486 Project - Gaming Machine

[Matzo]

It's a dream to build a PC today, much like the operating systems are much faster and easier to install.

I've found that building retro PC's you encounter problems much like you did twenty years ago, it's a strange mix of nostalgic pleasure and frustration. Today though one thing that's easier is the ability to buy the higher end hardware. My budget is a little more flexible that in was in my teens.

Yeah, crazy amounts of jumpers or dip-switches for setting multipliers, voltages and feature control.

The ATC 1425 socket 3 motherboard is pretty stable, the system has so much more memory installed (128MB) than I had back then (8MB and later 16MB). ZIP drive installed, which I could never afford back then - similar story for the Voodoo 3 and Gravis Ultrasound.

 

[Matzo]

What about the (often) missing .dll file? Or when uninstalling a software would cause no end to blue screens? The Windows 95 was as frustrating as the Windows ME, at least for me.

Fingers crossed it all seems pretty stable on this setup. Having said that I'm doing a few other vintage builds on the go and I've had one particular system with so many blue screen issues. I think the experience can be quite different based on the hardware. Back in the day the first family machine we had was a Packard Bell and it came shipped with Windows and had all the recovery software and we never had an issue, that was stable too.

Windows ME, was such a step up from 98SE as far as I rember and a much better user experience - until it fell over, reinstall... repeat experience.

 

[Matzo]

So much nostalgia.

I had my mate's dad build my first PC with me watching, it would have been 96 I think.

He was in IT at Ratcliffe Power Station back then so was so far ahead of the curve.

Growing up his man cave was amazing, 2 x BBCs and an Archimedes(?) all set up on a huge bench with various monitors and printer and boxes of floppy discs with games at a time most people only got to play Granny's Garden on the BBC at school and the Turtle Robot thing was mind bending.

The BBC Acorn was great, I had one as a kid which came with an external 5.25" drive and a heap load of games. Funny enough I've got one, might upload a few snaps of all the pixelated fun.

 

[Matzo]

I must have built well over a thousand 486, p60/66 pentium (fixed) and various AM486/Cirex cpus through the 90s - none will likely have survived this long though.

You've probably installed Windows more times than you care to remember, I know I have. If it wasn't for the bug of nostalgia I'd not be doing it again, it's bizzare.

 

[Matzo]

I know this thread is a couple years old but I always enjoy reading 486 threads.

I got a POS machine given to me and it has a socket 3 board it has a WIN Chip which I will replace with a 486 processor. If it works then I will transfer the board to a AT case and do a 486 build.

Thanks for digging the thread up again, it's been a while since I did much retro but got really into it, setup as an Instagram showcase as retronow.blog but life takes over.

Nice idea for a project, probably what I'd do too is replace with an Intel and re-case. Keep us all posted!