First post, by EddieHimself
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- Newbie
So, I decided to put together a Pentium MMX system. I've got a Pentium MMX 200 CPU to put in this system. I already had it because of... reasons, so I decided it would do. I can always put a 233 in there if I ever feel like it. The next thing was the motherboard. I decided to go with an ATX socket 7 motherboard. Why ATX? Because I don't want to go around trying to find all the I/O brackets, especially the "ATX form card" for the USB and PS/2 mouse port, which seems to be as hard to find as rocking horse teeth. Also, as much as I like the AT cases, they tend to be either in terrible condition or really expensive. So, I went with this board:
One thing that drew me to this motherboard in particular was the white ISA slots. I've seen them on motherboards in other builds on this forum, and I think they look really neat! With the MMX CPU installed, I decided to use a heatsink from an Athlon CPU, which I believe that--due to its size--will be enough to cool the CPU on its own, without the need for a fan. I guess if I wanted to be on the really safe side I could get a 60-mm fan to go on there, but it's only going to be a very low noise one.
Since the 5598 has built-in graphics, it means that this is all I need to fire it up for testing... at least I thought. I knew you needed pairs of RAM sticks for the 72-pin SIMM slots, but apparently you need them for the SDRAM slots as well, as I didn't get anything on the screen. Not to worry. For now, I put in a couple of 72-pin FPM SIMMS from a busted 486, and success!
Obviously, I want to have more than 8 megs of FPM for a system like this, so my current thinking is to get a pair of 32-MB SDRAM modules for 64 MB RAM in total, and of course ditch the FPM RAM. Does this sound good? I think it ought to be OK for a system of this era, and 32-MB modules ought to not have any issues, at least I think? Well, your input is welcome. The other thing is that I have replaced the Voodoo Banshee and AWE64 from my Compaq build, so that's what I'm planning on using here:
Yes, I know the Banshee isn't exactly the best Voodoo card out there, but that's why you can get them for less than 3 figures! Then, it's a matter of storage. I've got an SD-IDE adaptor, or I could try using an actual hard disk drive, depending on what the maximum size supported by the BIOS is. Also, later on, I will probably look at a different case. This one is in fine condition, but it's a bit too much of a new design for this era of PC. I guess you could say that any ATX case is for an original MMX build, but I'm sure I could find something that looks more the part. Well, that's it for now. I shall post progress as it happens.