The Post Your Old/Retro Builds Thread

[Mr. Bluntman]

We have a happy Voodoo 5 AGP card in this system, because what else would you use in a K6III+ system?

A 16MB 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 or 3500 TV AGP. You'll get more out of that Voodoo 5 if you throw it in a fast Pentium III or Athlon system (900MHz+)

 

[Starfalcon]

A 16MB 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 or 3500 TV AGP. You'll get more out of that Voodoo 5 if you throw it in a fast Pentium III or Athlon system (900MHz+)

Yeah I know, but I have a bunch of voodoo 5's, and I like how this system is set up. Plus I already have a P3 duallie with a voodoo 5 in it too.

 

[LightningCrash]

I'd try to snap up that motherboard as well, it's an nForce 2 motherboard of some variation. They go for a premium on eBay.

I have the whole machine. The nForce2 were okay, but man, they had a bunch of problems too. I want this rig to be an XP 2200+ with an Epox 8k7a+... but really it depends on the motherboards I find.
The same seller did find a Q500N (the 2.0 version of the Q500 that has the bars across the top instead of thick top section w vents) so I plan to grab that one too if I can.

 

[Starfalcon]

Okay on to the Slot 1 fun today, first one up today is a Dell poweredge 2200 server of ancientness. Has a single 266 P2 in it with the terminator card in the second slot. Has onboard SCSI, some PCI slots, some EISA slots. Unfortunately this board will only support P2 266 procs nothing more so it is very limited.

 

[Starfalcon]

Next on the Slot 1 plate is a much more interesting system in a clasic antec tower case. Starting off we have a pair of Plextor drives from back when SCSI was king for them. We have both the legendary Ultraplex CD drive and the Plexwriter burner that takes caddy CDs. Then we have just a standard floppy and a 250 zip drive. Inside then we get into the meat and potatoes of this beast, we have the amazing Tekram P6B40D-A5 board with a dual set of 500 mhz pentium 3 processors.

Now since we already had a Tekram board, why not use a Tekram DC-390U3W SCSI card in it. The SCSI card controls both the plextor drives and the IBM Ultrastar SCSI drive. Now on to the rest of the cards, we have a standard SB 16 card in the ISA slot, and another 3Com network card. Oh and look at that, another voodoo 5 card, what else goes better with a dual cpu rig than that. All in all this was an awesome rig back in the day, did a ton of folding at home on it back in the day....prob should have mined bitcoins instead, but hey what can you do.

Hope everyone enjoyed Slot 1 Sunday, maybe ill do some socket A systems for monday....or come up with something else weird.

 

[Format _C:]

Okay on to the Slot 1 fun today, first one up today is a Dell poweredge 2200 server of ancientness. Has a single 266 P2 in it with the terminator card in the second slot. Has onboard SCSI, some PCI slots, some EISA slots. Unfortunately this board will only support P2 266 procs nothing more so it is very limited.

Nice! I actually liked the slot type of CPUS you put the heatsink & fan on then stick it in the slot much easier to do well at-least I think so

Next on the Slot 1 plate is a much more interesting system in a clasic antec tower case. Starting off we have a pair of Plextor drives from back when SCSI was king for them. We have both the legendary Ultraplex CD drive and the Plexwriter burner that takes caddy CDs. Then we have just a standard floppy and a 250 zip drive. Inside then we get into the meat and potatoes of this beast, we have the amazing Tekram P6B40D-A5 board with a dual set of 500 mhz pentium 3 processors.

Now since we already had a Tekram board, why not use a Tekram DC-390U3W SCSI card in it. The SCSI card controls both the plextor drives and the IBM Ultrastar SCSI drive. Now on to the rest of the cards, we have a standard SB 16 card in the ISA slot, and another 3Com network card. Oh and look at that, another voodoo 5 card, what else goes better with a dual cpu rig than that. All in all this was an awesome rig back in the day, did a ton of folding at home on it back in the day....prob should have mined bitcoins instead, but hey what can you do.

Hope everyone enjoyed Slot 1 Sunday, maybe ill do some socket A systems for monday....or come up with something else weird.

Slot A Monday Garfield the cat approves as long as it comes with lasegnia
I'd rather have a case of slot a's then a case of the Mondays, oh you forgot to submit your TPS report also LoL!

