VOGONS


First post, by gerry

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Just a lightweight question,

Among the collection I have two PC's that are almost identical - both Duron 800, both onboard sound and both with tnt2 cards, same(ish) motherboard

one is a win 98se set up, with a smaller hdd (20gb) and less ram (256m) - that's for games mainly (late DOS and win9x up to about 2001)

the other is a winxp set up, larger hdd (40gb) and more ram (384m) - that's surprisingly good with WinXP and runs a mix of development software and lots of emulators, even some modern ones work fine on a D800!

I could have just made a dual boot out of one of them of course!

I could then have reviewed the motherboards and bought stuff to max one out in terms of cpu & agp card, but didn't want to spend anything

so back to the question - do you have any near identical PCs in use? What 'roles' do you give them? Or perhaps you prefer not to maintain identical PCs and break them down to parts for other projects

Reply 1 of 8, by Tetrium

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I've used many systems which had similar specs to a large degree.

I've used a Pentium 3 800 as a Windows Server rig which was converted to desktop consumer grade usage (purely to try it out since I had read about it on teh internetz), a Celeron 800 which was the more modern Glide rig with a Voodoo 3 iirc, Pentium 3 1000 which was my main rig for a short while, another Pentium 3 (with probably another) 1000 Coppermine which was just a backup rig I build which a friend of mine borrowed while his main rig was undergoing some lengthy repairs, a Tualatin 1200, a Tualatin-S 1400, a Thunderbird 1400, a Thunderbird 1100, a Pentium 3 933 (iirc) with Rambus.

The Coppermine 800 was build years before the Coppermine 933 was build, with the 933 being Slot 1 and the 800 being s370. By the time I build the 933, the 800 one had already been decommissioned. And there have been more rigs which may seem redundant at first, but were build years apart and fulfilled different roles.
Some of these rigs were merely build because I liked building and benchmarking them, after which the systems were not even used again (but I could if I wanted to).

Most of these systems saw very little use, but some actually had distinct purposes. The 1 gigger which was my main rig for a short while later got repurposed as a rig which I used to access or to make backups of other harddrives. The other 1 gigger I had also put a 1GHz Coppermine in because why not. And because that s370 board is one of those rare i815 boards with a bridged ISA slot and I wanted to use that board.
The Coppermine 800 was also (with I think XP on a different harddrive) used as a LAN rig for a short while, but was quickly replaced by a dedicated pair of more and faster systems (A64 3200+ and 3500+ rigs).

At first I'd constantly decommission half-build projects due to needing parts for a different project. But once I started to accumulate enough parts, I just kept building new systems on top of the ones I already had and didn't really have to cannibalize any system anymore.

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 2 of 8, by gerry

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Tetrium wrote on 2020-09-18, 01:27:

Most of these systems saw very little use, but some actually had distinct purposes.

that's what i tend to want - to give them slightly distinct roles, it sounds like what you ended up doing with the circa-1ghz machines

At first I'd constantly decommission half-build projects due to needing parts for a different project. But once I started to accumulate enough parts, I just kept building new systems on top of the ones I already had and didn't really have to cannibalize any system anymore.

once you get to the point that you don't need to break down a pc for parts to make another you reach a certain level I think, it somehow becomes 'self generating'! I'm at the point where i have quite a few PCs but not enough parts to make any more unless i went out buying stuff. at the moment it suits me and I don't mind the relative duplication in rough specs in some systems

Reply 3 of 8, by BSA Starfire

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I've got 3 kinda similar machines, all are based around AMD K10 CPU's. These are my daily drivers. I love AMD K10 architecture.

#1(2008) HP Proliant ML 115-G5 this is an old server/workstation from 2008,AMD Opteron 1354"Budapest" CPU(4 cores, 2.2 GHz, L2 512MB per core, L3 2MB), 8GB RAM, XFX Radeon HD 4770 512MB VGA, Soundblaster Live!, Samsung 830 64GB SSD and 2 regular spinning drives, 500GB Seagate pipeline(6 years 8 months uptime) and a very old Western Digital WD2500YS 250GB(with a tiny 3 years 1 month uptime). Kubuntu 20.04 and Windows 7 dual boot(my only modern-ish windows install and it's rarely used!). This is my main use computer, she might be old but is still capable of everything I need, skype, internet, and all other daily tasks, no waiting, no thinking, "come on", even today this machine is capable of everything I throw at it.

