Greetings and happy new year! Been reading enough on this sweet forum that I had to register. Lots of info and insight which I'll definitely have need for. I'm planning to build a 90s Socket 7 system for fun; have some ideas and I'm sure some more will come from this forum. I just jumped into full time self employment, so I now have much more time for hobbies.

I was in college from 94 to 98. For adequate weekend $$, I refurbished and sold computers similar to what I'm planning. The Internet became well available to college students during my sophomore year (95/96), so I bought "older" machines, added new 56K modems, and sold them to fellow college students; no shortage of buyers! Only about 10% of homes in the US had computers at that time. My first computer was a used 386DX I bought in September 94 for $400. The machines I sold were 386, 486, and P5 Pentiums. Like now, I never had a new machine, always a generation behind. I remember when I graduated I had a Pentium MMX, I think 133 MHz.

My "current" rig is a E6750 Core 2 Duo with a 1GB Radeon video card. That second hand MMX could never handle Saints Row, but it played Panzer General just fine! I'm planning on a MMX 233 MHZ with a board with a VIA VP2 or VP3 chipset, ideally a FIC PA 2007 board. Been a while, so I'll have to relearn a lot. I remember how finicky boards of thar era could be, so it could be a challenge to get components to work together, but I suppose that's part of the fun. I'll be interested to hear of any sources for machines and parts of course, and looking forward to being a member of the forum.