Mike 01Hawk wrote:

1) Replace the 48x CD-ROM w/ a 8x CD-ROM (already on order) 2) Either disconnect the PSU Fan, or buy a new better components fan […]
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1) Replace the 48x CD-ROM w/ a 8x CD-ROM (already on order)
2) Either disconnect the PSU Fan, or buy a new better components fan less PSU
3) Goto a 4gb Compact Flash IDE setup = Silent = Win! (thanks Cloud for the idea / pic!)
4) Get 2 120mm fans and ditch the single back case 80mm fan. Or at the very least 1 120mm fan and a quieter 80mm fan.

1) A CDROM branded "Jet engine"? I bet it sounds just like that! 🤣
Hopefully your 8x drive will be more quiet.

2) Disconnecting the PSU fan might be a bad idea, especially in older PSUs. If it gets too hot inside, there is a bigger chance for the electrolytic capacitors to fail and fry your board or soundcards. Probably the built-in fan only has worn-out bearings after all those years. If you don't mind opening the PSU, replacing the fan (preferably with one that can be speed-adjusted) would certainly be worth it.
In case you decide to go with a whole new PSU, don't buy one that comes without any fan at all. I've tried a few of these at work and I've found out that they only work satisfactorily in big well-ventilated modern tower cases. In other environments they tend to get too hot inside and give you flaky performance or cease to work completely after a few months.
Besides, an additional 80mm fan blowing out air at the backside might be necessary to ensure adaequate air flow through the Dell case.
There are many PSU models with a single 120mm fan, these are usually very quiet and shift enough air. The only question is whether one of these can be mounted into the holding bracket of your case so that the ventilation openings are not blocked by parts of the case or other components.

3) Could be a solution if you don't need much space on the "disk". Old harddisks are always very loud, no matter how they sounded when they were new. 😉

4) A 120mm at the front and an 80mm fan on the back (together with the PSU fan) should do the job nicely. Since the case already has a 80mm mounting bracket at the rear, I wouldn't hack up the case for a bigger fan hole.
Your suggested location for the 120mm fan is well chosen, those stacked ISA cards with DBs and the Voodoo3 would surely benefit from it. However, I would construct some kind of "shroud" around the fan (can be made out of cardboard or styrofoam or whatever you have available) to make sure cool air gets sucked in at the front and side of the case. Otherwise too much air would just flow around the fan itself. And finally, some kind of dust filter at the front/side ventilation holes would be a good idea if you don't like removing lint from between your cards... 😉

I think the term OldSchool should mean something that's really fit for a skip 😀 Mind you I also cannot stand people calling PC's 'rigs' and then top it off but describing it as a 'puppy':sealed:

Some helpful advice nonetheless...

Having the 4GB flash drive instead of a HD is OK but you have to realise that flash drives usually have a finite lifetime ('a few thousand' writes for example). Whilst this figure may sound a lot, it's not for normal usage on a disk and varies across the devices sold.

Sticking fans into a case at odd angles/locations probably isn't going to improve things. You have to have a flow of air in order to provide cooling. Have you really determined that the system is actually too hot with stock cooling. I'd be surprised if it is... As for noise, I thought the V3 had a heatsink only? Does it really get that hot? Same goes for the CPU. I've had the exact same system as a work PC many years ago and cooling just wasn't a 'hot' topic back then. Adding 2 more PCI cards isn't going to dramatically increase the temperatures (the V3 will generate the most heat of all your addons I'd imagine).

Reckless wrote:

Having the 4GB flash drive instead of a HD is OK but you have to realise that flash drives usually have a finite lifetime ('a few thousand' writes for example). Whilst this figure may sound a lot, it's not for normal usage on a disk and varies across the devices sold.

Modern CF cards use wear levelling techniques to keep erase cycles on single segments as low as possible. Most cards are rated for a few hundred thousand erase cycles per segment. This probably gives you more lifetime than a typical used harddisk.

Reckless wrote:

As for noise, I thought the V3 had a heatsink only? Does it really get that hot?

Touch one while it is running...
But keep a bucket of ice water nearby so you can cool off the blisters on your fingers afterwards. 🤣

5u3
As for the CD-ROM Drive, it's actually a LG 48x (CRD-8483b) 😀

Okay, bad idea on fan less PSU. I'll just try to find a 120mm fan, but the PSU is down on the list of noisy components. The worst so far are the back 80mm case fan and the HD 'whine'.

Good idea on the tunneling of air, I'll work on routing 'fresh air' from the side for that 120mm fan I'll put in there

Reckless
Correct, the V3 only has a passive heat sink. The only moving parts in my 'PC' 😀 currently are: 80mm back fan, fan in the PSU (80mm I think?), the HD, and the CD-ROM drive.

