Alright, well, here's one of mine. It's a very rare occurrence for my digicam to work, so it'll probably be awhile before I get pics of any of my other systems. Most of them consist of crap plugged together on top of cardboard boxes anyway, so it's not much to look at.

Anyhow, this is my Slot-A box, 800mhz Athlon Classic, Asus K7V, 384MB PC133 CAS2, Voodoo5 5500 AGP, SBLive, 30GB Maxtor, TDK CD-RW, Zip, Teac FD55GFR, plus a NIC and USB2.0 card. Case is an old Antec KS288, OS is 98SE.

Built this as a novelty in November 2009 out of a tiny little K6 machine I was given.

Gigabyte GA-5AA Baby AT Socket 7 board
AMD K6-2/450
128 MB PC133 SDRAM (can support up to 768, but I'm stuck here for performance reasons, thanks to the board's caching method that has been covered several times here-- definitely going to increase this the moment I find a K6/2+ or K6/3+ for a reasonable price)
Noname 1.44 MB disk drive
Noname 24x IDE CD-ROM drive
40GB Seagate IDE hard drive
ATI Rage 128GL 16MB AGP (might be the board, but the performance seems TERRIBLE on this-- is Unreal Tournament supposed to be faster in 320x240 software mode than 640x480 hardware mode?)
Creative ViBRA 16C (CT4180)
Network Everywhere NC100v2 PCI Ethernet Controller
Belkin PCI USB 2.0 Controller- recent addition, not pictured
Windows 98 SE

Unfortunately, I'm thinking I may put it back in its original case (a no-name AT case that is remarkably small and portable) because this takes up a ton of desk space and is extremely heavy, I would like to add some more drives, and I've had a few issues with cards becoming unseated for obvious reasons.

I'll post pics of my other rigs later, since I don't have any images on hand.

I've always wanted to get a hand me down Slot A Athlon but I have never run into one unfortunately...

And that lego box is fun stuff. 😁

I scored a NIB slot A board and 850MHz processor off ebay for fairly cheap. Just gotta find the time to put it together. Planning to use my Voodoo 5 5500 with it 😀

In the wild, I've run into Socket 4 boards more often then the Slot A ones. They appear to be somewhat uncommon.
The lego case is very original and I like the cleanness of your other case!
When I find a case I intend to use, I always give them a good clean in the bathroom first! 😁

That Slot A board is only the second one I've ever run across, the first being in an old Compaq Presario (one of the ones that look kinda like a spaceship from the front). And that one was dead, the processor was missing and the board was fried... the only thing salvageable out of it was one of the weird Compaq OEM Voodoo3 1000's, which I still have.

I seem to have won the battle with my camera for now, so here are a couple more shots, this time of my 386 system.

Specs are:
Chaintech 340SCD motherboard
AMD 386DX-40, 64K cache, Cyrix 87DLC copro
4x4MB 60ns SIMMS (yes, 60ns 30 pin SIMMS)
540MB DEC/Seagate SCSI HD
8X (?) SCSI CDROM, leftover from upgrading one of my Mac clones
Toshiba 1.2MB 5.25" floppy drive, and a random 1.44MB 3.5" drive
200W "Pro-Lin" PSU, generic case

Top to bottom, cards are:
-random Hong-Kongian I/O card
-ATi Graphics Ultra
-Realtek NIC
-Adaptec AHA-1542CF fast SCSI card
-Shuttle HOT-223 sound card... interesting in that it has two daughterboard headers and a real OPL3. I haven't had a chance to play with it much yet, though.

.

I've changed the configuration of this system again to make it more era specific. I formerly had a 386/486 VLB hybrid board in this thing, but now I'm back to a pure 386 OPTi 495SX board (with writeback cache). I want to stick the IBM DLC upgrade module back in this thing later too, but I need a CPU socket riser so it will fit.