 

[kamxam]

Was going through my bookcase and found my old Radeon 6990. If i remember correctly, it was working fine, but was a furnace when under load which is why i think i took it out years ago.
Been playing with my Amiga 500, but need to put in a new on/off switch on the monitor since it won't stay on unless you jam a paper clip on the current switch. (Was a common problem with them from what i read about it)

 

[Starfalcon]

I couldnt decide what I wanted to do for monday, so I ended up going with Motherboard Monday. I have a lot more motherboards than I have set up systems anyway, and it is a lot easier to do these instead of full systems...although I do have a bunch of those still left.

Starting off this collection with a bang and requested by Format C, we start out with the Socket A goodness. First up is the SOYO SY-K7AIA Slot A motherboard with an AMD Athlon 900 mhz in it. Glad I have this one as decent Slot A boards are not easy to get anymore. Funny thing about Slot A is that AMD just copied Slot 1 and reversed the slot. Slot A board will let you put a Slot 1 pentium in it backwards. The other thing abouyt the Athlon was it was the proc that carried AMD to beat intel to the 1Ghz speed.

Okay next on the show and tell is another motherboard from AOpen, the AOpen AX59 PRO a really nice super socket 7 board with a K6-2 300 mhz in it. Plus this board is a multi memory type one, you can use either Simms or Dimms in it. I always wondered why they put the floppy connector next to the ATX power connector though.

 

[Starfalcon]

Okay next up are a pair of boards that couldnt be more different. First up is the Abit BH6, one of many legendary boards from the great Abit. This one comes with a 450 mhz P3 in it with a nice aftermarket cooler on it. Ive had this one a long time and played a lot of games on it back in the day. Played Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Diablo 2 on this board....those were the days

Next up is another board from one of my favorite sockets, Socket A. We have the ASUS A7V266-E with the famous KT266A chipset from VIA. It comes with an Athlon XP 2400+ chip in it. This was an upgrade from their KT266 board, you got an AGP Pro slot, a useless ACR slot, and finally the 4 holes around the socket for mounting big coolers like the ALpha PAL 8045. This board was also a very good OCing board back in the day, let you clock the heck out of those Athlons and see how badly you could beat those P4's.

 

[Starfalcon]

Okay last 2 are some weird boards, first one up is a Tyan Tiger S2722 a dual socket 603 board. No idea how good or bad this board is, as it is nearly impossible to find socket 603 chips to install in the board. It was a short lived socket, quickly replaced by socket 604 and leading to a lot of ewasted 603 boards.

Last one up for the day is a very unique board, a dual socket 7 board the Tyan S1564D. I have no idea how Tyan came up with this, but it reminds me a lot of Abit with their dual celery board the BP6. Most of these boards they made with just the one socket, but the dual version seems very uncommon. I remember getting this just because it was a dual socket 7 board, as I had never seen one in that socket before.

Okay that looks like everything for the day, hope you enjoy the journey through retro boards and systems so far. No idea what I have for tomorrow yet, I am sure Ill come up with something though. Tune in tomorrow for more retro goodness.

 

[Format _C:]

I couldnt decide what I wanted to do for monday, so I ended up going with Motherboard Monday. I have a lot more motherboards than I have set up systems anyway, and it is a lot easier to do these instead of full systems...although I do have a bunch of those still left.

Starting off this collection with a bang and requested by Format C, we start out with the Socket A goodness. First up is the SOYO SY-K7AIA Slot A motherboard with an AMD Athlon 900 mhz in it. Glad I have this one as decent Slot A boards are not easy to get anymore. Funny thing about Slot A is that AMD just copied Slot 1 and reversed the slot. Slot A board will let you put a Slot 1 pentium in it backwards. The other thing abouyt the Athlon was it was the proc that carried AMD to beat intel to the 1Ghz speed.

Okay next on the show and tell is another motherboard from AOpen, the AOpen AX59 PRO a really nice super socket 7 board with a K6-2 300 mhz in it. Plus this board is a multi memory type one, you can use either Simms or Dimms in it. I always wondered why they put the floppy connector next to the ATX power connector though.