I don't think heat is an issue now, but when I go to a lower speed 80mm case fan I don't want to compromise anything. That's why I was gonna put a big ole honken 120mm fan up front to pull in fresh air.

And like 5u3 said, the V3 gets very hot, same can be said about the heat sink for the Pentium 200.

Okay, new question
Let's say I decide to just stick to a regular magnetic HD, what would be a good 'quietish' one that will work w/ my old PC?

I hadn't realised Flash technology had moved on that much. It's certainly a quiet solution and probably very usable although having thought about it, I'm not certain the Dell's BIOS will be able to boot from a USB device?

If you were stick with standard hard disk technology, you need to look for drives that support acoustic adjustments (they usually have a speedy/quietness option). You're probably unlikely to get below 40GB (at least that where the price seems as low as possible) from online outlets and you'll need to check the Dell's BIOS limitations with IDE drives. You can usually get around this with disk extending software but it's a long time since I had to deal with such things!

For reference, in one PC I've got a Seagate SATA xxxx.10 model. It's quiet except for some data access noises. In another I've got a Samsung SATA (not sure what model) which is probably a little quieter. My last PC has both Seagate & Hitachi IDE. The Hitachi is the noisiest of all I own. I personally avoid Maxtor's as one sold as "whisper quiet" was far far from it 😀

Reckless wrote:

I hadn't realised Flash technology had moved on that much. It's certainly a quiet solution and probably very usable although having thought about it, I'm not certain the Dell's BIOS will be able to boot from a USB device?

CF cards are IDE compatible, they can be attached directly to the controller via a cheap "dumb" adapter. That's what makes them so useful for legacy machines.
I'm only waiting for the 8 GB cards to become a bit cheaper (8 GB is the most my 486 controller can take), and then I'll kick out my whining and screeching old Seagate drive. 😉

Stupid question: My GXPro says it supports EIDE drives, is this backwards compatible with plain IDE Drives?

Seems like there isn't much on the market for EIDE.

Mike 01Hawk wrote:

Stupid question: My GXPro says it supports EIDE drives, is this backwards compatible with plain IDE Drives?

Seems like there isn't much on the market for EIDE.

This is not a stupid question at all, since the terms IDE, EIDE and ATA often get mixed up even in manufacturers docs, it's not easy to get an overview.
Wikipedia explains some of the differences in the ATA article.

Short summary: Yes, in theory old IDE drives work on more modern EIDE controllers and vice versa, only limited by the maximum speed and capacity of the older device.
In the real world it is not as simple, some combinations do not work because of bugs in the controllers or drives. And the PC BIOS comes with it's own limitations, so often drives are not detected or you may not be able to use the full capacity of the drive.
An EIDE controller should be able to handle drives up to 128 GB, however, there are BIOS limits at 504 MB (CHS addressing), 8.4 GB (LBA) and 32 GB (common BIOS bug).
Generally it works just fine if you combine an old drive with a newer controller.

It has the A10 Bios Update (released 8/15/2000) which states:
1) Added support for drives greater than 8.4GB.

I guess my question is this, if I get a quiet 40+GB HD, will it at the very least probably be able to see at least 8gigs worth of data, or not work at all? I'm okay if it doesn't utilize the entire HD, just as long as I have like 4 or so GB and it's quiet 😀

What about the WD400? Lol, will someone just tell me what to friggen buy?

Mike 01Hawk wrote:

It has the A10 Bios Update (released 8/15/2000) which states:
1) Added support for drives greater than 8.4GB.

I guess my question is this, if I get a quiet 40+GB HD, will it at the very least probably be able to see at least 8gigs worth of data, or not work at all? I'm okay if it doesn't utilize the entire HD, just as long as I have like 4 or so GB and it's quiet 😀

The BIOS update statement indicates that your BIOS does support Int13H extensions, so the next important barrier would be 128 GB. I can't tell whether your BIOS has bugs that limit the maximum useable capacity somewhere below 128GB, but judging from the date of the last update, it's rather likely they've been fixed.

Well I went ahead and got a WD400BB, spec: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=8

Acoustics
Idle Mode 30 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 0 32 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 3 31 dBA (average)

Compared to my old WD64aa (have to look it up here for specs) http://www.wdc.com/en/products/legacy/Legacy.asp?r=2

Acoustics
Idle Mode 4 33 dBA average, 37 dBA maximum
Seek Mode 5 39 dBA average, 43 dBA maximum

So it looks like it'll overall be quieter than my old drive. Which btw, I didn't mind the seek/access noise, it was that constant high pitch hum that got on my nerves.

