VOGONS


Retro Rig Photo Thread

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Reply 1640 of 2685, by svfn

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^ Nice another MVP3 SS7! that case looks rather unique though with the front cover and color.

This build that was on hold for quite a bit few months back, still WIP though because I'd like to add and swap out some parts like IDE for CF and additional RAM or different soundcard. Case is rather yellowed on the front but I don't think I will be retrobrighting since some of the plastic clips already cracked.

AMD K6-2/350
FIC PA-2013 Rev 2.1
64MB PC-100 SDRAM
3dfx Voodoo 3 2000 AGP
3Com Ethernet PCI
AWE64 value ISA
Imation 52x32x52 CDRW
ATX 800 Series case (A800TX)
AcBel E2 Power 390W
Windows 98 SE

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SS7: K6-2/350 | FIC PA-2013 2.1 | 32MB PC-100 | 3dfx V3 2000 AGP | AWE64 CT4520 | Win98SE
On MobyGames

Reply 1641 of 2685, by solidus

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Gopher_Hole wrote on 2019-08-31, 00:53:
This is my newest build, a higher end socket 478 gaming rig for playing F.E.A.R, doom 3, cod4 modern warefare, ect... Motherboar […]
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This is my newest build, a higher end socket 478 gaming rig for playing F.E.A.R, doom 3, cod4 modern warefare, ect...
Motherboard- Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
Cpu- Pentium 4 Extreme edition SL7CH 3.4ghz at 3.73ghz with a zalman fatality cooler.
Ram- 4x 512mb Corsair ddr500 with led indicators only running at 440mhz with lower timings.
Storage: 2 WD raptor 10k rpm sata hard drives
Graphics card- Gainward 7800 gs + silent active with 512mb gddr3 this model has the 24 pipes and 8 vertex shaders. core at 620mhz and memory at 710mhz
Sound card- Soundblaster audigy 2 ZS
Power supply: Evga 600w
Drives- A Sony ide dvdrw disk drive, sony card reader, panasonic floppy drive, creative soundblaster hub, and a thermaltake fan controller.
Misc: G-skill memory cooler, fox 2 case blower and a rosewill atx case.

Im really proud of it as its my first retro build, let me know what you guys think. I got so much help off of this forum reading old posts when selecting my parts.
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Thats awesome! Thats the PC I wish I had back then. At that time I had built an Athlon 64 system.. it was pretty good but definitely didnt have that awesome case and front panel. I definitely want to get my hands on some of those cool front drives... especially the sound and fan controllers.

Reply 1642 of 2685, by kolderman

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So my DOS PC ended up with a big hole in the top, and I needed something to cover it up. Ain't she beautiful?

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Reply 1643 of 2685, by wirerogue

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brought out my pentium iii rig so i could clone the hard drive.
thought i'd post some updated photos.
this is my windows 98se daily driver.

Antec SLK1600 Case
Antec True Power 380w PSU
Asus TUSL2-C
Pentium III Tualatin 1.4ghz
Cooler Master cooler
384mb A-Tech PC133
PNY Geforce4 ti4600 AGP
Soundblaster Audigy w/ Audigy Drive
Intel 10/100 NIC
Western Digital 80gb hdd - OS
Maxtor 100gb hdd - Backup
Lite-On DVD-RW
Alps 3.5" floppy

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Last edited by wirerogue on 2020-02-25, 23:16. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1644 of 2685, by DrSpock233

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DrSpock's retro build
Intel Pentium III 700Mhz
128MB RAM
40GB Western Digital IDE hard drive
CD-Rom Drive
Hercules Prophet 4000XT PowerVR AGP 32MB
Super Grace Volcano 3DX2000 Voodoo 2 12MB
Creative Sound Blaster PCI ( Temporary). Will be replacing with a Diamond Monster Sound MX300.
3Com NIC 10/100 PCI Ethernet Adapter.
Windows ME( Will be doing 98SE installation this evening)

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Reply 1645 of 2685, by Shuman

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Hi All,

My first Retro build, mixture of new and recycled parts obtained in last 12 months, currently running under Windows Me.

