Project Ancient Box.....

M

Moose777

2[H]4U
Joined
Oct 10, 2004
Messages
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Ok, so I'm tired of not being able to play my old games. You know the ones, Dark Forces, Full Throttle, Mortyr (yes I own that game), Blood 2, Dark Forces 2, SiN, Dungeon Keeper, the entire Wing Commander series.

So, I've decided to build a new box. And heres what I'm starting out with.

PICT0022.jpg

Does anyone know what case this is? Because, I sure as hell don't.

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Wiring is an abomination. But it gets better.

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2.5G HDD. Laughable at best.

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Probably the coolest part int he whole box....almost.....Diamond Stealth 3d bitches. :)

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The mobo, dunno what it is...don't rightly care either......Chances are I'm not reusing it.....sorry about the sun/flash glare....

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Look ma, no thermal paste!!! P1 Socket 7. It now makes sense as to why this thing would just lock-up when I was a kid, the back of the heatsink is discolored from the heat. Awesome!!!

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Memory...I believe it was 512. Not sure though. I do know that they are 144 pin though.

Unfortunately, I'm going to need at least a P2. So I doubt I can reuse any of this stuff. I doubt the case is even reusable. If anyone knows where I can get parts for this case please lemme know. Or hell, if you have stuff you don't want and are willing to donate cheaply that'd be even better.
 
I don't even know if it works. I took it apart before testing it. Hell, I don't evne know if I could figure out how to put it back together.....it seems more ocmplicated than the easy PnP boards we have today.

The proc in this thing is dated 1992-1993 thats when I started Highschool. I think the newest thing which is still about 8 years old in the case is the PSU and its a 12 pin PSU. Their what 20 and 24 pin now?

This stuff, case included might end up in the trash cause it'd peobably be cheaper to just start from scratch. Plus I've already got a spare AMD 939 board I'm not using, I might be able to run Win 98 on it.
 
Bah! Kids these days... :p

Must be nice having a spare 939 board lying around... here I am trying to scrounge up Slot 1 boards to fold on.
 
I tried selling the board 4 times. Had it on ebay all 3 times, listed it on here 1 had it on a few automotive sites I belong to and no one wanted it.

Anyway, I found an Ebay auction for 2 P2 procs for $1. With 7 hours left. I'm gonna go take my drug test for my new job then when I come back I'm gonna buy themif no one else has. If they are both socket 7 I might keep this old board and see if one of them will work with it. And I should still have a SB Awe 32 laying around too somewhere.
 
ygpm, i can help you with the parts and such you may be needing for this PC.
 
Moose777 said:
The proc in this thing is dated 1992-1993 thats when I started Highschool. I think the newest thing which is still about 8 years old in the case is the PSU and its a 12 pin PSU. Their what 20 and 24 pin now?
Click to expand...

Ahhh good ole AT, thats when you sometimes needed to solder the switch to the PSU just to get it working.
 
That mobo looks really familiar... I have a Pentium 133 system lying around... think it was something like an Asus P55TVP4... not 100% tho.. looks like an asus board 2me...myne has 1 SD slot where you can use two of the EDO slots as well as a 64MB sd slot at best (but it doesn't like it when I do that).

Those are EDO ram... you might think theres alot of ram on each chip.. but there isn't. I know I had 16MB of ram in my system, and it had two of those chips without the second row of ram. If i had to wager a guess, id' say theres like..
2x 16MB
2x 32MB
96 MB of ram there...
or...
2x 8MB
2x 16MB for
48MB of ram...

I'm pretty sure you could get a Pentum processor up to 233MHz in that socket before you had to get a P2, but I don't remember totally - this was a long time ago :p

Anyhow, good luck in your endeavers... My suggestion to you, is just buy a used box from a store that sells old computers for like $50, ensuring that what you get works (get them to sign paperwork).
 
nebo13in1 said:
Ahhh good ole AT, thats when you sometimes needed to solder the switch to the PSU just to get it working.
Click to expand...
Most psu's came pre-attached.... no solder required :p

remember.. black to black on the mobo if your using an AT power supply... (the two connectors... otherwise you can fry the board)
 
Dumass_Freakboy said:
I'm pretty sure you could get a Pentum processor up to 233MHz in that socket before you had to get a P2, but I don't remember totally - this was a long time ago :p.
Click to expand...

Better than that-- I have some socket 7 K6-2's that range up to 400MHz, and IIRC, they topped out at like 533MHz.
 
lockheed2266 said:
ygpm, i can help you with the parts and such you may be needing for this PC.
Click to expand...
Replied. Thanks for the help.

And yeah, I don't remember how this RAM works but that sounds right.

A buddy of mine in Rahway, NJ has an old HP Workstation he's also donating to the build. So, between all the parts I'm going to collect I should have enough to build one good rig out of so I can play all of my old games.

