Sounds exciting, looking forward to some photos!

I'll let others chime in with recs as I'm not too familiar with Socket 7 and have just started to dabble in that era.

Welcome to the forum!

Thank you. I’ll share a link to the eBay listing so you can have a preview, there are lots of pics on there

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=197653991093

FullYes wrote on 2025-10-31, 09:24:

Thank you. I’ll share a link to the eBay listing so you can have a preview, there are lots of pics on there

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=197653991093

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=197653 … ete=1&LH_Sold=1

Link didn’t seem to work. Try again

FullYes wrote on 2025-10-31, 09:25:

FullYes wrote on 2025-10-31, 09:24:

Thank you. I’ll share a link to the eBay listing so you can have a preview, there are lots of pics on there

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=197653991093

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=197653 … ete=1&LH_Sold=1

Link didn’t seem to work. Try again

Looks pretty good, caps too! I also like that you went with a desktop case, I think they're more a lot more interesting than towers.

FullYes wrote on 2025-10-31, 09:25:

FullYes wrote on 2025-10-31, 09:24:

Thank you. I’ll share a link to the eBay listing so you can have a preview, there are lots of pics on there

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=197653991093

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=197653 … ete=1&LH_Sold=1

Link didn’t seem to work. Try again

Looks like a nice setup - like sunkindly, if it was me I'd keep it in the desktop case but maybe look to retrobrite the front panel.

Opus were the public sector arm of Tiny Computers, and this model looks close to the spec you have there... https://web.archive.org/web/19980212165619fw_ … .uk/premier.htm

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2025-10-31, 17:27:

FullYes wrote on 2025-10-31, 09:25:

FullYes wrote on 2025-10-31, 09:24:

Thank you. I’ll share a link to the eBay listing so you can have a preview, there are lots of pics on there

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=197653991093

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=197653 … ete=1&LH_Sold=1

Link didn’t seem to work. Try again

Looks like a nice setup - like sunkindly, if it was me I'd keep it in the desktop case but maybe look to retrobrite the front panel.

Opus were the public sector arm of Tiny Computers, and this model looks close to the spec you have there... https://web.archive.org/web/19980212165619fw_ … .uk/premier.htm

Thanks for that! Yeah that looks identical to what I’ve bought!

Err, I might have to change the title of this thread! 🙈 (edit - I now have!)

Spent the past week or so researching/browsing eBay for additional components for this socket 7 system. It still hasn’t arrived, but I think it’ll be here tomorrow.
I wanted some kind of 3D card. Obviously with this system I’m limited to PCI and getting something really fast and modern would be pointless. A voodoo2 would be ideal, but crazy money now. I should never have sold mine!

I’ve seen several videos on Phil’s computer lab about the FX5500PCI and how good it is for retro-compatibility and price/performance. I had both a 5200 and 5600 back in the day, and remember neither fondly. Infact I had such a bad experience with that nvidia generation I switched to ATI for the next ~10 years.

But with the scarcity and cost of other options, I figured I’d try and get one from AliExpress, as Phil did. There are many on there, some for about the price Phil(‘scomputerlab) quoted in his most recent video, and some for totally crazy prices. I think the sellers have latched on to the community interest in these, as both times I attempted to buy one, both sellers said. “Sorry there is additional cost to ship to you.” First one said $90 extra and the 2nd one said $300!

I almost posted on here asking who might be a reputable seller on there, but instead I’ve switched direction. I’ll make this rig primarily for Dos, and for that the S3 should be adequate. At least to begin with.

I mentioned in the first post I was contemplating either a socket 7 or an Athlon XP build. Well, why not both?

I had my eye on a motherboard on eBay which was the right spec. A KT133A with an ISA slot. A Soltek SL-75KAV. I was uncomfortable with the asking price but it wasn’t that high when I think about how much it cost new. I put an offer in and it was accepted! But then I wasn’t sure what to do next. I still need all the other components and none of them are particularly cheap.

Having an AGP system, There is more choice for me to find a video card, but I still wanted good legacy compatibility. I had a GF4 MX 440
back in the day and I remember it as a stable and overclockable card. It seems to be a minefield buying one on eBay though, is the one I’m looking at 64 or 128bit? What ram and how fast? There are hundreds of different versions.

