Besides glitches with DX9 or earlier you will probably have issues with new cards not supporting old motherboards without UEFI BIOS (and of course no analog outputs for classic CRT monitors).

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-02-03, 05:34:

[...]

Viable is debatable but I guess it depends on what you are doing at home, if its email, youtube and word then sure its viable but anything modern and PCie 2.0 is showing its age hard, and DDR3 is slower than molasses. You will also have issues with modern UEFI GPUs which will likely not work or only work partially in a PCIe 2 board.

For high-end gaming Sandy Bridge is showing its age badly, but for general office work it's more than good enough. I only decommissioned my son's i7-2600 because it didn't have an M.2 NVMe slot and I had a bigger SSD (and faster GPU, but that would have worked) for him when his brother upgraded from i5-7600 to Ryzen, so just gave him the whole system.

The only issue is Windows 11 compatibility, but (for now...) you can circumvent the TPM2.0 check using custom install media and it runs as well as on modern systems (I am not a fan of Windows 11 UI).

myne wrote on 2025-02-03, 07:52:

Ok cool.
What runs on xp that absolutely can't run on modern hardware?

Well, 32b Windows XP can still run 16b code, so you can run things like Civ II, Colonization for Windows and BI3 on it at higher resolution than would be feasible on your average WIn3.11 system...

I will say my X58 system is still doing pretty good. I have a Xeon x5690 and a RTX 3050 and 16 gigs of ddr3 1866. I have a nvme adapter card and use a 1tb nvme drive for game storage. The main game I play is Guild Wars 2 and it really run well even in the areas of the newest expansion. In the next few months I'm going to get two new SATA SSDs and dual boot Bazzite and windows 11. I'm hoping come spring of 2026 I can build a new Ryzen based system and hand my X58 build down to my 2 boys. That system should be just fine for a 10 and 5 year olds.

IOMEGA REV 35GB and some disks.

Does anyone use this and can give some advice on software? I guess IomegaWare should do it.
Being SCSI it's a bit tricky.
----
A Voodoo 2 12mb. 25€ untested but working when put aside until today.

Just received this PC for £50 + postage:

Things that stood out to me:

1. Motherboard supports PCI, AGP, PCIe.
2. Love that blue CPU cooler
3. Floppy drive with built in SD/CF card reader
4. 128 Bit Geforce 5500 should be good for Win9x

I am planning to use it as a test bench for testing any new hardware that I aquire to make sure that it works. My understanding is that this chipset will support AGP cards of 1.5v or 0.8v, and it should work with most PCIe GPUs up to GTX 580. I think it won't work with dual GPU cards like the GTX 295.

Couple of recent purchases:

AMD Athlon Slot A 900Mhz Orion to pair with my recent purchase of a 900Mhz Thunderbird.
The ugliest GF2 Ultra I could find on Ebay that still works. 🤣
A very cool Shuttle Desktop PC, with an AMD Athlon XP, should work with 1X ,2X,4X AGP cards! ( Will post pictures after it arrives)

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-02-03, 14:30:

Just received this PC for £50 + postage: […]
Show full quote

Just received this PC for £50 + postage:

The attachment 20250203_131201.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20250203_131224.jpg is no longer available

Things that stood out to me:

1. Motherboard supports PCI, AGP, PCIe.
2. Love that blue CPU cooler
3. Floppy drive with built in SD/CF card reader
4. 128 Bit Geforce 5500 should be good for Win9x

I am planning to use it as a test bench for testing any new hardware that I aquire to make sure that it works. My understanding is that this chipset will support AGP cards of 1.5v or 0.8v, and it should work with most PCIe GPUs up to GTX 580. I think it won't work with dual GPU cards like the GTX 295.

Beautiful case 🙂. Great find.

dominusprog wrote on 2025-02-03, 15:38:

Beautiful case 🙂. Great find.

Thanks. Yes, I forgot to mention that I like the case too. It's a bit scratched up on the sides, but the front is OK. Could probably fix the sides with a bit of filler and spay paint.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-02-03, 14:30:

Things that stood out to me: […]
Show full quote

Things that stood out to me:

1. Motherboard supports PCI, AGP, PCIe.
2. Love that blue CPU cooler
3. Floppy drive with built in SD/CF card reader
4. 128 Bit Geforce 5500 should be good for Win9x

I like the motherboard and floppy drive, those alone would have been worth the £50 to me. Case is not too bad either, but I have a surplus of both AT and ATX cases 😀 What CPU is in it?

myne wrote on 2025-02-03, 07:24:

Right, but what can X79 do that current can't?

