What retro things have you done today?

Test fired the P5N-E SLI board this morning, been sat for years so was a bit anxious.

£5 Q6600 slapped in along with 4GB of 800MHz I found in a spares box. Running great.

First of the Golden Sample GTX260s arrived too. Love the way these cards look. Such a brilliant cooler design :)
 
I rescued these 3 free computers from being chucked away from work. They let me take them home with me but I had to give them the hard drives out of the machines which is fair enough.

Maybe not so retro but just thinking what I can do with these retro wise.... I need to clean out all the dust from them first. They are dual core 2 systems with dual PCI-E slots and 2 GB of Ram each and have a floppy header inside. They might be a bit to modern for Windows 98 I haven't yet checked to see what socket type the processor is but if I can get a single core processor in these then it could be possible Windows 98 would go on these. The Ram is DDR2 so 512MB ram downgrade which I think is the lowest amount in DDR2 256mb would be better but haven't seen any that low.

Windows NT / 2000 XP maybe?

Wv3YB1Q.jpg 22LxzL3.jpg AQvaX0k.jpg
 
phatboy said:
Test fired the P5N-E SLI board this morning, been sat for years so was a bit anxious.

£5 Q6600 slapped in along with 4GB of 800MHz I found in a spares box. Running great.

First of the Golden Sample GTX260s arrived too. Love the way these cards look. Such a brilliant cooler design :)
Click to expand...

I have a blower GTX 260, it had EVGA Livery but was peeling, i removed it all and it has the original NVIDIA Logos printed underneath and looks much better than the Tat vinyl
 
Yeah I think putting Windows XP on these would make more sense, that way I can max out the RAM and I've got a 1GB MSI GPU somewhere that will go in one of these and I've got some SATA SSD drives plus more DDR2 RAM.
 
Armageus said:
@Retro6 look like HP DC7900 - only single core CPU are Celeron I think
  • Intel Celeron 440 processor 2.0 GHz, 512 KB L2 cache, 800 MHz FSB
https://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c01570345
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info after some thinking I decided its best to do XP builds with these. I would have problems finding drivers / finding suitable PCI-E GPU cards for Windows 98 and then there is the sound card so I will do Windows XP instead.
 
Postie made me happy today,

X1950 Pro is here and indeed a 512MB, installed in the Athlon XP build and after a brown trouser moment of not producing a picture realised that my VGA>DVI was faulty, Phew! Found another in the garage and its running great :). FINALLY high end AGP achieved!

Also the partner for my GTX260 GS is now here. Friend has also found a coolermaster case in his loft for me so just a PSU to go now!!!
 
I bought two cheap hard drives for 1.50 each from CEX to bung into a couple of the HP DC 7900 machines. The other HP DC 7900 has an SSD. I had to replace the BIOS batteries in two of them and set the date and time so now they are ready for a hard drive and a Windows XP install. Some of these machines were fitted with quad core processors but unfortunately all mine are just dual cores but fast dual cores at 3.16GHz per core so probably almost as fast as a quad core.

I'm only going to install Windows XP on one of them for now. Its been a long time since I've dealt with Windows XP. I've just downloaded the ISO with key. I remember service packs 2 & 3 only let you have 30 days before you had to activate it and although there were lots of hacks around this none of them actually worked successfully. I'm assuming that the versions are fully activated now that Windows XP is unsupported. I'll guess I'll find out later. Fingers crossed...

Edit... Well as always nothing is ever simple.

It would appear I can't install Windows XP on to any of these machines because they all blue screen when attempting to load the XP files from CD or USB and it happens with all 3 of these machines. They will take Linux installations no problems but I really want Windows XP. I'm a bit stuck now. Maybe these needed a Windows XP HP Restore CD/DVD specific for that machine. There is nothing wrong with the installation media either.

I could attempt to copy Windows XP files to the hard drive in a completely different machine then pop the hard drive back in to the HP DC 7900 but I still run the risk of blue screens. HP have obviously locked these machines to prevent them from being re-used by the end user.

Update... Things I tried.
I tried my Windows 2000 CD "A known working installation CD" and it blue screens the same as XP
I tried Windows 7 pro that installs with no issues at all. Linux will also install with no issues.

I can rule out faulty hardware as being issue like RAM or drives...

I googled the issue I'm having and it would appear that many people have had the exact same issue with there HP DC7900 as I'm having.

The solution... Many HP business PCs of this model and similar require a special HP CD that has to be loaded onto the system before Windows XP can be installed. "I know that sounds silly" I have located an official HP Restore CD on ebay "not for this model" but may work, however I think its just a chipset driver disk and not the "special HP disk" I need. It would seem like the Windows XP installation CD can not detect the SATA controllers and perhaps the special HP CD I require is a driver for the SATA controller or an HP firmware lock to prevent the End User from reusing an HP product and therefor requires a piece of software so that Windows XP can be installed. That would explain why Linux and Windows 7/10 will have no issues installing to an HP 7900 but XP and earlier versions of Windows will.
 
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Retro6 said:
I bought two cheap hard drives for 1.50 each from CEX to bung into a couple of the HP DC 7900 machines. The other HP DC 7900 has an SSD. I had to replace the BIOS batteries in two of them and set the date and time so now they are ready for a hard drive and a Windows XP install. Some of these machines were fitted with quad core processors but unfortunately all mine are just dual cores but fast dual cores at 3.16GHz per core so probably almost as fast as a quad core.

I'm only going to install Windows XP on one of them for now. Its been a long time since I've dealt with Windows XP. I've just downloaded the ISO with key. I remember service packs 2 & 3 only let you have 30 days before you had to activate it and although there were lots of hacks around this none of them actually worked successfully. I'm assuming that the versions are fully activated now that Windows XP is unsupported. I'll guess I'll find out later. Fingers crossed...

