What retro things have you done today?

I got this out of storage today. I have talked a bit about it in this thread and thats my P3 Tualatin-S Machine. Its a tiny little power house in my Opinion for a P3 rig. I love the size of the case. The Specs are as following.

  • Intel Pentium III Tualatin 1.4-S @ 1.6ghz (152mhz FSB)
  • Gigabyte GA-6OMM7E Intel 815i M-ATX Motherboard
  • 256mb Ram (Need to get this upto 512)
  • PNY Geforce FX 5900XT (With Arctic NV Silencer 4)
  • Aureal Vortex 2 With Yamaha DB50XG Wavetable card for Dos Midi (And Final Fantasy 7)
  • Chieftec M-ATX Case
  • FSP SFX 300Watt Power Supply
  • Pioneer DVD Drive
  • Mitsumi Floppy drive with Card Reader (Not Connected Currently)
  • Hitatchi Hard Disk
  • Windows 98 SE

Just performing a full installation on MGS2 on it as i type this (8.9GB!)

8QnC3Pkl.jpg

TNWVIVql.jpg

oIXp5Jsl.jpg

BvlgwWPl.jpg

dvJn3b1l.jpg
 
Last edited:
LewisRaz said:
Is the dos support good? This will likely be my main dos machine.
New baby due soon so packing away all of my bits except for perhaps 1 project.
I am also really enjoying the soundcard with the OPL4 chip. Nothing like the sounds coming from your wavetable bits but much nicer than the normal FM.
Click to expand...

Yeah DOS support is great. No real problems with the 2D core in the V3 3000 plus it has nice picture quality. Congrats on the new baby mate. I hope it all goes smoothly for you :D
 
Cheers mate. I think I shall make that move then. Might add a pci usb card too so i dont have to mess about with CF.
Someone on vogons IDed the 486 I won the other night. I think building that into the "beast" (The pentium 90 is **** :) ) Will be my last move before everything bar the k6/2 and p3 are stored.
 
One step closer to my ultimate Xeon build. I scored two Socket 604 waterblocks today, should keep the Nocona cored CPUs a little cooler than air. Still deciding on a motherboard, either expensive and AGP Pro with RAMBUS, or cheap with PCIe and DDR. I’m leaning towards PCIe at the moment as GPUs are cheaper even of the same generation (say Geforce 6 or 7).
 
LewisRaz said:
But RAMBUS is an interesting part of history :p

This sounds like a very interesting build tho! Will you watercool the GPU too?
Click to expand...
I really do want a RAMBUS build, but tempted to find a P3 board for that!

Watercooling the GPU is something I want to do, but finding custom blocks is hard work for legacy kit!
 
cee-S-dee said:
The Intel OR840 looks to be the killer P3 board. I've kept my eye out for one. Only ever seen one for sale on ebay and it was £150.
Click to expand...
I’ve been looking for an Asus P3C that’s reasonably priced. Slot 1 and RAMBUS, lovely.

I’ve just won a DDR/PCIe dual socket 604 board, so that’s that settled then!
 
LewisRaz said:
New baby due soon so packing away all of my bits except for perhaps 1 project.
Click to expand...

Congrats.

It was having a baby that got me into this hobby.

I was a massive flight simulator enthusiast. But I couldn't commit the time anymore.

I discovered retro computing. In the odd bits of time here and there, I could browse ebay, shop for bits, fit bits, install software, park anything I was working on and and still be on hand for my daddy-duties.

That was 4 and half years ago.

This weekend, the girls were at their grandparents for a night.

I had a quick go with my Amiga 1200:

MVIMG-20200718-124236-1.jpg


And checked that both CRT TVs I was given work:

IMG-20200718-100455.jpg
 
I started on this after the birth of my first daughter as I had to clear out my retro room (massive 16bit sega collection). A few retro pc parts fit easily in my new lounge desk area and then this year I got carried away :)
Retro PCs are far more interesting than consoles for me!
 
cee-S-dee said:
I got this out of storage today. I have talked a bit about it in this thread and thats my P3 Tualatin-S Machine. Its a tiny little power house in my Opinion for a P3 rig. I love the size of the case. The Specs are as following.