I had a Slot-A board that came from a Systemmax PC from Tiger Direct back in 1999 or so! It was a FIC (First International Computer) board model # I forget but it was a "value" model.
I found out the Slot-A connector is the same as Slot-1 just mounted the opposite direction I also miss the lack of manufactures these days I Miss Abit Soyo Chaintech and more I also had a Tyan socket 370/Slot-1 model # S1854.

 

[Starfalcon]

I had a Slot-A board that came from a Systemmax PC from Tiger Direct back in 1999 or so! It was a FIC (First International Computer) board model # I forget but it was a "value" model.
I found out the Slot-A connector is the same as Slot-1 just mounted the opposite direction I also miss the lack of manufactures these days I Miss Abit Soyo Chaintech and more I also had a Tyan socket 370/Slot-1 model # S1854.

Dont forget Leadtek, Soltek, and Epox. We used to have tons of companies making parts back in the day, now they all have condensed into a few giant megacorps. We have lost a lot of the creativity that used to be there in pursuit of even more RGB.

 

[wra18th]

I had a Slot-A board that came from a Systemmax PC from Tiger Direct back in 1999 or so! It was a FIC (First International Computer) board model # I forget but it was a "value" model.
I found out the Slot-A connector is the same as Slot-1 just mounted the opposite direction I also miss the lack of manufactures these days I Miss Abit Soyo Chaintech and more I also had a Tyan socket 370/Slot-1 model # S1854.

I still have two S1854s. they were great mobos.

 

[Starfalcon]

Well I couldnt come up with a cool name for tuesday, so here have some Socket A motherboards. First one up is an ASUS A7V133 with the KT133 chipset from VIA. It also come with a promise IDE controller on the board, and a really cool VRM set on a vertical riser board. The star of the show is an old ceramic AMD Athlon Tbird core 1333 mhz cpu.

Next up on the board is an Abit KR7A-RAID with the KT266A chipset from VIA. A popular board at the time and comes with an onboard Highpoint IDE controller onboard. Also staring some bad caps around the cpu socket...damn you capacitor plague. The in the cpu socket with have an athlon 1200 mhz, but why does that core look like it is the wrong size? Well it turns out that it has a palamino core as it is a MP version, designed to be used in pairs in the duallie 462 boards of the time.

Last in the docket today is another awesome Abit board. The Abit KG7-RAID, the board that I bought to replace my P3 system, thanks to a review on this very site. Now this isnt the actual board I bought, the one I did is still built in a system somewhere in my hoard. This board came with the AMD 761 chipset which supported ECC, so I ended up buying 768 MB of corsair ECC DDR 2100 to go in it. I also bought a 1.4 Tbird to go with it and bought several heatsinks to try and tame the heat it put out, they all failed. I ended up with the Alpha PAL 8045 with a delta EHE fan, that kept it cool at the price of a very loud fan. This board has a much cooler chip in it though, an Athlon XP 1700+.

I guess that will do it for today, be back tomorrow with who knows what for wednesday. Stay tuned in for tomorrow, maybe something cool will show up.

 

[w1retap]

Finally found a good deal on my most wanted computer.. Amiga 4000/040 with a Video Toaster overlayed keyboard. The seller didn't know if it worked -- all he said is it had a power light and the CD-ROM opened/closed. I talked him down from a higher price and purchased it. Well, I inspected it, then plugged it in and it worked great. The Varta was replaced by the previous owner with a coin cell (although I need to redo it with a diode), it had a complete recap job already done, all corrosion was already cleaned up with one trace fixed, it has 3.1.4 ROM chips, and it has an IDE to SATA converter with a 2.5" HDD running Amiga OS 3.9.. w00t.

To-do list:
- Need to fix the coin cell battery holder to do it properly with a diode to prevent charging a non-chargeable battery.
- Installing a CF adapter in the rear expansion hole. -- already 3D printed the parts.
- Possibly install a SFX power supply although the OEM PSU has good voltage and low ripple. It might have been recapped already too.
- Remove the old crappy SIMM sockets and use metal retainer clip SIMM slots. Two are broke, but all RAM still works fine.
- Most of the front clips on the face plate are broke -- fix those. I already 3D printed new ones.
- Replace the CD-ROM with something that matches the faceplate better. I have quite a few on hand that will look nicer.
- Image a new CF-card with Amiga OS 3.1.4 and WHDload/OpenVideoToaster/etc.

