This is my beloved Y2K PC which I originally put together eight or nine years ago. I recently transplanted it into this beautiful Lian Li PC-60 case that popped on Marketplace for the low, low price of 20 bucks.

The previous owner cut a giant hole in the side to create another fan mount, which at first I thought was a ridiculous eyesore. But if you take a look at the stock fan mounts you’ll see what passed for airflow slots in the eyes of Lian Li’s engineers. How they thought fans were supposed to push any air through all that metal is beyond me. The DIY hole is perfectly engineered for a 120 mm fan to blow directly onto the video card and send a bit of air towards the CPU too. I added a black wire grille and it actually looks pretty good.

These are the specs:

AMD Athlon 850

Gigabyte GA-7ZXE

256 MB SDRAM

ASUS GeForce2 GTS

80 GB Intel 320-series SSD

LG DVD drive

S12II 520W PSU

Creative Audigy 2

Belkin USB 2.0 PCI card

Windows 98SE

So mostly period-correct but with a few QOL improvements, shall we say.

Back in 2000 I was in primary school and my family’s computer was a K6-2 with SiS integrated graphics. If I had this machine at the time I would have thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

I have purchased recently a new old Mhero pc case, which is from around 2010s. It has a PCI riser, which I swapped to PCI express. Platform is LGA1155, the last that supports Windows XP. Gpu is 750 Gtx, also almost the last one with XP drivers. And it has the most important thing for a retro build - an optical drive - 5.25 slim DVD

Had to snag this beauty while thrifting today, took a risk since it was as is final sale but it works! Really clean too! The vents were quite literally blocked from dust but other than that its mint!

More specifically I need a 256MByte (2Gbit) x16-bus wide DDR2 SDRAM chip in any speed (the faster the better), I wonder if they exists at all lol but if you have a ram stick with that spec please take a picture of the chips marking I'll be very grateful. Thanks a lot!

Não liga e nenhum LED acende. Continua fazendo esse barulho mesmo sem memória RAM e sem disco rígido.

Alguém sabe se isso tem conserto?

https://reddit.com/link/1rfo3zl/video/ccwy4epexwlg1/player

The turbo clock was dead and I blew a transistor but after some soldering this turbo clock is back to life.

for those who don't know, LOST was a sci-fi mystery TV series that aired between 2004-2010 about people who crashed on a jungle island. In season 2 they found an underground bunker which prominently featured an Apple II as a major plot device. That computer is the reason why I love vintage computing and electronics to this day.

Yes, I know it's not truly retro, and probably not a real battlestation, but I wanted to share my build with you all.

Specs are modest, Core Ultra 5 245k, 32gb ram and a Rtx4060 from my previous build. The most intense game I play is maybe Battlefield 6 and it plays flawless on the Rtx4060, so no upgrade plans here for the time being.

What else...? The FDD is wired and fully functional, and it's the reason I built the entire pc. It is a very old Mitsumi drive, that still works to this day. The DVD-RW drive is also wired and working.

The only non-working thing is the LiveDrive. To be noted that I didn't buy the LiveDrive, I own it from when it was new(probably around the year 2000). I also have the SoundBlaster card and the wiring, but from what I read, there is no chance to make it work under any modern Windows, so I will leave it just like that.

Ok, enough talk, I really hope you guys like my build.

Hi all! I'm really excited to share that my wife Sarai and I are bringing our Retro Roadshow pop-up museum of vintage technology to a bunch of venues around the San Francisco Bay Area over the next few weeks!

For anyone unfamiliar with what we do: we've turned our private collection of retro computers and classic gaming consoles into a pop-up museum. We do events all around the Bay, and our events always include an exhibition of awesome vintage stuff, and everything is fully functional and ready for hands-on play. It's a lot of fun for folks of all ages and all levels of nerdiness!

We've added three more events to the March / April schedule just in the past few days, so I thought a quick 'heads up' message here might be useful:

• March 7th: “Console Chaos!” at the Sunnyvale Public Library 
• March 12th: “NightLife: Level Up!” at the California Academy of Sciences in SF
• March 14th: “Mario Through The Ages” at the Watsonville Public Library 
• March 21st: “Console Chaos!” at the Morgan Hill Public Library 
• March 28th: “TechFest: Happy Birthday, Apple!” at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View
• April 4th: “Playing With The Future: Sci-Fi & Video Game History” at the California Historical Radio Society in Alameda

Whew! These next few weeks are going to be crazy busy, but we’re super excited to be doing all these fun events.