  • Intel Pentium III Tualatin 1.4-S @ 1.6ghz (152mhz FSB)
  • Gigabyte GA-6OMM7E Intel 815i M-ATX Motherboard
  • 256mb Ram (Need to get this upto 512)
  • PNY Geforce FX 5900XT (With Arctic NV Silencer 4)
  • Aureal Vortex 2 With Yamaha DB50XG Wavetable card for Dos Midi (And Final Fantasy 7)
  • Chieftec M-ATX Case
  • FSP SFX 300Watt Power Supply
  • Pioneer DVD Drive
  • Mitsumi Floppy drive with Card Reader (Not Connected Currently)
  • Hitatchi Hard Disk
  • Windows 98 SE

Just performing a full installation on MGS2 on it as i type this (8.9GB!)

8QnC3Pkl.jpg

TNWVIVql.jpg

oIXp5Jsl.jpg

BvlgwWPl.jpg

dvJn3b1l.jpg
Click to expand...

That's so clean! nice!
 
LewisRaz said:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/mr.cristiant/m.html?item=264801443272&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

This guy has a few voodoo 1s on auction
Click to expand...

You bidding then? :p

So far I'm underwhelmed by Voodoo 1, I never had one back in their heyday, and I'm pretty convinced that I didn't miss out. Paired with either my Pentium MMX or my K6-2 300 in my Socket 7 build (Asus SP97-V) the performance is lacklustre, even something as "simple" as GLQuake is a bit hit and miss performance wise. Running on a single Voodoo II from my pair, even on the same CPUs is far more playable.

Voodoo I (and by extension Voodoo Rush - possibly more-so the rush as the 2D implementation is dire supposedly, full of problems) seem to be more of a collectors item than a usable piece of classic hardware IMO.

Tempted to move mine on.
 
LewisRaz said:
But RAMBUS is an interesting part of history :p

This sounds like a very interesting build tho! Will you watercool the GPU too?
Click to expand...

So, I've had a good look around for pre-waterblocked vintage GPUs (only nVidia thus far) and it seems that I'd have to go a bit newer than the rest of the system (CPUs late 2004, board early 2005). I can find a fair few GeForce 8 series cards that come with blocks, but they are from 2006. I could alternatively get something like a GeForce 7950GX2 for some SLI action (only the one PCIe slot on the board, so no way to go SLI with more than one card) whilst again from 2006, would be a bit "different", albeit air-cooled.

Not found anything ATI based yet.
 
Just been pulling apart the three beige boxes I picked up last week. Turns out I was wrong, the second Aurora box didn't have a Duron 1.3 like it's sibling (even though D1.3 was written in sharpie on the motherboard tray).

It's an AGOIA stepping (good overclockers were AGOIAs!) XP1900+ Palomino! Glad I didn't just list both on eBay without checking now!
 
The Compaq Laptop I purchased the other week showed up today. Its in really nice condition but it will certainly be a project to get it to full Glory. It will make for an awesome portable dos rig when finished though. It has a Pentium 266 MMX (Not a PII) 64mb Ram, S3 Graphics Chip and ESS Sound. Has a 5gig hard disk with what looks to be the original compaq install of Win95. Its registered to BT so i think this was an old BT laptop. Battery is shot but the power brick is built in so it uses a 3 pin power cable to power it on. No CD-Drive and the floppy drive struggles to read disks. I'm going to hunt for the CD-ROM to add in place of the FDD. Will get a PCMCIA Network card so I can at least transfer stuff in the mean time. Condition wise its sooo nice and the Display is nice a bright with minimal ghosting. 1024x768 16bit colour.

Really looking to getting this back to full glory!

WhmpqBhl.jpg

GsG1kIYl.jpg

59qaUAAl.jpg
 
@cee-S-dee That looks gorgeous.

I'd be tempted to get a PC-Card to CF adapter rather than PCMCIA network card. It should recognize a PC-Card disk, certainly my Olivetti Echos Pentium 75 does.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom