775. Had time to do a quick benchmark at 3.73Ghz with the e5800. Tried 3.8GHz but got BSOD in 3dm99. Might see if the other e5800 has more headroom, though at these speeds I’m also borderline on the chipset

The E7500 still edges the E5800 in the lobby benchmark, despite a 600MHz clock disadvantage and a much lower memory clock (but tighter timings, realised now I forgot to put those in, but they are the 3-4-4-8 for the E5800) tomorrow I’ll see if I can tweak these a bit

2.5-3-3-6 is as good as it gets. 2-3-3-6 also works but doesn’t seem to provide a benefit in any of the benchmarks. I’m not sure this setting is actually applied in the bios

Seeing if I can find any stability problems now with this setup at stock everything.

I might use the case from my i7 for this build and find another for that. The i7 doesn’t need to have any drives, which gives some more options

Somebody stop me! (It will probably be the wife)

I’ve accidentally bought another PC. I wasn’t planning on it. I was innocently searching eBay for a case for the 775 system - I decided to list the Athlon system to see what would happen: So far, absolutely nothing.

As i said, I was only searching for a case. Preferably something matx. I found a couple of dell OEM cases that would have fit the bill, nothing as fancy as the Antec case I found for the Athlon.

I started looking at Antec stuff. As far as i know, they don’t make much in the way of matx stuff. But I was looking anyway, when I found a sonata case. Complete with some vintage hardware

Can anyone guess what spec it may be from these images? It’s taken me a while, but I have been able to deduce what the board is and what the GPU is. It was much harder to figure out than the MESH PC I bought containing the FX5900XT was

A few posts ago, I mentioned I had another socket 775 system I wanted to dig out and play around with. Turns out I was wrong!

Behold the magnificence of this Lenovo c205!

It has been sat on the floor in the corner of my office for the last 6 or 7 years. My brother passed it onto me from a house clearance he was involved in.

The original plan was to reset it and sell it. It was “windows 10 ready” so I upgraded it. Big mistake. It barely runs. I think the upgrade took most of a day. I may have even left it overnight to complete. After that I must’ve lost interest and so it remained until now.

I got the specs totally wrong. I thought it had an e7200 or similar in it, but it actually has something much worse. An AMD E-350! Apparently it’s similar to an atom. I’d never heard of it.

It needed a good clean. I have done a mediocre one

I managed to get into windows. Only took half an hour.

Ah. It only has 1.5Gb of RAM?? I guess that could be the problem.

Oh it has a spare slot! And I have some laptop ram kicking about. Time for an upgrade

So now it has 6Gb RAM (5.5Gb usable - the GPU has the other 512Mb) it is much better. I did not have 2 x 4Gb DDR3 to max it out at 8Gb. But it has made a huge difference.

I’ve been on the Lenovo website (on the machine itself!) to see what windows xp drivers it has. Apparently it only shipped with windows 7, but I’m pretty sure there will be wide ranging xp support

The plan is to have this machine in my garage for a quick reference to a computer catalogue I use called etka. It used to be widely viewable online but it’s all behind paywalls these days. The version I have works on NT/2000/XP only

Of course I’ll be doing some completely unnecessary benchmarks on it 😬

That’s the C205 all done. WindowsXP works great on it.

Benchmarks. It’s about 2x the speed of the socket 7 system in 99max and does fairly well in 2000 and in 2001 before tanking in 03/05/06

Time to move onto something more interesting now. The Antec sonata case filled with mystery hardware has finally arrived!

FullYes wrote on 2026-01-10, 17:09:

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2026-01-10, 10:46:

FullYes wrote on 2026-01-09, 19:49:

New CPU day! I just couldn’t help myself (I may have a problem!!) and bought a k6-3 for the socket 7.

Yes. You have a problem. It will probably get worse. You have the retro bug, and there is no cure.

Congrats on your purchase! Hope you have lots of free space in your home for the next retro PC you buy. 😀

No I’ve definitely reached my limit now. I promise!!

Told you!

Haha. You got me!

I am definitely not going to have any more machines, unless I stumble on a 486 (eek)

It also doesn’t look like I’m selling the Athlon setup either. (No interest at what it cost me)

This other system I’ve acquired. I will be selling it off, and just retain the case and the interesting GPU…as I really have no reason to keep the rest…

On that subject. Here it is!

It’s in much better condition externally than I was expecting

It’s also pretty dust free inside

It looks like it was a prebuilt machine. I didn’t ask for it and it wasn’t in the ad, but the seller sent me all of their original manuals.

Time to check the internals

Nice. Hope the new PC internals are good. Have you used that force feedback wheel yet?

