What retro things have you done today?

I bought some cheapo speakers for my dressing table retro desk. Currently got an XP PC set up.

PXL-20221106-145530181.jpg


The 80s built in wardrobes are being ripped out at some point in the new year and I'll be sketching up some kind of desk thing in CAD. Maybe a corner desk for retro activities with my main desk behind the camera (like it is now).
 
almoststew1990 said:
I bought some cheapo speakers for my dressing table retro desk. Currently got an XP PC set up.

PXL-20221106-145530181.jpg


The 80s built in wardrobes are being ripped out at some point in the new year and I'll be sketching up some kind of desk thing in CAD. Maybe a corner desk for retro activities with my main desk behind the camera (like it is now).
Click to expand...
Nice. I vote you keep the wardrobe and in both cupboards either side put one these

cerwinvega.com

Cerwin-Vega XLS Series Dual 15” 3-Way Floor Speaker - XLS-215

Cerwin-Vega XLS-215: Dual 15" floor speaker. Earth-shaking bass & massive power for ultimate home audio.
cerwinvega.com cerwinvega.com
 
Last edited:
Been a fun and interesting day for me

The Athlon XP build is finally up and running. New PSU installed and at last unravelled my issues installing any OS and constant differing errors from BIOS not supporting ACPI to HAL.dll being missing on fresh builds.....Dead stick of RAM!

luckily had some spare 1GB sticks of DDR400 so in they went and OS installed first time!

Have also got round to testing my 2 eBay cheap radeons and sadly I think the PCIE to AGP bridge on both the X1950 and 3850 are on the way out, nice shelf queen's though I guess. Might try a strip down, clean and re-paste to see if it helps at all.
Machine is running lovely with my faithful 9800 pro at present, that cards power still impresses me, but I still want that Nvidia 6800 now if I can!

Final build spec is:

Athlon 2500+
NF7 v2.0
2gb DDR400
Medion 9800 Pro 128mb
SB Audigy 2 ZS
 
Last edited:
phatboy said:
Been a fun and interesting day for me

The Athlon XP build is finally up and running. New PSU installed and at last unravelled my issues installing any OS and constant differing errors from BIOS not supporting ACPI to HAL.dll being missing on fresh builds.....Dead stick of RAM!

luckily had some spare 1GB sticks of DDR400 so in they went and OS installed first time!

Have also got round to testing my 2 eBay cheap radeons and sadly I think the PCIE to AGP bridge on both the X1950 and 3850 are on the way out, nice shelf queen's though I guess. Might try a strip down, clean and re-paste to see if it helps at all.
Machine is running lovely with my faithful 9800 pro at present, that cards power still impresses me, but I still want that Nvidia 6800 now of I can!

Final build spec is:

Athlon 2500+
NF7 v2.0
2gb DDR400
Medion 9800 Pro 128mb
SB Audigy 2 ZS
Click to expand...
Nice :) any pics?
I loved that socket (probs my favourite system) and had a similar build. You're right the 9800 pro is impressive.
Which OS have you gone for?
 
Last edited:
Few pics of where I am at so far, cabling is still a bit of a rats nest, there seems to be MILLIONS! just need to get them all correctly routed

Also looking to get a few replacement blue RGB fans that are 3 pin instead of the horror of the standard MOLEX blocked noisy things, they make things so untidy! want to fit the them and a 3-4 fan hub to hide away





 
Last edited:
Great job :) Those colours define that era so well and instantly takes me back :)
Fan controller (guessing you'll put in a CD drive slot?) will take away a lot of the cables , I miss mine from back in the day :( don't know why i've not fitted one since really on current rig - probs because all automatic now but that takes all the fun away :)
 
Ice Rich said:
Great job :) Those colours define that era so well and instantly takes me back :)
Fan controller (guessing you'll put in a CD drive slot?) will take away a lot of the cables , I miss mine from back in the day :( don't know why i've not fitted one since really on current rig - probs because all automatic now but that takes all the fun away :)
Click to expand...

Yeah haven't decided if to try and get an era correct drive panel one or just a box which is the splitter. If the fans are quieter than now (not tricky!) not worried about adjustability tbh and you can get a deepcool, i think it was 4 port for about 5-7 quid

Genuinely fancy one of the Akasa 5.25 ones though....just coz! :D
 
phatboy said:
Genuinely fancy one of the Akasa 5.25 ones though....just coz! :D
Click to expand...