#2 (2009)AMD Phenom II x4 805"Deneb"(4 cores, 2.5 GHz, L2 512MB per core, L3 4MB),ACER RS780HVF, 4GB RAM, XFX Radeon HD 5870 1GB VGA(I bloody love this graphics card, it's a BEAST!), Kingston 60GB SSD, 500GB Seagate constellation HD(with 6 years, 7 months uptime on it). Kubuntu 20.04. All in a really nice old Lian-Li case from probably around 2003. My friend built me this machine as a surprise gift, I wanted something similar to the Opteron above as a second machine and was complaining about the i3. I like to use two systems next to each other all the time, the previous "second box" an Intel i3 3240T with 8GB of RAM I wasn't that happy with, I tend to run a lot of things at once on both machines and the i3 didn't do too well. The Phenom II despite not being a high end one handles it all. Also does some steam gaming with Radeon HD5870 well and without problems. It also looks really cool(to me) in the old Lian-li.

#3(2011) AMD A6 3670K "Llano"(4 cores, 2.7 GHz, L2 1MB per core) Radeon HD 6530D graphics. ASrock A75M-HVS, 6 GB DDR3 1333 RAM, an utterly ancient 500GB Seagate Barracuda HD with over 8 years of uptime and Hitachi 1 TB drive with few. Linux mint 20. We keep this one in the bedroom mostly as a media player, but it ends up doing a ton of other stuff too.It's a great little machine and a demon overclocker(just done for fun, but it's fine and happy at 3.4 GHz and the graphics at 800MHz). A fitting finale to AMD's K10 journey I think. I'm no fan of the FX AMD's that came after, but I'll happily use to machines for years and years to come.

These are the 3 computers I use every day for everything.

286 20MHz,1MB RAM,Trident 8900B 1MB, Conner CFA-170A.SB 1350B
386SX 33MHz,ULSI 387,4MB Ram,OAK OTI077 1MB. Seagate ST1144A, MS WSS audio
Amstrad PC 9486i, DX/2 66, 16 MB RAM, Cirrus SVGA,Win 95,SB 16
Cyrix MII 333,128MB,SiS 6326 H0 rev,ESS 1869,Win ME

Reply 4 of 8, by Tetrium

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gerry wrote on 2020-09-18, 11:19:
that's what i tend to want - to give them slightly distinct roles, it sounds like what you ended up doing with the circa-1ghz ma […]
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Tetrium wrote on 2020-09-18, 01:27:

Most of these systems saw very little use, but some actually had distinct purposes.

that's what i tend to want - to give them slightly distinct roles, it sounds like what you ended up doing with the circa-1ghz machines

At first I'd constantly decommission half-build projects due to needing parts for a different project. But once I started to accumulate enough parts, I just kept building new systems on top of the ones I already had and didn't really have to cannibalize any system anymore.

once you get to the point that you don't need to break down a pc for parts to make another you reach a certain level I think, it somehow becomes 'self generating'! I'm at the point where i have quite a few PCs but not enough parts to make any more unless i went out buying stuff. at the moment it suits me and I don't mind the relative duplication in rough specs in some systems

I usually wouldn't go out to buy specific parts, but would often get either whole computers for cheaps for free or for next to nothing (it being mostly a gamble what is inside or if stuff had already been taken out), find computer (parts) while dumpsterdiving (with basically no choice but to take what I can find and deem worthy if there's too much to take) or get stuff from work (where in my case I would often be allowed to take home stuff that my 'not so clever' superior tested as not working, but I knew would probably work or take everything that would otherwise end up in the bin.

So I ended up with the majority of my stuff having been NOT my own picks, but what I ended up getting at random if I may say so, with the vast majority being either OEM or the low end stuff. So I would often end up with a lot of stuff of one particular thing with islands of missing stuff which I later filled in with internet purchases but of course was more expensive.

