133MHz wrote:

I have tested the three motherboards and here are the results: The Abit PR5 R2 refused to boot with my CF to IDE adapter so I co […]
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I have tested the three motherboards and here are the results:
The Abit PR5 R2 refused to boot with my CF to IDE adapter so I couldn't run any tests on it.

[...]

The M530 would sort of work with the CF to IDE adapter, it'd boot bare DOS but not anything else.

What CF cards are you using?

If you're getting a brand new USB 2.0, make sure it's not on VIA chip, they usually don't work on PCI 2.1. They say that new NEC controllers work, but I never tested them.

If you don't want to ruin your PS/2 header, it's easy to make a new one, using PS/2 port from some old dead board, some front-panel cords and front-panel connectors (Speaker, Power LED, Turbo - whichever feels more comfortable).

Pinout: http://pinouts.ru/Inputs/PS2Mouse_pinout.shtml

This is what mine looks like: http://s1260.beta.photobucket.com/user/Racoon … 000627.jpg.html
I soldered the header and attached it to a backplane from dead MX440. COM header fills the gap. So it's basically a header for almost any mouse, PS/2 or COM.

keropi wrote:

USB2 was slow on my p1/200mmx machine... you are way better putting a NIC on that pci slot and use windows networking or the MTCP DOS package that offers a ftp server...
speed with usb2 on my machine was 100~150kb/sec under DOS (did not bother with 98SE) and 1+mb/sec with the NIC...

I'm definitely putting in a PCI NIC in there, but currently I'm not going to get much use out of it because I don't have enough CAT5 running around my house. 🙄

archsan wrote:

What CF cards are you using?

I'm using the same 2GB Dane-Elec CF (P/N C2026144R100524091) I use with my thin client PC, it does DMA and it's fast enough to make Windows 98 usable on that machine.

On the PR5 R2 it refuses to boot (I/O error)
On the M530 it boots plain DOS but not much else
On the M571 (and other systems) it works perfectly

RacoonRider wrote:

If you're getting a brand new USB 2.0, make sure it's not on VIA chip, they usually don't work on PCI 2.1. They say that new NEC controllers work, but I never tested them.

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately pretty much every PCI USB card I can get my hands on has a VIA controller. Oh well. 😢 Guess I'll be better off trying to make a header for the onboard USB and sticking with 1.1, not that I'm going to transfer that much data anyway. 🙄

RacoonRider wrote:

If you don't want to ruin your PS/2 header, it's easy to make a new one, using PS/2 port from some old dead board, some front-pa […]
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If you don't want to ruin your PS/2 header, it's easy to make a new one, using PS/2 port from some old dead board, some front-panel cords and front-panel connectors (Speaker, Power LED, Turbo - whichever feels more comfortable).

Pinout: http://pinouts.ru/Inputs/PS2Mouse_pinout.shtml

This is what mine looks like: http://s1260.beta.photobucket.com/user/Racoon … 000627.jpg.html
I soldered the header and attached it to a backplane from dead MX440. COM header fills the gap. So it's basically a header for almost any mouse, PS/2 or COM.

That looks really good! I'm all about simplicity (sounds better than laziness) so I'm going to try to reuse the PS/2 header from the Abit board by wiring a small adapter using male and female pin headers to turn the M571 PS/2 pinout into the PR5 PS/2 pinout. 😀

Hey, nice! Those old AT cases are difficult to find anymore these days.

@133Mhz Could you please post a pic of which Cif you used because here in where i live we have different types of that?

Finally almost after 8 months I've gotten around to put this system together. This is what I ended up using:

• PCChips M571 motherboard
• 32 MB EDO DRAM (4x8MB sticks)
• S3 Trio64V+ PCI video card (I particularly like this one)
• Sound Blaster AWE64 Value CT4380 ISA sound card
• Seagate Medialist 4 GB IDE hard disk
• Sony CD-ROM drive and floppy drive that came with the case
• Mitac 150W PSU that came with the case
• Windows 95 OSR2

All put together:

I haven't managed to find compatible plastic feet by cannibalizing other cases so I stuck the closest ones I could find on the back. It makes the case slant a bit to the back but at least it doesn't wobble like crazy anymore.
Instead of a PC speaker I used some prototyping leads to run the PC speaker signal to the sound card, which is much better since I can control the volume through software.
I managed to find one of those "ATX form cards" and with that I got PS/2 and USB ports without looking for a compatible PCI add-in card. With a generic driver I got USB thumb drives working on Windows 95 so I couldn't be happier. 😀

Back:

...and here's the complete system in all its oldschool glory:

Keyboard/Mouse:

The A4Tech serial mouse was a lucky flea market find and the keyboard was a nice gift from a friend who knows that I love old keyboards (also a flea market find). It's a KPT-102 manufactured in Feb. 1994 and it's certainly more than meets the eye. It's got mechanical key switches and a hidden XT/AT switch under one of the stands. The dual pipe/backslash key layout instead of nothing/Windows keys is very peculiar too, electrically they're different keys! On the US English layout both produce pipe/backslash but on the Spanish layout (which I grew up with and use) the left key corresponds to greater than/less than and the right one to Ç, which is awesome. The only problem is that the 'I' key lost its clickyness, I might try to fix that someday. 😀

By the way this is how the keyboard looked when my friend gave it to me:

The monitor and the speakers are shared among my retro rigs. The CRT is a Samsung SyncMaster 591s from 2004 which I 'disguise' with an anti-glare screen filter to make it look older than it is. Not only finding a real vintage CRT is getting harder every day, but they almost always have weak picture tubes (and I don't want to think about how many of them I threw out over the years). Modern CRTs are too curved and stylized but this Samsung is boxy enough for my taste and the picture tube is in top notch condition.

