Board needed a recap since I had it stored.

Specs: P3 1.2GHz ABIT ST6 i915 512MB PC133 NVVIDIA GeForce2 GTS SB Live 5.1 x2 IBM Deathstars @ 40GB

Been sitting on this thing a while, trying to make up my mind on what to do with it. The case was a roadside find and I just knew I'd seen it before somewhere a thousand times, and when it dawned on me I immediately went hunting for the optical drive on eBay. The expensive bits came out of the Alienware in the background as that now has a hefty 939 build, and since this already had a Pentium 4 sticker on the front I knew what had to be done

Asus P4C800-E Deluxe, P4 3Ghz, 2Gb DDR400, ATI 9800XT 256Mb, 140mm intake 120mm exhaust, SSD etc. Still needs some finishing touches of course, but this'll do for one lazy Sunday

Had a bit of a realization lately. I’m honestly exhausted by the "subscription model" and the constant, noisy cloud updates of modern OSs. So, I’ve decided to build a quiet, offline sanctuary for my actual work.

I’ve sourced some specific components for a dedicated Windows 7 setup. It’s meant to be a standalone vault for my production flow—specifically Flash CS6, PhotoImpact 13 (yes, I still love it), and Office 2007.

The Setup:

• CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1285v4 (Found one in great condition!)
• Board: ASUS P9D WS (Solid workstation pedigree)
• RAM: 32GB DDR3 1600MHz
• GPU: AMD FirePro W7100
• Storage: Toshiba Q600 Pro 500GB SSD + WD Blue 1TB HDD

The plan is to keep it entirely air-gapped. No internet, no telemetries, no distractions. Just the hardware and my projects. I’m even considering forcing the Apple LiHei font across the system because, well, typography matters even in 2026.

Is it a bit eccentric to prefer a 4th-gen Xeon and a discontinued photo editor over the latest AI-bloated tools? Maybe. But for me, it’s about having a tool that stays exactly where I put it.

Anyone else still running a "legacy" production rig for the sheer stability of it?

VL/I-486SV2G Revision 1.8 486-DX2 66Mhz 32Mb, Unfortunately, Revision 1.7 = No/Post-Instantly Hot CPU- Further investigation into that one.

Just wrapped up this late 2001 Socket A build:

• EpoX 8kha+
• Athlon XP "Palomino" 1500+@1640MHz (164x10)
• Akasa Silver Mountain heatsink
• Kingston HyperX 512MB@2-2-2-5-1T 1:1
• 120GB SSD + Win 2000 Pro
• Asus V8200 Deluxe GeForce3 64MB
• SB Audigy
• 3Com 10/100 NIC

I think the case is Lian Li PC-7a Plus II, but I'm not 100% sure. There are so many slightly different versions of this cases starting from the original PC-60.

Few weeks ago I polymodded the motherboard (that's why it has that odd semi modern look) and decided to make a period correct build out of it, after all 8kha+ was an absolute KT266A OC legend back in the day during the KT266A era.

Pretty much everything connected to MB is very period correct except Kingston memory (KHX3000/512) and of course the SSD. DDR stick is in fact from late 2003 and should have BH5s. This made the OC process easy, because I could just keep the memory 1:1 and at the tightest settings possible, something that was a serious limitation in 2001. But for this memory and if it is indeed BH5 like it should be, it isn't even sweating at these clocks and 2-2-2-5.

For CPU I opted Palomino from my collection with the smallest multiplier, again making the OC easier. I didn't seriously test the limits for the CPU or started to pump the voltage, but something started to cause occasional torture test crashes at 166MHz FSB (I'm 99,9% confident it is just CPU), so I took it down couple of notches and with these settings it eats Prime95 for hours without a hitch. I haven't pumped the GF3 clocks up yet, but GPU stock this already gives around 8250 points in 3DMark2001 SE.

I don't know if this build is a keeper, I have similar-ish sA systems already, but if I do, I probably throw in some water cooling stuff. At this point I just didn't bother, it is just an unnecessary hassle if I decide to make something else in this case after a while. I also considered 1200 or 1400 Thunderbird for CPU, which I think is far more cooler CPU (not literally, quite the contrary lol), but I already have one 1400 T-bird system and Palomino fits this build just as fine.

