The Post Your Old/Retro Builds Thread

[Nobu]

Playing some Wing Commander Prophecy on the Voodoo 5 5500 with 4xAA using Glide! The good old days of gaming... Using the patch to get resolution to 1280x1024 as well, plays great. This is why I wanted a Voodoo 5 5500, for the amazing glide AA, and the ability to use real hardware to do it, no emulators. Going to enjoy some old favorites for sure. I actually never played this game all the way through, so it's something new!

Sorry for the crap~ish looking phone photo over a screenshot... lol.

View attachment 654977

Next time hit Print Screen, open paint and ctrl+v, then save to get a full-screen capture.

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

Next time hit Print Screen, open paint and ctrl+v, then save to get a full-screen capture.

So I tried that, and it came out as garbage. I think the way the "SLI" works on the Voodoo 5 5500 with the 4xAA was giving me issues in that game with screenshots... I'd have to try again, but pretty sure it was jacked up.

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

There is just something about the way a game look and run using Glide that just pokes all the right dopamine receptors in my brain. It has that feeling of playing on an arcade machine.

So true, most games that had Glide vs. DX or OGL just look so much better on Glide to me. For example, UT99 looks way better in glide, even though it's limited to 16bit color vs. 32bit color (which the V5 can do just fine). Not sure if it is the increased gamma or what, but it really does feel like coming home to gaming.

 

[Nobu]

So I tried that, and it came out as garbage. I think the way the "SLI" works on the Voodoo 5 5500 with the 4xAA was giving me issues in that game with screenshots... I'd have to try again, but pretty sure it was jacked up.

Ah, yeah didn't think about that. Probably won't work, iirc SLI messed up a lot of screen capture software.

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

Ah, yeah didn't think about that. Probably won't work, iirc SLI messed up a lot of screen capture software.

Yeah, pretty sure it does, cause my Voodoo 3 would take screen shots just fine. The issue with that one tho was you lost the "22-bit" dithering as that was with a filter before the output signal to the monitor.

I can probably get clean screenshots if I run in "Single Chip" mode, but then I would lose the 4xAA and at that point, why have a Voodoo 5? lol

 

[STINGRAY230SX]

New guy here, loving the retro thread....
I used to dabble in the early gaming win95/98 but somewhere around 2000 my job/personal life took a much busier turn and all of a sudden the PC was burning cd's and surfing the interwebs, lol.
I was gifted some dell gx280's and built one up but went to win7 and never went back.
Then built a C2D box around 2010/11, cpu and sata hdd was from a small form factor Dell but I used a Gigabyte mb etc. put a SSD in it at some point and when it failed let it sit.
made a Dell i3 into a i7-4790 / Gigabyte GTX 1060 for now
recently redid my spare room/office and added a whole bench to play on.
dug out all the old game cd's to move and then thought I might play around a bit.
I had an Athlon 1.1 / MS-6330 / Radeon 9550 AGP / winXP box that my brother left at our parents house and I fired it up [Im not familiar with any AMD stuff at all]
Tried to get it to run Rogue Squadron 3D but it wasn't meant to be. I have several AGP cards that should do Direct3d but they are win95/98
2x Voodoo 2 for that SLI goodness PCI though
1x Voodoo 3 2000
1x Voodoo 5 5500
2x ATI rage2c
1x Diamond ViperII
I did try the Diamond ViperII and the ATI RageIIc but no joy as the drivers would do regular display but not the game, and I knew the Voodoo cards likely didn't have XP support, then I remembered I had a Nvidia FX 5500 PCI card and this morning popped it in and bam, Xwings for days.
I have a old GX280 mb / P4/ I will probably put together with the voodoo 5 and a win 98se install.
also an old Ms-6156 slot 1 mb with a 450mghz cpu I will probably use the V2's on since the parts are here already

Athlon


MS-6156

 

[Mr. Bluntman]

I have a old GX280 mb / P4/ I will probably put together with the voodoo 5 and a win 98se install.

Do be aware that Voodoo 5 AGP cards (if you're not using a PCI version) require a 3.3V AGP slot and will not work in most P4 motherboards as they do 1.5V signaling outside of a couple VIA/SiS chipsets.

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

So I did come up with a much more elegant way of keeping my Voodoo 5 5500 cool! I generally run it around 175Mhz (166mhz is default) for most retro gaming as I use the 2x or 4x RGAA. I can run 183Mhz, but sadly one of the memory modules doesn't like it and I'll get some screen line corruption if I run higher (1280x1024 +) resolutions set that high. Interestingly, works 1024x768 or lower at that speed as less memory is used.

