.
It's built using all my own old parts that have been in the loft for a while except for the PSU which I bought off ebay so it's cost me £20 + time which is great.
System is

Coolermaster Centurion 520
Z77 Asus Maximus V Formula
8gb Corsair Dominator 2133mhz
Intel 3770k @ 4.4 (2 cores and ht disabled)
Asus HD7970 ghz edition Direct CUII
750gb hdd sata
Corsair CX500 PSU
2x Coolermaster red led fans

It's absolutely bonkers fast for XP which is what I wanted , to play all the old games max res max aa etc , so far , loving it.
Next build will be a late 90's build with recently acquired V3's , do need to source parts for that though as I have very little in the way of stuff from that era , it was all chucked away out of my old house's loft when I split with my ex wife (not by me 🙄)
Here's some pics , only off my phone so excuse if they're a bit crap.

EDIT : Oh yeah , I need to change those case badges 🤣.
And the SN30pro works beautifully on XP , I was surprised.

Macca70 wrote on 2021-09-18, 09:51:

Intel 3770k @ 4.4 (2 cores and ht disabled)

Why, and how ?
Me using a 2700K, with 16GB* ram, not done any tinkering with any settings - should I change something I wonder?
(*: plan is to 'dual' boot with Win7 at some point, separate harddrives/only 1 active disk)

bestemor wrote on 2021-09-18, 16:40:

Why, and how ? Me using a 2700K, with 16GB* ram, not done any tinkering with any settings - should I change something I wonder? […]
Show full quote

Macca70 wrote on 2021-09-18, 09:51:

Intel 3770k @ 4.4 (2 cores and ht disabled)

Why, and how ?
Me using a 2700K, with 16GB* ram, not done any tinkering with any settings - should I change something I wonder?
(*: plan is to 'dual' boot with Win7 at some point, separate harddrives/only 1 active disk)

Why , because XP won't benefit from it that's the only reason , stays cool at 4.4 with std volts and cooler but benefits from higher clock speed.

How , in the bios , just changed to 2 cores and switched HT off.

If you plan to dual boot just leave it , won't cause you an issue in XP.

I built an LGA775 rig today.
Core 2 Quad Q9400
Asus P5LD2-VM Motherboard
4GB DDR2-667
R7 250 2GB
SB X-Fi Pro Elite
Super Multi drive
3.5" FDD with card reader
240GB SSD
Win 10 (productivity), Win 7 (games)

This will be my go-to machine for playing the original version of Crysis. It will also be used for downloading software for older machines and writing to CD or floppy. Additionally, I am going to use it for recording music. Nothing fancy, just recording practice sessions, improv and recording some finished songs for demo purposes or posting to YouTube. The X-Fi has the distinction of being one of the best non-professional "Pro" cards available and certainly the best I will get for $5. It has a SNR 10% higher than the Audigy 2 and Audigy RX cards I have. It also has a game port so I can plug in a
This wasn't really intended to be a period correct build or anything, just a utilitarian machine for some very specific purposes. And the R7 250 is really just a cheap and available stand in for an HD4870. It should be ideal for playing some original versions of late '00s games I have.

HangarAte2nds! wrote on 2021-09-24, 02:24:

I built an LGA775 rig today. Core 2 Quad Q9400 Asus P5LD2-VM Motherboard 4GB DDR2-667 R7 250 2GB SB X-Fi Pro Elite Super Multi d […]
Show full quote

I built an LGA775 rig today.
Core 2 Quad Q9400
Asus P5LD2-VM Motherboard
4GB DDR2-667
R7 250 2GB
SB X-Fi Pro Elite
Super Multi drive
3.5" FDD with card reader
240GB SSD
Win 10 (productivity), Win 7 (games)