I was still pondering what to do when I got an offer from an eBay seller for an Athlon XP system I’d been watching. I had dismissed this system already as it didn’t have the right motherboard and it was in a hideous case. Still, the offer seemed quite reasonable and perhaps I can make use of the other components. I was at my PC so I had a big monitor to study the images carefully. I had previously only seen it on my phone. The description of the PC was pretty vague, no specs whatsoever, just lots of photos, including some pics of the inside. Then I spotted something. The GPU had a molex connector so it had to be a pretty decent one. It took me a while, but I eventually figured out what it is. If I am correct (and it works properly) then it will be worth buying this full system just for the video card. So I took the guys offer and paid for it. Hopefully it will be here by the weekend

So now I’ve gone from no retro PCs to 2 and a half in the space of a week, and I’ve not told the wife 😬

FullYes wrote on 2025-11-05, 23:08:

So now I’ve gone from no retro PCs to 2 and a half in the space of a week, and I’ve not told the wife 😬

Hehe, it can be quite the slippery slope.

She already complains I have too many computers. I’m in real trouble 🙈

Still no Pentium system today but I’m gathering bits for the athlon XP build:

2 x 256mb PC133 ram, CL2
An Athlon XP 2800+ Barton (2083MHz) (12.5x166)

The Soltek board has dip switches to change the multi up to 14x which should give me (if it works correctly) 1866MHz. If it doesn’t work, then I will have 1666MHz initially. Hopefully I can undervolt the CPU a little or go for some overclocking of the FSB. I don’t think these via chipsets are good for overclocking but I’m going to try it anyway 😬 I am sure I’ll also be tempted at some point to do the mod to force a higher multi, a nice round 2GHz would be cool.

My next pondering is what to do about storage. I am going to get a CF+IDE adaptor for the Pentium but I’m not sure of the performance of these on a newer build. I still have a 200Gb Maxtor IDE drive that I bought 20 years ago that still works perfectly so I’ll probably start with that with the Athlon. I have a 250Gb Samsung 830 SSD which I could also call into use with an adaptor. I was wondering in the car earlier how trim is handled in Win98 or if it’s even a consideration. I have not had chance to google but I assume this question has been asked and answered on here before

I’ve got my eye on an AWE64 on eBay but not sure if I would be better with a generic (but good quality) SB clone with a wavetable header.

Some stuff has arrived! Still no Pentium system. But enough Athlon stuff has arrived that I can start tinkering. Pics to follow

A few issues have stopped me posting for a few days. It was actually the Pentium system that arrived first. And what a time warp of a machine it is! It’s in superb condition. The photos on the advert didn’t do it justice

The yellowing isn’t actually that bad. The light in this room is quite a cool white I don’t think it really needs retro brightening

The stickers look like new!

All looks good at the back. Not much corrosion to speak of

The vga card is as I suspected. It’s a S3 virge DX375 and I’m pleased to see it’s already been upgraded to 4Mb! Looks like it was supplied like that from new.

Did some pre-checks. All PSU voltages good. Changed the CMOS battery and…it lives!

I have exactly the same PC!

Ah cool! Are you also from the UK?

Exciting times. I’ve been playing around with it this evening for a bit. Got straight into the bios. Im using a generic ps/2 keyboard and a Microsoft usb mouse that has a ps/2 adaptor. All working.

The hard drive still works. It’s a ~4Gb model which makes me think at some point the PC had a minor upgrade.

After I exited the bios the PC reset and booted straight into windows98SE. From the sticker on the front I was expecting windows 95. So I think it’s been upgraded at some point.

I was greeted by a desktop background of Renee O’Connor from Xena: Warrior princess. I suspect the original owner was not planning on donating this machine in this state!

I did not find a lot of interesting stuff digging though the files, the PC looks to have not been touched since around March 2003. There are still items in the recycle bin from 2002. I am assuming of course that the time and date were set correctly last time someone used it. It seems to default to 1/1/97 when the bios is cleared, so I’ve no reason to suspect it has been messed with since 2003.

The only game I’ve found so far is a save file and folder for tomb raider 2. Though the folder is pretty much empty.

It’s full of the usual bloat a PC of this era would have: Norton utilities and antivirus, zone alarm. Office toolbars. It took a long time to finish loading everything. My first upgrade will be to give it 64MB RAM and I’ll probably do a clean install of W98SE, but I will mainly use it for pure dos gaming. For now I’ve turned off most start-up items using msconfig to speed it up a bit.

