Retro Rig Photo Thread

[gdjacobs]

You mean you've never ginned up DCL in EVE? Me, I love DEC terminal function keys.

If you want really fun game, try opening TECO, randomly mash the keyboard, and try to predict what will happen.

[MMaximus]

Not a permanent setup of course, but here's a picture of two 286 rigs I've been working on these last few months, and my Turbo XT (bottom right). I'll make threads with more pics in the system specs section sometime soon.

[Mr_Blastman]

Holy servers, Batman! Did those things run Windows NT 4.0 Server in their lives? Very interesting, and kudos to you for saving those servers. I remember back in October, 2012, I saved a Dell PowerEdge 6300 server from getting tossed out. I still have the hard drives and the processors (will be used as record holders) to this day.

Tru64 Unix was their native OS from Compaq. It wasn't bad, had some quirks, but overall pretty solid.

[appiah4]

My K6-2/V2-SLI system has moved from its Elan Vital T-10 case to something that looks more contemporary for it, something that resembles the Aptiva and Presario cases with front doors..






Never mind the P4 and ASUS badges, they will be replaced tomorrow with K6-2 and 3dfx badges (currently being printed).



I did not bother with retrobrighting the front panel, I'm not sure that it's worth it.

[Almoststew1990]

Here are my three current retro PCs:



Earlier DOS Gaming PC
386SX 40MHz
4MB RAM
Acumos AVGA2 / CL-GD5402 Graphics
Soundblaster 32 CT3600
512MB CF Card


Late DOS and early Windows Gaming PC:


MSI MS-6119 Slot 1 440BX Motherboard
PIII 450MHz (to be downgraded to a 300 - 350MHz P2)
128MB SDR RAM
Nvidia TNT2 Pro
Soundblaster AWE32 Value CT3910 (might swap with the SB32 for it's real OPL which might be better suited to the older PC)
60GB IDE

Non Posting PC:

Lucky Star P45CE Socket 7 Motherboard
Cyrix P120
16MB "Topless" RAM
STB Lightspeed 128 PCI
IBM DJAA-31700 1.7GB HDD
I seem to have killed it by taking it apart as it was working before that.

Not pictured / in cases atm:
XP PC - C2D E8600 3.1GHz, GTX645, 3GB DDR2 RAM
W98 PC - Slot A Athlon 800MHz, Voodoo 3 2000 PCI or Geforce 4 MX440, SB Live!

[Bige4u]

Another oldie but goody!

CPU - Pentium1 100Mhz
MEM - 2x8mb edo
MOBO - Biostar M5ATA v1.0 socket7
Hard Drive - Seagate 1.7GB pata
Video - Cirrus Logic CL-GD5434-J-QC-F 1mb
Sound - Opti 82c931
Optical - 40x cdrom
Magnetic - 3.5" floppy drive
PSU - Solar Power 250w AT
DOS - v6.22

Originally built as a Pentium1 200mhz, same cpu, but down clocked to 100mhz, 128mb edo memory, 3.2gb pata hdd, voodoo3 2000 pci video, creative SB 16 isa sound and win98se.

Figured i would relive my intel 486 dx4-100mhz days from 1996, apparently, i kept the original video, sound, mem around, but i haven't the slightest clue what happened to the 4x cdrom, 850mb hdd, 486 chip and mobo, misplaced or something, i cant remember, but i've kept just about everything since the begining.

Its been around 18yrs since i messed with any computer using straight up DOS, im learning all over again, and at a snails pace for now, but its slowly comming back to me, its fun to get back to basics when windows has made computing so much easier, simpler and much faster, i've installed just a few full version games, it wont be much since its a small hard drive, like fan favorites, doom/doom2/duke nukem 3d/wolf3d/hexen/heretic/quake and descent so far, all of them play surprisingly well with this low spec machine.

But alas, the downgrade will only be temporary, to put it back the way it once was, but its been forever since i've actually had the pleasure of getting back to my roots... computer roots.

[tayyare]

My K6-2/V2-SLI system has moved from its Elan Vital T-10 case to something that looks more contemporary for it, something that resembles the Aptiva and Presario cases with front doors..






Never mind the P4 and ASUS badges, they will be replaced tomorrow with K6-2 and 3dfx badges (currently being printed).



I did not bother with retrobrighting the front panel, I'm not sure that it's worth it.

IIRC, Elan Vital T5/T10 cases were "the thing" during late Penium to Pentium II era, which I suppose also corresponds to AMD K6 (I never used them, so it's an educated guess). Besides they were much better cases then the one in the pictures. I hope you will use your T10 for something better, if not, it's a wrong move IMHO.

By the way, where are you printing the badges? I'm in need of some, too.

[oeuvre]

chkdsk out



HP Pavilion 8480z ATX case
Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D 380W ATX power supply
Arctic 92mm fan
Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L LGA775 ATX motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz quad core processor
ThermalTake Contac 12 cooler
8GB DDR2 RAM
3.5" floppy drive
DVD/RW SATA drive
3.5" USB 2.0 + USB 3.0 front panel combo
Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1600HLFS 160GB 10,000RPM SATA HD
Toshiba 128GB 2.5" SATA SSD
Windows XP Professional
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit dual boot
AMD RADEON HD6570 1GB PCIe video card
Onboard gigabit ethernet
Onboard audio
Creative SoundBlaster Live! PCI sound card
Sony ENX-26 Gigapocket PCI TV tuner
USB 3.0 PCIe card



Minor damage on top corner



Had to cut off some of this rear plastic covering so it wasn't blocking the power connector



The guts!



Guts part II



BIOS screen



Windows XP desktop



Programs and games galore



System info + Speccy



Windows 7 desktop



System info + Speccy



As ugly as it is, works like a charm.

