pixelatedscraps wrote on 2021-03-17, 13:34:

I had feverish dreams of a brand new Pentium II (think the 266Mhz was the fastest at the time) with a Millenium II and Voodoo 2 cards. In reality, my parents cut that short when they saw the price tag and in a cruel game of rationality I ended up with a much smaller and far more compact Pentium 120Mhz laptop from a minor brand I no longer recall, though barely saving a couple of hundred $$, it did hold its own playing Championship Manager and Wing Commander III.

The situation you describe was mine, except I somehow lucked out and managed to talk my parents into going 50% / 50% on the cost of the package. And also, I believe I got mine 6-9 months before yours.

Anyhow, posted here in 2003, purchased in late 1996-early 1997-ish, here's my beast (named because in 2003 it was showing its age 😉 ):
Stiletto's GhettoPC (TM)

Original specs prior to updates were:
- Video: Number Nine Imagine 128 Series 2 (upgraded in mid-1997 with a Creative Labs Voodoo 2 8MB)
- Audio: Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold (I forget whether something else came first)
- HDD: just the single 6.4 GB, I believe
- Optical: I forget but it didn't come with the DVD-ROM
- and of course it didn't have the RealMagic card or maxxed out RAM or game controllers or wireless input devices or surround sound speakers either.

I still have it (and the specs on the original invoice, somewhere), but it's currently in storage and I am not sure when I will be able to retrieve it.

Welcome to VOGONS! Many of us founding members are still kicking around as forum moderators or admins. 😀

Hahah, nice story on the Micron 266 there - and at least you had the funds to balance your parents suggestions!

Going back to the original post now has some comedic historical value 😅

Additional updates on this build, I have now acquired the following:

• Quantum Fireball SE 6.4GB
• FSP 300-60PLN PSU (5V @ 30A / 3.3V + 5V = 180W)
• Toshiba XM-6102D 24X CD-ROM
• Windows 98 SE CD with boot disk new / sealed
• Mitsumi KPQEA4Z 104-key keyboard
• IOmega Z100 Zip Drive

And I couldn’t say no to a lowball offer on a P2L97-DS so it looks like not only will I have a spare board, RAM and matching CPU but a dual socket Pentium II build potentially on the way for pure late 90s hedonism 🤪

Still looking for an appropriate case though. This is proving the hardest part to source...

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-03-17, 14:24:

Late '97-Mid 98 was actually a pretty bad time to build a new PC, because no matter what you ended up buying it would have been horribly obsolete in 6-12 months. Consider yourself lucky you didn't drop a few thousand USD on a PII-266. If I could go back in time and do it all over again, I would have just ridden my 486 to '99 or 2000 and saved myself a lot of $$$.

This was completly true, and it's also, what happened to us, we upgraded at the end of 1997, from 486. Luckily only into lowend, in that tim, Pentium 133. It was horrible upgrade, and it was basicaly obsolete during 1998... anyway, it was already 4x faster from 486 dx2-66. But much better upgrade would be to go for Pentium 166 MMX, and overclock it to 200 at least. It would be only a bit more expensive. And then, upgrade to Celeron 300A, and overclock it to 450. In late 1998. That was a way to go.

Even a 166MMX wouldn't have gotten you much further. The best time to have boughten a Pentium was either when the P75 or the original P166 was released. I had friends who got onboard with the original Pentium, and they at least got 2-3 years worth of satisfaction from their PCs.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-03-23, 02:50:

Even a 166MMX wouldn't have gotten you much further. The best time to have boughten a Pentium was either when the P75 or the original P166 was released. I had friends who got onboard with the original Pentium, and they at least got 2-3 years worth of satisfaction from their PCs.

Best time for buying the CPU perhaps, but not the RAM.

I bought a P60 in 1995 (already dated, so almost 486-level cheap) with 8MB RAM. That really wasn't enough, even in Win3.1, so in early 1996 I upgraded with another 8MB. Cost me DFL 512, the equivalent of USD 256. Three months later prices had dropped by over 50%. I really, really could have used that money for other things at the time. Still, the PC stayed usable until 1999 and an upgrade to Win98SE and a Mendocino.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-03-23, 02:50:

Even a 166MMX wouldn't have gotten you much further. The best time to have boughten a Pentium was either when the P75 or the original P166 was released. I had friends who got onboard with the original Pentium, and they at least got 2-3 years worth of satisfaction from their PCs.

Good thing 'best' is a very subjective word 😉

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-03-23, 02:50:

Even a 166MMX wouldn't have gotten you much further. The best time to have boughten a Pentium was either when the P75 or the original P166 was released. I had friends who got onboard with the original Pentium, and they at least got 2-3 years worth of satisfaction from their PCs.