This will be my go-to machine for playing the original version of Crysis. It will also be used for downloading software for older machines and writing to CD or floppy. Additionally, I am going to use it for recording music. Nothing fancy, just recording practice sessions, improv and recording some finished songs for demo purposes or posting to YouTube. The X-Fi has the distinction of being one of the best non-professional "Pro" cards available and certainly the best I will get for $5. It has a SNR 10% higher than the Audigy 2 and Audigy RX cards I have. It also has a game port so I can plug in a
This wasn't really intended to be a period correct build or anything, just a utilitarian machine for some very specific purposes. And the R7 250 is really just a cheap and available stand in for an HD4870. It should be ideal for playing some original versions of late '00s games I have.

a splendid 775, probably good for games into the 2010's too with that card. I've played crysis with high settings on an athlon II x2 with an hd 6450 and it does just fine, yours will be great for it

Here's my current work in progress

I've finally found a nice case for my Pentium VLB, the current specs are:

- Pentium 100;
- Supermicro P54VL-PCI board that has no onboard I/O just like 486 VLB boards, but has 2 VLB slots, 3 ISA and 4 PCI;
- 32MB of FPM RAM;
- Ark Logic 1000VL with 2MB RAM. Voodoo 1 works in this system, but I don't see a lot of use for it because I'm running DOS 6.22/Win3.11;
- Tekram DC-680C with 4MB cache and a 2.5GB Fujitsu drive. The controller's BIOS has been upgraded to support PIO4;
- Turtle Beach Tropez Plus. I like this card — too bad there is no way to use soundfonts in game (or a good choice of soundfonts to begin with). The card is connected to a 4x Mitsumi drive;
- Primax Soundstorm Wave. A GUS Classic clone with a hardware mixer;
- 3COM 3C590 PCI. Essentially an Etherlink III on PCI for better compatibility — I think I couldn't get a regular 3C905 to run on this board.
- a PS/2 controller for ISA.

The board has a locked CPU multiplier (so nothing faster than 100MHz) and the BIOS seems to detect Pentiums (likely because the chipset is a revision of something made to work with 486 chips), so I can't use K5/K6 or even a Pentium MMX Overdrive. If I use a BIOS from a different board, it does work, but not as stable, so I've decided to stick with P-100 and look for a regular Pentium Overdrive or a CPU interposer that provides voltage for regular Pentiums.

As a result the system really feels like a very souped-up 486 (because it is) and you kind of have to tweak a lot of stuff here and there to get an extra 0.1 FPS in Quake 😀 But overall the performance is enough for a lot of games. Quake timedemo demo1 runs at 23.5 FPS or 25.9 FPS if using QDOS sourceport (I don't know why, but it's consistently faster even though I think it only has changes made to netplay/support for DOS packet drivers).

One interesting thing this board has is the turbo functionality that brings the CPU to 4.7MHz (according to SI8). According to the service manual, the turbo functionality was designed to save power rather than provide compatibility (Intel boards tends to run at mid-386 speeds in comparison, which is a lot more useful).

I might switch to a different disk controller, because my Tekram doesn't support ATAPI or have serial ports, so I have to occupy the last ISA slot to have a mouse and I'm kind of forced to use Turtle Beach, because most soundcards I like don't have IDE. I have some cached controllers that at least have a COM port. I also have SCSI controllers for VLB, but they don't seem to work (maybe because I'm running write-back cache).

I absolutely love the case, but it is EXTREMELY cramped. Basically because of the power supply I can't screw the board to the case. Currently it's using plastic stand-offs for support and the cards themselves are being used to hold the whole thing in place — extremely hacky, but I'm not sure what I can do at this point. The Supermicro board is very big, and this is not the only case that gave me issues.