Run Windows 7! without issues.... 🥹

debs3759 wrote on 2025-02-03, 16:08:

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-02-03, 14:30:

Things that stood out to me: […]
Show full quote

Things that stood out to me:

1. Motherboard supports PCI, AGP, PCIe.
2. Love that blue CPU cooler
3. Floppy drive with built in SD/CF card reader
4. 128 Bit Geforce 5500 should be good for Win9x

I like the motherboard and floppy drive, those alone would have been worth the £50 to me. Case is not too bad either, but I have a surplus of both AT and ATX cases 😀 What CPU is in it?

Pentium 4 3.0Ghz. I may put a P4 Cedar Mill 3.4Ghz in it. Since I have a few of those CPUs. The motherboard supports dual core P4s, but not Core 2 Duos.

justin1985 wrote on 2025-01-30, 23:06:

I bought this plain looking PC on eBay for what seemed to be a very unusual case - it's MiniITX but with both full sized 5.25" and 3.5" drive bays ...

So just after I'd bought that ITX PC for its case, which didn't end up being as EPIA-ideal as I'd hoped, I actually got another, similar but differently arranged one.

This little case is even closer to my ideal for a retro ITX machine. It's physically a good few inches smaller in every dimension, mainly because it has a FlexATX PSU rather than TFX.

What clearly started out as a 5.25" drive bay is configured as a slim optical drive bay with a 3.5" bay below. The 3.5" bay again doesn't really suit a regular floppy drive because of the lack of depth. BUT considering no ITX boards have floppy controllers anyway, I figure an adapted external slim USB floppy mounted at the top of the 3.5" bay would work well. Not least as the VIA EPIA has a very shallow cooler etc. As long as the drives are higher than the ATX connector/cables, should work ...

Added bonus - the dead space above the I/O shield actually has a full height expansion slot - ideal for a short card in a riser, or more likely one of the CF card adapters.

The PC was originally built by Novatech, a pretty respectable UK OEM / parts retailer. Case probably needs respraying though! I do like the style - clearly nothing special, but the vertical stripes kind of evoke 90s IBM to me ... Half wonder about respraying it beige?

It came with a Haswell i3 4th generation with 8Gb DDR3 on a decent ASUS board. Too new for XP though, and too old for Win11?

justin1985 wrote on 2025-02-03, 16:50:

So just after I'd bought that ITX PC for its case, which didn't end up being as EPIA-ideal as I'd hoped, I actually got another, […]
Show full quote

justin1985 wrote on 2025-01-30, 23:06:

I bought this plain looking PC on eBay for what seemed to be a very unusual case - it's MiniITX but with both full sized 5.25" and 3.5" drive bays ...

So just after I'd bought that ITX PC for its case, which didn't end up being as EPIA-ideal as I'd hoped, I actually got another, similar but differently arranged one.

The attachment IMG20250203161139.jpg is no longer available

This little case is even closer to my ideal for a retro ITX machine. It's physically a good few inches smaller in every dimension, mainly because it has a FlexATX PSU rather than TFX.

What clearly started out as a 5.25" drive bay is configured as a slim optical drive bay with a 3.5" bay below. The 3.5" bay again doesn't really suit a regular floppy drive because of the lack of depth. BUT considering no ITX boards have floppy controllers anyway, I figure an adapted external slim USB floppy mounted at the top of the 3.5" bay would work well. Not least as the VIA EPIA has a very shallow cooler etc. As long as the drives are higher than the ATX connector/cables, should work ...

The attachment IMG20250203161222.jpg is no longer available

Added bonus - the dead space above the I/O shield actually has a full height expansion slot - ideal for a short card in a riser, or more likely one of the CF card adapters.

The PC was originally built by Novatech, a pretty respectable UK OEM / parts retailer. Case probably needs respraying though! I do like the style - clearly nothing special, but the vertical stripes kind of evoke 90s IBM to me ... Half wonder about respraying it beige?

It came with a Haswell i3 4th generation with 8Gb DDR3 on a decent ASUS board. Too new for XP though, and too old for Win11?

If you do a clean install Windows 11 will complain about stuff but should install no issues. You can always use the tool Rufus to make windows 11 skip the hardware check and make a local account.

I bought a scrap lot off ebay cause I saw something in the photo listings, an AGP Voodoo 5. Sadly it was packed loose with the other parts and now needs some repairs. Anyone know of a source for the 4.7 coils? It will need some work but hopefully can be saved if not by myself then someone else.

The poor Voodoo 5. Check for broken SMD capacitors as well, especially on the reverse side of the PCB under the VSA chips.

