when you mentioned deus ex. you made it pretty easy.

I made a system based on the Voodoo 5 video card. its specs are:

Voodoo 5 5500 video card http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/over2k4/voodoo5.jpg
MSI k7d master L motherboard http://www.rainwalk.net/pcmods/hc_new_hw/k7d- … ster-l-mobo.jpg
2x 2800+ AMD xp processors http://mixeurpc.free.fr/SITE_x86-guide/Photos … 0AQXCA%2001.jpg
2gb ddr400 ram http://mhcomnet.com/bigpic/20100131134535.jpg
Soundblaster 2 audigy (this was a tossup between this and the diamond monster mx300) http://www.mat2057.info/wp-content/uploads/20 … 6/audigy2zs.png

I use mine for more Quake 3, but deus ex is the same era.

Other "period" cards are the kyro 2, the geforece 3, and the if memory serves me, the late rage and early radeon ati cards.

A "typical" processor would be a early socket a processor or late slot A, or 1.4ghz tualatin.

you always max out the memory on a motherboard...

Sound cards of the time were the audigy 2 zs, or the diamond monster mx300.

I think a Tualatin or perhaps a DDR Palomino 2000+ would be around what you're looking for, preferably a board with an AGP 4x slot.
Voodoo 5 would be a nice choice, but very expensive. Another option would be to get a GF2 GF3 GF4 era card, or perhaps a Radeon 9600.
And indeed, max out the memory if you feel like it 😉

A 2000 period machine? You'd want a late Pentium III or a nice Athlon Socket A Thunderbird paired with a good TNT2 or a Voodoo3+ or a somethingforce2, a Sound Blaster Live 5.1 (better yet, the higher end bundles, include some of the hot period games of the time, such as Thief 2, Deus Ex, MDK2 and Unreal Tournament), and The Matrix DVD because that's the COOLEST FILM EVER. Aim for the 800-1100MHz stuff.

Don't top it off with a crappy Maxtor DiamondMax though 😀

LMAO, what's wrong with the DiamondMax? My 866mhz PIII based Dell made in the middle of 2000 with a circa 2002 20gb DiamondMax and aside from making incredibly little noise, it performs well.

GXL750 wrote:

circa 2002

You have no idea. Try circa 2000, one of the most notorious years of Maxtor history.

Yeah, I've seen a number of Maxtors fail but it seems to me like they were mostly worked out by 2002.

Also, FWIW, I have one 8gb Maxtor circa 1999 that was in my computer back in that same year (Celeron 300A, Abit BE6 mobo w/ BX chipset, TNT2; was that a good combination or what?) and since then, it's been in a few different project boxes, spent several years in my sister's computer and to this day still runs fine despite sounding like a meat grinder.

I think a circa 2000/2001 Maxtor of any flavor is a much safer bet than an IBM from the same time. If you're gonna make a drive that has a habbit of literally destroying it's own platters, it's best to not give it a name that sounds like Deathstar.

leileilol wrote:

GXL750 wrote:

circa 2002

You have no idea. Try circa 2000, one of the most notorious years of Maxtor history.

Agree. I had a 2B020H1 here - the famous Athena ATA2-PLUS - dead after just a day off its warranty. 😀

Late 90s/ early 2000s rig, eh? Your looking for a 500Mhz cpu and above, 256mb ram, a Voodoo3 would be nice, a Sound Blaster card- Live! is best but if you can get an AWE64, 16 or even PCI128, that would be okay and fully compatible too, 10gb and upwards hard drive, Windows 98SE.

So basically, a Slot 1, Slot A, socket 370, socket 462, 423, 478, 754 platform would do nicely. I would stay away from socket 7 though- they're nice for games up to 98 but lack the grunt for year 2000 releases like Deus Ex, Giants, NFSPU, etc.