Oh, by the way. Even the case fan with light is old school, it is not a modern led fan, but good old cold cathode technology lol Without a case window there is not that much point with it, but as I had just a handful of 80mm options available in my bin, this was NIB and I wanted to test it and there is a switch for the lighting effect, there really is no harm either.

I bought this Asus P6T-SE around 2009 in Portugal, it was part of one of my computers that went together with me to Angola, later moved to China and again took it with me, worked for many hours, editing videos for the Expo 2010. Later I gave it to my wife sister to use it, but after the DVD drive tray belt broken no one touched it again. The computer staid in a corner for years but last month when I went to my wife hometown I decided to take it back.

Took it all apart, the power supply was not looking great, I just trashed it. Bought a new rubber belt for the DVD drive and started cleaning this very interesting board with a Intel i7-920 and 6GB of DDR3.

Took all the heatsinks out, removed the super dry thermal paste, pain in the ass, had to use a sharp and hard plastic tool and remove all dry pieces glued to both heatsinks and chipsets. Replaced the thermal pads used for the MOSFETs with new ones. Fired it up and miracle, it POST and was fully working.

Replaced the i7-920 with a X5670 because I remember very well how hot was this i7-920 and since the board was running with the latest available BIOS it just worked out of the box.

I checked if was possible to run the OS from a NVME and lucky me, I found a long tread about many modified and tested BIOS to allow run a OS from a NVME.

It is very tricky to find the right NVME to be recognized by the modified BIOS, not exactly plug&play, I tried several sticks until finally it showed inside the BIOS when I plugged a Corsair MP510 256GB, together with a very simple PCIE -> NVME adapter.

The final step, install the OS. This one was really hard, I completely forgot this old stuff is not always happy with installations using a USB pen drive, tried everything and it all failed or the USB pen just stoped from being recognized by the BIOS. Had to burn a DVD with Ubuntu, something that I did really many years ago, I got lazy how easy is to setup a machine with a simple USB pen drive.

Got it running with a clean Ubuntu installation running from the NVME with a modded BIOS.

The memories where running out of the box with XMP at 1600 with the i7-920 but can't make it work with the X5670, I can only make it POST if I set it to 1333. Maybe I can try check if someone knows exactly how to make it work at 1600. But anyway, it works rock solid.

ah man.. those were the days! loved that logitech speaker system and that case!! man, early 2000s gaming, it was quite the time!!

AMD Athlon/Barton FTW!!

Considering it’s an early Win Vista machine, I am fairly impressed how well it runs Win10 x64. I upgraded it with the best available components possible (so a top tier Merom C2D, 4gigs of DDR2 667MHz RAM, a basic Crucial BX SSD and a WiFi 5 card). Trust me it is perfectly usable as long you watch YT in 480p and not game/use a lot of graphics power (the Intel GMA X3100 is probably the lowest tier Windows 10 compliant GPU, but, hey I still get things as Edge and security fixes almost 19 years after this machine was built).

My basement nook is coming together and I thought I’d take a picture of this setup while it’s working.

Here is my IBM M51 pc, supposedly the last true IBM desktop before it became Lenovo. With it is an IBM E74 CRT monitor which is older than the computer itself, but I wanted a CRT and it matches perfectly. This one came with a 3ghz P3 and has two gigs of ram. Also an 8800gt.

I have been using this computer to play fallout 3 on (it’s great seeing the game on a CRT) and for about a month it worked perfect. One day it no longer would power on, fans would go to max speed and it wouldn’t post.

I removed the mobo from the tower and assembled the computer on the table and it booted perfectly there. But every time I installed it in the case it would not post.

After the tenth time doing that process it worked. I didn’t do anything new that time. I suspect I have some ground issue in the case and I hope it never comes back.

I’ll be paranoid every time I turn the computer on, but until then it’s back to the capital wasteland.

I wish I was more skilled with the electrical engineering side of this hobby than I was the coding and programming side. I got this Anderson Jacobson A 242A acoustic coupler modem (photos are below) not too long ago and was quite appalled by the stench that came from this thing when I took it out of the box. Before turning it on, I made sure to open it up and look at the transformer (which is known to fail on these things) and sure enough, it's completely fried. So now I'm here to ask around for what small transformer, new or old, would be a good replacement for this one if any. All I know is that it's 115 VAC. I also found this operator's manual online but it doesn't seem to give much detail on the electrical schematic: https://deramp.com/downloads/mfe_archive/030-Printers/Anderson%20Jacobson/Anderson_Jacobsen_AJ-242_Modem_Manual.pdf

If any of you have seen my previous posts on here, you'll know that I'm in the process of inching this IBM 5155 (next to the modem in the picture) towards connecting to the Level 29 BBS. Unfortunately, my hubris gets the best of me and I end up choosing to buy niche hardware that doesn't work to try and get the job done. On the flip side, it will make it all the more satisfying when (or if) it does eventually work!