Device manager had an install of ATI Mach 64 drivers. So perhaps the S3 is not the original vga card afterall!

The sound card seems to work in windows, haven’t tried it in DOS yet. I was hoping to listen to some MIDI but ran out of time.

It looks like USB drivers haven’t been set up properly. The on-board ports detect a usb stick but then cannot find a mass storage driver. The via add-in card looks to have drivers installed but nothing happens when I plug a usb in. Luckily I still have a box of floppy disks so I’ll be doing some file transfers on those to get the USB up and running from stuff I’ve got on my main pc. Glad i didn’t get rid of all my retro stuff 😬 I found a floppy disk install set for sim city 2000 which will be the first game I’ll play on this machine. The floppy drive and floppies still work, I’ve probably not used them in over 25 years.

So in summary. It all works and I’m very pleased with it!!

I should have proof-read again before submitting as I can’t edit it. But the Mach64 drivers were in add/remove programs, not device manager

Here is Renée O’Connor in all her glory. I bid you a good evening

FullYes wrote on 2025-11-11, 23:29:

Ah cool! Are you also from the UK?

Yeah, I am from the UK. I don't recall how much I paid for the PC, but I think around £100, and that was several years ago. So you got a good deal.

Mine was very yellowed on the front. I retro brighted it, and that made it look much better. However most of the yellow has come back now, and it's not in direct sunlight. So that was a waste of time really.

Mine currently has an S3 graphics card, 200Mhz Pentium MMX, Soundblaster 16 and a Voodoo 1. I am actually planning to replace the internals though.

I have been building on my test bench a more flexible DOS machine. Still using a Pentium MMX, but over-clocked to 300mhz. It will be switchable down to 200Mhz with a front mounted switch.

It will have 64Mb RAM, Voodoo 1, S3 Virge Graphics card, Soundblaster 16 with 2mb Wavetable board. 4 speed optical drive in top bay (as its quiet) and a removable caddy in the lower bay.

I have several of the caddies. So I plan to have several use cases for this PC, and different OSes.

I personally really like this PC case, which is why I am using it for my build. The system, as it is now (very similar to yours) has been great for the last couple of years. But it does struggle a bit with some later games. Which is why I want to upgrade it a bit. But I do also have a system with Pentium II with Voodoo 2, so there is some overlap.

Yeah I really like the case too now. It’s surprisingly compact considering it’s full ATX which is useful in my office full of stuff!

I know my previous Pentium struggled with 3D titles. A k6-2/3/+ would help, but I decided it was more cost effective/beneficial to performance to build a 2nd machine like you have.

I have almost everything I need now to put together the Athlon system. Just waiting on a GPU

Ok so my 2nd Athlon setup has arrived. The plan for this is to strip it and sell the not needed parts off of it. I have mainly bought it for the GPU. Fingers crossed I haven’t bought a deceased one

https://ebay.us/m/zeIVyr

In addition to the GPU, it’s got 2 DVD drives - one for the Pentium system and another for spare. I’m planning on binning the case as it is quite hideous.

More playing with the Pentium system yesterday. Swapped the USB card from the Athlon system into it as it’s an NEC one, and the orientation of the ports means I can actually plug something into them! It’s works perfectly using the nusb36 driver stack I got off here.

Done a fresh install of win98 and prepared a boot floppy for DOS using Phil’s guide and a few additional EMM386 tweaks to get over 600k free base memory. So far all the games I’ve tried seem to be working ok. I’ve yet to try any really challenging games, but if any struggle I’ll just run them on the Athlon

Still waiting for the 64MB ram stick to arrive. But it runs much better on a fresh ‘98 install just with the 32

I managed to get the Athlon PC I’m parting out fired up today. I thought it was dead at first, but it turned out to be the the ram I bought for it. One stick is totally dead. With the other stick in, it comes to life. The GPU appears to be working! Too early to say for sure as I’ve only got to the bios screen. But it’s a good start! The cpu fan is bloody noisy though. I’ve ordered a noctua for it.

I might start a separate thread for the Athlon stuff as I can’t change the thread title. (Edit - I have now changed it!) I also have a 3rd machine that I already finished some months ago though I wouldn’t class that as retro yet. It’s a winXP build using an i7-2600k, a P67 mATX board and a GeForce GTX 460. Unlike these older builds, the XP system cost me (almost) nothing!