I am Oldskool

ALXAndy · 24 Sep 2017 at 15:24

V F said:
Where are you getting all these Alienware heads from?

The bay of fleas. About £1.50-£2 each, IIRC, solid metal and come with 3m tape. I have painted the eyes in this one from blue to black.. Talking of the bay of fleas.. Because most of the games I am going to be playing are Sega PC titles that means awesome J-pop. However, it also means 48X CDROM. I forgot just what happens when a CDROM drive that fast spins up and hits its resonant frequency, making everything in the PC vibrate and rattle. So I have ordered two sheets of this.

Can't remember if I mentioned that I had settled on a board? any way I got this for £20.99 (fully mech blues) on another site on one day special.

And then today when I was digging through my drawers I found these.

Noice.

ALXAndy · 26 Sep 2017 at 11:34

Treated myself to this.

It's suitably filthy so will need some cleaning and opening/lubing etc.

ALXAndy · 27 Sep 2017 at 12:20

OK so today's fun began about 30 mins back. The postman came with the LEDs etc. However, one thing that has always boiled my pee is how easily LED strips come unstuck. It's annoyed me since the dawn of the things. 3M my ass. So I decided to add this before even attempting to fit them.

Which was an absolute nightmare. If it touches itself you are in big trouble. One of those jobs where you need like ten hands. Eventually I got them in (apols for poor pic quality the weather is crap)

Can hardly see them which is what I wanted. Here they are in place, they will never be removed.

And on the underside of the box

And on.

So now I have to get a 240v cable into the PC somehow to power up the PSU. Then I found this little snap out hole.

So now just some soldering, braiding, tidying etc and it will be done.

mikedigitales · 27 Sep 2017 at 14:23

Loving this build thread - looks ace!

ALXAndy · 27 Sep 2017 at 14:55

Thanks man

I have watered this down a little in case it upsets the "If you swallow bubblegum it sticks to your insides and kills you !" brigade. So I've not taken any pics of testing, making switches and power cables etc.

First remove the bay covers.

Then snap out the metal parts.

Power supply.

You can see the inlet cable here.

And then where it will reside.

And the inline switch I fitted.

So now I can turn the lights off independently of the case etc.

ALXAndy · 27 Sep 2017 at 19:12

LePhuronn · 27 Sep 2017 at 19:43

Sick. Nicely done.

mikeggratton · 28 Sep 2017 at 10:45

Nice build, looks great!

ALXAndy · 28 Sep 2017 at 12:22

Thanks guys. Never done a UV build before but it reminds me of my raving days haha.

Unfortunately this is now the third time I thought my "cold" was gone and after 12 hours of sleep last night I've woken up feeling just as bad as I did at the beginning again. I think it's a bit more serious than a cold, so I really need to force myself to rest and take the cold meds rather than end up faffing around with this. I still have two panels to design/cut and make graphics for but I really just don't have the energy. It sucks

ALXAndy · 29 Sep 2017 at 09:53

Last night I decided to fit the sound deadening material onto the DVDROM drive. I had a look over it, and realised pretty quickly I could not deaden the top. If I did then it would not have gone back into the case. So, instead I removed the drive, then removed the face plate from the HDD bay I fitted and instead I completely covered the bottom of the DVD drive. I also deadened the sides of the CD bay.

And the other side obs, where the pieces were bigger because the mech to remove the drives is not there. And it did the trick ! all you can hear now is a gentle whoosh as the drive spins up with no rattling or buzzing. Awesome

The top and right side are now back in place.

So as soon as I feel better I will finish the two cover panels

ALXAndy · 29 Sep 2017 at 12:27

Pushed on and finished the panels. Now I am a sweaty mess and need to go back to bed.

It's still not quite finished finished because the black panel will have a chrome decal on with the date it was completed. I still have a few jobs to do before that

I did treat myself to a separate chair for this rig because the arms on my chair do not drop (I broke them, now they are fixed in the up position and don't go down).

ALXAndy · 1 Oct 2017 at 13:52

Nearly there. Just need the chair to arrive

Aneskimo · 1 Oct 2017 at 18:19

Cracking job Andy, it’s actually got that retro look you was going for

Vidar · 4 Oct 2017 at 02:23

Favourite build log ever..... thank you mate!

ALXAndy · 6 Oct 2017 at 13:30

Thanks guys. Sadly there has been a delay with the chair so I haven't had a chance to actually use it properly yet ! Should be here next week apparently.

almoststew1990 · 6 Oct 2017 at 21:58

Now let's see some benchmarks!

ALXAndy · 7 Oct 2017 at 20:22

almoststew1990 said:
Now let's see some benchmarks!

Hah ! finding them to download is pretty tough tbh. I did run one (can't remember which) and the GPU was between a Geforce 2 and Geforce 3. Not that it matters, it does what I need it to

I've still not overclocked the CPU because I can't seem to find a temp monitor for it.

almoststew1990 · 7 Oct 2017 at 22:49

ALXAndy said:
Hah ! finding them to download is pretty tough tbh. I did run one (can't remember which) and the GPU was between a Geforce 2 and Geforce 3. Not that it matters, it does what I need it to

I've still not overclocked the CPU because I can't seem to find a temp monitor for it.

3DMark have their legacy benchmarks (the pro editions) available for free here, (with 2001 generally being the favourite) and of course what retro gaming PC would be complete without a Quake 3 benchmark? Download the demo here and then run a timedemo by pressing the console ( ¬ ) and typing timedemo 1, and then going to the demo option in the main menu and running demo 1. Your fps score will display in the console afterwards.

I use HWMonitor for basic temperature monitoring; oldversion.com has a version from 2010 that is more likely to support your hardware if the newest version doesn't. Whilst you're there oldversion.com has old versions of CPU-Z if you want an authentic Windows 2000 / XP time period version!

If you haven't discovered Vogons forum it is a good place for retro PC gaming.

ALXAndy · 8 Oct 2017 at 11:26

Wicked cheers I will try that. Right now I CBA dragging my chair to and fro because it's wrecking my cowhide.. I also decided to keep the machine off of the internet, so yeah, lots of running back and forth. I did connect it up first install but it downloaded a crap ton of updates that then made it crawl. I would imagine they far succeeded the age of the board and CPU and were for much faster core 2 rigs and the likes. So right now I have to ferry my chair over this rug with a memory stick in hand. Wish the chair had arrived, but they said it won't even be shipped until at least Monday *sigh* so much for "IN STOCK AND READY TO SHIP !!11". I phoned him and he said he's sent it off to be recovered, but however does that mean in stock and ready to ship. Then he tells me read the small print.. Yeah, slightly annoyed would be putting it mildly.

I was aware of Oldversion. Been using it since about 2002 for older versions of Yahoo! messenger lol. That's gone now though

Will deffo try out Quake 3. I had the original game in a steelcase (big box) for Linux but it seems it got lost somewhere

harrism · 8 Oct 2017 at 21:14

Great build mate really like the orange colour on the inside.