-AMD 386DX-40, Cyrix Fasmath 83D87 40MHz
-256kb 15ns SRAM
-32MB 60ns Parity 30pin
-20GB Seagate Barracuda SCSI HDD
-Adaptec 1540C ISA SCSI controller
-Tseng ET4000W32i 2MB DRAM Graphics Adapter
-3com 3c509B ISA 10MBps NIC
-Creative Labs CT1770 SB16 ASP w/WaveBlaster II
-Panasonic 1.44mb/IBM 1.2mb floppy drives


I removed the CD-ROM drive and replaced it with a grey plastic HDD drive panel with a green LED.

CPU and FPU different than shown here, and battery removed.

Cool. We need more 286 and 386 hardware around here.

What's the newest hardware that would be eligible for posting here? Would anything newer than slot A/ s370/slot 1 be welcome?

sgt76 wrote:

What's the newest hardware that would be eligible for posting here? Would anything newer than slot A/ s370/slot 1 be welcome?

I wouldn't mind a Socket A DDR board with an AGP Voodoo 5 though (=fastest board with AGP x4), nor a s423 Pentium 4.
It kinda depends what the intended use is I guess.
Anything that is Conroe or maybe even past Socket A is what I, at this time, consider to be a "modern generation" CPU architecture.
Personally I think s370 is fine (but Super 7 is better! 😜).

What's the newest hardware that would be eligible for posting here? Would anything newer than slot A/ s370/slot 1 be welcome?

Way I figure it, a retro rig is whatever you use to do retro PC stuff. That could just as easily include a pristine IBM 5150 PC, or DOSBox running on a 24-core Xeon with 32GB of RAM and quad-SLI GTX590's.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

Way I figure it, a retro rig is whatever you use to do retro PC stuff. That could just as easily include a pristine IBM 5150 PC, or DOSBox running on a 24-core Xeon with 32GB of RAM and quad-SLI GTX590's.

I like this definition! 😁

Isn't the definition of a retro rig a rig that is build specifically to play retro games? (anyway, this discussion kinda seems like a road to confusion 🤣, it's not THAT important to me anyway 😜)
A computer with Windows 7 that you sometimes play a 2005 game on I wouldn't consider a retro rig, more like a spare rig 😜

If I build a rig with somewhat older hardware and older drivers (optimum drivers for that older hardware but drivers that may work incorrectly with the most recent games (even if those games themselves have low system requirements)) I would consider that a retro rig, or perhaps just a mixed bag! 😜

I mean, my "database" computer (which used to be my main rig till last year) has a 1991-vintage 2.88MB floppydrive, but I wouldn't consider it a retro rig.

Maybe the definition is just a little too vague 😜

We need some more pics in here!!

As I was taking some pics for DonutKing, I took the opportunity to take some pics of the 2 retro rigs I used to play Unreal, so here they are 😉

The left box is my Super 7 Glide rig and the right one is my s370 Glide rig

The Super 7 retro rig:

FSP-made PSU (either 250W or 300W)
Gigabyte GA-5AX rev 4.1 (I think it's 4.1)
K6-3/400 AFR
256MB SDRAM PC-133 set as PC-100 cl2
AGP TNT2 M64 Vanta 16MB (Doesn't even have a heatsink. It's used for 2D only)
Voodoo2 12MB (has some slight artifacting, it always displays one block of the screen correctly, but with about half it's pixels dark blue! Didn't bother me in Unreal though and as it was otherwise performing just fine, I left it in there)
Soundcard can't remember if it was the Vortex or a Creative
Harddrive, somewhere around 6.4GB to 15GB I guess
Windows ME

This is actually my very first (and atm only) Super 7 rig but I really wanted to build one.
The case it's in has a story of it's own.
Years ago, back in my dark ages of endless dumpster diving (2002-ish), this was the very first ATX case I ever found that didn't have any missing parts. All other ATX cases I had found had either their drive cages removed or had one of their side panels missing.
This is also one of THE very first ATX cases to have ever made it to the market in The Netherlands. It's got "Designed for Windows 95" printed on one of it's front bezels on the front!
It's side panels are unusual in that they have these large plastic thingies in the side that you use to slide them in the "open" or "closed" position. Both side panels have this plastic grip thingy but the one on the motherboard side has always jammed a bit. No prob, as I only need to open the other side for accessing the insides of the case.
As a sidenote, it originally came with a Pentium 2, ASUS P7L97 I think. The board still functions and, even though I never used it in any rig of mine, I've always kept the board 😀

