What retro things have you done today?

hohum said:
Definitely intriguing, pretty awful description kept the price down on that! Probably doesn't have a Voodoo 5 in it but let us know :p
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No it likely has (if anything) a low end motherboard with integrated everything.

Speaking of Voodoo 5s, mine has begun the international leg of its journey, and the fans and fan headers have arrived today. Heatsinks are still enroute from China (solid copper 40x40mm).
 
I made a couple of ebay purchases past couple of days.

What looks to be a nice Compaq Armada 7792 DMT Laptop. I will have to look for the CD-ROM Drive for it. I believe this model has the Pentium 266MMX "Tillamook" CPU inside. Waiting for it to arrive to find out its specs. Looks in good nick and will make a really nice retro gaming laptop.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Old-Comp...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

Bundle of 3 soundcards. Offer £15 for the 3. One of them is a Aureal Vortex 2. Don't really need it as I have one and a Diamond Monster MX300. Might flip it as they usually go for £40+ and make some money off the lot.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Computer...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649
 
paradigm said:
We are yet to see, it’s a faulty card that I’m going to attempt to repair. It might end up a £100 paperweight yet!

If it works however, it’s incredibly cheap for a PCI Voodoo 5.
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Ah right, best of luck! I decided a while back I'd not venture beyond a V2 or V3 due to the sums of money involved, but if you can get it working then that's not too bad a price in the scheme of things.
 
So, went to pick up that "case" and ended up with two of them, along with a Time Pentium II tower. Not opened any up to see what's in them, but as suspected they all seem to have integrated everything so to me only the cases are particularly interesting/useful, along with the floppy/cd/dvd drives.

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So, the two Aurora cases house Asus A7N266-VM nForce based mATX motherboards, 1GB of DDR and a Duron 1.3GHz CPU. The Time "Pentium II" is actually a Pentium 3 500 (so Klamath) with 256MB of PC133.

All three have LifeView FlyVideo 98 TV Tuner/Capture cards in them, which is odd.
 
Thats still a pretty good haul you could split the components and flip them for a nice little profit.

Ive got super nostalgia for anything TIME/TINY or Gateway 2000.

Which goes some way to explain my next purchase. Picking up this weekend:


 
I’ll probably flip the boards, cpus and RAM, and probably one of the aurora cases (maybe one as a full system), but I’m keeping the Time case and the better of the two aurora cases. Might keep a duron also, and swap in a sempron.
 
Had a Dooohhh moment today. Had this Gigabyte 586ATS motherboard which I know used to work a good while ago. I tried to fire it up a couple of weeks ago but couldn't get it to post so i put it away. The Dallas had also died on it and I had brought some replacements from China just before Covid hit. Decided to give it another try as i had picked up a ATI Rage 3D Rage card i wanted to test out. Assembled all the parts and the thing wouldn't power on. Kept trying the power and the PSU would just click. Scratched my head.. then saw I had reversed the AT Power plugs. I chuckled to myself and thought well that's a load of hardware I have just wiped out. I reversed the plugs and thankfully it powered on but still no post. So then i though maybe it didn't like these dallas chips. I had the original dallas which i coin modded but still no post. Then i saw i had only populated 1 RAM slot. I thought Pentiums could run with 1 RAM stick. Stuck a 2nd stick in and victory, the thing posted. Stuck the new dallas in and it works and keeps the settings. Got a little lucky there.

RRuWXCFl.jpg
 
Its actually quite a decent board. Its a 430FX Chipset but it actually supports MMX CPU's. It also has a turbo function which sets the speed to 50fsb. Its a good candidate for a MMX Slowdown System combined with Setmul.
 
paradigm said:
I’ll probably flip the boards, cpus and RAM, and probably one of the aurora cases (maybe one as a full system), but I’m keeping the Time case and the better of the two aurora cases. Might keep a duron also, and swap in a sempron.
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Is the Time Case a Side Mount PSU? Good Cases for Slot 1 Machines. A Scrub with some CIF should have it coming up nicely!
 
Considering we are building a hell of a lot of cool machines in this thread, Here's an interesting question and i'm interested to see what people come up with in regards to what they would build, have built. Whats is your "Dream" build, or perfect build in regards to a retro machine? Have you built it yet or if not why?
 
cee-S-dee said:
Considering we are building a hell of a lot of cool machines in this thread, Here's an interesting question and i'm interested to see what people come up with in regards to what they would build, have built. Whats is your "Dream" build, or perfect build in regards to a retro machine? Have you built it yet or if not why?
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Oooh great question. Be interesting to see everyones answers, perhaps even thread worthy. I was thinking earlier that there is not much 486/386 love in here.

For me there are 2 "dream" systems. The first one is not a money but a rarity issue.
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This case (my first ever PC) along with a 486 dx4 with PCI slots.

The 2nd "dream build" is mostly already done. A high specced P3 with nice ISA soundcard. I dont think I have any speed sensitive games so its got a massive range with good DOS support too. I would love one of the 1.4ghz ones with a gf3 ti 500 or something. Would give me a bigger range of games than the current 866mhz + voodoo 3.
 
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