First post, by TheAdmiralty
- Rank
- Newbie
Howdy!
For the first time in a long time, I've actually finished building a system past it being a pile of parts on a test bench. Since everyone likes pictures:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/jw4uu3yo9fl8rn2/DSC_0084(2).JPG
http://www.mediafire.com/view/njusjoqmnsqlp8z/DSC_0085(2).JPG
http://www.mediafire.com/view/5r9nhmw88g25h3j/DSC_0086(2).JPG
...The pictures don't really show much, but I'll blame that on the fact that they were taken from 10 feet, standing on a swivel chair, using a DSLR with a really ill-matched zoom lens. Not really meant for close-up pictures of a computer... I'll take some better pics soon enough when I get my other lens back. 🤣
Anyway, the system itself is in a brand new ATX desktop case with an also new Antec EarthWatts 380... those two things cost as much as the rest of the system. Under that little black heatsink is a Pentium-MMX at 200Mhz (SL27J), on an FIC PA-2011 motherboard. 256MB of SDRAM.
From top to bottom, the expansion cards are as follows:
S3 Virge/GX 4MB (STB Nitro3D)
Creative SB Audigy SB0090
3Com Fast Etherlink 10/100 PCI
US Robotics (3Com) 56K Fax/Modem
Creative SB AWE32 CT3990 +8MB
The video card is likely to change to something a bit faster and less period-correct; the GeForce FX5200 I have seems a bit too far ahead, but is pretty much the next step-up in my inventory ATM. I'm hoping to get that Audigy set up to output MIDI done on the AWE32, or at the very least, use its microphone jack as a passthrough from the AWE32's line-out; the CT3990 may be my favorite sound card of all time, but with a pair of sensitive Shure SRH-940s, the noise floor is... well... substantial.
The HDD is a Quantum Bigfoot, 2.5GB. I know the drive itself works without issue, as it came to me with the owner's contents completely intact and functional; the one thing about Win9x is that you can pretty much put any HDD into any system and it will find a way to function just fine. Well, I immediately started formatting it to put my own Win98SE on it, and FORMAT is currently trudging through what appears to be a huge chunk of bad sectors, as it's "trying to recover allocation unit 5xx,xxx". The thing sounds awesome nonetheless, and isn't that what counts the most? 😀
If this were your system, what would you change about it? What would you do with it? Now that I've finished this thing, I'm not exactly sure what I want to do with it... I didn't really think that far ahead. I might buy an ISA ethernet card, move the Audigy down a slot, and put two Voodoo2's in there. I'd really like to get a 5.25" floppy drive and controller card just for the hell of it, but I just can't shake the feeling that it'll end up dead as a brick within a few years anyway... they seem to be hitting the end of their functional shelf lives just about now. I guess it kinda follows the same logic as my wishing I had an amber-monochrome CRT.
Just thought I'd share my progress here... I'm sure someone out there would enjoy seeing a nice chunk of old hardware as much as myself. Feel free to comment... I'll be sure to keep you updated once I get everything set up!
He took out his hip flask when he reached the page that described how he reached the page that made him take out his hip flask.
