I am Oldskool

ALXAndy · 12 Sep 2017 at 20:28

You should be playing Stunt Island on that 486

one of the best games ever. Ahhh, those were the days. I was reminiscing in bed last night about my early PC days. I started on a 286 SX25. I upgraded to a 486 DX266 and then a DX4100 before going Pentium. But yeah, some of my happiest days ever were just chilling on my 486 with Stunt Island, Papyrus Indy Car & NASCAR and a can of coke

This rig is a '93-'99 rig. Those are the games I am gunning for, so mostly Sega PC stuff on DX3 lol.

Best update yet

The block is now being machined. Here is the block being milled.

And to size.

I had a choice of chamfered or rounded edge. I chose rounded.

And the edge finish from the mill.

I will be polishing that out myself

ALXAndy · 12 Sep 2017 at 22:19

Fine here?

ALXAndy · 13 Sep 2017 at 11:48

We are with rad !!

Yay, it's a minter

Massive thanks to Alf.

ALXAndy · 13 Sep 2017 at 13:52

And the rad is in

ALXAndy · 13 Sep 2017 at 18:04

ALXAndy · 14 Sep 2017 at 11:46

The block top is now finished

Going to be a slight pause now. I have had to order some more modding supplies, so until they arrive I can't go any further

ALXAndy · 14 Sep 2017 at 20:42

I had to. I still remember it like it were yesterday. 1999, walked into that *gob spit* place who are all over the place. Purley Way, Croydon. Handed over just over a hundred notes and left with this.

Just picked that up on the crappy auction site. Well stoked.

ALXAndy · 15 Sep 2017 at 11:53

Been thinking about it and I decided to splash out a little. Instead of trying to make it work with my KVM I am going to make it a separate entity. I bought this to match my furniture

The last 160gb IDE drive made.

17" LCD in grade A condition.

ESD brush kit to clean the mobo sound card etc.

Elsewhere work continues.

I am having to weld one edge at a time to keep it true and square. I also need to come up with an idea for a fan shim so that it goes in without touching the shroud. All relatively easy stuff.

Quick sneak peak at the back plate. The cut out is for the RAM retention.

I made the back plate to match the logo on the card which is chrome but won't be visible with the cooler on.

ALXAndy · 15 Sep 2017 at 13:14

Welding is complete.

So

I am now working on the retention and other things

ALXAndy · 15 Sep 2017 at 15:23

Kurgen said:
looking good, whats that little gland for?

The fan cable. Right now it sounds like a typhoon. So, I am fitting the yellow fan onto a fan controller.

ALXAndy · 15 Sep 2017 at 17:29

Removed fan, removed fan plate. Sanded fan plate so the graphics are gone, glued fan down.

As you can also see I have meshed "capacitor corner".

Will give the fan a couple of hours to set then solder/braid etc.

ALXAndy · 16 Sep 2017 at 09:47

Quick teaser pic. Have a very busy day lined up today

ALXAndy · 16 Sep 2017 at 10:33

Postman came.

Yay, stunning work Gareth !

ALXAndy · 16 Sep 2017 at 13:06

Aneskimo said:
Got a colour scheme in mind? only ask as the fittings on the block above are red and everything else seems black and orange

Nope ! this is modding from the early noughties where taste and colour schemes did not exist

Orange, black, yellow, red, silver etc.

ALXAndy · 17 Sep 2017 at 12:13

Aneskimo said:
Tbh black does go with everything , good luck mate

Well I have decided to change the main cover panel graphics. The silver stuff started peeling and yeah, I didn't need a second reminder. Am laid up with a cold ATM so I think I will just do some design today and get that redone. Fittings were practically free. I had 6 spare from doing my last loop and there were two left on OCUK at the price I got them for (£2.99 each for Bitspower). I had the hose, had the pump, the rad was pretty much free and so on. The braided cables (24 pin etc) were all left over from a DFI tribute project that never happened and so it was finally time to throw everything I had in my spares box at it. Which is good because it has barely cost me anything (well, about £200 all done tops) but it has kept my mind busy. The last time my mind wanted something to do I spent about £1200 upgrading my main desktop lol. So I feel I have gotten off lightly here

Lee - yeah I was trying to find something modern with lower hours on it. Otherwise they start to whine and the noise is annoying.

ALXAndy · 17 Sep 2017 at 13:25

Thanks Michael. Yeah, another one that started out as a bit of a laugh and then I got knee deep in lol. Was supposed to be simple !

Even though I swore up and down to myself that I was going to do nothing today (got a cold or something) I ended up doing something lol. My ESD brushes came last night so I gave the motherboard a ruddy good clean. Even though it was pretty clean there was a lot of dust clumped up in certain areas. Can't be having that.

And then of course it led on to "I will just remove the stock cooler and clean the CPU" and then "I will just fit the block" and then "I will just measure up the IO cover. FFS lol.

ALXAndy · 17 Sep 2017 at 15:09

Quick IO cover.

ALXAndy · 17 Sep 2017 at 15:41

Before.

After.

ALXAndy · 18 Sep 2017 at 09:18

So instead of soldering up loads of fan to molex I just bought this for £10 instead.

Just need to make a couple of 3-4 pin fan adapters.

ALXAndy · 18 Sep 2017 at 09:45

Last night I fitted the front.

The old cathode ballast used to go in the case but I changed it and modded it to fit into the front area.

And what old skool PC would be worth its salts if it didn't have a Boomslang

Yup, hiding in the bottom of my wardrobe was my 2007 Boomslang CE. I got it from OCUK ten years ago ! It's a little tatty but I tested it last night and everything works as it should