What retro things have you done today?

[Duke]

Nice. Pretty sure you'll find a backplate for the mobo online easily enough too.

 

[LewisRaz]

@almoststew1990 you can get sata to fan power cables very cheaply on ebay

 

[almoststew1990]

It turns out the whole molex lead is dead so I've used both of my Sata to molex cables getting the dvd and cf card working. Now I remember why this kit was set aside as back up kit I'll probably get a Sata to fan cable then. Got the PC up and running though!

I've got the backplate somewhere, just can't be bothered to dig it out and work out which is which.

 

[Retro6]

Today I pulled together a Glide build from spare parts. I haven't used glide in a looong time. It's in my backup modern case so it had 1 5.25" bay and that's it, but thanks to the CF card, it doesn't need any 3.5" bays. The power supply's molex cable is dodgy so I've the CF card has that cable to itself and then I got a SATA --> Molex converter for the DVD drive. I can't use the top PCI slot because the screwhole on the case for that top PCI slot is completely smooth and won't hold after all the GPU changes that it's seen

VIA C3 800MHz soldered CPU with a chipset heatsink on it instead of miniscule heatsink plus whinny 40mm 4,000RPM fan. I'm going to get a 120mm fan to stick up top blowing directly onto the heatsink.
128MB SDR RAM
Voodoo 3 2000 PCI
Soundblaster Live! SB0100.

I'm tempted to put a 120m fan in the front too to blow air onto the graphics card, but there aren't any headers on the motherboard (beyond the CPU fan, which the top 120mm will have). That means I'll need a molex to fan adapter. And with the dodgy molexs that means I'll need a SATA to Molex, Molex to Fan string of adapters... eeehhhh

That's a nice little motherboard. Whats the name of it?

 

[almoststew1990]

It's some OEM thing, no name on the board. However a bit of digging ID'd it as an ECS P6WEM3. As you may know VIA CPUs allow you to use SetMul in DOS to set the CPU multiplier, disable caches, disable some VIA speedtech that I can't remember the name of, so it can run at 486 and 386 speeds as well. PII and PIIIs are generally multiplier locked so can't do this very well.

It's got onboard graphics, which worked just fine in DOS, so all you really need is a PCI soundcard that work acceptably in DOS (I use a SB Live). I haven't tried its integrated sound in DOS though...

 

[Duke]

Eww ECS - remember them. Very cheap boards and prone to failures Most had SIS chipset so maybe being VIA it actually lasted longer

 

[Flibster]

I've picked up a buttload of Socket 775 stuff for pennies.
5 complete dell systems (2 sff, 1 micro and 2 midi), another 3 boards, 4 other cpu's, significant quantity of ram (shared between 2 and 4gb sticks), couple of graphics cards and other pcie cards, a couple of sff psu's. No drives included, but no worries there.

It was actually one of the graphics cards that caught my attention. Not retro by any counts, a Radeon Pro WX series, low profile job. Was expecting a WX2100. Turns out to be a WX4100. Bus powered, single slot, low profile slight cut down RX460.

One of the CPU's is a Q9650, so will probably build something around that in one of the midi tower cases. Might stick the WX4100 in a machine and see how it performs as a gaming card.

 

[Retro6]

Yeah I have a lot of those socket 775 with dual core processors I usually dump Windows 7 on those kinda builds.

I've been seeing if I can repair some old dead vintage mice PS/2 and serial type but I can't really do much as the eprom chips are the components that have shorted out, mind you I've got a nice looking vintage keyboard which is a DIN type also has bad eprom chips... I wonder if I can replace the eprom chips they'd probably require programing or something.

 

[almoststew1990]

Eww ECS - remember them. Very cheap boards and prone to failures Most had SIS chipset so maybe being VIA it actually lasted longer

Counter intuitively it's got a Sis chipset. Sound, graphics, USB, ethenet etc all on one chip. 630E I think it is from memory, fine for XP, doesn't get on with w9x

I have to say my ecs socket 478 Motherboard that I got right at the start of my Windows 98 PC project (if you remember that from a couple of years ago) has been my most reliable board. It's had dozens of GPU swaps, at least 5 CPU swaps, its been thrown in bin but still works. The AGP slot is getting a bit dodgy though.

 

[Retro6]

I've got a Micro Star MS-6787 Motherboard I tried it with Windows 98SE and its not bad I might put that into a retro AT case tomorrow and try some old games on it. I'm just thinking about what graphics card to use on it. I'm going to stick a sound Blaster sound card on it as well if I can find the drivers for the sound card.

 

[cee-S-dee]

Not exactly today but yesterday i was working on my 386 machine i'm currently building. Added the media drives in. Really happy with how its turning out.

Specs are as follows

Dataexpert Opti 495SCL Hybrid AMD 386 DX40 Motherboard
4mb ram (4x1mb)
Vesa Local Bus Cirrus Logic GD5428 1MB
ISA Winbond I/O Card
Sound Blaster Pro
Music Quest MPU401 Card for Roland MT-32
Seagate 1GB Hard Disk
Panasonic 5 Disc CD Changer
5 1/4" Floppy Drive
3 1/2" Floppy Drive

Currently has DOS 6.22. Just need to carry out some configuration and then to get gaming

 

[Duke]

Very tidy

 

[GeX]

Oh wow. I had CD changer drive like that, not seen one for a long time!

 

[GeX]

I did something silly.. https://photos.app.goo.gl/2sJeLFDUkP7k9wA98

 

[Retro6]

I built another Windows 98SE machine out of some old parts I had and works surprisingly well although its not finished yet as the retro case I had isn't a standard ATX case and I will need a PCI/AGP extension cable so that I can fit a video card and sound card horizontally in the back of the machine so for now I'm just using the onboard VGA and a USB sound device. I could not get the onboard sound to work so a USB Sound Device will do for now.

I played some games on it and almost all my old games work on it without any problems.

Here are the specs:
Micro Star MS-6787 motherboard
2.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor
512 MB DDR RAM "I don't have any 256 MB sticks" but works fine with 512 MB
80 GB Maxtor IDE Hard Drive
3.5 floppy drive
Beige DVD ROM drive

 

[cee-S-dee]

I did something silly.. https://photos.app.goo.gl/2sJeLFDUkP7k9wA98

No excuse now not to build a 200MMX machine. I have a 233mmx and I love that machine. What spec is the ram in the tray?

 

[GeX]

I have a P233MMX system (430TX chipset board), the 200MMX chips will be built in to another. Have a long standing bet with a friend that he can't get one above 300MHz, going to retro play in a couple of weeks.

The RAM is 512MB DDR 400.

 

[Retro6]

I have a P233MMX system (430TX chipset board), the 200MMX chips will be built in to another. Have a long standing bet with a friend that he can't get one above 300MHz, going to retro play in a couple of weeks.

The RAM is 512MB DDR 400.

Wouldn't it be fantastic if you could get CPU adapters so you can run old processors on fairly modern motherboards

 

[GeX]

I have a GA-5AX that can attempt it at over 300

Back in the day though, PowerLeap made such things.

 

[Akagi]

Picked up some 1980's wheels in my 1980's car while listening to 1980's music.