One interesting detail is the indicator panel. Apart from the usual POWER, TURBO and HDD indicators it also has a COMM indicator with a 2-pin connector. Does anybody know what it could be for? I don't think I've seen a network card or a modem with a header like that.

jheronimus wrote on 2021-09-24, 12:28:

Here's my current work in progress […]
Show full quote

Here's my current work in progress

I've finally found a nice case for my Pentium VLB, the current specs are:

- Pentium 100;
- Supermicro P54VL-PCI board that has no onboard I/O just like 486 VLB boards, but has 2 VLB slots, 3 ISA and 4 PCI;
- 32MB of FPM RAM;
- Ark Logic 1000VL with 2MB RAM. Voodoo 1 works in this system, but I don't see a lot of use for it because I'm running DOS 6.22/Win3.11;
- Tekram DC-680C with 4MB cache and a 2.5GB Fujitsu drive. The controller's BIOS has been upgraded to support PIO4;
- Turtle Beach Tropez Plus. I like this card — too bad there is no way to use soundfonts in game (or a good choice of soundfonts to begin with). The card is connected to a 4x Mitsumi drive;
- Primax Soundstorm Wave. A GUS Classic clone with a hardware mixer;
- 3COM 3C590 PCI. Essentially an Etherlink III on PCI for better compatibility — I think I couldn't get a regular 3C905 to run on this board.
- a PS/2 controller for ISA.

The board has a locked CPU multiplier (so nothing faster than 100MHz) and the BIOS seems to detect Pentiums (likely because the chipset is a revision of something made to work with 486 chips), so I can't use K5/K6 or even a Pentium MMX Overdrive. If I use a BIOS from a different board, it does work, but not as stable, so I've decided to stick with P-100 and look for a regular Pentium Overdrive or a CPU interposer that provides voltage for regular Pentiums.

As a result the system really feels like a very souped-up 486 (because it is) and you kind of have to tweak a lot of stuff here and there to get an extra 0.1 FPS in Quake 😀 But overall the performance is enough for a lot of games. Quake timedemo demo1 runs at 23.5 FPS or 25.9 FPS if using QDOS sourceport (I don't know why, but it's consistently faster even though I think it only has changes made to netplay/support for DOS packet drivers).

One interesting thing this board has is the turbo functionality that brings the CPU to 4.7MHz (according to SI8). According to the service manual, the turbo functionality was designed to save power rather than provide compatibility (Intel boards tends to run at mid-386 speeds in comparison, which is a lot more useful).

I might switch to a different disk controller, because my Tekram doesn't support ATAPI or have serial ports, so I have to occupy the last ISA slot to have a mouse and I'm kind of forced to use Turtle Beach, because most soundcards I like don't have IDE. I have some cached controllers that at least have a COM port. I also have SCSI controllers for VLB, but they don't seem to work (maybe because I'm running write-back cache).

I absolutely love the case, but it is EXTREMELY cramped. Basically because of the power supply I can't screw the board to the case. Currently it's using plastic stand-offs for support and the cards themselves are being used to hold the whole thing in place — extremely hacky, but I'm not sure what I can do at this point. The Supermicro board is very big, and this is not the only case that gave me issues.

One interesting detail is the indicator panel. Apart from the usual POWER, TURBO and HDD indicators it also has a COMM indicator with a 2-pin connector. Does anybody know what it could be for? I don't think I've seen a network card or a modem with a header like that.

Very cool build! Would love to see more pics, digging the mix of green and red LED speed display.

Temporary setups while I get this room and desk situation sorted.

Left
• Asus P2L97-DS
• 2x Pentium II 333Mhz ‘Deschutes’
• 128MB PC-133
• Matrox Millenium II 4MB PCI
• 6.4GB Quantum Fireball SE
• Seasonic SS300-FS

Right (out of sight)
• Asus ROG Strix B550i
• AMD Ryzen 9 5950x
• 64GB Gigabyte Designare DDR4-3200
• RTX 3090 Founders Edition
• 1TB WD SN850
• Silverstone SX1000
• Sliger SV540
• full EK custom loop

jheronimus wrote on 2021-09-24, 12:28:

Here's my current work in progress
I've finally found a nice case for my Pentium VLB, the current specs are:..