I know, because of middle of year 1998 (supersocket7, CeleronA, and sucess of K6-2 and frequencies over 300 mhz), but to stay on 486 during mid 1997 to mid 1998, was too much pain. And Pentium 166MMX overclocked to 200, particulary if used on 75 Mhz bus, was considered maximum highend at beginning of 1997, so it would served good during mid 1997-mid 1998, until CeleronA Upgrade would come. I would considered it good upgrade, for year 1998, but buying Pentium Classic < 166 was a pain for 1998. MMX 200 Pentium was much much faster from Pentium 120,133,150,166. So just saying, we could do it much better, but didn't know about it. I was still looking only for that we get Pentium, and 2x more megahertz speed, from 486-DX2. I even didn't know, that it was much faster megaherz to megaherz, I've expected only +100% increase, and it was enough for my childish brain. Little I did know, how fast progress and demand will come.
Btw, with 3d accelerator, that Pentium 225 MMX (75x3) would served good, we bought voodoo2 at end of 1998, but Pentium 133 was holding it back very much. With that Pentium MMX 225, we would get actualy almost double frame-rate, so I would not call it unusable, particulary for already low price at the end of 1997. But anyway, to suffer on 486 for 8 months until 1998 was worth I think, but it would be most painful 8 gaming months. Anyway, we could not know, that such good chip as CeleronA will come, so I just found it as risky to wait and suffer on 486. 486 DX2-66 was basicaly unusable for 1998-1999 games. We also could not know, how good CeleronA overclocker will be. For me, it seemed, like Pentium II will be only option, and it will be overpriced. AMD had problems to get over 233 Mhz with K6. So to upgrade at the end of 1997 to Pentium MMX, I would find (without knowing the history) as quite wise choice for lowend. There could be some unexpected problems, and if CeleronA would not come, and also AMD have another problems with K6-2, it would be dissaster to wait on 486 DX-2 66 during 1998. What good games I've played thanks to that Pentium 1 133mhz during 1998, like finally Quake 1 after 1.5 years of waiting, Terminal velocity on 640x480, Hexen II software mode 320x240, would not want to stay on 486 DX2 66, it would screw up my 1998 gaming year. But Pentium 166 MMX, overclocked to 225 Mhz, would be SO MUCH better, and only for little more money. Pity, I didn't know about hardware back then, but that was cultural element of late 90... as teenager, to not know about hardware and doing bad and pricy decisions. To spend incredible money on comp, that was in half year or year quite obsolete. Yea, it's part of late 90's computer era. (we didn't have internet, and any source of hardware information, I only started to learn english in 1997, so in 1998, in no way I would be able to read technical pages in english, so even with internet, I would not be able to get any information)

I remember when Maximum PC was the only source of information...

It’s coming together…

Golden afternoon sunlight edition, now with newly arrived (but cracked) EIZO L565 and two Diamond Monster Voodoo 2 almost in SLI…

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-03-17, 14:24:

Late '97-Mid 98 was actually a pretty bad time to build a new PC, because no matter what you ended up buying it would have been horribly obsolete in 6-12 months. Consider yourself lucky you didn't drop a few thousand USD on a PII-266. If I could go back in time and do it all over again, I would have just ridden my 486 to '99 or 2000 and saved myself a lot of $$$.

To be fair jumping on the Pentium/Vodoo bandwagon with a 166MMX/200 and Voodoo 1 around 98 and waiting out the Pentium II era until Athlon/GeForce came out was the best course of action. Anyone who did this, kudos. Me.. No, I got a PII-300 with a Voodoo 2 8MB in 1998, only to upgrade to Katmai and Voodoo 3 in 1999, only to upgrade to Coppermine and GF2MX in 2000, only to upgrade to Tualatin and GF2Ti in 2001... I am stupid, no other way to put it.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-09-08, 07:35:

To be fair jumping on the Pentium/Vodoo bandwagon with a 166MMX/200 and Voodoo 1 around 98 and waiting out the Pentium II era until Athlon/GeForce came out was the best course of action. Anyone who did this, kudos. Me.. No, I got a PII-300 with a Voodoo 2 8MB in 1998, only to upgrade to Katmai and Voodoo 3 in 1999, only to upgrade to Coppermine and GF2MX in 2000, only to upgrade to Tualatin and GF2Ti in 2001... I am stupid, no other way to put it.