The clear side door has 2 fans too that blow in and across the top of the card. Way better than the old school floor fan idea I actually used back in the day with my voodoo 3... LOL.

I've debated putting this in a modern case for looks, but I need the CDrom drive for some games and the Disk Drive on occasion for DOS stuff.

 

[1.1.2.3.5...]

So I did come up with a much more elegant way of keeping my Voodoo 5 5500 cool! I generally run it around 175Mhz (166mhz is default) for most retro gaming as I use the 2x or 4x RGAA. I can run 183Mhz, but sadly one of the memory modules doesn't like it and I'll get some screen line corruption if I run higher (1280x1024 +) resolutions set that high. Interestingly, works 1024x768 or lower at that speed as less memory is used.

The clear side door has 2 fans too that blow in and across the top of the card. Way better than the old school floor fan idea I actually used back in the day with my voodoo 3... LOL.

I've debated putting this in a modern case for looks, but I need the CDrom drive for some games and the Disk Drive on occasion for DOS stuff.

View attachment 673671

Sweet rig!!! I remember those old copper coolers!!!!

 

[mnewxcv]

Working on an agp opteron dually soon. Have a bunch of old gpus but most are pcie so I have a new agp gpu coming hopefully next week. I got my case for the build yesterday so I'll post it up when I unbox it. Do you guys think running wraith prisms would look out of place or a subtle touch to an old build? They don't look all that different than amd blocks of the era. Either that or some period correct copper ones.

 

[Grebuloner]

Working on an agp opteron dually soon. Have a bunch of old gpus but most are pcie so I have a new agp gpu coming hopefully next week. I got my case for the build yesterday so I'll post it up when I unbox it. Do you guys think running wraith prisms would look out of place or a subtle touch to an old build? They don't look all that different than amd blocks of the era. Either that or some period correct copper ones.

You know, I either have that same board or its close sibling in my legacy pile. Tyan Thunder S2885 or something like that I think? Pair of Troy 240-something Opties I scored for cheap and maxed out the ram. Threw an ATI 3850 AGP in there and the only PCI-X card I ever acquired, a Supermicro SATA HBA. Ran it as an HTPC with some light gaming. Sadly the board has long expired and just sits looking pretty with the others.

 

[w1retap]

The opteron+agp era was pretty much LAN party era, so the wraith prism coolers wouldn't look too out of place, althought RGB wasn't much of a thing at the time -- you usually just had fixed color LEDs or cold cathodes. I think the wraith max would look best though with the solid black fan instead of the transparent one on the prism.

 

[El_Capitan]

Where's the beige?

 

[mnewxcv]

Where's the beige?

No beige here. Being a 2005ish era build going for a little more modern look. Back then I had a couple chieftec dragons. I almost went with another, but I found a different chieftec case that is a little more professional looking which I think goes with the dual opteron nicely as a workstation based gaming rig. It's very similar to a dragon with a few different features. Glad to have the 120mm rear fan instead of the dual 80s as well! Some crappy photos as promised. More to come.

 

[Format _C:]

No beige here. Being a 2005ish era build going for a little more modern look. Back then I had a couple chieftec dragons. I almost went with another, but I found a different chieftec case that is a little more professional looking which I think goes with the dual opteron nicely as a workstation based gaming rig. It's very similar to a dragon with a few different features. Glad to have the 120mm rear fan instead of the dual 80s as well! Some crappy photos as promised. More to come.

Wow that is a really neat case! I myself am a fan of giant full tower cases but not cases with windows RGB and the most annoying trait of modern cases are NO 5.25" bays!

 

[Starfalcon]

Wow that is a really neat case! I myself am a fan of giant full tower cases but not cases with windows RGB and the most annoying trait of modern cases are NO 5.25" bays!

Yeah me too, thats why I am not planning to replace my Lian-Li case. Also I got this crazy tower about 10 years ago, still havent figured out what to put in it. it is almost too big for any system I could put in there.

 

[mnewxcv]

Another piece of the puzzle

 

[1.1.2.3.5...]

god those days were good

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

So here is a screenshot of my Retro PC desktop as of right now. The next game I plan to play is Freespace 2 (just installed it and patched to 1.20). Going to enjoy it with 4xRGAA @ 1024x768 while using EAX on the 5.1 setup I have hooked to it...

