Alright, subscribe me to this game as well. At least for "newer" systems like this, I can have a better chance at guessing.
I saw this thread a few days ago, and I too immediatelly thought this would be an early and extremely budget socket A system from 2001-2002... except, my intuition was more along the lines of a cheap ECS motherboard, like the K7SEM with a soldered-on Duron CPU, and in the range of 600-750 MHz. And like Ozzuneoj above, I too am surprised the motherboard here actually has an AGP slot, given the "Modem-for-AGP-graphics" card in that upper slot. So that's a nice surprise - means this can actually make a decent Win98 system with a better GPU. Even with a lowly low Duron 600, it should still handle most late 90's games quite alright.
Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-04-01, 20:19:
And, despite the budget board, the caps don't look swollen. This just seems to be how these ultra low budget boards from the early 2000s are a lot of times. 😊
Or he just got lucky. I see OST RLP for the CPU VRM output/low side, which are miles better than the equivalent G-Luxon caps that were often used on these and ECS motherboards at the time. Then again, the caps could be bad but just not showing it yet, which is something I find quite often with OST's.
Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-04-01, 20:19:
Generic 300W PSU that is restricting the CPU cooling at least a bit (thankfully it isn't covering it completely)
Yeah, that's how these cases with "side PSUs" regularly are. Mine originally came with a Pentium II, which was fine, given it's a slot CPU and took airflow from the side. But then in the early 2000's, I upgraded to a socket A Duron with a much taller-than-necessary heatsink, and it was terribly suffocated by the PSU. Dropping the plastic adapter on that heatsink alone lowered the temperatures by close to 10C. And since there are no exhaust fans, that too made my system run hot. So I ran it with the sides removed, which dropped another 3-5C. Total went from mid-high 50's to low 40's under max load.
Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-04-01, 20:19:
Definitely check the caps in the PSU though. I bet at least a few are bloated and leaking.
Or just outright replace it as it's probably not worth keeping - at least not without some cap upgrades and possibly filling out the missing input AC filtering components.
Speaking of the cheap PSU, here's one area where I'm good at and can comfortably say this "generic" PSU is actually made by Linkworld.
These are pretty budget PSUs, but not terrible once upgraded with some proper parts inside (for anyone who likes to do this kind of "fuckery" like I do 🤣 ).
I'm fairly familiar with their LPJ/2 platform, but this one might be an older design of that. In any case, it should be your standard half-bridge design with lots of undersized parts and standard 2-transistor 5VSB circuit that's probably on the virge of overheating and killing itself. So caps in the PSU should definitely be changed before powering up the motherboard with this PSU.
Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-04-01, 20:19:Also, the hard drive is one of those goofy old Seagates with the rubber jacket on it. I had guessed 20GB and I'm sticking with t […]
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Also, the hard drive is one of those goofy old Seagates with the rubber jacket on it. I had guessed 20GB and I'm sticking with that guess, so it should be something like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267604808200
(Date code is late 2001)
I guess 40GB is also a possibility, but that would have been quite a bit more expensive at the time, so I doubt it.
I don't think those "goofy" rubber jacketed Seagates went that high. IIRC, they go up to about 20 GB tops. I have an 18 GB model in one of my Pentium 3 rigs, and it's been quite a reliable HDD.
Recently, I also got another one (or was it two now?? I don't remember) in the range of 8 to 10 GB.
In any case, my guess would be this one is probably more than 10 GB, but less than 18 GB. And that it still works! 😀
Note: if it clicks, DO NOT POWER IT OFF! Let it click for a bit and it should "straighten" itself out. These old Seagates have amazing recalibrating capabilities. I got an ATA IV not too long ago as well, and after about 30 seconds of clicking as it tried to startup, eventually it did. And now it works fine.
*EDIT*
No wonder this board seemed so familiar. I actually have the same thing... or a nearly identical version of it. See picture below.
One peculiarity I've ran into this board is that it does NOT want to work with NTFS-formatted OSs. I tried With XP first and then 2000, and both failed about midway through the file copying process, saying some system file (insert random name) was corrupt. Once I switched to FAT32 for my Windows 2000 install, everything went through just fine. Of course, I wanted something more retro, so I tried Windows 98SE, as seen on the picture below. I think that was my first time back on Win98 is nearly 20 or so years.
The onboard graphics aren't actually too bad for most Win95/98 games. And the onboard audio was picked up by Windows, IIRC. So not a bad little motherboard.