Because I wanted to avoid having any AGP related problems I at first intended to put a Voodoo3 PCI in there, but since a V3 is a bit overpowered and I had always wanted to try out teh Voodoo 2 for myself, I put a Voodoo 2 in there.
I used ME because it's what I use, it's basically my standard 9x OS. I know how it works, how to tweak it and how to keep it running. That, and my only ever own experience with 98SE turned out to be less then impressive.
It uses some standard cdrom drive and comes with a plain ol' boring 1.44 floppy drive.
I played through the entire Unreal 1 campaign on it for I can't remember how many days! The system has been remarkedly stable for me, not a single crash or lockup 😀

The s370 Glide rig:

FSP-made PSU 250W
Chaintech ??? i400BX Socket 370
Celeron 800 (yep...could've just put a Pentium 3 in there butteh...I wanted a Celeron hehe 😜)
256ish MB SDRAM PC-100 cl2 or PC-133 used as PC-100 cl2
AGP Voodoo3 3000
Soundcard can't remember if this one had the Vortex or the Creative
Some random cdrom burner or drive and another plain ol' boooring "a million a bucket" floppy drive
Harddrive probably 10 to 20Gigs

This rig was build after my 1st Glide retro rig.
As I had chosen the Voodoo2 in my Super 7 rig, I still was eager to try out a dedicated Voodoo 3 rig of my own.
I decided that a P3-1000 was a little bit overpowered for a Voodoo3 so I opted to try an Intel BX system.
As I prefer Socket 370 over Slot 1 I ended up using this i440BX Chaintech motherboard.
As I had no speedy 100Mhz fsb Coppermines at that time and underclocking one of my then few P3-1000's to a mere 750Mhz, I decided that I might as well put my Celeron 800 in there.
Another reason for me to stick with the 800Mhz Celeron is because I encountered a slight problem while mounting it's cooler: There are so many caps directly around the socket that it's impossible to mount anything larger then a Socket 7 sized cooler. I did try a smaller aluminium cooler but after a little while the heatsink became a little bit too hot for my taste.
Hence I went with the Celeron 800 (slower ones are 66Mhz fsb and I wanted 100Mhz fsb) and my only smallish copper cooler you see in the pic. I might have replaced the original Coolermaster fan with another Coolermaster fan to make it a bit more quiet.
However!...even though the little copper cooler cooled it much better, it's clip was blocking the memory slots and after a while I got tired of having to unmount+remount the cooler everytime I wanted to switch memory around. So I put the aluminium cooler back and mounted a neat looking LED fan which shines in 3 different colors yay! And it did fix the overheating problem well enough. (edit:the LED fan is actually an 8cm case fan. Thought I should point that out :endedit)

The 800Mhz Celeron is somewhat special as it is the very first Celeron to make use of the 100Mhz fsb. All previous Celerons were limited to a mere 66Mhz fsb which was fine for the PPGA Celerons, but made the first lot of Coppermine Celerons woefully underpowered compared to it's Coppermine brother (I always try to avoid the Celeron 566-766 ones).
That, and I actually wanted to use a Coppermine Celeron (I had already used a couple P3 Coppermines before and wanted to try out something new 😉 )
I used a different soundcard in this rig as I wanted to play through the campaign with a sound solution that was totally different from that of my other Glide rig.
Of course I installed ME on this computer also. XP seemed a bit too new for this one.

The case is a very nice one. Sturdy and good looking for an ordinary beige case.
No sharp edges on the inside, it was probably made by a quality manufacturer.
The only thing I dislike about the case is it's miniholes on the back for using the 8cm case fan, but other then that, I'm very pleased to own 2 of these cases 😀
I've played through the entire Unreal campaign again, only this time in hard.
Again, not a single crash or other ugly problems.

