VOGONS


Some of my retro computer builds

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First post, by Czeky

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Hello users of Vogons! I'm Czeky, and I like building/repairing retro PC's.
In the last years I've built two retro PC's for my likings and gaming needs.

The first retro build I did was a Socket 7 one, the specs are:
- Gigabyte GA-586T2 motherboard
- Intel Pentium MMX 200 MHz Processor (originally Intel Pentium 120 MHz processor)
- S3 Trio64V+ 2 MB video card
- ColorMAX VP-503 Voodoo1 3D accelerator card
- ESS Solo-1 sound card (originally ALS4000 sound card)
-40 gb Samsung hard drive
- Sony CD drive
- Windows 98 SE (originally Windows 95)

Plans for future upgrades:
- Some kind of Voodoo2, not sure about brand, maybe Diamond or Creative
- New case and power supply, the original one gets unstable a bit when the CD drive starts spinning

The second one was originally meant to be a Socket 370 build, but the board i've bought was broken, and since i did not have another, i went with a Socket A board, specs are:
- ASRock K7VT4A PRO motherboard
- AMD Athlon XP-M 2500+ 1,8GHz processor
- ATi Radeon 9200 128mb video card (originally Nvidia GeForce 4 MX 440 video card)
- Sound Blaster Live! sound card
- 80 gb Samsung hard drive
- OEM DVD drive (not sure about brand)
- Windows 98 SE (might be better with Windows XP, but oh well)
- Had a power supply swap, the old one was noisy and unstable after time

Replies are appreciated, might upload some pictures too.

So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse.

I'm no American.

Reply 1 of 62, by Czeky

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As I've mentioned, here are the images about the machines.

First, the socket 7 pc.

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This is the front, its yellowed, and its a small horizontal case, plus a sticker I bought on ebay, the original power button was removed and replaced by the previous owner by this lamp switch, 🤣.

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The original sound card it had, an ALS4000, it had many compability problems with games, so a swap was needed.

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The ColorMAX VP-503 Voodoo1 card, as I've heard this card is a bit underpowered compared to other Voodoo's, but i still like it.

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Descent Freespace (Conflict Freespace) looks pretty nice with this card, at least its better than software mode, that's for sure.

So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse.

I'm no American.

Reply 2 of 62, by Czeky

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Some other games running on the voodoo1:

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So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse.

I'm no American.

Reply 3 of 62, by Czeky

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Next up is the Socket A machine:

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This is how the front of the machine looks, it has a missing reset button plastic piece, so its a bit harder to push the button. Also Windows 98 and AMD Athlon XP stickers.

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The inside, a bit messy and dusty.

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I've also put a super rack in it at one point, but decided to remove it, since i didnt use it as much as i wanted to.

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A bonus pic: Blender running under Windows 98.

Last edited by Czeky on 2021-06-20, 08:05. Edited 1 time in total.

So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse.

I'm no American.

Reply 5 of 62, by Czeky

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Thanks, I've actually got that from a relative who had no use for it.

So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse.

I'm no American.

Reply 6 of 62, by buckeye

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Never seen a beige case with black interior, nice!

Asus P5N-E Intel Core 2 Duo 3.33ghz. 4GB DDR2 Geforce 470 1GB SB X-Fi Titanium 650W XP SP3
Intel SE440BX P3 450 256MB 80GB SSD Radeon 7200 64mb SB 32pnp 350W 98SE
MSI x570 Gaming Pro Carbon Ryzen 3700x 32GB DDR4 Zotac RTX 3070 8GB WD Black 1TB 850W

Reply 8 of 62, by Czeky

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psybyrd wrote on 2021-06-19, 19:00:

Nice rigs.
Have you tried pushing that Athlon XP-M to the limits yet?

Not really, but maybe one day I will with a game or a stress test.

So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse.

I'm no American.

Reply 9 of 62, by Czeky

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buckeye wrote on 2021-06-19, 18:16:

Never seen a beige case with black interior, nice!

Yes, it was quite a surprise when I first looked inside.

So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse.

I'm no American.

Reply 10 of 62, by Czeky

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Today I've transferred the Socket 7 into another case, this is a vertical one now.
I've had this case for many years, and I did use it before, and now it's time to use it again.
All the images were made after the transfer.

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This is how the front looks , It's yellowed (like most of my old cases) and has a spot which had a sticker, I will try to find a voodoo sticker for it on ebay.

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This is how the inside looks, and man, this case has so many space. Also, sorry about the mish-mash screws on the cpu fan, i dont have any proper fan screws at hand. :'(

I still need to get a Power supply, and an AT only IO shield. Other than minor problems mentioned I'm pleased how this looks. 😀

So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse.

I'm no American.

Reply 11 of 62, by Joakim

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Czeky wrote on 2021-06-20, 14:50:
Today I've transferred the Socket 7 into another case, this is a vertical one now. I've had this case for many years, and I did […]
Show full quote

Today I've transferred the Socket 7 into another case, this is a vertical one now.
I've had this case for many years, and I did use it before, and now it's time to use it again.
All the images were made after the transfer.

