gerry wrote on Yesterday, 17:01:
AlbaScot1995 wrote on 2025-11-02, 20:57:I've lurked here for a few years, but now that I have a semi-permanent setup, I thought it was time to sign up and share a pictu […]
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I've lurked here for a few years, but now that I have a semi-permanent setup, I thought it was time to sign up and share a picture of what I've got:
From left to right:
An LGA775 system with Windows XP.
An Athlon XP system for Win98.
A Pentium 200 for MS-DOS (currently active).
The unappealing bundle of wires on top of the Win98 PC is the KVM that makes this setup possible. Need to manage those cables better.
i like it, simple straightforward access to 3 systems.
what are the specs of those machines out of interest? I tend to go lower down for a given windows, eg windows XP and athlon XP. I like 775 though, seems to go with anything 😀 And the screen spec?
All of these systems are high end for what they are!
The DOS machine is a Pentium 200 with 32mb of ram, and an ATI Rage IIC (not the best for DOS, I know, but it's what I have!). 2GB CF card is the storage solution. Toyed with a 16gb CF card for win95 just to dabble with win95, an OS I've never actually used in my life! Also of note, it has a 5.25" 360k floppy drive - this is for writing floppies for my Amstrad PC1640.
The Windows 98 machine is based on an Athlon XP 3000+ (A barton core, IIRC), with a single stick of 512mb DDR memory. I actually bought a pair of 128mb sticks to replace but I fear one might be dead. GPU is a Ti4200, rather a nice one if I say so myself, with SK Hynix memory chips rather than the much less reliable Samsung ones! 80gb Seagate Barracuda IDE HDD. Sound card is a basic CMI8738 - I'd liked to have used a Live! or Audigy 2, but this motherboard will just not work with Creative sound cards - one reason why I plan to eventually replace the win98 setup with a Socket 578/Pentium 4 machine. The XP+ may offer better performance, but I think compatibility and stability will be better with an intel platform.
The XP machine is an E8400 with 2gb (will soon be 4gb) of memory, an Audigy 2 ZS for sound and a 9800GT - I plan to get a second 9800GT to make this an SLI build, as the board is an ASUS P5N-E SLI. Plus a 500gb HDD for storage!
The screen itself is a Samsung Syncmaster 700P. It is a fairly decent CRT I suppose, does up to 1280x1024, though tends to look a little strange at that res, for win98 I tend to run it at 800x600, at which resolution it looks great. In XP 1024x768 is my go-to resolution.
Unfortunately the Syncmaster seems to have some sort of issue with Radeons, and struggles to display images from Radeon cards at 800x600 and below. Otherwise I'd consider swapping that Ti4200 for a 9600XT.
The speakers are... not amazing. I'd like to replace them at some point.