I intended to post some more and also different pics, but as my camera ran out of juice and it's too dark now to shoot a couple more, these ones will have to do 😀
I hope it was an enjoyable read! 😉

edit: Since PB decided to take a crap on us, I decided to re-upload at least some of the pics to Vogons directly, because missing pics in a picture thread just isn't really something many of us will probably like. Keep enjoying! 😀

Going to spam the hell out of this thread shortly with pic's 😁
Been too buried in work lately (arrghh)

Good deal... this thread needs a good picture spamming. 😁

@Tetrium
I see you went with the typical mid-'90s "meh, screw it" style wire management, too. 😁

That's a rather poor design for the vent holes on the front of that second case... at first glance, I thought that was mildew or something.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

Good deal... this thread needs a good picture spamming. :D […]
Show full quote

Good deal... this thread needs a good picture spamming. 😁

@Tetrium
I see you went with the typical mid-'90s "meh, screw it" style wire management, too. 😁

That's a rather poor design for the vent holes on the front of that second case... at first glance, I thought that was mildew or something.

Lol! Yup, couldn't be bothered using tie ribs, but at least I kinda pushed the cables away from the HSF 😁
And yes, the vent holes are rather crappy though the back vent hole is a bit less crappy. It's the only thing I don't like about this case though, it's perfectly fine otherwise 😀

As for more pics, I still got a couple older ones of my 486. Will post a couple in a minute (must keep the picture spam going, right? 😉 )

Edit: Heres a couple older pics of my 486.

The pics are at least 2 years old I think. It was the 2nd system I ever build!...or should I say, completed 😜
I build this system around 5 years ago actually and used it off and on for playing DOS games (mainly stunts 😁).
It was kinda badly configured as I was kinda a newb back then, but at least I got it working without breaking anything! 😁

Though after I moved I discovered the serial mouse port for some reason wouldn't work anymore. I tried a couple different solutions, couldn't get mouse to work and finally decided to give up my efforts for the time being.
And on top of that, I remember it being annoyingly unstable. BSoD every time I used it, but it could've been caused by anything really. I'd basically put the hardware carefully together, but the hardware doesn't really match it's intended use very well. I basically threw 95 on there, installed a driver or 2 and that was it basically...ah those newb days! 😁

Even though this rig's kinda decommissioned right now, I haven't cannibalized any parts from it (yet?) so atm it's sitting in my bedroom and should at this time still be functional (though I've always intended to replace it with an improved 486 at some time in the future, or at least add at least one more 486 rig).

What I remember from the hardware is it's got an Acer AP43 PCI board, PCI Rendition 2100 (the one made by Diamond) and I think an ISA soundcard, probably Creative.
The CPU is a DX4-100 though I can't remember if it was Intel or AMD. I'm pretty sure it's not one of the other ones and it's for sure not one of the Intel DX4-100 WB's.
Due to those tiny CPU coolers being kinda loud, I experimented with one of those large passive Pentium coolers + wire clip.
The 4 memory modules are 4 identical IBM 16MB FPM simms.

Maybe tomorrow I'll go have a look in my house, trying to find some forgotten other rigs of mine.
I may have my 1st ever build system around though I remember having messed up that rig when I tried to upgrade it's motherboard 😵

edit: Since PB decided to take a crap on us, I decided to re-upload at least some of the pics to Vogons directly, because missing pics in a picture thread just isn't really something many of us will probably like. Keep enjoying! 😀

here are my 2 machines that I use:

1. Tualatin 1.4ghz pIII with voodoo5 and sblive :

2. p200mmx with a riva128ZX , sb16+db50xg and a LAPC-I :

keropi wrote:

here are my 2 machines that I use: […]
Show full quote

here are my 2 machines that I use:

1. Tualatin 1.4ghz pIII with voodoo5 and sblive :

-snip-

2. p200mmx with a riva128ZX , sb16+db50xg and a LAPC-I :

-snap-

Specs? 😁

Btw, I like both those cases!
I like ATX cases with room for a 12cm case fan and the AT case looks neat and clean 😉