Removed the ducting for the CPU fan. Interesting solution to airflow. All in the name of reducing noise apparently!

Now I can see the GPU properly

It’s a Quadro FX 1000, similar to an FX 5800. Nice! This will go well in the Athlon machine.

The motherboard is a socket 478 ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe. A very nice board with lots of features. Unfortunately, it very much needs a recap

I decided to see if it would fire up. No shorts and PSU voltages look good. Let’s do it!

It works! So I stuck a hdd in it and did a win98se quick install on it. Both DVD drives seem to work but the floppy drive needs attention. I could not get it to read my memtest86+ floppy. Didn’t try any others. I used one of my external usb floppy drives instead

The CPU is a 3.2GHz Prescott. Nothing exciting unfortunately!

It has 4 x 512MB Kingston RAM installed. It must have been upgraded at some point as their is paperwork for Corsair ram

RetroPCCupboard wrote on Today, 17:01:

Nice. Hope the new PC internals are good. Have you used that force feedback wheel yet?

Yes I used it for a few weeks playing nfs:Porsche. It works well but the bulb for the light on the wheel doesn’t work

Since I got the wheel I also got the joystick and joypad from the same range. Neither are boxed unfortunately. The joystick comes with a usb adaptor that I think will work on the joypad and possibly the wheel as well. Microsoft put out some great stuff around this time. Both of my retro mice are Microsoft optical usb ones that work through a ps/2 adaptor

FullYes wrote on Today, 16:41:

I am definitely not going to have any more machines, unless I stumble on a 486 (eek)

Any games in particular you want the 486 for? I think most will work on your socket 7 machine.

I bought a 386 because I couldn't resist the price (£40), and because I want a machine just for the old point and click adventures and for some authentic software development to make DOS games. Yes, I can do either of those things on my Socket 7, but there is something nostalgic about having to wait for the computer a bit.

I haven't built the 386 yet though, as it requires me to make a custom case. It is from an OEM system, and the seller had stripped it from the case.

FullYes wrote on Today, 17:20:

Yes I used it for a few weeks playing nfs:Porsche. It works well but the bulb for the light on the wheel doesn’t work

Since I got the wheel I also got the joystick and joypad from the same range. Neither are boxed unfortunately.

It is strange to me that the gameport versions of the wheel and Joystick are relatively cheap. Seems nobody wants them, but they are great devices.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on Today, 17:21:

Any games in particular you want the 486 for? I think most will work on your socket 7 machine. […]
Show full quote

FullYes wrote on Today, 16:41:

I am definitely not going to have any more machines, unless I stumble on a 486 (eek)

Any games in particular you want the 486 for? I think most will work on your socket 7 machine.

I bought a 386 because I couldn't resist the price (£40), and because I want a machine just for the old point and click adventures and for some authentic software development to make DOS games. Yes, I can do either of those things on my Socket 7, but there is something nostalgic about having to wait for the computer a bit.

I haven't built the 386 yet though, as it requires me to make a custom case. It is from an OEM system, and the seller had stripped it from the case.

Yeah basically I would have it as a full dos machine, totally un-necessary!

Now I have the k6-3+ and xp-m I can slow both machines down to improve dos compatability too. I’ve yet to find a game that wouldn’t work on either of them. I’ve had more trouble running stuff on the socket 7 than the Athlon weirdly. But something that doesn’t work on one seems to work on the other

RetroPCCupboard wrote on Today, 17:26:

FullYes wrote on Today, 17:20:

Yes I used it for a few weeks playing nfs:Porsche. It works well but the bulb for the light on the wheel doesn’t work

Since I got the wheel I also got the joystick and joypad from the same range. Neither are boxed unfortunately.

It is strange to me that the gameport versions of the wheel and Joystick are relatively cheap. Seems nobody wants them, but they are great devices.

I’ve never had them before. Friends of mine had them and rated them very highly. I got by for years on a generic 4-axis 4-button stick and 8 button joypad (4 of the buttons were actually mapped to 2 of the analogue axies)

I’ve yet to try the stick, but the joypad works perfectly. And I think both of them cost me less than £10 all in

So the 478 machine works, but it’s not stable. Not really a surprise. Installing win98 and drivers was trouble-free. But stress testing and benchmarking is problematic at best.

I have been able to complete 1 run of 3dmark99 max so far and that’s it!

Based on these results it’s a bit faster than the Athlon here. (CPU score) Nothing crazy between them.

One thing I do notice on the Athlon on the SDR board, in this benchmark is stutter in The 2nd game. When you round the corner towards the end and look back through the green glass. This system and the 775 are much smoother here.