[appiah4]

IIRC, Elan Vital T5/T10 cases were "the thing" during late Penium to Pentium II era, which I suppose also corresponds to AMD K6 (I never used them, so it's an educated guess). Besides they were much better cases then the one in the pictures. I hope you will use your T10 for something better, if not, it's a wrong move IMHO.

By the way, where are you printing the badges? I'm in need of some, too.

Your memory may be serving you wrong.. I believe the T10 cases were introduced in 2000 and popular in 2001 or so, that makes it more a P4/K7 era case than a P3/K6 in my opinion..

I realize it's not half as pretty in its new housing, but I think that will change once I retrobright the front panel some day.

The T10 is now housing my Socket 754 Athlon64 3200+ / Radeon X1950PRO AGP system (which is currently not working due to wahat I think is either a weak PSU or a VIA vs ATI driver mess; either way that PC has issues that need resolving )

[tayyare]

IIRC, Elan Vital T5/T10 cases were "the thing" during late Penium to Pentium II era, which I suppose also corresponds to AMD K6 (I never used them, so it's an educated guess). Besides they were much better cases then the one in the pictures. I hope you will use your T10 for something better, if not, it's a wrong move IMHO.

By the way, where are you printing the badges? I'm in need of some, too.

Your memory may be serving you wrong.. I believe the T10 cases were introduced in 2000 and popular in 2001 or so, that makes it more a P4/K7 era case than a P3/K6 in my opinion..

I realize it's not half as pretty in its new housing, but I think that will change once I retrobright the front panel some day.

The T10 is now housing my Socket 754 Athlon64 3200+ / Radeon X1950PRO AGP system (which is currently not working due to wahat I think is either a weak PSU or a VIA vs ATI driver mess; either way that PC has issues that need resolving )

I think that it is more like 1998-99. I clearly remember I first used them to upgrade our office PCs from pentiums to PIIs in that time period.

I'm an old man though, clearly remembering things that never happened, from time to time (P4s was not that widespread before very late 2001 - early 2002 IIRC)

[WildW]

While wandering around a forgotten corner of my hard drive I stumbled across some pictures of a sadly missed computer I had sometime in the mid 2000s. It wasn't retro then, but it is now. Also the digital photography is decidedly vintage.

I don't remember exactly what the case was, only that it was a monster cube with 14 drive bays, though I only managed to fill 10 of them. I had an extensive digital media collection I guess. Those drives made nearly 2TB altogether.
(Edit: It was a Yeong Yang Cube case)

I built it just after the Athlon 64 X2 had come out, but they were so expensive that it was actually slightly cheaper to build this dual-Xeon monstrosity with an Asus NCCH-DL https://www.asus.com/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/NCCHDL/

Two Nocona core Xeons (P4 based) at 3GHz gave me 2 cores/4 threads. 2GB of ECC DDR @ 400MHz, Leadtek AGP 6800 Ultra, Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music.

I mostly played Battlefield 2 on it. Sadly missed machine, I don't own a single bit of it any more.

[Bancho]

While wandering around a forgotten corner of my hard drive I stumbled across some pictures of a sadly missed computer I had sometime in the mid 2000s. It wasn't retro then, but it is now. Also the digital photography is decidedly vintage.

I don't remember exactly what the case was, only that it was a monster cube with 14 drive bays, though I only managed to fill 10 of them. I had an extensive digital media collection I guess. Those drives made nearly 2TB altogether.
(Edit: It was a Yeong Yang Cube case)

I built it just after the Athlon 64 X2 had come out, but they were so expensive that it was actually slightly cheaper to build this dual-Xeon monstrosity with an Asus NCCH-DL https://www.asus.com/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/NCCHDL/

Two Nocona core Xeons (P4 based) at 3GHz gave me 2 cores/4 threads. 2GB of ECC DDR @ 400MHz, Leadtek AGP 6800 Ultra, Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music.

I mostly played Battlefield 2 on it. Sadly missed machine, I don't own a single bit of it any more.

That's a Yeong Yang Mid Cube YY-B0221. I have that case in black in storage. It weighs a good bit. Thank god for the castor wheels!

[Merovign]

Cubes always seem to be there, but a minority in the case field. There was a recent small cube mobile gaming rig, and of course the Mac G4 and NeXT, and in the early 90s Everex had a 486 cube (big one IIRC, lots of drive bays) as a workstation-class machine.

[mmx23]

Socket 8 slotket's adapter. Used on ALR Revolution 2x server.

[oeuvre]

[EkriirkE]

Pentium 100, 16MB




More: https://imgur.com/gallery/m8qbqY0

[wiretap]

That PC chassis and keyboard does look very Wolfenstein-esque, haha. Nice system.

[henryVK]

Very nice system. How is the TFT-screen?

There was one on German ebay recently. The manufacturer was a German defence contractor and the machines appear to have been used as data terminals by the Bundeswehr. There's some pictures in the auction of the backplate with inspection stickers and stuff:

https://www.ebay.de/itm/PC-DATENTERMINA ... 7675.l2557

edit: Jetzt ist mir das Weißbierglas auf deinen Bildern aufgefallen; da hätte ich wohl auf Deutsch schreiben können?

[mmx23]

80286 16 MHz
Ram 1 MB
HDD IDE 40 MB
Video ISA OTI 256 KB Ram
ISA hdd and floppy controller
OS: Ms Dos 6.22 + Windows 3.0

https://imgur.com/a/xFIim

[retrofanatic]

80286 16 MHz

Very nice system. Looks like a great compact and solid 286 setup. Looks like the MB is made in the USA too. nice.
Are you taking advantage of the turbo button capability? I could not make out from your photos if you had a turbo button or not on the front of your case.
If you are, what sound card(s) are you planning on using for this setup?