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

Oh yeah, snagged this gem for $25 on ebay. Asus A7V333 Rev 2.0. Fastest and last motherboard to ever support 3.3V AGP for Athlon XP series, so i can put the fastest cpu possible with my voodoo 5 5500 and shoot for some records among retro enthusiasts (and always ensure that voodoo is the limiting factor in games... lol). Sadly, some versions of this board came with a KT333cf instead of a KT333ce chipset, the cf only supports 1.5V, so kind of a risk assuming this board even powers up (i really hate replacing caps). For $25 tho, it's worth it. I was not about to have some random on ebay take the NB heatsink off and check... lol. Worst case if it doesn't suit my needs, I guess I'll OC the hell out of the cpu the guy included to its breaking point for fun and call that worth $25?

 

[mnewxcv]

For $25, you'll get a good amount out of fun. Better than most new games!

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

For $25, you'll get a good amount out of fun. Better than most new games!

For sure, I love tweaking stuff. Best case, this becomes my Voodoo 5 5500 setup with a Barton Core XP2800+. I'd then throw my Voodoo 3 3000 in my KT133A setup with an XP2100+. I don't think I have issues with my voodoo 5 5500 in it now, but I'd love to see it fly with DDR memory and the full speed of my XP2800+ (which I've made work on the KT133A by underclocking it).

It's going to be a fun time I hope!

 

[pendragon1]

Oh yeah, snagged this gem for $25 on ebay. Asus A7V333 Rev 2.0. Fastest and last motherboard to ever support 3.3V AGP for Athlon XP series, so i can put the fastest cpu possible with my voodoo 5 5500 and shoot for some records among retro enthusiasts (and always ensure that voodoo is the limiting factor in games... lol). Sadly, some versions of this board came with a KT333cf instead of a KT333ce chipset, the cf only supports 1.5V, so kind of a risk assuming this board even powers up (i really hate replacing caps). For $25 tho, it's worth it. I was not about to have some random on ebay take the NB heatsink off and check... lol. Worst case if it doesn't suit my needs, I guess I'll OC the hell out of the cpu the guy included to its breaking point for fun and call that worth $25?

View attachment 704200

already re-capped? they look mint...
iirc that was my last board in that era.

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

already re-capped? they look mint...
iirc that was my last board in that era.

I'll find out when it gets here, some side pictures made a few of the CPU phase caps look like they were all originals (no massive bulges tho), but not ALL mobo's from that era suffered equally, some would get lucky.

Last board I had from that era was a Soyo KT880, and I recapped it a couple years back. The caps were very much obvious they were bad though. My KT133A board I am using now was recapped and you could not visually see the caps were bad from the original pictures. It can be a toss up, hopefully I get to find out all is good next weekend (best case)!

My MSI nForce2 400FSB Delta motherboard has all original caps and still maintains a high overclock on an XP3200+ stable to this day... so go figure!

 

[Susquehannock]

I'll find out when it gets here, some side pictures made a few of the CPU phase caps look like they were all originals (no massive bulges tho), but not ALL mobo's from that era suffered equally, some would get lucky.

Last board I had from that era was a Soyo KT880, and I recapped it a couple years back. The caps were very much obvious they were bad though. My KT133A board I am using now was recapped and you could not visually see the caps were bad from the original pictures. It can be a toss up, hopefully I get to find out all is good next weekend (best case)!

My MSI nForce2 400FSB Delta motherboard has all original caps and still maintains a high overclock on an XP3200+ stable to this day... so go figure!

If I may ask ... do you know maker of the capacitors? Like you said, not all got the bad ones. Or some board makers like Soltek publicly acknowledged the issue and changed suppliers. My early FRN2 boards (nForce2) had the bad Taiwanese Teapo caps. Near end of the model run they switched to the good Japanese Rubycons.

Reading through recent posts here I can hear my Win98 voodoo 4 system calling.

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

If I may ask ... do you know maker of the capacitors? Like you said, not all got the bad ones. Or some board makers like Soltek publicly acknowledged the issue and changed suppliers. My early FRN2 boards (nForce2) had the bad Taiwanese Teapo caps. Near end of the model run they switched to the good Japanese Rubycons.

Reading through recent posts here I can hear my Win98 voodoo 4 system calling.

I'd have to get in there and look again, but here is a snip of a pic of the build right at the caps... they look brand new even to this day... and I have owned this board since it was relevant in the early 2000's... lol

The entire build for this specific retro system if anyone is curious...

