First post, by LunarG
- Rank
- Oldbie
Hi everybody. I'm one of those, probably many, people who have been lurking in the shadows of this forum. I've been reading a lot, but so far only posted once, but a few weeks ago, I started a retro project, so I thought I'd better get involved here, as this seems to be the best place to find interesting information about old hardware.
Yesterday I went to a fleamarket just to have a look for old computer stuff, and I ended up buying 2 old LCD screens for almost nothing, two brand new in box KeyTronic KT2001 PS/2 keyboards and a few packets of 3.5inch floppies, also brand new in sealed boxes. The big scoop didn't happen until I dropped my folks off at their house though, as a quick chat with one of their neighbours revealed that she had an "old computer" sitting around that she hadn't used in years, which I was free to take if I wanted. Turns out it was a PIII based Compaq Deskpro EN, complete with a fairly nice CRT screen (which I wiill be using for my other retro build). It wasn't the most exciting system, but at least it was a Compaq based on standard ATX components, and not their mid-90's all integrated and no expansion slots stuff. So, after adding a few parts I've had sitting around I ended up with the following system:
Specs.
Pentium III 800MHz, running on a Compaq built motherboard using the i815 chipset.
512MB PC133 SDRAM, 10GB Maxtor HDD, NEC DVD-RW drive (just so it can read DVD's) and 3,5inch floppy drive.
NVidia Riva TNT2 Pro 16MB, and more importantly: my old Yamaha WaveForce 192XG sound card.
The system is running Windows 98 Second Edition, and I'm going to use it mainly for playing late 90's Win9x games. I've hooked it up to one of the LCD monitors I got on the fleamarket, as it allows for a much nicer desktop resolution. It's also connected to my LAN on a 100Mbit port, so I'm posting this from the PIII at the moment 😀
I'm going to need to get a better graphics card for it, as I doubt the TNT2 with only 16MB RAM will cut it for 3D games. For nostalgia purposes, a Matrox Millennium G400 MAX + Voodoo 2 SLi would be awesome, but I expect that would cost a bit. A Voodoo 5 might actually be more viable, but any suggestions for an appropriate card would be appreciated. Back in those days I think I'd probably just upgraded to a GeForce256 DDR (around the turn of the millennium), but those are quite rare as well I think.
Anyway, that's it, hope to be able to contribute on this forum in the future.
WinXP : PIII 1.4GHz, 512MB RAM, 73GB SCSI HDD, Matrox Parhelia, SB Audigy 2.
Win98se : K6-3+ 500MHz, 256MB RAM, 80GB HDD, Matrox Millennium G400 MAX, Voodoo 2, SW1000XG.
DOS6.22 : Intel DX4, 64MB RAM, 1.6GB HDD, Diamond Stealth64 DRAM, GUS 1MB, SB16.