Building a missing link in my retro PC collection - a WinXP box around an AMD platform.

This time a mATX Gigabyte mobo with an Athlon 64 X2, Radeon 5770 together in a lovely little Antec SFF case -- together make a powerful but fairly low-wattage combination for WinXP gaming.

Wondering what sound card to use. I already have multiple WinXP retro builds with X-Fis and Xonars...are there any other interesting sound cards for WinXP that I am missing out on??

Ikea'ed what had been a previously unmentionable corner of the room...

Nice collection! Would love to have all of the Ultima's!

My SD Card to IDE, Gotek, and Bios Battery showed up this week, so I got my Zenith up and running. A big thanks to "PC Hoarder Patrol Offline" for the configuration software. All I had to do was boot up off my Gotek, and then run a file called CF and it made my Zenith a happy computer.

Setting up the SD to IDE was much easier on this 486 than my AT&T. It has auto detect IDE. The only hiccup I had was with the SD. At first I had a c drive, but I could not format it with system. After messing with FDISK, I ended up with a missing operating system error. Running FDISK again would not recognize the drive.

What finally worked for me, was to format the SD with RUFUS as a bootable drive in Windows 10. Then when I ran FDISK on it on the 486 again, it recognized the SD as a C drive. Then when I formatted it with system, that finally worked.

I have an Optiplex 330. As remarkable as it gets, but it served me well as a utility and testing PC in the past couple of years. Lately it was acting up. I don't know if it was because of the busted caps on the motherboard, the C2Q Q8200S I wanted to upgrade it with or the new BIOS, but it was really unstable. I've left it alone for a year and now I thought, I install a fresh Windows 7 on it, test it out and if it still has stability issues, I'll just salvage whatever I can from it.

Specs: Pentium Dual Core E2140, 2GB DDR2 800MHz, 80GB HDD, Intel GMA X3100

Installing the fresh Windows went without issues, so I gave it some tests.

3DMark 2001SE default settings - 4673
Ridiculously low. Much lower than expected.

GTA San Andreas 1024x768, everything else on default - 9fps on average
GTA San Andreas 1024x768 low - 21fps on average
I had better experiences on Geforce 2 MX cards.

Unreal Tournament 2004 (GOG) 1024x768, everything else on default
Fraps just gave up with this game, but it was a smooth experience.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) 640x480 low
Fraps still didn't do anything. Based on what it felt like, the framerate was in the mid-to-high teens.

I didn't expect anything from this PC in gaming, but I still feel a little disappointed. I think it underperforms even for what it is.

Intel X3100 IGP is just dead slow, hate to say it. Does it have a proper PCIe slot?

Yes Optiplex 330 does have PCIe slot. But only 1 slot wide of specific length, and in SFF chassis, low profile cards.

Cheers,

Sure, I used to have a HD3450 in it, this is a low profile PC. I took it out because it's a DMS-59 card and I didn't like the adapter cable, but it's still my only low profile PCI-e graphics card and it isn't a speed beast either. Still infinitely better than the X3100 I'm sure of it. But the X3100 underperforming an MX440 is just too pathetic. I can't believe that it's THAT slow.

To be fair, I just tested it's gaming performance out of curiosity and to test whether the PC as a whole still has stability issues and it passed the test. I'm not planning on playing anything on it. I'm thinking whether I should use it as a file server for my actual retro machines, though I consider a Raspberry for that too or some sort of interface machine between my Linux based daily driver and the retro machines, though the Dell being a small form factor PC, it doesn't allow me to add all the drives and card readers I'd need.

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-03-21, 17:43:

I have an Optiplex 330. As remarkable as it gets, but it served me well as a utility and testing PC in the past couple of years. […]
Show full quote

I have an Optiplex 330. As remarkable as it gets, but it served me well as a utility and testing PC in the past couple of years. Lately it was acting up. I don't know if it was because of the busted caps on the motherboard, the C2Q Q8200S I wanted to upgrade it with or the new BIOS, but it was really unstable. I've left it alone for a year and now I thought, I install a fresh Windows 7 on it, test it out and if it still has stability issues, I'll just salvage whatever I can from it.

Specs: Pentium Dual Core E2140, 2GB DDR2 800MHz, 80GB HDD, Intel GMA X3100

Installing the fresh Windows went without issues, so I gave it some tests.

3DMark 2001SE default settings - 4673
Ridiculously low. Much lower than expected.

GTA San Andreas 1024x768, everything else on default - 9fps on average
GTA San Andreas 1024x768 low - 21fps on average
I had better experiences on Geforce 2 MX cards.

Unreal Tournament 2004 (GOG) 1024x768, everything else on default
Fraps just gave up with this game, but it was a smooth experience.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) 640x480 low
Fraps still didn't do anything. Based on what it felt like, the framerate was in the mid-to-high teens.

I didn't expect anything from this PC in gaming, but I still feel a little disappointed. I think it underperforms even for what it is.

Oh boy, the 330 is retro already? We still have about two dozens of them in several departments. Yes, they’re slow as ****, but upgraded with more RAM and SSDs they do run Windows 10 well enough for the warehouses.

CMB75,

Purchase large order of 1 port Intel Pro/1000 PT x1 PCIe with low profile bracket included in the kit and put them in at your work, if you get them in large order from chinese, they are typically 25 each. And they will off load the ethernet traffic processing away from CPU and gain about 20% performance back. This what I did with my optiplex 780 E8600 using PT ethernet card netted me 1 more year out of it.

Cheers,

Worked some more on compaq 4/33i as 386DX 33. From storage box, unpacked my correct, matched set of the 4x4mb parity SIMM and tested them. located one defective SIMM and inspected then found fractured solder on one end of 16 bit chip IC and resoldered.

