EvieSigma wrote on 2020-07-13, 02:44:

darry wrote on 2020-07-12, 15:19:

Socket 1366, though not yet retro, is my favourite . Bandwith, expandability (Xeon compatibility), native support for legacy PCI, longevity are the key factors .

I have a Xeon X5675 based one with 48GB of RAM as a triple boot Windows 7/ Windows 10/Linux setup and I intend to keep it a long time . I have a spare motherboard for it too and a few lesser 1366 CPUs, so this thing should run for a very long time .

Board is a SuperMicro x8Sax .

I'm wanting to get a LGA1366 board that can overclock, as the Xeons really wake up when you overclock the snot out of them. The X5675 has a 3.06GHz base clock and 3.46GHz boost clock, yet can easily be made to run at a 4.2GHz boost clock.

The X8SAX is not really conducive to overclocking . When I had P6X58D Premium (before it died which is, apparently, rather common), I overclocked my i7 930 to 4GHz . Fun times .

It's honestly kinda insane how much headroom LGA1366 chips have, especially the Xeons as they were never intended to run faster than stock to begin with.

S370, mATX, Via C3, for compact dos/win98 builds. Add in a Voodoo3 and an audiodrive/ymf719 for some brilliant 90s gaming.

Socket 3/VLB for several reasons:

• It works fine for most of the games I'm interested in (late 80's up to around 1995)
• I find tinkering with hardware from that era really fun
• For some reason I enjoy filling as many of the MB slots as possible with cards, and it's easier to do with these earlier boards that don't have any integrated stuff
• I prefer the simplicity of the MS-DOS command line, no resource hog or bullshit such as the Windows registry
• Nostalgia of course!

I also like Socket 7 and Slot 1 very much, but I despise Win9x, which is almost mandatory on those systems. When I finish a build on those platforms, my interest plummets once the time comes for installing/configuring the OS. It's not a recent thing however, in the 90's I stuck to DOS for as long as I was able to, I never felt comfortable with Win9x and that feeling persists until this day.

Socket 3 /486 just because of all the different card types it had (ISA/VLB/PCI/MCA/EISA) plus you can even get a 486 card for a Nubus slot Mac.

TheMobRules wrote on 2020-07-13, 05:20:

I also like Socket 7 and Slot 1 very much, but I despise Win9x, which is almost mandatory on those systems. When I finish a build on those platforms, my interest plummets once the time comes for installing/configuring the OS. It's not a recent thing however, in the 90's I stuck to DOS for as long as I was able to, I never felt comfortable with Win9x and that feeling persists until this day.

Yep. 9x sucked hard! I find a good compromise is to dual boot NT4 and DOS/Win3.x

I love slot1, and a lot of that comes from the fact i never had one. I have a few of them now. I'm still searching for one in the 700-1000 range, though they are apparently more rare.

Probably my second favorite was my 486, which i later hotrodded with one of those evergreen 133mhz CPUs. Still miss that one.

Had socket 370, it was a great system, but for some reason it isn't as interesting to modify.
i think i could say the same for socket 478, though i am starting to get into that more recently.

Socket 7/super 7 for me, it has such a range of things to play with, Intel Pentium & Pentium MMX, AMD k5, K6, K6-2, K6-III, Cyrix 6x86, MX, MII, Idt Winchip C6, C6-2, RiSE MP6 CPU's. you can use ISA, PCI and AGP video cards, ISA and PCI sound cards. chipsets where available from many makers too offering a different experience. I don't think we have ever had the opportunity to experiment before or since with such a range of different bits on the one base platform.

Ever since I bought the April 95 edition of Byte magazine, it's socket 8 for me.

But I like all Intel's gaffes and all duallies 🥰

I like 486 and SS7.

486 because that was the first PC I built (I never bought a pre-built system until I started collecting), and SS7 because I always like the K6 series.

Socket 939 might not be considered retro, but that and socket 754 eluded me as a I had a socket A system and a socket 478 system so I held off upgrading until 2nd gen Conroe. Now that I have nothing to do and a bit of extra money to spend being stuck in the house, I've been dabbling with 754 and 939. I'd really like to get a socket 370 board to play with that has tualtian support, but ordering stateside is quite expensive. I find most of these boards to be in continental europe on he evil auction sites.