Pentium III Coppermine 800Mhz
Abit BE6-II
3 x 256MB RAM
Matrox Millennium G400 32MB DualHead
DIAMOND Monster 3D II 12MB SLI
Creative Sound Blaster Live! PCI 5.1 CT4620 + Live! Drive II
3COM 905b-TX-NM
USB 2.0 PCI controller
Chieftec Dragon clone
Corsair 450W Modular PSU
Mitsumi Floppy Combo
Iomega Zip250
Samsung SSD 850 120GB
Samsung DVD and DC

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Reply 1646 of 2685, by bjwil1991

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I have a similar case for my main PC, except there are 2 sets of rails for the 5.25" bay that are missing and cannot source new ones.

Discord: https://discord.gg/U5dJw7x
Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/retropcuser

Reply 1647 of 2685, by Shuman

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bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-02-03, 18:02:

I have a similar case for my main PC, except there are 2 sets of rails for the 5.25" bay that are missing and cannot source new ones.

Think I have one set spare somewhere in the loft if you need one.

Reply 1648 of 2685, by Mike

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wiretap wrote on 2019-07-04, 10:10:
486 done -- although I'll be upgrading to a VLB graphics card for better DOS performance. But I'm surprised all the parts work g […]
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486 done -- although I'll be upgrading to a VLB graphics card for better DOS performance. But I'm surprised all the parts work great with no issues. Quality stuff. 🤣

Core Specs:
Biostar MB-1433/50UCV-D Ver 1.0
Intel 486DX2-66MHz SX955
4x4MB Siemens 60ns SIMM
ATI Mach64 ISA 2MB EXM913
Sound Blaster Pro 2 CT1600
DTC 2278-EB LBA Support VESA Enhanced IDE/Floppy Controller
CF-->IDE w/ 2GB Sandisk CF Card
16x CD-ROM
3.5" 1.44MB Floppy
5.25" Teac FD-55GFR 1.2MB Floppy
Running DOS 6.22 / Windows 3.1 OEM

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Aww man, that's such an amazing machine! It is almost exactly what I had as a kid with the mini-tower design, 486DX2-66Mhz processor, and the CD-ROM and the 3 1/2 inch floppy drive, that turbo switch and that nice little monitor there lastly. Nostalgia overflow!

Reply 1649 of 2685, by Zack_H

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Found this in the trash a little over a month ago and finally got around to testing it a few days ago.

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It's a Compaq Evo D500 desktop, made right before the HP disaster that ruined Compaq. So it's one of the very last true Compaqs. Naturally, it works absolutely fine, as the Evo was basically an updated version of the Deskpro EN, which was a very, very reliable computer.

This one is an early socket 478 Pentium 4, which a 1.6GHz Willamette chip installed. I was very shocked that it wasn't a Northwood, because it runs really good! The Willamette in my Dell Dimension 8100 (socket 423) is unbearably slow.

I may upgrade it to a 2GHz Northwood at some point, but for now it's running really well.

The biggest shock with this PC is that is uses PC133 SDRAM! I knew there were some early P4s that used this as a cost-effective memory solution, because RDRAM was super expensive and DDR didn't exist yet, but this is the first one I have owned. Was really excited when I realized this.

I have set it up with a Windows 98/2000 dual boot (I actually installed two separate hard drives for this). This is the first time I have tried Windows 98 on a Pentium 4, and DAMN it's fast!

Here's screenshots of the Windows 98 and 2000 running:

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Very happy with this computer. I have been using to transfer software to my older computers, since it's new enough that I can connect to Winworld and download software, and old enough that I can easily network it to Windows 95/98 computers. Plus, using a true-vintage computer to get transfer software to my even-more-vintage computers is really cool! (I certainly consider an 18-year-old computer to be vintage anyways). Anything Pentium 4 or older I consider to be vintage.

