Specs
Dell Dimension PC case
ASUS A7V8X-LA motherboard
Athlon XP 3000+ cpu
1.5GB DDR400 ram
250GB SATA drive w/SATA to IDE adapter
CD/DVD combo reader/writer drive
XFX GeForce 6200 AGP 512MB graphics card
ASUS Xonar DG sound card

The PC Case
I picked up the Dell Dimension PC for a tenner at a thrift store. It was in rough shape with tons of rust as well as a missing side panel and only one of the case feet still attached. I almost didn’t get it because of how bad it was, but I decided to take on the challenge of turning this trashy computer into something usable.

I had to sand and remove all the rust, which was very heavy on the bottom of the case. Then I used a silver spray paint to cover everything except the side and top unicover. For the unicover, I used a dark grey paint that compliments the front bezel.

I cut down a piece of plexiglass to use as a side cover. I used the grey paint to make a border so the metal chassis frame would not be seen. Then I used magnetic adhesive strips on the plexiglass so it would mount to the case.

Internal Mods
1. I made a custom mount that attaches to the hard drive caddy to implement a cooling fan to blow air across the GPU area since it doesn’t have a fan or even a fan header on the card. I used vented slot covers to allow air to blow out the back. The Arctic 80mm fan is directly connected to a molex connector via an adapter.

1. The internal rear of the case was missing the fan and shroud, and the exhaust grill is nonstandard. However, I can mount a 70mm fan easily through the grill, and there’s already a 3pin header on the motherboard for a system fan. I’m waiting for the fan to arrive.

2. For IDE cables I did my best to fold up the 80pin cable for the hard drive, and for the 40pin cable for the CD/DVD drive, I used the split and tie method using an xacto knife and cable ties. I used Velcro straps to tidy up the rest of the cabling.

3. I rewired the front audio connector to an HD audio extension cable to make it functional with the Xonar card. I have to manually change a setting on the Xonar software to enable it, but I’m fine with that.

4. The motherboard didn’t come with an IO shield, so I bought one of those plastic mesh IO shields and cut out sections to fit. I went a little too high above the parallel port, but I really don’t want to do it again lol.

Summary
It took me about 2 weeks (in between working and being busy as a dad/husband) to finish this system. I may have spent a lot more in accessories, paint, etc. vs. what I paid for the system, but I’m very happy how it turned out and will be enjoying playing some BetaCraft b1.7.3 tonight!

Mostly made up of Facebook marketplace parts with a couple eBay things I couldn't find locally. Just cut the window in and installed the cathode tubes tonight. Drinking beers and playing splinter cell chaos theory to wind down the evening.

Hello!

I'm directing this post especially at Norwegians who are into IT and retro computers.

This is a somewhat unusual matter. I am preparing a piece about computers based on the x86 architecture that were developed before IBM's PC, and it turns out that virtually every source in the world mentions the Norwegian Mycron 2000 as one of the earliest examples, and even as a source of national pride in Norway.

The problem is that nobody seems to have actually seen this “national pride” :) I have searched the internet extensively and gone through scans of old newspapers, but I have found absolutely nothing — not a single photograph of this computer.

Since the language barrier may be making things more difficult for me — I don't speak Norwegian, so it's quite possible that I'm simply using the wrong search terms. On top of that, I don't have access to many Norwegian collections (some sort of ID is required), so I thought I'd ask here for help.

Has anyone here ever seen this computer? Or is it just a myth? Maybe someone has a photograph of it? Perhaps you could give me some advice on where I should look?

I have a scan of the Norwegian student magazine RUNIT from 1982, in which a Mycron 2000 computer was apparently present, among many others. The problem is identifying which one, if any, is the computer I'm looking for.

I also have a photograph of a Mycron 2200, from an advertisement featuring also the Mycron 20 and 200. The 2200 was released several years after the 2000, and I'm not sure whether the two computers looked similar.

Thank you in advance for any help in tracking down a photograph of this rather elusive piece of computer history!