Windows XP rig with a Gainward 6800GT AGP in it, 2GB DDR Dual Channel and an XP3200+ running at 2.4Ghz (memory and CPU are 1:1 sync, so yes, the memory has a high OC as well). Also has an Audigy 2 in it (pic shows when I had my Live! in it instead a year ago or so, but I have since switched cards in it)... love the colors, might have to throw it in a modern case just for the looks someday.

The motherboard is an MSI K7N2 Delta-L

 

[mnewxcv]

In case the x800xt aiw didn't work out, I picked this up as well. I do plan on using the aiw video input functionality though so hopefully this is not necessary.

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

Well, hot damn, i did it! After fighting a few hardware and software issues with Windows 98se (some bad RAM hosed my OS and i had to restore from a saved image), I got the Voodoo 5 5500 working in one of the last motherboards to ever support 3.3V AGP power!

Final Specs:
- Asus A7V333 Rev 2.0 board w/ 1018.004 final bios & USB 2.0 support
- AMD Athlon XP2800+ @ 2.2Ghz
- 1GB DDR PC2700 Ram @ 2-2-2-5 1T
- Voodoo 5 5500 AGP OC'ed to 182Mhz
- SB Audigy 2 ZS using .vxd drivers
- Netgear 10/100 PCI Network Card.
- WD 40GB 7200rpm hard drive.
- 48x/32x/16x DVD/CD R/W Drive.
- Iomega ZIP 100 Drive
- 1.44MB 3.5" Floppy Drive
- 450W Antec Power Supply
- Windows 98SE with final service pack and HIMEMX patch to allow 1GB RAM.

 

[Haswellbeast]

This is my AMD Phenom IIX6 (OC 3.8ghz) build that I already have ordered an FX-8300 for. Originally I planned to have dual GTX 760s, but now, I am trying to use this as a daily driver for a bit, and the 760s with 2gb of Vram are borderline unbearable even in my Indy games. Thus, I swapped in my Frankensteined Rx 580 8gb.

*UPDATE* I finally updated the bios to the latest version (from 2016, yeesh!, my Asus z87 board's latest is from 2014! FX really stagnated!) After doing this, I put in an NVME to Pcie card that I had (mostly for s's and G's until my fx comes and I can run W11) and it actually recognizes NVMe!! I have an almost 15 year old system that can have ssd speeds of up to 1.5GB/s, crazy!

The 760s

Specs:
-- AMD Phenom II X6 1045T (bought from eBay with bent pins, cheapest 6 core for a Dell that I was upgrading, but ultimately didn't work out)
-- Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 that started this build, got it for $25 after shipping on eBay, was sold as untested, but I couldn't pass up an (almost) top of the line board for AM3+
-- 8GB Kingston DDR3 1600 temporary until the FX comes, going to swap for 16gb of Hyperx DDR3 1866
-- (supposed to be) 2x EVGA GTX 760 SC ACX 2.0 (Miss EVGA)
-- Noctua NH-U12s (obvious from photo)
-- PSU Seasonic GX-850
-- Corsair something or other case, but I am REALLY looking for any ATX case because I want one for my 4770k build (so if anyone has one taking up space, I am more than welcome to pay shipping + a couple of bucks for it!)

--Update!-- My Fx-8300 arrived today and I have put it in. Also, with FX, the best thing is that I can actually use 32gb of ram. So far, my OC success has been 4.8ghz @ 1.392v (under load with LLC) that ended up BSODing while downloading Windows updates... Since then, I just set the multiplier down a notch and I am typing this right now at 4.7 ghz. My temps under load are around 52-53c, and that is after a few runs of cinebench that heated my room temp up a bit. Overall, I think it is just a teeny bit snappier than the Phenom was (running a really de-bloated Windows 10 with minimal Windows Defender). I also booted my Windows 11 SSD and happily watched it boot (unlike the Phenom). Oh, and I forgot, my cinebench R15 score is 729 @ 4.7Ghz, which, off the top of my head, pretty close to a stock 4770k- pretty good!

 

[Advil]

View attachment 706130

Well, hot damn, i did it! After fighting a few hardware and software issues with Windows 98se (some bad RAM hosed my OS and i had to restore from a saved image), I got the Voodoo 5 5500 working in one of the last motherboards to ever support 3.3V AGP power!