Starting Windows 95. . .

Reply 1650 of 2685, by Cosmic Wizard

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Hi all, I've just joined the site after my sleeping interest of DOS based machines awoke a year-or-so ago.

I will start a seperate thread with some interesting hardware that I've collected over the years - it really is an addiction, but I suspect I'm in good company 😉

For now though, here's a couple of pics of a lovely little XT that was in amongst a few computers I bought recently. I've just got it back up and running after finding a few problems which consisted of a faulty PSU, dodgy intermittent Tantalum Caps on the IO board (which eventually let the magic smoke out) and the lack of a CGA monitor. Fortunately I found an old Realtek card on eBay which has done the job nicely.

Now for the spec 😁
DTK 10MHz Turbo motherboard
Intel 8088 cpu
640Kb of RAM
Boca Bocaram 4140 RAM card
Realtek 16-bit VGA
Maxtor 212Mb SCSI HDD
Seagate ST01 SCSI controller
Serial & Parallel IO card with RTC
1.44 & 360Kb FDD
Dual boots with Minix 1.5 and MS DOS 5.0

Thanks for reading and I'll post again soon 😁

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Reply 1651 of 2685, by Zack_H

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Got this one working today.

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It’s a Compaq Presario 1090ES from 1997. The original series of Presario notebooks were light grey, rather than black like the later ones. These are considerably harder to find than the newer ones. Guess they didn’t make as many.

These were also the first ones to have the “premier sound” audio system, which is INCREDIBLE! The bass these little speaker produce is unbelievably. I believe they use a similar concept to the Boze Wave radios.

It has the original install of Windows 95, but it’s a little screwy, so I’ll probably make a backup of it to preserve it, and just go with a fresh install.

I also recently got my Presario 1622 fixed up, which I’ll post about later. That one is quickly becoming one of my favorite Windows 95 laptops, and this 1090ES is too.

Anyway, really happy with this one. I love my ‘90s Presarios!

Starting Windows 95. . .

Reply 1652 of 2685, by LHN91

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Zack_H wrote on 2020-02-21, 15:19:
Got this one working today. […]
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Got this one working today.

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It’s a Compaq Presario 1090ES from 1997. The original series of Presario notebooks were light grey, rather than black like the later ones. These are considerably harder to find than the newer ones. Guess they didn’t make as many.

These were also the first ones to have the “premier sound” audio system, which is INCREDIBLE! The bass these little speaker produce is unbelievably. I believe they use a similar concept to the Boze Wave radios.

It has the original install of Windows 95, but it’s a little screwy, so I’ll probably make a backup of it to preserve it, and just go with a fresh install.

I also recently got my Presario 1622 fixed up, which I’ll post about later. That one is quickly becoming one of my favorite Windows 95 laptops, and this 1090ES is too.

Anyway, really happy with this one. I love my ‘90s Presarios!

Years ago I had one of the black Presario notebooks. It was a MediaGX based unit and only sort of worked..... but the sound was excellent. I wish I hung onto it, but I was in a tiny apartment and the CD drive was failing, so I couldn't justify hanging onto it at the time.

I've picked up a couple from recyclers since then and have had no luck at all getting them working.

Reply 1654 of 2685, by Tali

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Greetings to the most esteemed community!

I've been lurking around here ever since coming across LGR's channel and being infected with the idea of reliving my own early computing years. Inevitably, google searches for drivers, specs and workarounds would bring me here, and more often than not would actually help, as opposed to most other sources on the internet. So I figured I might as well (finally) register.

This is not my first build, but it is my first successful one. I began, as most folks here, with a DX4 and a PCI board, but that board just didn't want to work. Now there are two more projects, including an even spicier 486 on a DEC PC LPX+ board, as well as a 386 with an incredibly beautiful (and awfully rare) black/red Compuadd board. Just love the look of that thing, even if its specs are somewhat average. But those are still in progress.

