What retro things have you done today?

I've got a nice 478 board but I need to replace seven 3300mF leaky caps on it. Its among my motherboards to recap so I should have them done soon once parts arrive.

Thats the problem with socket 370 some boards have ISA or AGP but not both options or two ISA slots. On all my 370 boards its either one or the other. The good thing about socket 370 is that they are still cheap to buy compared with other retro boards, you can still get new old stock 370 boards for 30 to 40 pounds. Some compromises will need to be made in the way of ISA and AGP but its easily worked around, there are good PCI sound cards about that work well in DOS.

I might use the socket 478 it just depends on the clearance inside the case, if the PSU overlaps the CPU fan then its not going in, I'll do a test fit in a bit and see. The other issue is that a 478 processor may be too fast for some DOS games and having low enough amounts of RAM where as on the socket 370 boards they take older RAM so you can have 64MB or even 32MB RAM and a 300 MHz processor so in a way 370 boards will be more suitable for DOS gaming over 478.
 
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Thing is with Speed sensitive DOS games, even a Celly 300 is going to be too fast. Unless you start messing with Caches and Multis (which multi's is not an option on the Intel CPU's) then your going to have too fast a system anyways.

My current 2 main rigs are a 233mmx which is pretty flexible in regards to speed, and a P4 with a 5900XT and 3 ISA Slots. Both those systems cover the majority of DOS and Windows 9X games.

Speed sensitive is also a bit of a weird thing in my experience. 2 games which i play which are speed sensitive are Theme Park, and Descent which can be worked around. The rest are just games I'm not really interested in.
 
I have no idea if this board is a runner, I've never put power into it but I have no reason to believe why it shouldn't work once I've re-capped it. I stripped this board from a semi modern junky looking PC that was thrown out some years ago. It all looks good with AGP and plenty of PCI slots.

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Just a few slim mini retro builds I got going on.

The Compaq I may just part out, it runs Windows 98 perfectly and games run well. I was going to spray paint the front face beige and put some wood grain effect around the black casing. I'm not really a fan of the black and silver. This one is 1.8GHz 256MB RAM

The NEC PC has a socket 370 board inside with an 800 MHz processor 128MB RAM... I need to find a new PSU for it one that will fit which is proving to be a challenge but I have a trick up my sleeve for what I'm going to do.

The RM PC is running Windows 2000 I wanted to get Windows 98 on it but the motherboards chipset is not supported under 98 but is under Windows 2000 and it runs games very well. I've been paying Lemmings and Roller Coaster Tycoon on it for most of the day. It features a 1.6GHz Celeron 420 with 512MB RAM 160 GB SATA hard drive.

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phatboy said:
No way. I worked for RM as product manager for 4 odd years and that was the same as my work pc :)

Memories :) not often you see them anymore, just the Export **20 desktops that are kicking about on eBay etc.
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I've always liked the RM PC's they have a simple but nice tidy look to them. I haven't seen any about neither apart from the one I have. I worked on a bunch of them although the larger ones with the vertical mounted floppy drive back in the early 2000s there were always plenty about, but now they have disappeared of the face of the earth it would seem.
 
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Whilst not retro in the sense of what some of you are doing PC wise, I've had an old Optiplex 320 lingering around for a while so i've got it setup for some early xp gaming.
I just need to try and find a black floppy drive now to mount in it for no reason other than aesthetics and to hear it at boot times lol I might even have a go at installing Windows 98 at some point as i'm sure i managed this in the past on it.
 
Fonz-Valo said:
Whilst not retro in the sense of what some of you are doing PC wise, I've had an old Optiplex 320 lingering around for a while so i've got it setup for some early xp gaming.
I just need to try and find a black floppy drive now to mount in it for no reason other than aesthetics and to hear it at boot times lol I might even have a go at installing Windows 98 at some point as i'm sure i managed this in the past on it.
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I have the same sort of thing sat in my folks garage I need to pick up, thanks for the reminder lol. HP Compag DX7500 i want to say? very much a grey "box" does have matching screen, keyboard etc. and nice 2.1 altec lansing speaker setup though :)

Been thinking of something to do with it outside of created some bizarre sleeper
 
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My parts have arrived and I've made a start at re-capping one on the socket 370 boards. The old leaky capacitors came off nice and easy, easier than I expected with just a basic soldering iron but I need to clear the holes of solder to fit the new capacitors, I thought I'd be able to do it with the de-soldering pump, I can't find my de-soldering braid anywhere so I've ordered some more. Its best I use braid rather than risking damaging any traces. It be a another week or so now until I can finish it and then that will be used for a Windows MS-DOS/Win95 build.