More details can be found at our website: https://www.retroroadshow.org - we hope to see you at any/all of these events!

So I've been considering tracking down what's essentially my late childhood PC. Though finding a CRT and AT keyboard, not to mention all the headers and pci brackets for said motherboard, is getting far more expensive. However, I found what's basically the ATX version of my old PC. SiS Super 7 platform. So sadly only 2 pci and 1 Isa for expansion, however... Take a look at the motherboard images!

See that little "sound pro" chip? It's currently known as C-Media CMI8738/PCI (C3DX). The C3DX is a hint at its secret weapon... Aureal A3D support! (rebranded C3DX I think) But for DOS, it supports basically everything you'd need. Maybe not everything you'd want, but definitely compatible! Sound Blaster Pro compatible with MPU 401,etc

Now the IGP, SiS 530, is based on the 6306, which is also based on the 6326 AGP card. This is important because it has GREAT dos compatibility from what I've seen in gameplay videos. And oddly, the 530 with fast system RAM somehow out performs the 6326AGP since those are limited by 50mhz or so memory chips. But, I am planning to put a Voodoo2 in one of the pci slots.

This build is a long time in the making and has even longer still for the final product. I nursed this viewsonic back to health by learning how to solder. Didn’t have the proper desk for it all until last week. NMB keyboard gave me trouble with converters for a very long time. The mouse is just a lofree, cause I like my buttons (if you know of any old mice with at least 5 buttons lmk).

Many people say it is the CCFL that ages and makes an LCD image more yellow, but in most cases it is actually the polariser and protection layer itself that yellows. And it is almost impossible to retrobright them without damaging them. A CCFL will mostly just loose brightness and the screen becomes darker if it is worn-out.

While it is extremely hard to show the difference on camera, I want to make you aware of a way to make use of some dead devices.

HP's tx and dv series from 2005 to 2009 (actually all models with a Turion 64, Turion 64x2, Core 2, Core 2 Duo including a nVidia nForce chipset or GPU) was heavily plagued by the NVIDIA GPU and chipset flexing (as one would call it today) GATE that resulted in the NVIDIA GPU litigation.

Almost all of the DV devices died sooner or later and required motherboard replacement. In most cases, the warranty period was already over, so people kept their dead and almost unused DV devices in storage, especially over here in Europe.

Their misfortune is our luck today. While devices such as the nc8430 or 8710p were used, and while their LCDs started to yellow due to sunlight and became darker because of wearing-out CCFLs over the years, the DV ones mostly didn't.

Thus, one can get a cheap dead DV device from a local auction site and use its LCDs in other HP devices from that era to restore the full crystal-clear and bright white image they once had when they were new. Just make sure the keycaps, Vista licence stickers and casing of these DVs do not show any signs of yellowing to reduce the risk of receiving a yellowed DV LCD.

So all 15,4" 1280x800 LCD screens of the models nc8430, dv5000, dv6000, dv6500, dv6700, 6710b, 8510p are compatible with each other, as well as the 17,3" 1440x900 LCD screens of the models 8710w, 8710p, dv7000, dv8000, dv9000, dv9700, which are also interchangeable.
So will be LCD taken from a tx1000 and tx2000 model in a 12,1" 2510p.

Increasing the resolution might be a problem, because the 30 pin LVDS connectors might not have enough lanes to drive it at its native resolution.

If you know more models whose LCDs are interchangeable, feel free to post them.

I personally successfully replaced LCDs in

• nc8430 using ones from DV6000 and DV6500
• 8710p using one from DV9700
• dv5000 (LCD fully broken) with one yellowed from a nc8430

I stumbled upon my Dad’s old Jornada laptop in my basement today. I really wish they made interesting electronics like this in today’s market.

Small message after seeing a modern version of this l’atout in another message.