This one is a dual P2 build, which is also a multiple purpose build. Not only it is a DOS/W98 rig, it will also dualboot into W2K (which I have some of the fondest memories of), and it will also serve as my EPROM rig (with proper low level parallel port access, using Willem programmers is a breeze, while anything modern turns it into a nightmare). Finally, I think that retro hardware is beautiful, and putting it behind opaque metal shells is a crime. Hence my choice of case for all my retro builds - Fractal Design Define R6, with side window. This also means I have to colour-match my hardware if possible, adding another layer of difficulty when finding parts.

This is the first picture I have, shortly after installing Windows 98 on the rig, but long after all the fiddling and testing the system was done. I am having trouble locating 50mm coolers for the second CPU, so the ones I have at hand do not quite match in brightness. I've chosen a KingSpec PATA SSD for my hard drive, which is a bold choice, considering there are people that swear by it and people that swear at it. I did want an SSD, and I do think Sandforce is more appropriate controller choice for OSes without Trim support, as opposed to getting a modern SATA SSDs with some adapters. But this is a sutuation where you throw things at a wall and see if it sticks, so I can't tell if it was the right choice until after a couple years of use. Now, back in the day to make a build "hot" (at least in Latvia) you would add a 3COM network card to the mix for good measure. So I did.
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Specs so far:
Fractal Design Define R6 case
MSI MS-6120 Motherboard
2 x PII 450 MHz
512 Mb RAM
GF 2 Ti - 64 Mb (to be replaced) - a temporary solution, I'll go for something more period appropriate
ESS 1868F (to be raplaced) - just a sound card most of us have around
3COM 905 CX-TXM
8Gb PATA SSD
Slim Panasonic 24x DVD-RW
Gotek 1.44 Floppy Emulator
Antec Neo 480W PSU

I've finally located the coolers... Also, there is now an elephant in the room, sitting happily atop the case.
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The first Voodoo 2 has arrived, an early Creative CT6670 model with nearly black PCB, 12 Mb version. The GeForce is also replaced, now there is a proper Savage 4 in there. Beautiful quality and some exceptional capabilities for Unreal Tournament. I don't remember precisely, but I think it took quite a few generations of GeForces before they started doing S3TC correctly without colour bleed. ESS card was also replaced with a YMF 724, which can make full use of SB-Link on the motherboard for sweet DOS compatibility, while actually being modern enough for windows games to support some 3D effects. Granted, EAX and A3D are better on original hardware, but getting both and DOS compatibility at the same time is worth it.
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Specs so far:
Fractal Design Define R6 case
MSI MS-6120 Motherboard
2 x PII 450 MHz
512 Mb RAM
Savage 4 Pro - 16 Mb
Voodoo 2 - 12 Mb
YMF-724 w/SB-Link
3COM 905 CX-TXM
8Gb PATA SSD
Slim Panasonic 24x DVD-RW
Gotek 1.44 Floppy Emulator
Antec Neo 480W PSU

Another Voodoo 2 has arrived (an identical CT6670, black PCB), and while I didn't push them hard yet, I eventually would, so cooling was also needed. Now I don't feel like modding such rare hardware, and this case supports sideways mounting of cards, so I used a Titan cooler solution. It has white fans, however, so I had to change the whole colour scheme. I've also migrated to a larger SSD, one that will have enough space to properly dual boot into W98/W2K.
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Final specs:
Fractal Design Define R6 case
MSI MS-6120 Motherboard
2 x PII 450 MHz
512 Mb RAM
Savage 4 Pro - 16 Mb
2 x Voodoo 2 - 12 Mb @ SLI
YMF-724 w/SB-Link
3COM 905 CX-TXM
64Gb PATA SSD
Slim Panasonic 24x DVD-RW
Gotek 1.44 Floppy Emulator
Antec Neo 480W PSU

And this is what it looks like in the dark!
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Final thoughts: I still need to add a nice LCD display, run by Arduino, to the disk cage. It will show the logo, specs, and some short Wikipedia-style articles about specific hardware inside. I also may eventually replace the Savage with a 32 Mb model, if I get my hands on a working example. I do have one at hand, but it locks up in 3D mode, and I don't think it is a problem with contacts in the slot, even if it is a bit finicky. So, odds are, it is done for.