Now the computer see 16MB + 4MB as 20MB total. But I'll need that set for other computer that requires 70ns or 60ns.

Cheers,

I got a Cakewalk SPS-25 (rebranded Roland UA-25 with slightly different device ID) from between 2004ish to 2008ish to to work under Windows 10 using Vista x64 drivers for the UA-25 (anything newer did not work) . I hope that qualifies as retro .

MCGA wrote on 2021-03-21, 02:17:

My SD Card to IDE, Gotek, and Bios Battery showed up this week, so I got my Zenith up and running. A big thanks to "PC Hoarder Patrol Offline" for the configuration software. All I had to do was boot up off my Gotek, and then run a file called CF and it made my Zenith a happy computer.

Great looking old PC's ! Good job !

darry wrote on 2021-03-22, 01:58:

I got a Cakewalk SPS-25 (rebranded Roland UA-25 with slightly different device ID) from between 2004ish to 2008ish to to work under Windows 10 using Vista x64 drivers for the UA-25 (anything newer did not work) . I hope that qualifies as retro .

Nice find and Good work ! Spent my weekend fighting with Win10 >> NOT VINTAGE << on my moms computer because MS forced a semi annual update to it that messed up everything.

Thanks!

I hastily painted the front today and shoved in my 40x IDE CDROM Drive -- which I bought new stock a few years back for 5 bucks, so had fun unboxing it.

When I painted the front case, long story short, the parts were in a box next to my window. I should have known better, a gust of wind pushed the box off and caused one of the 3.5" plates to land on top of the main face plate. This left a mark, which I then painted over. No big deal though, it looks pretty good in person IMO.

Just to get the CDROM in was a chore. There was hardly any room between its back and the PSU. It took me about 15 minutes to figure out the right configuration for the IDE ribbon cable, so that it could also connect to the SD card drive and not hinder the plastic rod which is used to power on the PSU. I also had to factor in the Floppy cable, which was in the way.

To make things more difficult, he GOTEK's screw holes barely lined up with the case holes, and there were no holes on the left, just a rail slot -- I don't have any rails. I found some rubber fan spacers that fit, but not perfectly, but I managed to get it in fairly level. To add even more work, there was a large gap between the GOTEK and CDROM. So I found a piece of wood and cut it -- a tiny bit too short, then painted it the same color as the front bezel. It works, but I'm going to order some styrene sheets and make another attempt.

Anyways, I'm happy with it. Nice to finally have a more boxy case with lines. 😀

I ordered a FX 8120 for $25 to bump up a friends old Phenom ii x 2 am3 setup he built back in the day new. Its a MSI 890 board with am3+ support! He already upgraded it with a gtx 970 and 16gb of ram a few years ago.

Not super retro. But I was amazed he was still running a dual core!

A while back, I replaced the capacitors of an Abit KA7-100 mainboard, which is a pain in the ass with all that RoHS solder. It took hours.
After that, the board refused to boot. Again hours of troubleshooting went by, I almost gave up the board.
Then I found this blob in the middle:

The beep-sound after removing the solder was music to my ears.

Then I had a problem with a black screen and one blue line at the bottom while entering the BIOS. Same as the person in this topic;
https://forum.pcmech.com/threads/black-screen … g-to-bios.9295/

Unplugged the CPU fan, and voila, I could enter the BIOS.
20 year old forum / topics are goldmines.

Horun wrote on 2021-03-22, 03:40:

darry wrote on 2021-03-22, 01:58:

I got a Cakewalk SPS-25 (rebranded Roland UA-25 with slightly different device ID) from between 2004ish to 2008ish to to work under Windows 10 using Vista x64 drivers for the UA-25 (anything newer did not work) . I hope that qualifies as retro .

Nice find and Good work ! Spent my weekend fighting with Win10 >> NOT VINTAGE << on my moms computer because MS forced a semi annual update to it that messed up everything.

TY, I hate it when manufacturers do what Cakewalk did with the drivers for this device .

Those atomic Windows 10 updates updates always bring fear into my heart, especially since the VT-d related issue on some x58 boards (Asus) a while back ( https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/e … =win10itprovirt) . My mother doesn't use an x58 system, but she does have a 10 odd year old PC (perfectly fine for her needs). If a Windows 10 update breaks it, I will likely have to find a way to fix it at a distance (damn COVID) .

Cloudschatze wrote on 2021-03-20, 05:59:

https://www.symphoniae.com/misc/vogons/wip5_s.jpg […]
Show full quote

Ikea'ed what had been a previously unmentionable corner of the room...

Looks beautiful. And what's that colorful box in the lower right corner?

This batch of RAM arrived today, mostly for testing repaired motherboards.
In total there are 38pcs.
Two are 512MB Kingston 133 PCs.
For these I have to see in which PC to put them, replacing others of 256MB.
There are 4 PCS of RAM per server, they are from Infineon-IBM, it says 128MB DDR 133MHz CL2 ECC REG.
For these I don't think I have suitable motherboards.
Most other DDRs are 266 and 333, the capacity ranges from 128MB to 512MB.
For the 333 I have a Gigabyte with P4 / 533.
The rest of the lot is made up of DDR2 RAM, most of it is PC5300-667, a couple of 512MB Corsair, others Kingston and Micron, were mostly installed in HP PCs, finally 3PZ 512MB of the Hynix PC-3200 coming from an Acer PC .

Today, I'm looking back at nostalgic memories.

They're in the post before this.

creepingnet wrote on 2021-03-19, 17:24:

Theres a part of me though that's tempted to make my own PCMCIA SB16 compatible card though since I have skills to do that sort of stuff.

Have you seen this thread? Re: Newly made PCMCIA sound card
yyzkevin has made a significant progress on this. Yet SB compatibility is the most challenging part. So maybe you could share your thoughts there?