Having one of those "BW wants to build weird crap again" days, pulled out some A/462 mATX boards to eyeball them. There's been jokes about using merely mainstream components from a given era being just a "poor man simulator" meaning what's the point if it's not high end. So yah, deliberate top of bottom end style builds come to mind. Though they would be targeting 3 years earlier really. Got three HP/MSI-OEM KM series boards, but they offer very limited config options. Then the two that scream at me are an M810LMR and a L7VMM2, SDRAM budget and DDR budget. For CPUs I've got duron 900, 1300 and 1600, those are spitfire, morgan and applebred (appaloosa/thoroughbred)
For pixel pushers, IDK got too much choice, TNT2 as they were held over as the budget card for a few years, despite the GF2MX existing, which is an option, then the same sitch with ATI with Rage128 vs Radeon 7000VE ... then for DDR era more the thing is maybe a GF4MX, or a Radeon 92x0, or for giggles SiS Xabre 200, or for that matter a SiS315
For a lower speed build, I'd be thinking late 90s with win98 as the game target, for a faster DDR build, it's more like transmillenial "haven't you upgraded to ME/2k/XP yet" win98.
I don't think I've got any (in)appropriate cases though, there was some really nasty minimal effort mATX boxes around for $10 at one point. Then the classic was grubby old reclaimed OEM cases from aspires or thinkvistas etc for lowbuck builds at the time. Though seen very rarely, this was the era of expensive digital cams still after all, there were examples of "built in a tomato box" student rigs.
I dunno if this is a configure and run on the bench only project or what, kinda leans a bit towards my "See what I can put up with" strategy, of doing some unusual or less high stressed, "same performance as..." something a little older and spendier ... while I actually have the other stuff to compare it to for "feel" then eventual rationalisation down to some reasonable number of keepers.
But, might end up with two configs here, morgan 1300 on the SDRam board, Duron 1600 on the DDR board.. and I know the 1600 will barely break a sweat to run at 133 bus so that tends to stick it in the top third of fast for socket A.
Undiscovered: Don't know where these are, but I was fairly sure I had either a spitfire or morgan 1100 also and a basic xgi volari, so maybe those end up joining the fray... or don't.
Then I'm happily dreaming this up and it goes through my head, "Wait, isn't this stepping on the toes of the 'proper' builds you're planning like the top end Thunderbird Athlon on A7V, and the most you can squeeze out of a tualeron on an apollo board.??? " yeah maybe... IDK why I wanna build 6 of the same thing all the time. Those would probably get the GF3 or GF2GTS though.
I'm just rambling on here when I should be off downloading some drivers for the "gaming laptop" for 2010 and prior. Which is another point, I'm duplicating capabilities across desktop and laptop too 🤣 I'm hopeless.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