I will also eventually try to get my hands on a few HardMPU cards, because reasons (black with a little green LCD kind).

Other than that, this build is finished. It doesn't run Crysis, but it does run Unreal and Homeworld pretty darn well. And Space Quest 5 was a blast, too!

EDIT: updated specs, addes CD/FDD/PSU information

Last edited by Tali on 2020-02-23, 15:52. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1655 of 2685, by svfn

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Wow lots of nice new builds 😁

A side window is great for enjoying the view and dual slot CPUs with lighting are cool, not too overdone like RGB lighting. I guess you could do without an optical drive but I have yet to find a solution for emulating CD audio for dos games and sometimes it's just simpler to pop a game CD in and call it a day.

I still hope to build a slot 1 Pentium II PC one day, probably in a black case too with side window, as I am tired of finding only yellowed beige cases here. At least there's plenty of places for intake fans in modern cases. Fractal cases are great, a joy to build in. Their Focus G has 2 5.25 bays and comes in white/black, but I guess you can still find an old black case with 5.25/3.5" bays for less.

SS7: K6-2/350 | FIC PA-2013 2.1 | 32MB PC-100 | 3dfx V3 2000 AGP | AWE64 CT4520 | Win98SE
On MobyGames

Reply 1656 of 2685, by Tali

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Oh, but it does have a CD drive, along with a Gotek floppy emulator, all in one slot thanks to Dell NR95F caddy, I just love those for this particular reason. I just didn't mention them because there is nothing special about them. This build also has fan regulators, if we speak about details, and those LED fans are actually from a memory cooler (GSkill Turbulence) - seems to be about the only source for 50mm LED fans out there these days.

Come to think of it, the biggest challenge was to find a silent, black, fresh enough PSU with plenty of amps on 5V rail (2 P2 AND all the cards!). Antec NEO 480 solved that issue with 38 amps on 5V rail.

Reply 1657 of 2685, by SubZero

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I am a fan of socket 7/super socket 7 systems due to their versatility. I am quite noise sensitive, and since these systems usually come with small noisy fans, noisy hard drives etc I have put a lot of thought on how to build a silent system. This resulted in following:

Chassi: Aopen, with pre-mounted 300W PSU with silent 120mm fan
Motherboard: Aopen AX59Pro (1MB cache)
CPU: AMD K6-2+ 550MHz, running at 600MHz
CPU-cooler: Zalman CNPS 6000 CU (passive)
Memory: 256MB SDRAM (max cacheable)
Graphics: 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Sound card: Soundblaster AWE64 CT4380
Storage: 32GB SSD (S-ATA -> IDE Adapter)
Chassis cooling: Zalman fan-bracket with Fractal Design 92+80mm low rpm fans, cooling CPU & GPU
Other: DVD-ROM, D-link Ethernet, Floppy etc.

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Reply 1658 of 2685, by chrismeyer6

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That's a great system there zubsero. With that being a k6-2+ you can theoretically cache up to 4 gigs of RAM. Your not longer at the mercy of what your motherboard can cache thanks to the on chip l2 cache.

Reply 1659 of 2685, by SubZero

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chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-02-24, 19:59:

That's a great system there zubsero. With that being a k6-2+ you can theoretically cache up to 4 gigs of RAM. Your not longer at the mercy of what your motherboard can cache thanks to the on chip l2 cache.

Yes I figured that might be the case. But anyway I see no real use of more than 256MB memory in this kind of build 😀