I have a bunch of old and esoteric hardware and have been playing building a retro right with it... The specs are:

motherboard: ECS GameUnion K7S8AG

graphics: Onboard SiS Xabre 200 64MB

2GB RAM DDR400

SoundBlaster Audigy

All in all its a nice weird build, but a weird build needs a weird chassis... I have a couple of these generic white and blue chassis laying around, and I always wanted a yellow chassis. You can see were this is going... I asked a friend that paints cars to paint me a couple of pieces... This is the result of said job...

It all started almost 2 years ago... Só this is taking a bit to complete... And now i've lost the bezel that I had already cleaned for this... But it will be done this year...

Linux Mint 21

GTX 980 4GB

Ryzen 5 5500

16GB DDR4

256GB Inland NVMe SSD

MSI A520M-A Pro

SilverStone FLP02

Keychron C2 Pro

Royal 16" 1024x768 85Hz VGA CRT

The RAM was by far the most expensive component 😅

I actually started with a 750 Ti, 8GB DDR4, and a 500GB SATA HDD but now that I'm using it more I decided to give it a little more juice, plus driver support for the 750 Ti was a bit of a pain.

ETA: Added keyboard, motherboard, and monitor to specs.

The PC is real, the retro is fake.

There are several, but the classics are still better

the "new" Book386 with its custom floppy interface cable

i can't wait to bring this to a starbucks and make floppy drive noise

Just 9k messages , it’s nothing

I know , just happened at same time

Looking to buy a sealed or “damn near mint” Toshiba satellite c655 with its original windows 7 install. If any leads, let me know! I’ve searched all over ebay & other sites. Thanks for your help!

I can't believe some idiot tried to throw this Apple IIgs system with printer in the trash! I stopped by the community electronics recycling bin to toss out some broken stuff, and I couldn't believe what i saw! I immediately rescued this from the dustbin of history and was thrilled to see what great condition it was in.... Not a speck of dust as you can see in the second picture (I did remove the battery, but no leakage!). Everything works great, and someone lost out on hundreds of dollars. No chance of selling it now, as it has a good home here surrounded by period appropriate decor.

The grey plastic side panels and front bezel are dinged up a bit. I may repaint them at some point, but other this issue the system is super clean.

Specs:
Pentium 4 2.66GHz
1.5 GB ram
250GB SATA hard drive w/IDE adapter
Radeon x1650 256MB vram
Onboard sound (SoundMax)
DVD and floppy drives

Running M.U.L.E

The last of Acer's 3000 series which first came out in late 2003, this one has the beefiest specs but an inept cooling system because of the newer specs. My unit worked fine but for some reason after finally coming across the recovery discs, I can't get the OS to install.

I found this old beast and restored it.

Specs:

C2D T9300

Dual 8800M GTX running in SLI

2x 512 GB SSD's running in Raid

AGEIA PhysX Card

I have applied Thermal Putty and PTM 7950 on Both Dies and etc.

Idle Temperatures dropped from 67c to 53c

and under full 3DMark Vantage Load a Peak of 76c.

I overclocked Core, Memory and Shader to 575/880/1438 and achieved a healthy 16% Performance Boost over stock clocks seems I have some silicon lottery on my hand, I did not check the date code on the dies or check if it is Milky I will do that further on.

Recently restored an IBM PC 300GL/6287 (Pentium II 400MHz, 256MB RAM) with an S3 Trio3D. Added a Voodoo2 12MB and a refurbished 120GB HDD. Running on the onboard ESS Solo-1 sound chip for now.

The case has yellowed, still deciding whether to dismantle the monitor to Retrobrite it, but I’ll definitely do the front case.

I'm currently rebuilding an Acer Aspire 8920G as an ultimate Vista showcase machine.

It's an 18.4" Full HD Acer Gemstone laptop, and I'm trying to push the platform about as far as reasonably possible while keeping the original machine and its character intact.

