Greetings

Firstly I would like to announce that I am an idiot.

I had a “maxed” socket 7 build up until a few years ago, made up of components I’d either bought new in the late ‘90s or with components I’d bought cheap off eBay in the early noughties. Parts included a GF2 MX, a voodoo2 and an AWE64 gold. I sold the machine when I moved house. The reasoning behind it was; “sell it while it still worked” as I did not think I could easily repair it if it ever did finally break down.

The system was based on a FullYes Intel 82430VX motherboard, which was the first motherboard I ever bought (2nd hand at a computer car boot sale) and either ran a Pentium 233 MMX or a K6/2-400 in its final form, but it was originally paired with a Pentium 75 (which I o/c’d to 100Mhz 😬)

I’ve been hankering for a dos/w98 machine again recently, torn between a socket 7 build and a kt133a-based Athlon XP. But I moreorless have to start from scratch as I’d cleared out all of my retro add-in cards. So building something from scratch was going to cost a lot of money for either option.

So I was really looking for a full system as a fixer-upper. I can solder and with a lot of inspiration from YouTubers like necroware, crg and Phil’scomputer lab I looked for such a machine. I wasn’t in a rush, but I’ve just bought what looks like a good base on eBay

The seller didn’t provide much information but from the pictures, it has the MSI 5158 TX5 motherboard. The CPU appears to be a Pentium 233MMX based on how the jumpers are set and the sticker on the front of the case. There is a sound blaster vibra16 (model CT4170) and I think an S3 virge vga card. It appears to work but may need recommissioning.

So it has similar bones to what I had before. Some benefits over my last system is that it’s atx and has native usb, I had a lot of issues with usb cards on my old system. Particularly when I had the voodoo2 installed.

It’s in a desktop case. Not sure if I should transplant it to a modern tower or not. The case is pretty beat up.

Im looking forward to getting it and doing some tinkering. My main interest will be for playing dos games from the mid-late 90s with maybe the odd windows game thrown in. Ideally I would find a 3D card such as what I had before, and maybe a better sound card. What would you guys recommend?