Edit... Well as always nothing is ever simple.

It would appear I can't install Windows XP on to any of these machines because they all blue screen when attempting to load the XP files from CD or USB and it happens with all 3 of these machines. They will take Linux installations no problems but I really want Windows XP. I'm a bit stuck now. Maybe these needed a Windows XP HP Restore CD/DVD specific for that machine. There is nothing wrong with the installation media either.

I could attempt to copy Windows XP files to the hard drive in a completely different machine then pop the hard drive back in to the HP DC 7900 but I still run the risk of blue screens. HP have obviously locked these machines to prevent them from being re-used by the end user.

Update... Things I tried.
I tried my Windows 2000 CD "A known working installation CD" and it blue screens the same as XP
I tried Windows 7 pro that installs with no issues at all. Linux will also install with no issues.

I can rule out faulty hardware as being issue like RAM or drives...

I googled the issue I'm having and it would appear that many people have had the exact same issue with there HP DC7900 as I'm having.

The solution... Many HP business PCs of this model and similar require a special HP CD that has to be loaded onto the system before Windows XP can be installed. "I know that sounds silly" I have located an official HP Restore CD on ebay "not for this model" but may work, however I think its just a chipset driver disk and not the "special HP disk" I need. It would seem like the Windows XP installation CD can not detect the SATA controllers and perhaps the special HP CD I require is a driver for the SATA controller or an HP firmware lock to prevent the End User from reusing an HP product and therefor requires a piece of software so that Windows XP can be installed. That would explain why Linux and Windows 7/10 will have no issues installing to an HP 7900 but XP and earlier versions of Windows will.
Click to expand...
All the 10K Hard drives from CEX are faulty, all four of them. I tried to install Win XP on them on an ASROCK Dual VSTA motherboard and all of them got stuck during install. They also make a small cranky noise. While searching through a drawer for 3.5" HDD I found two 2.5" 10K 300GB HDDs wrapped in bubble wrap. I totally forgot about them.. I managed to install Win XP with no issues. I might give them another chance, but it will take a long time to test them. Any app you can recommend to test them quicker for bad sectors?
 
manisses said:
All the 10K Hard drives from CEX are faulty, all four of them. I tried to install Win XP on them on an ASROCK Dual VSTA motherboard and all of them got stuck during install. They also make a small cranky noise. While searching through a drawer for 3.5" HDD I found two 2.5" 10K 300GB HDDs wrapped in bubble wrap. I totally forgot about them.. I managed to install Win XP with no issues. I might give them another chance, but it will take a long time to test them. Any app you can recommend to test them quicker for bad sectors?
Click to expand...
The ones I bought are fine but I know what you mean. Some of the ones I bought in the past from CEX have been faulty. I remember buying an 80 GB drive from CEX and the guy in there dropped it on the counter and he said "oh that will be fine" I bought it anyway but returned it because it was iffy. A lot of stuff there isn't tested properly I'd say partiality tested at best. They use Windows Vista to test SSD's I've noticed. Sometimes I buy cheap parts and don't use them until much later on when I need them which is not always a good thing to do. I just take CEX's word for it that they work and have been fully tested.

To be fair, it all takes time and the staff who work in CEX stores are under paid and are under a lot of pressure to make sales and stuff. A lot of employees get fed up and quit.

There are all sorts of applications you can use to test hard drives normally if they are making a random clicky noise for no reason then that a sign of a faulty hard drive.
 
Retro6 said:
I rescued these 3 free computers from being chucked away from work. They let me take them home with me but I had to give them the hard drives out of the machines which is fair enough.

Maybe not so retro but just thinking what I can do with these retro wise.... I need to clean out all the dust from them first. They are dual core 2 systems with dual PCI-E slots and 2 GB of Ram each and have a floppy header inside. They might be a bit to modern for Windows 98 I haven't yet checked to see what socket type the processor is but if I can get a single core processor in these then it could be possible Windows 98 would go on these. The Ram is DDR2 so 512MB ram downgrade which I think is the lowest amount in DDR2 256mb would be better but haven't seen any that low.

Windows NT / 2000 XP maybe?
Click to expand...

I was gifted four dell 330's. On one I ended up cramming a couple of zalman led fans in the front, SSD, 750Ti, e5450 xeon (771 to775 mod) and a noctua replacing the original PSU fan. Totally pointless, but does win 2000 and win 11.

48039395143_691344186d_z.jpg
 
drakulton said:
I was gifted four dell 330's. On one I ended up cramming a couple of zalman led fans in the front, SSD, 750Ti, e5450 xeon (771 to775 mod) and a noctua replacing the original PSU fan. Totally pointless, but does win 2000 and win 11.

48039395143_691344186d_z.jpg
Click to expand...
Nice. I've seen a couple of interesting mods online. I was thinking about doing a mod to one of the HP DC7900's. I will leave them as they are for now. Unfortunately the HP DC7900 are Windows 7/10 or Linux machines only as they wont take any earlier versions of windows. I was going to do a Fisher Price mod for a laugh to go with Windows XP but Windows 7 will have to do and I got the computer up to 8 GB's of RAM and its flying and has an SSD I'll probably use it as a handy CD/DVD burning machine.
 
Retro6 said:
Nice. I've seen a couple of interesting mods online. I was thinking about doing a mod to one of the HP DC7900's. I will leave them as they are for now. Unfortunately the HP DC7900 are Windows 7/10 or Linux machines only as they wont take any earlier versions of windows. I was going to do a Fisher Price mod for a laugh to go with Windows XP but Windows 7 will have to do and I got the computer up to 8 GB's of RAM and its flying and has an SSD I'll probably use it as a handy CD/DVD burning machine.
Click to expand...

HPs website says XP and Vista
 
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