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-02-03, 18:35:

The poor Voodoo 5. Check for broken SMD capacitors as well, especially on the reverse side of the PCB under the VSA chips.

Yeah, I'm going to go over it with a microscope and check every thing. Thankfully this card is very well documented.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-02-03, 07:38:

myne wrote on 2025-02-03, 07:24:

Right, but what can X79 do that current can't?

Support for Windows XP without having to jump through too many hoops is what I would have said a year or two ago... but it seems that people have come up with weird solutions to getting Ryzen systems working in XP these days despite having absolutely zero official support. No idea if there are any major downsides or limitations to those setups though (ACPI, USB 3, AHCI, etc.).

Someone here got Ryzen running 98SE and with a physcial Voodoo 2 no less, so....

Anyways, a few stuff I have managed to secure from a scrapper:
- Soyo 5ED
- MSI MS-5169
- Diamond Monster MX300 in quite some need of repairs

I'll update y'all tomorrow - he has some fresh stuff coming thru.

Veeb0rg wrote on 2025-02-03, 18:29:

I bought a scrap lot off ebay cause I saw something in the photo listings, an AGP Voodoo 5. Sadly it was packed loose with the other parts and now needs some repairs. Anyone know of a source for the 4.7 coils? It will need some work but hopefully can be saved if not by myself then someone else.

Man, that's sad to see. It definitely wasn't that damaged in the listing pictures. I was talking to that seller and he was in the process of getting it pulled out of the scrap lot so it would be packaged separately and protected in shipping... then the lot sold while I was waiting for him and his hands were tied. 🤷

Hope you can find parts for it though. Definitely check it over thoroughly, especially for scrapes on the PCB or any broken traces that could cause shorts.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-02-04, 01:53:

Veeb0rg wrote on 2025-02-03, 18:29:

I bought a scrap lot off ebay cause I saw something in the photo listings, an AGP Voodoo 5. Sadly it was packed loose with the other parts and now needs some repairs. Anyone know of a source for the 4.7 coils? It will need some work but hopefully can be saved if not by myself then someone else.

Man, that's sad to see. It definitely wasn't that damaged in the listing pictures. I was talking to that seller and he was in the process of getting it pulled out of the scrap lot so it would be packaged separately and protected in shipping... then the lot sold while I was waiting for him and his hands were tied. 🤷

Hope you can find parts for it though. Definitely check it over thoroughly, especially for scrapes on the PCB or any broken traces that could cause shorts.

Guess that was me. 🤣. He could have still packed it nicely even after it sold. The PCB looks ok its just got a bunch of knocked off caps and the coils. I did send them a message when I bought it asking them to pack things better but they never responded. The motherboard/cpu and hdd did end up working which holds hope the voodoo will do after repairs.

Veeb0rg wrote on 2025-02-04, 05:33:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-02-04, 01:53:

Veeb0rg wrote on 2025-02-03, 18:29:

I bought a scrap lot off ebay cause I saw something in the photo listings, an AGP Voodoo 5. Sadly it was packed loose with the other parts and now needs some repairs. Anyone know of a source for the 4.7 coils? It will need some work but hopefully can be saved if not by myself then someone else.

Man, that's sad to see. It definitely wasn't that damaged in the listing pictures. I was talking to that seller and he was in the process of getting it pulled out of the scrap lot so it would be packaged separately and protected in shipping... then the lot sold while I was waiting for him and his hands were tied. 🤷

Hope you can find parts for it though. Definitely check it over thoroughly, especially for scrapes on the PCB or any broken traces that could cause shorts.

Guess that was me. 🤣. He could have still packed it nicely even after it sold. The PCB looks ok its just got a bunch of knocked off caps and the coils. I did send them a message when I bought it asking them to pack things better but they never responded. The motherboard/cpu and hdd did end up working which holds hope the voodoo will do after repairs.

Yeah, I actually asked him after the sale if it seemed like you were buying them for scrap or to reuse. He said it did seem like you wanted to use them for something, so I suggested that he protect that board so that it doesn't get destroyed. Even if I didn't get it I still didn't want a Voodoo5 to get trashed. 🤷

After that exchange it's disappointing that he didn't pack anything around it... especially if you asked. That lot was easily listed at 3-4 times the scrap value since most of the weight was in a few big bulky copper coils, which aren't even worth shipping. Most likely those are what caused the damage in the first place, which is why I wanted the card out of the lot. Too bad really.

Anyway, hopefully you can either find a modern replacement for those broken coils or find a donor card that isn't also really valuable and rare. Let us know if you get it working. 😀