I used to hate anti-glare filters back in the day when everyone and their dog had one hanging in front of their screens to filter the Evil Martian Communist Radiation™ emanating from the CRT, usually going "Don't do that! You'll burn your eyes out!" when I lifted them up, such rationale irked me to no end. Now I seem to like them because they bring me pleasant memories from a bygone era and they make a nice cover-up for modern CRTs. 😵

Overall I'm pretty happy with the results! 😊

sebaz_ri wrote:

@133Mhz Could you please post a pic of which Cif you used because here in where i live we have different types of that?

Better late than never!

I use regular Cif which comes in a white bottle:

There's also Cif with bleach on a green bottle but that should be avoided since chlorine weakens the plastics in the long term.

fantastic! this is pretty much exactly how I'd set it up. it looks great. you even installed winamp!

133MHz wrote:

[…]
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• PCChips M571 motherboard
• 32 MB EDO DRAM (4x8MB sticks)
• S3 Trio64V+ PCI video card (I particularly like this one)
• Sound Blaster AWE64 Value CT4380 ISA sound card
• Seagate Medialist 4 GB IDE hard disk
• Sony CD-ROM drive and floppy drive that came with the case
• Mitac 150W PSU that came with the case
• Windows 95 OSR2

I liked the fact that you didn't make it top notch everything, back in the day most people buyed computers with cheap parts (the best example is the PCChips mobo) and yours is an excelent representation of that. Congratulations!

133MHz wrote:

I got USB thumb drives working on Windows 95 so I couldn't be happier. 😀

Do you mean flash/pen drives? If so how did you do it?

133MHz wrote:

I use regular Cif which comes in a white bottle: http://www.suministrosvina.cl/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/LIMPIADOR-CREMA-750-GR […]
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I use regular Cif which comes in a white bottle:

There's also Cif with bleach on a green bottle but that should be avoided since chlorine weakens the plastics in the long term.

Thanks for the advice! Did you cleaned the keyboard with that?

Does that keyboard have mechanical keys and a XT/AT switch on the back? I've got it one a month ago that looks exactly like that except for the brand sticker:

I've got it new in box (yes, a twenty-years-old keyboard still NIB, I don't know where they guys who sold it me could have found it...) in a flea market a month ago for 15€. Was a bit pricy, but well, I couldn't hold myself from owning such a good keyboard. I bought an AT/PS2 adapter and I use it for everyday computing in my main computer.

sebaz_ri wrote:

Do you mean flash/pen drives? If so how did you do it?

Yes. First I got the "ATX Form Card" so I could use the onboard USB chipset on the motherboard (in lieu of that a standard USB header could be hacked up), then I installed the USB support package for Windows 95B/C which comes on the Windows CD-ROM (D:\OTHER\USB\USBSUPP.EXE). After the installation completed I rebooted and enabled the USB controller in the BIOS. At the next bootup Windows recognized the USB controller and installed the drivers, when it didn't find a file I pointed it to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM and it completed successfully. Finally I plugged a flash drive in and when Windows asked me for the drivers I installed a generic USB Mass Storage driver for Windows 95 which I have attached to this post, and that's it! 😀

sebaz_ri wrote:

Thanks for the advice! Did you cleaned the keyboard with that?

Indeed, I clean up most of my old hardware with Cif, it works wonders on the textured plastic and painted metals used in PC cases and peripherals, but do keep in mind that it's a mild abrasive so don't use it on glossy plastic surfaces.

socram8888 wrote:

Does that keyboard have mechanical keys and a XT/AT switch on the back? I've got it one a month ago that looks exactly like that except for the brand sticker

It does! It is indeed the same keyboard, but I'm jealous since yours has the Spanish layout and mine's US English. 😵
Fortunately they're exactly the same electrically so I'm not missing the '</>' key. Mine has two '\ /¦' keys, when using the Spanish layout the left one acts as '</>' and the right one as 'Ç/}' which matches up perfectly with yours. With other US English keyboards I lose the '</>' which is irritating to me since I grew up and learned touch-typing on the Spanish layout.

socram8888 wrote:

I've got it new in box (yes, a twenty-years-old keyboard still NIB, I don't know where they guys who sold it me could have found it...) in a flea market a month ago for 15€. Was a bit pricy, but well, I couldn't hold myself from owning such a good keyboard. I bought an AT/PS2 adapter and I use it for everyday computing in my main computer.

I wouldn't have passed it up either, especially in NIB condition. I love these old mechanical keyboards. I use a Mexican IBM Model M on my main computer, you can take it when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. 😎

Nice - I got an old 386 this way too - Back in 2000 or so, I was returning home from my gf's house, and as I was driving, I saw a tall tower case, so I pulled over and grabbed it. It has undergone MANY upgrades since that time, but it still serves as a Windows 3.11 machine - Budgeting, typing, and mostly gaming these days.