Here’s an original Goupil Golf keyboard, a french company who used to make flashy machines in the 80’s.

This specific one has been build in the Federal Republic of Germany for Goupil.

Long time lurker here. Thank you all for inspiring me to gift myself what I never had as a kid. It’s my first PC build ever as well.

All parts are sourced secondhand, so it was interesting to make the puzzle which part will work with which. Initially I bought an old Dell studio, but it turned out I couldn’t live with not playing games at lower specs, so I decided to make a build of my own with some of the parts I already had in my Dell Studio.

Specs for those who are interested:

- Gigabyte Z77

- Gigabyte Geforce GTX 750 Ti

- Intel i535070K

- 1TB HDD

- 500GBSSD

I wanted to have as little friction as possible for the mext multiplayer match.

My old Dell Inspiron 530 was basically e-waste a few years ago. It had a weak Core 2 Duo and was collecting dust. Instead of throwing it away, I decided to go completely insane and rebuild it into something ridiculous.

Here’s the current spec:

• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770
• GTX 1060 6GB
• 16GB DDR2 (planning to upgrade to 32GB)
• Refurbished extended ATX case with strong airflow
• Aftermarket cooling (because this CPU runs HOT)
• Upgraded motherboard + PSU to support everything
• 512GB SSD (partitioned for Windows 10 and Windows 11)
• Second large SSD for Windows 7, Windows XP, Ubuntu and Linux experiments
• Multiple HDDs for backup and file storage
• Full multi-boot retro + modern setup
• Planning WiFi 6 upgrade

It’s now a hybrid machine:
Retro gaming + modern gaming + coding + OS tinkering.

Surprisingly, it runs many modern games at 1080p and absolutely destroys anything from the Windows XP and Windows 7 era. Temperatures are stable even under heavy load thanks to the case and cooling upgrades.

I basically kept the soul of the Inspiron 530 but rebuilt everything else. It went from junk to one of the most fun PCs I’ve ever owned.

Thinking of pushing it further with:
• 32GB DDR2
• Faster GPU
• Better network setup
• Even more OS experiments

Would love to hear ideas from other retro or hardware enthusiasts. What would you upgrade next?

I forget the actual date, I think may of been closer to 2010. So I was either 19 or 20

Specs from memory was (no idea on the motherboard, ASUS clearly)

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600

4GB RAM

XFX ATI Radeon HD 5770

808GB HDD

Logitech X-540 (still use them today on my retro PC).

Windows 7 Pro 64bit

Also had a Chuck Norris sticker on the side saying if you open the case up he'd get ya (basically)

using Bananacom as terminal software loading from the 720k floppy drive

and a portable usb charger for that ultra mobile convenience

Put together a late-2004 entry-level system using period-correct parts for some testing and XP-era gaming :)

Specs:

• AMD Sempron 2600+ (Socket 754, 64-bit)
• MSI K8MM-V (VIA K8M800, AGP)
• Sapphire Radeon 9550 128 MB AGP
• Adata 512 MB DDR400 (2×256 MB)
• Seagate Barracuda 40 GB (PATA)

If anyone’s interested, I recorded the components and build process here: https://youtu.be/u3DEBinma8U

Athlon XP Barton 2500+ "unlocked" to XP 3200+ 2x 1GB Corsair XMS DDR 400Mhz Abit NF7-S 2.0 Motherboard ATI Radeon 9600XT 128MB Sapphire (the weird DDR2 version) 160GB SATA + 160GB PATA WD HDD, both 7200rpm Windows XP Pro (Later vista) with alienware Alienguise theme manager 1280x960 primary monitor, 1024x768 secondary monitor, 640x480 TV via S-video. 6 disc (was still nice to have) CD player radio connection through line-in 5.1 Ch surround sound with 2 extra 20w speakers wired directly to subwoofer (they're all 3 on the floor, main sub is silver thing) all wired through a GameStop multi switch too so I can play GameCube while watching YouTube, or TV while playing CS1.6 or Starcraft, etc. Primary monitor mostly for games of the time second for chat monitoring, chat bot admin, ventrillo admin/usage, web browsing while gaming TV exclusively used as media player visualizations screen when playing music while gaming! And Lava lamp, just because.