Dug this guy up the other day. 1.2ghz PIII Celeron

[commissioneranthony]

I finally got around to sifting through my unsorted junk pile. I believe I found these chucked out by a local business just last year. Yes, last year. What a run. What to do with it? I'm not the kind of animal to chuck a good PCB to the wolves. I came up with some valid choices. Feel free to chime in with other options. I mean, jeez, when was the last time you saw a blue socket 370?

 

[pendragon1]

I found these chucked out by a local business just last year. Yes, last year. What a run. What to do with it?

put them back

 

[Starfalcon]

Nice soyo board, they made a lot of good ones back in the day. It looks like it will need a recap though, see lots of bulgey caps around the socket.

 

[pendragon1]

bulgey caps

most of them...

 

[GoldenTiger]

It's gorgeous... How could you consider forcing it to work?! Put that puppy in a safe deposit box for preservation!

 

[RazorWind]

Is that cockroach diarrhea around the socket?

 

[ribcage]

Replace all capacitors, not just ones that are bulged.

 

[commissioneranthony]

Is that cockroach diarrhea around the socket?

Nah, those are tiny resistor networks.

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

If you don't want it, I'll take it, recap it and boot it up! I could use an old universal AGP 1.5V/3.3V 4X mobo. I just re-capped a Soyo KT880 Socket A last weekend and she booted up nicely on a Athlon XP 2700+!

 

[Westwood]

Nah, those are tiny resistor networks.

Could also be cheese.

 

[Valnar]

That VIA chipset board is not worth keeping IMO. The CPU is though. Makes for a good Win98 retro machine with a better board.

 

[ribcage]

Poor quality capacitors don't necessarily mean the manufacturer used cheap components, even Intel boards had issues with failing capacitors. It could be related to the so called capacitor plague of late 90s and early 2000s.

I would say boards are definitely worth keeping. CPUs are probably easier to find than boards.

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

Poor quality capacitors don't necessarily mean the manufacturer used cheap components, even Intel boards had issues with failing capacitors. It could be related to the so called capacitor plague of late 90s and early 2000s.

I would say boards are definitely worth keeping. CPUs are probably easier to find than boards.

Too true... I have several Soyo boards (which were damn good boards) that I had to replace most the caps on. Meanwhile, my MSI nForce 2 board has the original caps and still works flawlessly 20 years later, even with a heavy OC... lol.

 

[Down8]

My first PC (meaning one I built, not mom's x386 in the '80s) was built on a P3-500e and a very similar Soyo/VIA board. Eventually took it up to 700MHz by OC'ing from 100FSB to 140 with random PC100 RAM. Was a good machine. GPU was... [thinking... damn, started with an 'S'...] oh!, a Savage... something....] Diamond S3 Savage! Fry's had it all way back then.

On topic: wall art.

-bZj

 

[thedream829]

I put together a retro gaming rig and never ended up ever touching it. Tinkering and putting it together was fun though.

 

[SpongeBob]

Sell it to one of those a-holes who's going to dump $500 into a "vintage" gaming machine that they'll use 3 times.

Edit, awkward... Just read OP's post didn't see the post I'd be posting under.

 

[thedream829]

Sell it to one of those a-holes who's going to dump $500 into a "vintage" gaming machine that they'll use 3 times.

Edit, awkward... Just read OP's post didn't see the post I'd be posting under.

 

[zandor]

Your poll has no good options. You should sacrifice them to the beer gods. In other words, make a temp controller out of those obsolete parts and brew a batch of lager.

 

[NamelessPFG]

Keep the CPU at the very least, even if the motherboard turns out to be utter crap even after a recap. VIA chipsets were not particularly well-regarded back in the day, but it'll tide you over until you can find a suitable 440BX board - and probably a slotket, most of those are Slot 1 and you have an FC-PGA2 Tualatin CPU.

This thing's a potentially good start for a Windows 98 SE build. Throw in some SDRAM, a 3dfx card (your AGP slot on that looks like it can accept a Voodoo3 or even a Voodoo5 5500), a Sound Blaster Live! or Aureal Vortex2, maybe put those ISA slots to use with a Sound Blaster 16 or AWE32 if you don't like the aforementioned cards' SB DOS emulation, and off you go. PCI Ethernet would also be advisable just so you can use FTP or SMB 1.0 to get files on and off of it without having to muck around with CDs or Win98's jank-ass USB Mass Storage support too much.

You'll still be ahead on performance compared to trying to emulate a similar build in PCem/86Box even on today's latest and greatest, and you have more GPU and sound card options.