nice build - clean and tidy , needs more Roland though: shouldn't be a problem for you Artex 😁

keropi wrote:

nice build - clean and tidy , needs more Roland though: shouldn't be a problem for you Artex 😁

Are your ears ringing? 😀
(Cough)
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Very nice machine 😀

That hard drive bay interest me. Who makes it?

@Artex
it's the Roland call, I heard it beyond the ocean 🤣 🤣 🤣

philscomputerlab wrote:

Very nice machine 😀

That hard drive bay interest me. Who makes it?

Here you go Phil! I thought you already had one of these..
http://www.ebay.com/itm/181270184720

Artex wrote:

philscomputerlab wrote:

Very nice machine 😀

That hard drive bay interest me. Who makes it?

Here you go Phil! I thought you already had one of these..
http://www.ebay.com/itm/181270184720

Thanks! Ordered one. Great price I must say.

Nice build.

Thanks all! I'll be posting one of my builds each week for the next several weeks! This will allow me to clean them up, take some pics and get everything documented for my own inventory.

Really nice build! I especially like the case and the add-ons like that CF card reader and HDD tray. Do you boot off of it? Is there an IDE version? Too bad the seller doesn't post to my country. That's a first for a chinese seller... usually these guys ship worldwide. On another note, where'd you get the CF card reader?

What are you gonna use it for? To fill in a specific niche like between 486 and socket 370?

Yes there is an IDE version.

Check StarTech.com, they have all sorts of gadgets like these.

Thanks for the compliments! I am able to boot off the CF Reader as well as the HDD tray. As Phil said, there is all kinds of this stuff out there, and StarTech seems to make the most of these items. I got the SATA (and IDE) versions of the CF 3.5" bay unit from eBay as well.

Right now the system is configured for Win98 use. I boot from the 2.5" drive which is partitioned into two separate drives - one for my ripped media .ISOs and the other (C:) for installing the games. I have my Windows games in a C:\Games\Windows folder and the pure DOS (well, DOS 7.1) games in C:\Games\DOS. I found that the 2.5" spindle drive behaves MUCH better than the CF cards...

On the DOS 6.22 front, I can boot the CF card (using the bay) into pure DOS mode for the old-school games. The card is partitioned with a single 2GB partition. I also have a DOS 7.1 card formatted with a single 8GB FAT32 partition for some of the larger games.

On my main (non-retro) PC, I slaved all of these drives and created images using Paragon Backup and Recovery. That way, I can easily create 'ready to roll' copies of each of these cards/hard drives on the fly. So far this setup hasn't let me down!

I really do owe this setup to Phil and all of the homework he's done for me (well, all of us really). I just tweaked things here and there to my liking, but the basic idea was all his! It's nice that I can play with the L1 and L2 caches to slow things down to low-486 speeds or crank things up to full K6 III+ glory for the games that need the horsepower.

That's a nice build and a nice read, cheers! 😀

Also nice to see someone use a TNT2 non-M64 and your build also seems well thought out 😀
Looks clean, good parts (I like the GA-5AX though I have an older revision), looking forward to your next builds! 😁

Tetrium wrote:

That's a nice build and a nice read, cheers! 😀

Also nice to see someone use a TNT2 non-M64 and your build also seems well thought out 😀
Looks clean, good parts (I like the GA-5AX though I have an older revision), looking forward to your next builds! 😁

Excellent! I should enough material for a while. I plan on sharing the next build this weekend! Stay thirsty my friends. 😀

Nice build! 😁

I always feel strange when seeing these ooold hardware with their 5cm fans compared to brand new black chassis and 12cm fans 😜

StarTech.com has a lot of ridiculously overpriced stuff. You can often buy the exact same product for less than half the price from chinese sellers 😉

Half-Saint wrote:

StarTech.com has a lot of ridiculously overpriced stuff. You can often buy the exact same product for less than half the price from chinese sellers 😉

Yes, but not all of their products which is a pain. I could not find a cheap front bay CF reader.

Nice build Artex. Very clean. With so many starting to use CF readers these days, I'm thinking about jumping on the bandwagon.

I like the idea of having a 2.5" drive that can easily be removed and plug'ed in for .ISO files. I transfer all these on the network today, but its a hassle.

Awesome, as always Artex!

Just a quick question though, does the CX500 have a -5V rail? Otherwise, how do the ISA cards operate? I thought this was a necessity!