Slot 1 because:
- this was the first platform I build a pc from single parts I've bought
- CPU from PII 233MHz up. to P3 1GHz and even Tualatins 1,4GHz are possible
- AGP slot
- up to 3 ISA slots
- jumperless

Its the most versatile platform possible - allowing to play old DOS games with compatible sound ISA cards as well as more modern more demanding ones till around the year 2001.

Close one is SS7 with CPUS from 60MHz to K6 550.

The one o favour a lot - C2D LGA775 - I had this set up for years just changing CPUS and graphic cards and still capable of running new games - often faster than already existing I3/5/7. But this is nor really retro as no AGP and ISA makes it less compatible with win98/DOS.

486 and slot 1

486 is great for tinkering and reliving my early PC days.

Slot 1 is just super stable and great for late dos/most windows 98 games.

jondoom wrote on 2020-07-13, 22:05:

Socket 939 might not be considered retro, but that and socket 754 eluded me as a I had a socket A system and a socket 478 system so I held off upgrading until 2nd gen Conroe. Now that I have nothing to do and a bit of extra money to spend being stuck in the house, I've been dabbling with 754 and 939. I'd really like to get a socket 370 board to play with that has tualtian support, but ordering stateside is quite expensive. I find most of these boards to be in continental europe on he evil auction sites.

If you are referring to the auction site whose name rhymes with Botany Bay, I have had good luck so far there with sellers there from Eastern Europe . Shipping may be a bit steep, but overall prices seem to be lower .

Socket3 and Socket7.

Socket3 because it was my first personal PC. I didnt buy it, but I took it to college with me. It's also the only platform I experienced that stuck around long enough to make upgrading the CPU worthwhile. (I've upgraded plenty of other CPU's but thats usually because the previous owner made a poor choice. IMO: Most sockets/slots if your initial purchase is mid-high range, there wont ever be a worthwhile upgrade. The next socket/slot is always a superior price/performance choice). Technology moved a little slower than - so I upgraded the 486sx33 -> 486dx4-100.

Socket7 because it was awesomely long lived like socket3, and it was during this period that I had my first experience using 3d accelerated graphics.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-07-12, 14:41:

If we're talking about x86 only, then I'm going to go with 80286. Probably a pretty unpopular opinion, but I find 286s are just […]
Show full quote

If we're talking about x86 only, then I'm going to go with 80286. Probably a pretty unpopular opinion, but I find 286s are just really interesting to screw around with. 286s represent a transitional period, and were available for 8 years, so there was a lot of variety in the hardware.

There was transition from:
-5.25" to 3.5" drives
-MDA/CGA/EGA to VGA
-DIP to SIMM memory
-MFM/RLL to ESDI and IDE
-84-key to 101-key keyboards
-Grey to Beige case colours

Interesting events and features:

-ISA was decoupled from the main bus.
-BIOS setup went from floppies to ROM based
-Expansion RAM on an ISA card
-EMS memory
-Turbo buttons
-LED displays (some pretty fancy ones on Everex systems)
-Introduction of GUI and mouse

I guess every platform evolved during its life, but I just find 286s to be more extreme. You never know what kind of weird and exciting features you're going to get when you find a 286.

They're also good to own if you're into 80s culture.

100% agree, I'm a 286 fanatic

flupke11 wrote on 2020-07-13, 18:57:

Ever since I bought the April 95 edition of Byte magazine, it's socket 8 for me.

But I like all Intel's gaffes and all duallies 🥰

socket 8 is a solid runner up

-generic Socket 4
-late era Socket 3
-late era socket 4
-socket 8
-super/socket 7

I'd love to experiment with a socket 8 PC but I've been unable to find a working (standard AT/ATX) board or complete OEM PC... I have a 200MHz 256k pentium pro, but a working board keeps eluding me... Right now I'm wondering if a socket 8 to slot 1 adapter would be easier to find.

I think my most favorite retro socket would be s370, with s7 trailing closely behind.
I also like sA, s754, s939 and s3 but in the end s370 was the most fun for me to build, all the way from Celeron 400 to Tualatin 1400.

Even though my first PC was a slot 1 build, I never really liked that platform that much from a mechanical standpoint. I mean it ran reasonably stable and I build several Slot 1 builds, but overall I preferred s370.