First post, by drosse1meyer
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Meaning to post this for a while but only just got it all together.
Target build is an early-2000s Pentium III (!!!) machine with reasonably accurate hw thats decently spec'd. The time was ripe as I had accumulated a collection of parts from other projects, random fleabay purchases, etc.
It was mostly plug and play aside from a problematic PSU. Minor work needed for the old case, just a little clean up and retrobrighted some of the front panel. It was missing two 5 1/4 bay covers and had no I/O shields, luckily some how I had the correct shield in my parts box. More on the missing drive covers later. There was also a lack of a GPU fan but that was taken care of with a small one from a 3D printer, which fit perfectly.
I know a lot of people don't like them but I think the SD-IDE adapters work pretty well in retro builds. So I went back to the well and installed Win XP on a 32 gb sdcard. Boot time is pretty good, the OS is very responsive and apps load quickly. Win98 may be a little bit faster overall but XP could equally have been used with such a build and its stable. (I ran Win2k on my p733 back then until XP came about.)
Regarding drivers, I stuck mostly with XP SP3 defaults, so benchmarks could perhaps be better. I may play around with nvidia drivers a bit after watching Phil's video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRhm4aGNI3o).
As for the name 'Orangina' - everything on this PC has an orange LED (unintentionally) - both CD drives, power and activity LEDs, and even an orange glow emits from the vents in the side panel (the SD-IDE LED's are super bright). Very cool 😁
Here are the results along with some benchmarks. Please reply with comments, questions, ideas, benchmark requests, etc.
Enjoy 😀
The parts:
- 815 based board - modeled off Intel D815EEA - gateway OEM (was not aware of this when purchasing)
- Intel P3 1 Ghz @100 mhz PSL5QV
- Geforce 2 GTS Pro 64 MB (AGP)
- ESS 1938S
- 384MB RAM (3 x 128mb)
- Random optical drives
- SD-IDE adapter (32 gb card)
Benchmarks (1024x768 32bpp without tweaks):
Quake2 - 183 FPS
Quake3 - 93 FPS
Unreal - 50 FPS (opening flyby, game mostly plays > 60fps)
+See attached CPU/memory benchmarks
The cons:
Not a D815EEA2 and thus no Tualatin support
CPU/RAM is 100 FSB
On board USB is v1.1
P1: Packard Bell - 233 MMX, Voodoo1, 64 MB, ALS100+
P2-V2: Dell Dimension - 400 Mhz, Voodoo2, 256 MB
P!!! Custom: 1 Ghz, GeForce2 Pro/64MB, 384 MB