No, you did quite good, if you have choosen BX platform, you could not choose better. The only problem was, that you were not using Celerons. Like Celeron 300A overclocked to 450 was a beast for little money. Katmai was not needed, then you should wait for Coppermine celeron, and again, buy 566, and overclock it to 800. In this time, you could even use same motherboard, so it would be cheap upgrade.
3dfx cards were good in that time, you should just wait a little bit, till prices drop, not buying them on the prime. And yes, Geforce 2 MX was good pick. Later, you could upgrade to Tualatin, through slotket.
This is, what I would do again, if I would return to that era. I would not go through AMD path, so many problems we had, because of drivers, AGP drivers, and random freezes and stuff. Would never wanted to experience it again, I would choose BX platform for sure, most stable, and fast, compatible platform.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-09-08, 07:35:

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-03-17, 14:24:

Late '97-Mid 98 was actually a pretty bad time to build a new PC, because no matter what you ended up buying it would have been horribly obsolete in 6-12 months. Consider yourself lucky you didn't drop a few thousand USD on a PII-266. If I could go back in time and do it all over again, I would have just ridden my 486 to '99 or 2000 and saved myself a lot of $$$.

To be fair jumping on the Pentium/Vodoo bandwagon with a 166MMX/200 and Voodoo 1 around 98 and waiting out the Pentium II era until Athlon/GeForce came out was the best course of action. Anyone who did this, kudos. Me.. No, I got a PII-300 with a Voodoo 2 8MB in 1998, only to upgrade to Katmai and Voodoo 3 in 1999, only to upgrade to Coppermine and GF2MX in 2000, only to upgrade to Tualatin and GF2Ti in 2001... I am stupid, no other way to put it.

I mean, that was the 90s in a computing nutshell. New CPUs, sockets, chipsets, every 2 years, things were moving ridiculously fast, it was a crazy time . I don't fault you for upgrading 🤣, if I had the money I probably would have too but i was a poor teenager. Was stuck with a 14" crt and Compaq SFF-style P150 from 97 to 2000. And before that a 50 mhz 486. Saved up enough from my part time job to buy a voodoo1 and 17" monitor on sale at compusa at least...

appiah4 wrote on 2021-09-08, 07:35:

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-03-17, 14:24:

Late '97-Mid 98 was actually a pretty bad time to build a new PC, because no matter what you ended up buying it would have been horribly obsolete in 6-12 months. Consider yourself lucky you didn't drop a few thousand USD on a PII-266. If I could go back in time and do it all over again, I would have just ridden my 486 to '99 or 2000 and saved myself a lot of $$$.

To be fair jumping on the Pentium/Vodoo bandwagon with a 166MMX/200 and Voodoo 1 around 98 and waiting out the Pentium II era until Athlon/GeForce came out was the best course of action. Anyone who did this, kudos. Me.. No, I got a PII-300 with a Voodoo 2 8MB in 1998, only to upgrade to Katmai and Voodoo 3 in 1999, only to upgrade to Coppermine and GF2MX in 2000, only to upgrade to Tualatin and GF2Ti in 2001... I am stupid, no other way to put it.

Myself, I know I want this machine in its current state and configuration despite knowing there are far, far superior configurations just months away. Hindsight is a wonderful, excruciating thing. Embrace it 😉

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-03-17, 14:24:

If I could go back in time and do it all over again, I would have just ridden my 486 to '99 or 2000 and saved myself a lot of $$$.

Well I had ye mighty 5x86 @ 2x60, but I was sweating through the late 90s with all that cool 3D crap happening, broke down in '99 and got a TX board cheap, onto which went first a very cheap K6-266, which I bumped to 300, but then found K6-2 400s on sale just as cheap a couple months later so it got that bodged in running at 6x75, added a voodoo 3 card and wheeee I could 3D... which lasted about 3 years before I couldn't even launch some game demos, but this time had a "reasonable amount" to spend instead of cheapskating, so I got a new out KT333 and a recently out Xp 1800 and 128MB GF3 and cursed that piece of crap for 2 years before I went back to "what worked for me" which seemed to be getting just going obsolete platforms with the most CPU you could cram onto them (First "serious" PC board was the infamous AMD 386sx40), and paid $10 for a brand new KG7 lite, put a thoroughbred on it, tuned the crap out of it with PCRedit, and ran that stonker with a GF4 at 2.4 GHz for 5+ years. MUCH more satisfying than the glitchy KT333 that it ran rings around (Was running something like DDR350 when the KT wasn't even 333 stable). So now I'm fooling round with Core 2 Quads for "modern", but I think I feel a major upgrade coming when AMD's next socket comes out and I pick up the fire sale bargains on the older stuff. Gotta find the platform that "was never meant to" run the last AM4 Ryzens, but somehow can.

