First post, by stevemagin
Hi Vogons!
Due to a mishap involving a rat my painstakingly built P90, on which I learned (relearned) all my old 90s IT skills and some new ones (from Vogons of course! 😀 ), needs to be replaced.
The goal is to as close as possible approximate the build I had as a kid i.e. my first PC. Given I get to try this all over again I thought I could try to get even closer to that build but I'm having difficulty finding a matching motherboard and graphics card. And I was hoping you guys could help.
My original PC was built in Australia, just prior to mid-August 1995 - a few weeks at most, not sure about the stock age of course but the shop seemed to move inventory pretty quickly and had to order my parts in a few weeks before that. On that basis it was either a late model Socket 5 or an early model Socket 7. I recall that I was contemplating a VRM module a few years later for a CPU upgrade as the board did not have one, if that narrows it down.
*It definitely used a "Triton" FX series chipset - I remember insisting on that, so VIA, PCChips, SIS etc can be discounted
*It definitely used Ami Bios and came up with the American Megatrends logo on boot.
I'm certain did not have the cache module socket
I'm reasonably certain it used a normal CR2032 watch battery for the CMOS battery
A bit less certain about number of slots - have a vague recollection one was a joint ISA/PCI
Had 4 SIMM slots
*The FDD/IDE/COM ports had heads on the motherboard
*Used a DIN connector for the keyboard and I used a serial port for the mouse - no PS/2 headers or connectors
The lines I marked with a * denote the features I definitely want to match.
The other components were:
Soundcard: AWE32 CT2670 which I have found a replacement for
Video card: Hercules Graphite Terminator Professional (S3 Vision 968) with 4 MB Ram - for love or money I can not find this card anywhere (grateful for any tips here) - in the mean time I'm using a Diamond Stealth.
CPU was a P90 and I could never get it to be stable at 100 (Lol!)
Any help in matching as close as possible the motherboard or finding the Herc graphics card greatly appreciated; or relevant advice in general.
Thanks
S