My main reason for doing this is because my nephew doesn't know what good games are, he's stuck in this retarded Scooby Doo phase and the games he plays suck so I figured it'd benefit him as well since he can play allt he games I played when I was a kid.

Another thing, I joined this site in 2004 thats when I got into computers. Prior to that I didn't care so thats another reason why I have no idea how to hook this one back up. Although I agree, this MoBo does look like an Asus board, although there is no manufacter information on it.
 
I'd also gladly help you with anything for your build.

I recommend keeping that case, because it would look sweet as all hell modded and painted black. Where that curve is on the front, bottom left of the case I'd put a plexiglas window and show off a pimp watercooling system :p
 
I doubt this thing will see water cooling. It'll be lucky if it gets a couple of 120's. It'll be a P2 after all and not worth anything else. Although I'd like to find an old VooDoo....now I'm kicking myself in the ass because I threw away 2 VooDoo 3's last spring. I agree with the window and painting it black.

Anyway, PM me with what you're willing to part with or sell.


*EDIT*
Upon further inspection of this case I originally thought I'd have to toss it out due to the way the back was but I realized, its modular.

PICT0029.jpg


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Which is cool, if I have to I can make a new back for easy enough.
 
Found another HDD in it. I thought it was a floppy at first glance, realized it wasn't when I pulled the front cover off.

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Its a 500Mb HDD, might be good for Win98 or something.
 
Dngrsone said:
That would make a beautious swap drive.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it would. Thats actually a really great idea. Thanks.

Anyway, I didn't want the guts of it cluttering up my office so I put it back together for the time being. And I was feeling adventerous so I decided to unhook my gaming rig and plugged the screen into Project Ancient just to see if it would boot.

Man, was I surprised. It did boot. I actually had everything hooked up correctly first shot. lol

It posts, does it's mem test (its slow as hell too) and then I get an error, something to the effect of the keyboard being locked and unlocking it or press F1 to continue. I didn't have a keyboard hooked up to it because it uses one of those keyboards with the big plug not like the little ones today. So, I just shut it down. Happy that it actually fired up.
 
The plug is an "AT" plug if i'm not mistaken... I have an AT(din5) -> PS/2(minidin6) converter which works great. If you could get your hands on one, you could use pretty much any keyboard u want, or if you can find a AT keyboard... I have several here, but i'm too lazy to ship tthem anywhere.

Good luck :) Sounds like your off to a great start already....

Curious, how much ram does the POST say you have??
 
I didn't even look. I'll have to hook it back up tonight and see. He's also bringing me an "AT" keyboard.

On a related note I got a call from my brother he's got an entire P3 box with Win2k installed on it and Win98 Special that he's going to donate to this project. He's bringing it to the restuarant where we are meeting for dinner with my mom and his fiance.

So, I'm thinking of building a huge box with all three rigs in it a P1, P2 and P3 in one unit.
 
Well, got the new rig from my brother.

Got it to boot into Windows 2000 but had to disconnect one of the HDD's in order for it to do so. The CD drive doesn't work either.

So, I've gotta figure out how to get the second HDD to work; I belive its just a jumper. Replace the CD drive.

Then I have to figure out how to reformat the HDDs and clean it up. Currently, I'm going through and deleting a whole mess of programs.

I'll take pics of it in a few minutes.

Does anyone know of an easy way to format teh HDD's without screwing Windows up? I'm actually thinking about taking the two HDD's from the P1 and putting them in this, but I know one of the drives has whatever OS was on the P1.
 
This no-longer seems to be "Project Ancient Box.....", but rather:
Project: get new stuff and forget about "Project Ancient Box...."
 
No, its still project Ancient Box. I still have the P1 box and I'm still working on it. I need to get an AT to PS2 adapter, just haven't been able to pick one up yet. I dont' want to start cutting the case up if I don't have a good idea of how I'm going to design it. Cause I pretty much only get one chance at this otherwise I have to buy a new case and I'd really not waste the money on a new case for a 16 year old computer.

Although I did change my mind on the P2 stuff since I've gotten a hold of the P3 (it might change again if I can't get the older games to work on either the P1 or P3 though.)

The reason why there haven't been any updates lately is because I'm waiting on my brother who happens to have Win98 for the P1.

Both systems run and I'm just trying to decide how I'm going to tackle this. I'd like ot put a window or something in the P1 case but don't want to make anything to large because well..its not a high end computer.

If I do end up leaving them in their respective cases one of them is going to get redon and given to my nephew and the other I'm keeping.

As for the whole getting new parts thing. I haven't talked to anyone who offered me help about getting any of the parts parts they offered since my brother donated his old P3 and some other various things for the P1 the other night. Cause irght now I don't need anything.
 
Yeah, I saw that one. I had planned on getting it at BB or Radio Shack next time I was near one.
 
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