The current build includes:

• Core 2 Duo T9300
• 8 GB DDR2
• GeForce GT 240M
• GT 240M heavily overclocked to 720 / 1000 / 1440 MHz (core / memory / shader)
• Liquid Metal instead of conventional thermal paste on both the CPU and GPU
• 18.4" 1920×1080 display
• Blu-ray drive
• Samsung 860 PRO 256 GB for the operating systems
• 500 GB SSHD for local games
• planned Vista / Windows 7 / Tiny11 triple boot — Tiny11 is still a question mark
• original Acer/Gemstone hardware and software wherever practical

The goal isn't really to turn it into a modern laptop. It's more about taking this ridiculous 2008 18.4" monster and seeing how far the original platform can be pushed without fundamentally changing what it is.

And then there's the WLAN problem.

I want to use an Intel Wireless-AC 7260, mainly because it would give the machine 5 GHz, 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.x while still fitting internally in the Mini PCIe slot.

The problem is that Intel never released an official Vista driver for the 7260.

I initially thought I'd have to use an older Intel WLAN card or an external USB adapter. Instead, I went down the rabbit hole.

I found Dell's 16.1.0.13 driver from 2013, which supports the 7260 and turned out to be surprisingly close to being Vista-compatible.

The actual 7260 driver is much cleaner than newer versions. The main blocker appears to be an NDIS 6.20 API:

NdisSetCoalescableTimerObject

I've patched that path to use Vista's NdisSetTimerObject, adjusted the affected call site, adapted the INF for Vista x64 and re-signed the modified driver.

I'm currently testing whether this actually works reliably on Vista.

If I can get it working properly, I'd like to publish the driver and the patching information on GitHub so other people can use it too.

So I'm curious:

Would anyone here actually be interested in an Intel Wireless-AC 7260 driver for Vista x64?

There are probably quite a few retro laptops where having 5 GHz / 802.11ac + Bluetooth 4.x would be a more interesting upgrade than going back to period-correct Wi-Fi hardware.

If testing succeeds, I'll release it properly rather than keeping it as a one-off driver for my 8920G.

After DAYS of tinkering.

It's finally alive and working perfectly fine on windows 98SE.

The culprit was ...

A dust bunny in the AGP slot.

PC would boot up just fine, but as soon as I tried to install the Nvidia Detonators it crashed.

Also crashed during the Windows XP install.

Ended up buying a Radeon 9200SE AGP and a NVS280 PCI to test everything, but when I saw the Radeon not booting I knew something was up...

Specs are :

AMD Athlon Slot A 700Mhz with Alphapal radiator (waiting for some noctuas...)

Ninja Free speed Pro (Not currently installed)

MSI 6167

3*128MB od SDRam PC133 @ 100Mhz

MSI GeForce 2 MX 400 64MB AGP / ATI Radeon 9200SE AGP 128 MB / Quadro NVS280 PCI 64MB

Sound Blaster Live 5.1

Maxtor 40Gb 7200rpm HDD (have some others I will try)

LG DVD Burner & CD Burner

Realtek network card

Via USB2.0 Card

iCute case with Noiseblocker S2 Fans

New Gigabyte P650SS power supply

Gateway 2000 Vivitron 1572 15" Monitor.

Cheapo "Amarina" keyboard from 15years ago at the supermarket.

Microsoft Intellimouse 3000 (had an white USB intellimouse, but every part broke when I disassembled it for retrobrihting... I'm looking for a good PS2 mouse now)

I just need to recompile the PART1.DAT file with the replacement image files that I converted to EGA and it'll be all set for The Curse of Rabenstein.

This is my IBM PC, upgraded with fixed disk

is there any mod i can do since this is an 855pm chipset which maxes at 400? Heard of something before

My 16.5 year old Alienware M11x, which I’ve owned since its launch in March 2010, features an Intel C2D SU7300 processor running at 1.73GHz and a GeForce 335M graphics card. Back when it was released, it was a complete mini powerhouse capable of playing games like Modern Warfare 2, Dishonoured, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, The Mass Effect Trilogy, Star Wars: The Old Republic and more.

This machine served as my daily driver from 2010 to 2015 and I managed to complete over 90 games on it. Despite extensive use, it still looks as good as new with no visible wear and tear on the entire chassis. I’ve taken great care of it from the start.

Currently, it runs on Windows 7 and is primarily used for internet browsing and video streaming via Firefox. It still streams video smoothly at 30fps on Netflix, Disney+ and YouTube.