Final Specs:
- Asus A7V333 Rev 2.0 board w/ 1018.004 final bios & USB 2.0 support
- AMD Athlon XP2800+ @ 2.2Ghz
- 1GB DDR PC2700 Ram @ 2-2-2-5 1T
- Voodoo 5 5500 AGP OC'ed to 182Mhz
- SB Audigy 2 ZS using .vxd drivers
- Netgear 10/100 PCI Network Card.
- WD 40GB 7200rpm hard drive.
- 48x/32x/16x DVD/CD R/W Drive.
- Iomega ZIP 100 Drive
- 1.44MB 3.5" Floppy Drive
- 450W Antec Power Supply
- Windows 98SE with final service pack and HIMEMX patch to allow 1GB RAM.

That Zalman cooler! So nostalgic. I built so many of those. And a few of those kluged extra fans too.

Time for some GLQuake and Total Annihilation: Kingdoms.

 

[lord_tris]

2005ish i think its been a while
Raedon card and amd proc maybe

Thermaltake water cooling and cold cathods all stuffed in a Lian Li pc70?

 

[w1retap]

This showed up the other day.

 

[Format _C:]

This showed up the other day.

View attachment 715834

Wow an AGP card with two 4-pin molex connectors that card must have been power hungry!
Although I think the card only used the 12 Volt wires just like the PCIe connectors that had not thought of yet.

 

[Format _C:]

2005ish i think its been a while
Raedon card and amd proc maybe

Thermaltake water cooling and cold cathods all stuffed in a Lian Li pc70?

View attachment 709774

I remember cold cathode fluorescent lamps!
I remember getting zapped when I was messing around with the inverter damn that hurt and it left a mark also LoL!

 

[mnewxcv]

This showed up the other day.

View attachment 715834

that looks like a card I was about to accept an ebay seller's offer on when it quickly sold to someone else. Hmm

 

[Nobu]

Wow an AGP card with two 4-pin molex connectors that card must have been power hungry!
Although I think the card only used the 12 Volt wires just like the PCIe connectors that had not thought of yet.

Also possible they did that so it wouldn't pull too much juice from one rail. Weren't 12V rails relatively weak back then?

 

[mnewxcv]

Also possible they did that so it wouldn't pull too much juice from one rail. Weren't 12V rails relatively weak back then?

Ironically, I think the focus was on distributing the power across multiple power connectors/wires, presumably so they wouldn't get so hot they'd melt.

 

[revenant]

I'd have to get in there and look again, but here is a snip of a pic of the build right at the caps... they look brand new even to this day... and I have owned this board since it was relevant in the early 2000's... lol

View attachment 704326

The entire build for this specific retro system if anyone is curious...

Windows XP rig with a Gainward 6800GT AGP in it, 2GB DDR Dual Channel and an XP3200+ running at 2.4Ghz (memory and CPU are 1:1 sync, so yes, the memory has a high OC as well). Also has an Audigy 2 in it (pic shows when I had my Live! in it instead a year ago or so, but I have since switched cards in it)... love the colors, might have to throw it in a modern case just for the looks someday.

The motherboard is an MSI K7N2 Delta-L

View attachment 704327

I have the same MSI K7N2 with the same OCZ dimms (I think mine are tccd though) and with a red gainward video card on it.. and an audigy! lol.

 

[Starfalcon]

I just had to tear my old AMD MPX system apart to get some cap ratings so a fellow [H] can get his one running, and since I didnt ever post this massive thing I guess I will now. It is in an Antec SX1240 case with an Antec True 430W PSU. It has dual 1200 palmino mp cpus with 4 Gigs of ECC memory on an Asus A7M266-D. For drives has a WD 80 GB IDE boot hard drive, 1 WD 120 GB IDE, and 2 seagate IDE 250GB storage drives, and then an Asus DVD Burner and a yamaha F1 CD burner. I used to use this as my main storage server for "linux distros" back in the day and when it got full I would burn it on DVDs. Plus I used it for storage of the drivers and stuff I needed for all my systems and could whip up an floppy or CD with needed drivers.

It has for cards a 4650 XFX AGP card, the USB3 card the board came with, a maxtor 133 PCI IDE card for the extra drives it has, and an Audigy 1 sound card. It used to have a 3com 3CR990-TX97 network card in it, but that got pulled for another retro system a while back. This system runs windows XP pro, my go to back in the day for all my systems. It basically run 24/7 for about 10+ years as my main server, until power use was too high and the system was obsolete. Plus the drives really couldnt hold much as drive size had massively expanded since then. This is one of my favorite retro systems.

 

[Celcius]

This showed up the other day.

View attachment 715834

How much was this? I assume you got it on ebay?