--- and of course upgrades.
- Waiting for a A1200/A4000 CM4 PiStorm. This will be slightly faster than 68060 accelerator speeds at 20x less cost, and it will add RTG/networking/PiSCSI/alt-ROMs.
- Flicker fixer / scan doubler in case I want to use 31kHz only display. Maybe another cheap RGB2HDMI will come out if the GPIO AGA stuff can be figured out. It would probably be better to use the Pi4's PCIe bus for it, since it is wayyy faster and would allow for higher resolutions at full color modes.

 

[Starfalcon]

Well I wasnt feeling good so I missed wednesday unfortunately, Ill see if I feel well enough today to make up for it.

 

[Format _C:]

Well I wasnt feeling good so I missed wednesday unfortunately, Ill see if I feel well enough today to make up for it.

Don't worry we won't be mad just feel better!
I wish I had the Tandy 1000 my uncle gave me for my 12th birthday in 1996 which is funny as I also think the computer was 12 also!
It was the better (AKA more expensive) version then also and I don't see many of those around anymore.
PS: Do you have an extra IDE/E-IDE/ATAPI/Parallel-ATA/etc/LoL DVD-ROM that you don't need does not need to be a writer just a reader is fine
Thanks

 

[pendragon1]

I wish I had the Tandy 1000 my uncle gave me for my 12th birthday in 1996 which is funny as I also think the computer was 12 also!

we had one of those in 91, our first pc. got destroyed during one of my house parties a few years later though...

 

[Starfalcon]

Don't worry we won't be mad just feel better!
I wish I had the Tandy 1000 my uncle gave me for my 12th birthday in 1996 which is funny as I also think the computer was 12 also!
It was the better (AKA more expensive) version then also and I don't see many of those around anymore.
PS: Do you have an extra IDE/E-IDE/ATAPI/Parallel-ATA/etc/LoL DVD-ROM that you don't need does not need to be a writer just a reader is fine
Thanks

I probably do have one, just would have to go through my stash, but I wouldnt be mailing anything for a while as I am still mostly housebound recovering from my broken ankle.

 

[Starfalcon]

Well still feeling under the weather today, hopefully I will be up for fantastic friday and more retro posts.

 

[Mr. Bluntman]

It may not be in it's permanent home, but I now own the last dual PCB dual GPU card made by nVIDIA (GTX 295) after wanting one for over 11 years. This thing is a DX9/10 monster (when SLI works) even with a Yorkfield Core 2. Special thanks to CompuG##K for making it possible.
e.

 

[RS_Surge]

Specs are on sig. I don't play too many old titles, but when I'm sick the new stuff. Retro is the way to go.
You can still do alot of old school gaming running XP.

 

[Mr. Bluntman]

Specs are on sig. I don't play too many old titles, but when I'm sick the new stuff, retro is the way to go.

Being unamused with the new stuff (or their microtransactions/loot boxes) is why I end up having my Core 2 Extreme system hooked up more often than not. I basically just hook up my Broadwell-E system for Oxygen Not Included and Warhammer: Vermintide II these days. I'm about to play Dishonored for the very first time at 2560x1440 max details on the system from my last post after I am done with Alan Wake. Great times

 

[RS_Surge]

Being unamused with the new stuff (or their microtransactions/loot boxes) is why I end up having my Core 2 Extreme system hooked up more often than not. I basically just hook up my Broadwell-E system for Oxygen Not Included and Warhammer: Vermintide II these days. I'm about to play Dishonored for the very first time at 2560x1440 max details on the system from my last post after I am done with Alan Wake. Great times

Honestly, I had more fun in the early and mid 2000's than I do these days. Maybe i'm just getting old, but the games of today just bore the heck out of me.
I remember playing games like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Farcry 2004 which amazed me how far we came after going through dx8.
Now it's like 'been there, done that'. I honestly don't think much has improved the past 10 years.

 

[CompuG##K]

Been toying around with this thing

 

[Mr. Bluntman]

Honestly, I had more fun in the early and mid 2000's than I do these days. Maybe i'm just getting old, but the games of today just bore the heck out of me.
I remember playing games like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Farcry 2004 which amazed me how far we came after going through dx8.
Now it's like 'been there, done that'. I honestly don't think much has improved the past 10 years.