To bad I'll probably only be using a 10th of the HD... oh well.

I'm also thinking about getting a couple of these 80mm fans that have all kinds of control options: Thermaltake A1357 80mm Case Fan, link:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16835999111

The fans that DELL put in the PSU and Back case are actually pretty decent, I'll post the model #s when I get home. But I'm thinking once I put that 120mm fan in there, I can slow down the other 2 80mm fans.

I'll keep ya guys posted, will most likely submit a formal "Specs" thread with lots'o'pics

Thanks for the input guys.

Mike 01Hawk wrote:

The fans that DELL put in the PSU and Back case are actually pretty decent, I'll post the model #s when I get home. But I'm thinking once I put that 120mm fan in there, I can slow down the other 2 80mm fans.

Maybe you should keep an eye on the airflow and the cfm-values of the fans you want to use.
As far as I know the basic rule for case-cooling is to get the hot air out of the case. So - when you install a big fan at the front (to get fresh air in) but its cfm value is higher than those of the others, dedicated to get the air out, you might just end up with more hot air inside. Airflow should be like this: CFM 80mm PSU + CFM 80mm rear > (or =) CFM 120mm front.

(By the way: opening a PSU to change a fan can be very dangerous, because sometimes the capacitors are still charged even when the PSU is disconnected)

It may sound primitive, but I got my system quiet (and cool) most of the time by using the power management option of either the BIOS or Win98. Many old games do not constantly access the HD (okay, it depends on what you play). For DOS-games you can also think about creating a RAM-Disk (and use it while your HD is sleeping...)

5u3 wrote:

CF cards are IDE compatible, they can be attached directly to the controller via a cheap "dumb" adapter. That's what makes them so useful for legacy machines.
I'm only waiting for the 8 GB cards to become a bit cheaper (8 GB is the most my 486 controller can take), and then I'll kick out my whining and screeching old Seagate drive. 😉

@5u3,

I would be very grateful if you would kindly point me in the direction of any website that lists a commercially available "dumb" onboard IDE adapter, which you mention in your post. This item, combined with a CF card, would greatly assist my 486 mobo testing. Thanks very much if you can help. 😀

1) Jet engine 48x CD-ROM drive

My first suggestion would be to copy all your games onto the hard drive.

For CD use, perhaps someone knows of some quiet models that aren't dog slow but I don't have an answer for you here.

If still running a loud CD drive, come up with an enclosure to muffle it while in use.

2) 230w PSU w/ a built in noisy 80mm fan

Two options:

first: open the power supply case(watch out for those big capacitors) and rewire the fan with power plugged into the 5v on one of the molars, or if that's not enough power, ground in 5v, power in 12v. There's a few pictorial guides on doing this around the net. Try looking for "7v fan mod."

Second: get an 80+ efficiency power supply. You can find them for cheap now on ebay. You can still do the 5/7v fan mod, but you likely won't need to with an 80+ unit.

3) High pitch humming Western Digital 6 gb HD

Replace with a SSD drive or network boot off a file server in a closet.

retro games 100 wrote:

I would be very grateful if you would kindly point me in the direction of any website that lists a commercially available "dumb" onboard IDE adapter, which you mention in your post. This item, combined with a CF card, would greatly assist my 486 mobo testing. Thanks very much if you can help. 😀

No idea where to get them in shops, but enter "compact flash ide adapter" in ebay, and you'll find plenty of them. They're available in many styles, but are basically the same thing.
That reminds me... I'm going to order myself a few of these now 😉

5u3 wrote:

No idea where to get them in shops, but enter "compact flash ide adapter" in ebay, and you'll find plenty of them. They're available in many styles, but are basically the same thing.

Thanks very much 5u3. 😀 I tried that search, and the very first result seems promising. It is item # 260372225935. (However, "bestemor", please avert your eyes. 😉 🙁 )

The salient details of this item for sale appear to be:

* Fully compatible with Type 1 and Type 2 CF cards and IBM Microdrive
* Jumper to select Master / Slave mode
* IDE 40 pin male connection, 3.5" floppy type power connection

You want to find a CF card with DMA support too. The cheap ones usually only do PIO.

I had another browse on ebay, and saw this item -

290238257177 "COMPACT FLASH CF TO IDE 3.5 ADAPTER"

The salient points of this item for sale appear to be -

* Master / Slave mode selection (jumper).

* Male, 40-pin IDE connector with 4-pin power connector on-board.

* Boot from Dos/Windows/Linux with the CF card.

* Support DMA MODE. 😀

* Support CFI/CFII cards

both card and adapter have to support it.