That's the one I had :D No way would I have been able to remember the make but just did a google and it was that 6 dial Akasa brushed steel one :cool: I see(and remember now) they had one with LCD screen too but less dials, that looks great.
 
i think frustratingly due to the wave style front panel on the thermaltake case you can't put anything with adjustability knobs as will foul the front door :(
 
Moved house last year and almost all of my consoles and retro stuff has been stuck in a cupboard but I found my stash of Saturn games lurking around in a box:

IMG-1432.jpg


Which then put me in the mood to play some games so made me dig out one of my Saturns (and my DC)

9a5013ed-e48f-4845-bee0-f14364ef97b8.jpg


This is in the spare room that I've claimed as my home office so I might as well just set them up permanently under the TV in here and be done with it :)

Feels quite weird playing a real Saturn with a proper wireless controller though.
 
Last edited:
love this! Saturn is still up there as one of my favourite consoles.

Great selection of NTSC games there too, I have amassed quite a few over the years. so many gems that never made it to the wests catalogue from Japan. also in a lot of cases cheaper to get hold of games in NTSC vs. the crazy ebay prices now

Take it you have the action replay cart or you hard modded the console to run the other region games?

Also is that the Retro-Bit wireless controller? How decent is it, had one on my xmas list lol
 
Last edited:
LewisRaz said:
Im just going to replace those 2 smaller ones for now. The larger ones do look OK and probably be hard to remove with my cheap soldering iron.
Click to expand...
I'd be interested to see how you get on. I've got a few boards with dodgy caps and was bought a cheap soldering iron for last Christmas but yet to give it a go.
 
phatboy said:
love this! Saturn is still up there as one of my favourite consoles.

Great selection of NTSC games there too, I have amassed quite a few over the years. so many gems that never made it to the wests catalogue from Japan. also in a lot of cases cheaper to get hold of games in NTSC vs. the crazy ebay prices now

Take it you have the action replay cart or you hard modded the console to run the other region games?

Also is that the Retro-Bit wireless controller? How decent is it, had one on my xmas list lol
Click to expand...

I've got a nice condition boxed Japanese Saturn lurking around in my cupboard somewhere, but that one's obviously a UK console. I've done the switchless mod on it so pressing reset and holding for a few seconds starts to change the power LED colour to indicate it's cycling between Japan, USA and Europe regions and pressing and holding it for a shorter period of time toggles the 50Hz/60Hz select. Works great :)

Got some more Japanese games lurking around somewhere. As you say, so many that never made it over here and some great titles too but another reason I like the Japanese games is because they're just in standard CD cases. The European cardboard cases annoy me so much and the USA games in completely proprietary plastic cases are just as bad for when they inevitably get cracked too.

I'm using a Saturn HDMI cable there which doesn't do a bad job but there's a weird border on the left and bottom of the screen. Need to get myself an OSSC or similar at some point.

Always had a soft spot for the Saturn and I feel it's such an underrated console. And yes the controller is the Retro-Bit one. It feels just as good as the legit Sega controllers, arguably nicer because it's newer and doesn't have years of wear on it :) Absolutely no complaints from me.
 
Last edited:
Today The Soprano went back for a sleep (not with the fishies) and Project SLI came for a visit instead!

Today's jobs were some cable tidying, installation of a 120gb SSD and installing and activating windows 7 pro as well as fitting a Xonar DG PCI sound card.

She's a fully working system now and I personally love the look. The Gainward GTX260 216 GS cards were the best looking cards out there when they were on sale new. This pair costs me the grand total of £17 too :)



 
Last edited:
Today I set about finally taking a look at the DELL system my brother saved from a scrap pile in holland. The PSU literally exploded when we turned it on so I had not really cared to look at it.

Unfortunately the PSU is a dell pinout and extremely expensive to replace so I am stuck for now.

It did have this in it tho...



And a Diamond Viper V550 in the AGP slot.
 
Firestar_3x said:
If anything like "newer" Dells you can buy a Dell to ATX adapter.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately cant seem to find one for this age of machine. Someone on twitter has pointed me to here however: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=59959&start=40

You can literally just move the ATX connector over and its now an ATX motherboard...

phatboy said:
V550, that the Riva TNT 4MB card?

Absolute result if so :) keep looking out for them and they are getting less easy to find
Click to expand...

Its the 16mb one the same as this: https://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cpu/item/591-diamond-viper-v550-nvidia-riva-tnt
It also has a cool looking DVD Decoder card. Was really hoping to do a full restoration video on this. Looks like I will be able to if I can move that connector over!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom