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New socket 5/7 build advice

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First post, by stevemagin

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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

Reply 2 of 12, by stevemagin

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Can you remember the form factor of your board, which I assume is either AT or baby AT?

The original one was an AT - definitely I had it in a full tower case. If the retro one is a baby AT that's OK though.

I've never seen a P90 that can't OC to 100... Are you sure it's not a remark from P75?

It was a P90, and I could OC it to 100 it just didn't seem very stable after a few hours to me. Maybe there was something else going on.
But not a P75. 😀

Reply 3 of 12, by Neco

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Excuse me, but I would like to know what happened to the rat please.

this is the closest I can find so far, for your hercules card
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HERCULES-GB3610P-TERM … iIAAOSwPcVVqWCD

If you're looking for that particular chip you can find loads of cards on ebay by searching for "S3 Vision 968"

Reply 4 of 12, by Munx

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stevemagin wrote:

It was a P90, and I could OC it to 100 it just didn't seem very stable after a few hours to me. Maybe there was something else going on.
But not a P75. 😀

Sounds like it might have been the cooling.

My builds!
The FireStarter 2.0 - The wooden K5
The Underdog - The budget K6
The Voodoo powerhouse - The power-hungry K7
The troll PC - The Socket 423 Pentium 4

Reply 5 of 12, by Rhuwyn

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As far as motherboards are concerned it's getting harder and harder to find specific models. That being said the things you've listed as your must haves really shouldn't be too hard to find. I just searched for "Triton Motherboard" and "430FX Motherboard" on ebay and found many listings. Some of them were pretty high priced and some of them were reasonable. Many even come with CPU and RAM. If your looking for something that is as close to what you had as possible I'd just start searching and try to find one that visually comes as close as possible for a fair price.

As far as the videocard is concerned I don't think I've ever seen a Hercules S3 968 card, but often times many people list auctions with generic descriptions like. "S3 Video card" or "S3 968 video card" i've even seen some auctions that just say "PCI video card". You might try your lucky widening your search parameters and see if you get lucky. Otherwise, there are lots of 968 based cards out there if you can't find a Hercules.

Reply 6 of 12, by Rhuwyn

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One more comment i'll say is that persistence and patience are often well rewarded. What I would personally do is keep checking local classified both on the internet and in the paper. Setup ebay seaches to e-mail you for new listings that match your search. I pretty much get everything either off craigslist or ebay.

If you can't find exactly what you want right away and you really feel like you want something right now then settle for what you can find cheap at the moment that will still do what you want to do, then you can really concentrate on finding the right parts for the right price without the stress of not being able to play those retro games you want to play.

Just my 2 cents.

Reply 7 of 12, by lazibayer

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Rhuwyn wrote:

One more comment i'll say is that persistence and patience are often well rewarded. What I would personally do is keep checking local classified both on the internet and in the paper. Setup ebay seaches to e-mail you for new listings that match your search. I pretty much get everything either off craigslist or ebay.

If you can't find exactly what you want right away and you really feel like you want something right now then settle for what you can find cheap at the moment that will still do what you want to do, then you can really concentrate on finding the right parts for the right price without the stress of not being able to play those retro games you want to play.

Just my 2 cents.

True. And better to relax the search keywords to something more generic. Most of my cheap treasures are found in volume sales titled something like "lot old computer junk".

Reply 8 of 12, by Tetrium

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Rhuwyn wrote:

One more comment i'll say is that persistence and patience are often well rewarded. What I would personally do is keep checking local classified both on the internet and in the paper. Setup ebay seaches to e-mail you for new listings that match your search. I pretty much get everything either off craigslist or ebay.

If you can't find exactly what you want right away and you really feel like you want something right now then settle for what you can find cheap at the moment that will still do what you want to do, then you can really concentrate on finding the right parts for the right price without the stress of not being able to play those retro games you want to play.

Just my 2 cents.

^This.

Some configurations I would never even have considered if it weren't for limitations.

s370 Mendocino? TNT2 M64? PCI Solo-1? I thought it was crap. Heck I removed the motherboard from a system which had its PSU burned out (lots of black stuff yup) and it didn't even feature an AGP slot 🤣
But it worked! I kept using it for several years even and ended up loving it!

Same for A7V133 (only SDRAM) and Palomino and a GF2MX (though I never used that particular system as much as I used that first Celeron rig of mine).

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 9 of 12, by stevemagin

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Hi all,

Firstly thanks for all the replies and secondly apologizes for the belated response - I was called away for work and family reasons unexpectedly.
So I took your collected advice and decided to get an HX board whilst I patiently look around for a more exact fit. Lazibayer / Rhuwyn thanks so much for the search advice, my searches were a bit narrow. The only thing I would add is I tend to use the Australian version of ebay, I suspect some of the searches you are coming up with are on the US site, not all sellers will post to Aus.

Neco the rat met the pointy end of an exterminator we bought in. I think they were attracted mostly by the weather we were having at the time and came looking for water, or so I am told. Have not seem them since 😀. I keep finding Hercules virge cards but my one was based on the Vision 968 chip.

Thanks all for the input.

Reply 10 of 12, by sprcorreia

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I have something close to what you were looking for.

MSI motherboard with 430FX (Triton) chipset, Amibios, 4 SIMM slots, socketable RTC replaced one week ago with Dallas DS12C887A made last year. CPU in photo is a 75MHz.

IMG_1605_zpsjgshjive.jpg

Reply 11 of 12, by stevemagin

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sprcorreia wrote:
I have something close to what you were looking for. […]
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I have something close to what you were looking for.

MSI motherboard with 430FX (Triton) chipset, Amibios, 4 SIMM slots, socketable RTC replaced one week ago with Dallas DS12C887A made last year. CPU in photo is a 75MHz.

IMG_1605_zpsjgshjive.jpg

Hi sprcorreia,

I would be interested. The image link didn't work though for some reason. Do you have a model number and also where are you located? Got to factor in shipping to Aus.

S

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