The biggest improvements I've noticed are in lighting and tesselation over the last 10 years. Sure, LODs have increased, but global illumination and ambient occlusion have really brought games those few inches closer to realism more than anything, IMO. Oh yeah, and games requiring half as much VRAM as of system RAM, 4096x4096+ (4K) textures abound in games, rather than 1/4 or as little as 1/8th back in the DX9 days makes a big difference too. Games being developed on machines as their lead platform that only had 512MB of RAM (512MB unified in the X360, 256 sys/256 vid split in the PS3) was really what held us back the most until 2013-2014. After that, it was lackluster CPU performance in the following generation.

 

[AthlonXP]

So I have a SLOT A and socket A combo that I was looking to unload if anyone is interested. Got some other stuff with it as well (Geforce 3 card, IDE HDD, IDE Disk drive, and some rounded cables). The SLOT A Board is a 700MHZ Athlon with the Asus KA7 board. I think the Socket A is a KT7A and Tbird combo. Has some ram for it as well. I was going to do a retro rebuild but no longer have the time.

 

[zpackrat]

So I have a SLOT A and socket A combo that I was looking to unload if anyone is interested. Got some other stuff with it as well (Geforce 3 card, IDE HDD, IDE Disk drive, and some rounded cables). The SLOT A Board is a 700MHZ Athlon with the Asus KA7 board. I think the Socket A is a KT7A and Tbird combo. Has some ram for it as well. I was going to do a retro rebuild but no longer have the time.

you have to make the time, isn't that what they say? and good God man, live up to your name, LOL....

 

[Starfalcon]

Tempting with a slot A board....must resist the pull of classic AMD procs....

 

[CompuG##K]

Soon...

 

[pendragon1]

sweet but just old.

 

[zpackrat]

Soon...View attachment 362775

gonna need a nuclear reactor to power that beast.

 

[w1retap]

Doing a little gaming tonight.

 

[AthlonXP]

Ok so I am looking to work a deal locally (Northern VA) for all of this retro hardware:

1. Asus K7V w/ 900MHz Slot A Athlon and 3x 256 PC133 SDRAM
2. Abit KT7A Raid w/1.2GHz Tbird Athlon
3. Abit KD7-E with Athlon XP 3000+ and misc cooler
4. Misc Accesories
   1. SONY IDE CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive
   2. Brand New WD800 IDE HDD
   3. SB Audigy Sound Card
   4. Abit Geforce 3
   5. 3 sticks of random SDRAM
   6. 4 sticks 256MB DDR Ram
   7. A bunch of rounded Black IDE Cables

 

[Starfalcon]

Wish I was local, but it is prob for the best as I have too much retro stuff already.

 

[SamuelL421]

I have a athlon xp system I'm wokring on that I will post photos of later on.


that looks a lot like a system gold leader has (well know folk in the 3dfx forums)

Wow, I didn't know there were dedicated 3dfx forums that were still active! And here I was going to vogons for 3dfx info.

 

[mtrupi]

Oldest one I actually have a picture of. Cobbled together for my son. I don't remember what it was. Would be from the late 90's but this after an upgrade to play Halo smoothly.

 

[mnewxcv]

View attachment 379614

Oldest one I actually have a picture of. Cobbled together for my son. I don't remember what it was. Would be from the late 90's

Looks like a pretty high end gpu. I'd guess Nvidia fx 5900 series or 6800 series. Pretty easy to confirm with a Google image search which one.

Looks like socket a with a nforce2 chipset. Circa early 2000s. Probably one of the Asus a7n8x or similar boards.

 

[SamuelL421]

Looks like a pretty high end gpu. I'd guess Nvidia fx 5900 series or 6800 series. Pretty easy to confirm with a Google image search which one.

Looks like socket a with a nforce2 chipset. Circa early 2000s. Probably one of the Asus a7n8x or similar boards.

Good eye, yeah that's a A7N8X socket A

 

[mtrupi]

Good eye, yeah that's a A7N8X socket A

Yep, that was it. Nailed it. I want to say it was an fx 6800 but not sure.