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 5 of 8, by chinny22

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Once you reach a certain point it's inevitable to have very similar PC's.
The "server" option is always a good one. Load it up with Hard drives and job done!
I like a "Test PC" to try out installing stuff on. Keeps your main games retro rig nice and tidy.
I also try to give these "double ups" a specific purpose. maybe an old server OS to play around with, or bit of hardware that I can't justify on my main builds
Good option for the later is early 3D alternatives to D3D/Glide.
3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)

Reply 6 of 8, by gerry

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Tetrium wrote on 2020-09-20, 08:13:

So I ended up with the majority of my stuff having been NOT my own picks, but what I ended up getting at random if I may say so, with the vast majority being either OEM or the low end stuff.

same for me, my systems are pretty much 'budget' as opposed to retro 'dream builds', partly why they're often similar in terms of hardware, and i'm happy with them and mostly happy with the roles i give them

Reply 7 of 8, by gerry

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chinny22 wrote on 2020-09-21, 10:09:

Once you reach a certain point it's inevitable to have very similar PC's.
The "server" option is always a good one. Load it up with Hard drives and job done!

that is a good option, especially for those who create full home networks

Reply 8 of 8, by creepingnet

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From the standpoint of the same Hard DIsks, Graphics Capabilities, and networking, all of my machines overlap. They're all vintage x86 PC's running quasi-modern hard drives with DDO, as fast/powerful a graphics card I can jam in there, and TCP/IP using IPv4 over a modern network using DHCP complete with internet and (limited) LAN Access.

The only real differences are RAM, CPU, what Floppy Drives (if any) are installed, and what Operating System the darn thing runs.

My GEM 286 and Tandy 1000A overlap by virtue of the GEM's turbo button. It actually does a pretty good approximation via the turbo button of an actual IBM XT clone. Honestly, I could totally forego the Tandy if I put a Tandy 3-VOice card in the GEM, and drop it down to EGA from SVGA 1MB.

I have two Pentiums, one laptop, one desktop. Both with 80GB Drives, Maxxed out hard disks, 1MB Accelerated video, and BOTH are NEC computers (Versa P/75 and Ready 9522 LPX Tower) - one runs 95 (Versa), one runs 98 SE (Ready) - the only real difference is the Ready has 128MB of RAM, and the Versa will have 40MB as of this afternoon, and the Versa has WiFi. The Versa is a Pentium 75, and the Ready is a Pentium 100, but the performance is so close even with both running 95 it's almost like THAT's what I should LAN game with for Win9x.

I have THREE 486 - the 486 DX4-100 desktop, and 2 NEC Versa laptops (40EC, M/75). The slowest is the 40EC and even that runs 95 comfortably. However I'm running FreeDOS or MS-DOS 6.22/Windows For Workgroups on them most of the time these days. If HX gets any further along to run Win 9x Games from DOS well enough they'll overlap the Pentiums as well - which they already do under Win9x.

The DX4-100 Desktop already overlaps and even exceeds both PEntiums. The DX4-100 has a 2MB S3 805 VLB card, and that thing beats the pants the alliance integrated video on the Ready and I have yet to try it against the 1MB C&T video on the Versas but if my M/75 is any indication, they are evenly matched. The benchmarks PC Magazine ran on the Versas in 1993, 1994, and 1995 for the 40EC, M/75, and P/75 respectively had them come out on top in the graphics department. I think the C&T is way better than the Alliance so in a way my 486s have better video than my Pentium desktop does (which only has one or two PCI slots, so I'm really hesitant to start cramming in a big powerful 3D Card, esp since there's not much 3D stuff I run that's not modern anyway).

The one nice thing I CAN do with all this very similar Pentium/486 hardware is LAN game, and since three of the five can run without Ethernet Cables on my LAN, I can indeed LAN game - ie DOOM or Wolf3D or even Quake - with up to 5 people. I did this with my Wife on the Ready 9522 and me on the DX4 desktop last year and the graphics quality was really visible with those two side by side, the Ready kept dropping frames, my DX4 was full frame rate the whole time.

There may come a day I downsize....if I had to go down to two, the GEM 286 and Versa M/75 would stay at this point. The GEM for XT class stuff, and the M/75 for the later stuff with 2 different drives. If 5, the GEM, plus the three Versas and my 486 Desktop. But with my wife getting into this I might end up getting more machines....heck, she still likes to talk about the Compaq Portable her dad had back in the 90's (apparently he had one of the early ones, or a clone thereof).

~The Creeping Network~
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