That's a neat rig! I like the colorful speed display. Nothing screams out "1995" as much as a computer that likes to brag about CPU speed.
The VLB - no I/O thing caught me out recently when buying parts for a 486DX4-120 build recently. I built a 486 in 1995 and it had onboard I/O.
So I ended up with a Goldstar Prime 2C Mk III ISA because there wasn't much to choose from in VLB cards and they were priced too high. But I did get a sweet Boca CL-GD5426 VLB new in box. I will be putting it together in a few days. I have an old APC large tower to put it in, a transitional model set up for both AT and ATX, which is good because an ATX PSU will work. No clock speed display though 🙁

The PCs i have in signs minus the win7 and my current pc which is not in the sign.

pixelatedscraps wrote on 2021-09-25, 06:13:

Left
• Asus P2L97-DS
• 2x Pentium II 333Mhz ‘Deschutes’

Why 2 CPUs and Win98?

devius wrote on 2021-09-26, 20:39:

pixelatedscraps wrote on 2021-09-25, 06:13:

Left
• Asus P2L97-DS
• 2x Pentium II 333Mhz ‘Deschutes’

Why 2 CPUs and Win98?

That’s Windows 98 first, NT 4.0 followed just after this. I probably should have installed Windows 95 first but I’ll do it the three OS in that sequence when I swap everything out and put in the SCSI drives.

How about an actual vintage system photo? This photo is of my first PC, taken in my college apartment sometime between September 1991 and August 1993.

In the summer of 1991, I sold my car and used most of that money to purchase my first PC. It was a Comtrade brand 80386DX/33 system for ~$US 2,000. I picked it out from a magazine ad and ordered it C.O.D. by phone. (The attached ad scans are from the September 1991 issue of Byte which is the closest that I've found to when I bought it.)

It came with 4Mb of RAM, an ~80Mb Maxtor hard drive, Trident SVGA card with 1Mb, 14-inch CTX monitor, and MS-DOS 5.

Over time, I added more RAM, a 330Mb Maxtor hard drive, 80387 math coprocessor, an internal 9600 baud modem, Soundblaster 2.0 and then replaced with an original Gravis Ultrasound.
The CTX monitor was later replaced with a 15-inch Sony Trinitron.
I wore out the joystick that is partially visible on top of the case in this photo and replaced it with a CH Flightstick.
I used the Epson LQ-500 24-pin dot matrix printer leftover from my previous computer (Laser 128EX).
I can't recall whether I put a CD-ROM drive in this PC.
I installed Windows 3.1 on it, but only really used Windows for Word and Excel.

This computer served me well until about January 1995 when I replaced it with a 486DX2/80 system that I pieced together.

MNrocketry wrote on 2021-09-28, 14:09:

How about an actual vintage system photo? This photo is of my first PC, taken in my college apartment sometime between September 1991 and August 1993.

Interesting, thanks for sharing!

What stands out to me is that you've upgraded to a fairly advanced sound solution (SB Pro 2 + GUS would realistically be as good as it gets in 1993) but kept 386DX33.

I assume that before Doom came out at the end of that year, so a 386 would be enough for most games. But I don't think it was enough for the majority of titles that could benefit from GUS. Were you making music on this machine, or was there some other use case for those cards?

jheronimus wrote on 2021-09-28, 14:27:

What stands out to me is that you've upgraded to a fairly advanced sound solution (SB Pro 2 + GUS would realistically be as good as it gets in 1993) but kept 386DX33.
I assume that before Doom came out at the end of that year, so a 386 would be enough for most games. But I don't think it was enough for the majority of titles that could benefit from GUS. Were you making music on this machine, or was there some other use case for those cards?

What I meant to say was,
I bought and installed an original 8-bit Soundblaster v2.0 (not a Pro). When the GUS came out, I bought one, installed it, and then sold the SB. I never attempted to have both the SB and GUS in the PC at the same time.
The sound cards were used primarily for games and listening to MOD and MID files. I didn't create any music.

I couldn't afford to upgrade to a 486 at the time. I played a lot of games on that 386/33. Wing Commander, Stunts, Civilization, Command & Conquer, Doom, the "gold box" AD&D games, and many more.