IMG_20210620_163527.jpg
This is how the front looks , It's yellowed (like most of my old cases) and has a spot which had a sticker, I will try to find a voodoo sticker for it on ebay.

IMG_20210620_163722.jpg
This is how the inside looks, and man, this case has so many space. Also, sorry about the mish-mash screws on the cpu fan, i dont have any proper fan screws at hand. :'(

I still need to get a Power supply, and an AT only IO shield. Other than minor problems mentioned I'm pleased how this looks. 😀

You could "retro brighten it" but maybe you like the yellow. As long as it is not almost brown I personally don't mind.

What is an AT only Io shield? Is it to use at motherboards in ATX cases? (I did not know they existed.)

Reply 12 of 62, by Czeky

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Joakim wrote on 2021-06-20, 14:59:
Czeky wrote on 2021-06-20, 14:50:
Today I've transferred the Socket 7 into another case, this is a vertical one now. I've had this case for many years, and I did […]
Show full quote

Today I've transferred the Socket 7 into another case, this is a vertical one now.
I've had this case for many years, and I did use it before, and now it's time to use it again.
All the images were made after the transfer.

IMG_20210620_163527.jpg
This is how the front looks , It's yellowed (like most of my old cases) and has a spot which had a sticker, I will try to find a voodoo sticker for it on ebay.

IMG_20210620_163722.jpg
This is how the inside looks, and man, this case has so many space. Also, sorry about the mish-mash screws on the cpu fan, i dont have any proper fan screws at hand. :'(

I still need to get a Power supply, and an AT only IO shield. Other than minor problems mentioned I'm pleased how this looks. 😀

You could "retro brighten it" but maybe you like the yellow. As long as it is not almost brown I personally don't mind.

What is an AT only Io shield? Is it to use at motherboards in ATX cases? (I did not know they existed.)

Yeah, I could, but at the momment I'm out of hydrogen-peroxide, and had no luck with sunbright. It looks fine, but the cd drive and floppies is better in comparison.

Yes, it is for ATX cases. This motherboard only has an AT keyboard connector, no usb, no ps/2, no serial or printer port, and I want to buy an I/O port that only has that one hole cut out, and nothing else.
https://www.dealsanimg.com/d/l400/pict/154299 … -window-for.jpg

So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse.

I'm no American.

Reply 14 of 62, by Czeky

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Joakim wrote on 2021-06-20, 16:18:

I could use one of those for my SS7 build. AT cases are hard to come by now days...

Yeah, would be handy though 😀

So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse.

I'm no American.

Reply 16 of 62, by Czeky

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chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-06-20, 19:58:

Nice job with both of those systems. I love the black interior of the Socket A build.

Thanks! And yes, it looks really nice.

So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse.

I'm no American.

Reply 18 of 62, by Czeky

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Hezus wrote on 2021-06-21, 10:31:

Nice systems! Socket 7s are my favourite systems. Or maybe XTs.. or maybe.. ok, too much to choose from 🤣

Yes, can't choose which to love more either, I love both... or maybe my Compaq 486 laptop? 🤣

So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse.

I'm no American.

Reply 19 of 62, by Czeky

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Not really a build, but still a machine so why not.

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This Compaq LTE Elite 4/75CXL laptop was quite a lucky find for me. I've bought this at the local flea market in October, and it only costed me 2000 Forint, which is 6,50 Dollars!
At first I've thought it was broken, but I was like screw it I'll buy it.
When I arrived to home, I've plugged it in, and to my surprise, it booted up just fine! Until it stuck at the Windows 95 loading screen.
I was able to get into safe mode and the PCMCIA driver was completely wrong, and after installing the correct driver, it booted up fine.
And after that I wanted to load a floppy, but after putting a floppy into the drive it only gave me a terrible whirring sound, and the drive wasnt been able to read anything, something's wrong with the drive.
So I've went to ebay and bought a CF to PCMCIA adapter, because I wanted to copy games onto the machine.
I've also removed the battery, because it was dead, and it also leaked inside, but I didn't really find any replacements online at the time of writing this. If anyone knows one, please send a link!

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And the specs:
- 75mhz Intel 486 DX4 processor
- 512kb video ram
- 16mb ram
- 800mb OEM hard drive
- pc speaker
- (broken) floppy drive
- Windows 95 Hungarian version

I was thinking about getting an opl2lpt or a PCMCIA sound card.
And also replacing the HDD with an SD to IDE adapter. I'll do the basic DOS install on another machine, since I cannot use the floppy drive on this.
Other than lack of OPL chip I'm really happy with the machine, and because it only has 16mb of ram, I can play most DOS games on it without the use of any additional ram limiter program.

(and yes, this is almost the same machine that The 8-Bit Guy has, except this one has a bigger screen, hence the L in the name)

So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse.

I'm no American.