But, it's fun going back and seeing what you missed.... like dirt cheap MS, Apple, Amazon etc shares 🤣

For me the key to buying and upgrading is to invest in a hardware platform once it's fairly mature and the bugs are ironed out. So for the 486 that would have been late 92/early 93 when VLB came out...and for the Pentium when Triton 430FX boards came out. Those platforms gave a lot of headroom for upgrades. If you waited until 1996 to get a PCI486 with 5x86, you totally missed the boat and you had no upgrade path. It was the same deal with buying a TX or SS7 board in 1998.

These days I don't give a rat's ass though. Everything sucks, so I'll just stick with whatever I have until the internet becomes totally unusable.

In mid '98 I got a 400 PII with 128MB RAM, BX chipset and a Voodoo Banshee with win98. It wasn't the fastest Dual Xeon with SCSI but it was nice for a while. Upgraded 2 years later to a Athlon 1GHz. Before this I had a slow 486.

I think the 66MHz PIIs probably were a bit weak and not a good buy, but the mature BX chipset probably could have lasted me a bit longer if it weren't for the games at the time and the shiny-ness of 1GHz!

I'd echo what Anonymous Coward said. Wait for a platform to be mature. From a collecting standpoint though I do the total opposite. I nearly always go for the weird early PC, early XT, 286, 386 and so on. And do the same with other parts too like HDDs. This is all the stuff I could never bought new. This is often some of the most interesting hardware to me. BUT so far in every case be it a '81 PC, '86 386, '90 486 or especially a '93 Pentium, at the time I'd have said wait at least a year and buy then. The early stuff always has mad problems. This is also true of high-end NICs, SCSI controllers, video cards etc.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-09-10, 04:53:

These days I don't give a rat's ass though. Everything sucks, so I'll just stick with whatever I have until the internet becomes totally unusable.

I quite agree. I find it very difficult to get excited about new stuff. New versions of windows. win 11? I don't even want 10. It's just change for the sake of change to me. My latest PC is from 2007. It was about 5 years ago when i built it. I tried looking at new stuff and i realized it just couldn't care less about it. So built my ultimate 2007 build. Its a LGA 771 Dual Xeon on some Supermicro board. It has two of what I determined were the best video cards in 07. But even this monster i I'd have to look up the specs to tell you what its details are. Most of the time i spend on my T60 that's getting a bit long in the tooth now. Cost me about 50USD but I bought 2 of them because they inevitably fail and one did. HDD swapped to other machine and I'm back.

Now when my early 386-16 was getting it's ESDI controller and drive, I couldn't wait to get it up and running. All the new stuff is boring to me and a lot of it sounds like a can-of-worms in a mine-field. TPM module? <sigh> Seriously? I haven't researched it yet but it doesn't sound good. HDCP (now old) <sigh>. It really has got to the point where you took the words right out of my mouth "so I'll just stick with whatever I have until the internet becomes totally unusable"

Good point I probably won't need top end ryzen ooomph for years. I am projecting 2026 as about when it will be unpossible to avoid going to Win11 or equivalent to get the modern internet experience.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-09-11, 18:47:

Good point I probably won't need top end ryzen ooomph for years. I am projecting 2026 as about when it will be unpossible to avoid going to Win11 or equivalent to get the modern internet experience.

I’ve hated Windows for so long (let’s say Vista was my point of no return) that I cannot imagine having Windows 10 or 11 as my daily drivers. Thank god for Macs, though they were becoming increasingly unreliable before the switch to the M processors. I can at least use them without throwing my arms at the heavens and cursing Microsoft.

Another step in the right direction and finally some progress being made on this build.

I removed the internals from an old InWin H-500 build I got off eBay and tested it to make sure it booted (another thread entirely) before swapping in the P2L97-DS on the bench table with the just-arrived Seasonic SS-300FS. Also just arrived is a Dell 2001FP in almost pristine condition I got from a Buyee seller in Osaka. Shipping was 3x times the price of the monitor but they’re impossible to find locally and in the end it was about $100 in total.

I installed both CPUs after checking the caps, replacing the CMOS battery and giving everything a good dust off. I loaded up the board with just a single stick of 128MB, a Matrox Millenium II 4MB PCI, a floppy drive and the Quantum 6.4GB - for ease of use (and I’m missing a SCSI cable I believe) I’m setting up the build on the IDE drive first. Once I verify everything is working, I’ll re-paste the heatsinks and delve into SCSI for the first ever time in 30 years of computing 😉

Both CPUs spin up, though one fan sounds like a banshee and here we go, we’re straight back into a typical 1997 boot up sequence.

I’ve been trying to boot off an original (eBay) DOS 6.22 disk 1 but despite configuring the boot sequence correctly and trying out a second 1.44MB drive, it’s not booting off the disk successfully and I am left with constant Press Any Key To Reboot errors.

Ahh, the memories flood back. I can’t wait to get into this over the weekend.