The thought of installing Win98 on it has crossed my mind tho... just because its got better driver support... I'm on the fence about which one to go for. Hopefully this board works as I've never tested it with those bad caps. I also found a 370 processor of 366MHz to put on it, that is the lowest I have.
 
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Fonz-Valo said:
Whilst not retro in the sense of what some of you are doing PC wise, I've had an old Optiplex 320 lingering around for a while so i've got it setup for some early xp gaming.
I just need to try and find a black floppy drive now to mount in it for no reason other than aesthetics and to hear it at boot times lol I might even have a go at installing Windows 98 at some point as i'm sure i managed this in the past on it.
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Semi modern machines can run Windows 98 pretty well provided the drivers for the board are installed, sometimes they are automatically installed. I've done many Windows 98 builds from Pentium 4 boards and socket 775 boards. For me XP isn't retro enough for me.
 
Retro6 said:
Semi modern machines can run Windows 98 pretty well provided the drivers for the board are installed, sometimes they are automatically installed. I've done many Windows 98 builds from Pentium 4 boards and socket 775 boards. For me XP isn't retro enough for me.
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I do agree regarding XP but it's what the machine originally came with so I went with that :) i've got way too many spare IDE and SATA drives lying around so i'll try and set up a 98 build on that.
The system has a E6600 in at the moment but runs at 2ghz due to chipset limitations. I think will have problems with 98 straight away due to it being a dual core so i'm hoping that switching off multicore in the bios will help, failing that i'll swap for Socket 775 P4 to see if that helps.

My old P200 packard bell system from 97/98 is in the loft somewhere at my mums house so i really need to dig that out for some true 98 goodness lol
 
Fonz-Valo said:
I do agree regarding XP but it's what the machine originally came with so I went with that :) i've got way too many spare IDE and SATA drives lying around so i'll try and set up a 98 build on that.
The system has a E6600 in at the moment but runs at 2ghz due to chipset limitations. I think will have problems with 98 straight away due to it being a dual core so i'm hoping that switching off multicore in the bios will help, failing that i'll swap for Socket 775 P4 to see if that helps.

My old P200 packard bell system from 97/98 is in the loft somewhere at my mums house so i really need to dig that out for some true 98 goodness lol
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There are better boards around for Windows 98. I only used socket 775 boards because I like to see what hardware can do retro wise. A board with AGP is a must or ISA if you can get it. Socket 462 boards are pretty good and they have AGP but then again you can also find socket 370 boards on the bay for not much more 25 to 30 quid which are even better retro wise. A nice cheap but good board I like is the PC CHIPS M811 V.3 its a socket 462 board and also has some interesting Bios options.

Another option for dual core2 machines is Windows 2000 SP4 for retro gaming.
 
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Retro6 said:
There are better boards around for Windows 98. I only used socket 775 boards because I like to see what hardware can do retro wise. A board with AGP is a must or ISA if you can get it. Socket 462 boards are pretty good and they have AGP but then again you can also find socket 370 boards on the bay for not much more 25 to 30 quid which are even better retro wise. A nice cheap but good board I like is the PC CHIPS M811 V.3 its a socket 462 board and also has some interesting Bios options.

Another option for dual core2 machines is Windows 2000 SP4 for retro gaming.
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Hmm Windows 2000, good shout!

Nice OS as well.
 
I found my flux and de-soldering braid but I think this board is defeating me which is very annoying. Caps came off easy but unclogging the holes is impossible, the solder just wont budge. I hate soldering motherboards. Anything else is easy I've been soldering for years. I feel like just chucking this motherboard.

Has anybody got any tips for unclogging holes on a motherboard?
 
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I managed to re-cap another socket 370 board without too much of a fuss. That first board is a nightmare I tell ya, I will have to come back to that one some other time. So the second 370 board I re-caped has an ISA slot so better for when it comes to DOS gaming. I've just tested it and its working :cry:. I've installed it into the soon to be Windows 95/DOS build. I've got a 4GB industrial SSD to try out on it to install the OS on to. Only thing missing is a Bios battery and some IDE cables plus a floppy drive cable which I have a box of them somewhere but I will call it a night for today.
 
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