This has been an ongoing project for the last year-ish; after digging one of my nasty old circa-2000 Windows PCs out of my dad's basement, I decided to give it a full refurb. Apparently mice had been nesting inside, and minor flooding in the basement had caused a significant amount of rust:

Soaking the case metal in industrial-strength vinegar removed most of the rust, but unfortunately I had to replace several of the original components that had failed over the years. On the plus side, I think the case cleaned up very well:

Components list:
-Enlight 7237 mid-tower ATX case
-StarTech ATX 20/24-pin 400-watt PSU
-FIC AD11 Socket A / Socket 462 ATX motherboard
-AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1400C 1.4GHz CPU
-Corsair 256MB UDIMM DDR PC-2100 RAM [2x / 512MB total]
-ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB AGP
-SanDisk 128GB Extreme CF card + IDE-to-CF adapter & 5.25" mount bracket [2x / 256GB total]
-Generic PCI network card
-Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.1
-Creative Sound Blaster Live! Drive IR
-Sony MPF920-D 3.5” floppy disk drive
-Plextor PlexWriter 24/10/40A CD-RW drive

I've replaced every case/mobo fan with Noctua equivalents to help reduce noise, plus the PSU's internal fan. As a Win98SE box, the Radeon 9600 Pro is probably overkill, but I got a good deal on it as NISB. It's been a pleasure resurrecting this machine, which I've begun to affectionately refer to as "Rusty," and pairing it with a 19" CRT transports me straight back to the early 2000s every time I use it.

FlyingToaster wrote on Today, 02:21:

This has been an ongoing project for the last year-ish; after digging one of my nasty old circa-2000 Windows PCs out of my dad's […]
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This has been an ongoing project for the last year-ish; after digging one of my nasty old circa-2000 Windows PCs out of my dad's basement, I decided to give it a full refurb. Apparently mice had been nesting inside, and minor flooding in the basement had caused a significant amount of rust:

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Soaking the case metal in industrial-strength vinegar removed most of the rust, but unfortunately I had to replace several of the original components that had failed over the years. On the plus side, I think the case cleaned up very well:

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Components list:
-Enlight 7237 mid-tower ATX case
-StarTech ATX 20/24-pin 400-watt PSU
-FIC AD11 Socket A / Socket 462 ATX motherboard
-AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1400C 1.4GHz CPU
-Corsair 256MB UDIMM DDR PC-2100 RAM [2x / 512MB total]
-ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB AGP
-SanDisk 128GB Extreme CF card + IDE-to-CF adapter & 5.25" mount bracket [2x / 256GB total]
-Generic PCI network card
-Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.1
-Creative Sound Blaster Live! Drive IR
-Sony MPF920-D 3.5” floppy disk drive
-Plextor PlexWriter 24/10/40A CD-RW drive

I've replaced every case/mobo fan with Noctua equivalents to help reduce noise, plus the PSU's internal fan. As a Win98SE box, the Radeon 9600 Pro is probably overkill, but I got a good deal on it as NISB. It's been a pleasure resurrecting this machine, which I've begun to affectionately refer to as "Rusty," and pairing it with a 19" CRT transports me straight back to the early 2000s every time I use it.

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great rescue, nice spec too - Athlon 1400 and the agp card make it great for everything 98se (and pretty good for win xp if you want that)

That's not a rig, but I found the original CD that came with my first ever CD Recorder - a SCSI Smart&Friendly. Many years ago I burnt The Need For Speed: Special Edition on it. Back before using CD images for everything, I liked duplicating my original discs and using the copies to play, to improve the longevity of the originals.

Burnt CDs tend to degrade much faster; this one still reads fine, even if discoloration is obvious at the edges. The disc is more than 25 years old and was burnt probably 15-20 years ago.