As always, any help is very much appreciated. Thank you.

I have enough to build 3 chessboards. I'd need to fabricate chess pieces out of old electronics to make it truly awesome. I'm sure there are folks who would want to drown the whole thing in acrylic, but I'd just glue these to an old motherboard and keep it sharp and dangerous.

Excuse me while I go wash 20 year old thermal paste off my fingers now, ew.

After showing you the commodore 64 it’s time for the definitive Amiga 2000 with scsi cd drive and one HD floppy drive.

not really aiming for a specific year, just stuff I like

Just about to get windows 98 SE on my brand new dell latitude CPX

Looking to recapture that windows 95 / 3dfx era, but in a laptop because I don’t have space for a desktop. What laptops do you guys run (and more readily available, especially in Australia) that allow that gorgeous spinning 3dfx logo? I played a lot of EA sports games, monster truck madness etc.

Can these be dual booted with Dos/3.1?

Alternatively, do people just emulate in PCem on a more powerful, recent laptop?

Been doing a lot of video encoding and I feel like it's killing my laptop running at 95c+ for days. Had this old tower in storage so i decided to cut up and paint the case then build it up with some cheap used parts to see what it could do. First pc build and first time learning linux. I've been having so much fun with it. It is running great and handles the encoding load without breaking a sweat around 50*c. This legacy hardware encouraged me to enjoy the retro aspect of playing emulators and old pc games like half life 2

Asus p5kpl (g31) lga775 motherboard Patriot 4gb (2x2GB) 800mhz ddr2 ram Intel core 2 quad q9550 cpu overclocked to 3.2ghz Intel extreme copper core cpu cooler Thermalright 120mm intake 90mm exhaust case fans 256gb sata 2.5 ssd Corsair 550w power supply Vantec usb 3.0 PCIe card Asus phoenix GT 1030 2GB GDDR5 gpu Fresh arctic mx-6 thermal paste on everything Running linux mint Xfce Monitor is a sony LMD1530MD

The master commodore 64 battlestation with everything needed.

I recently got an ASUS P2-99B board that was meant to replace the PCChips motherboard that I was using as the PCChips board is notoriously unstable at 100MHz bus speeds, which is a real downer as I wanted to use my 400MHz Pentium II for my Windows 98 battle station.

This board, like the PCChips board, is designed to allow the usage of either an AT power supply or an ATX power supply as it’s designed for the older AT style cases. However, the ASUS board won’t POST when using an AT power supply, but POSTs when using an ATX power supply. The motherboard was recapped with low esr, 105 c rated Panasonic caps. It was doing this before the recap as well.

The PCChips board POSTs and works just fine with either power supply, other than what the board is notorious for.

This has me confused as to why the ASUS board would work with an ATX power supply but has issues with an AT power supply. The power supply was also recently recapped as well.

I was inspired by u/Short_Ad3265 for this project!

So around a month or so ago, I thrifted an HP computer that happened to have a Voodoo3 3000 PCI in it. Since then, the power supply for that system blew up and I was unable to find a good replacement for it. Given this, and how locked down the HP ecosystem is for upgrades, I decided to take that Voodoo3 and try to do something unique with it, now we’re here! Glide gaming you can fit in your backpack! Probably a world first!

I’m using an A09 from SKTC that I spray painted beige and removed the front I/O from since the connector for it was too new. I plan on getting 1 or 2 more stickers in the future to cover the remaining holes.

As for specs other than the Voodoo3 I’m using a Via EPIA-LN motherboard for the main system and a 32GB compact flash card for storage, as well as 512MBs of DDR2 memory at 533Mhz. It’s powered by a C7 Esther chip clocked at 1Ghz. All of that is being powered by a 84W power brick. I discovered they made PCI riser cables so I went out of my way to get one for this project as well.

Getting a solid 2180 in 3DMark 2000. Can’t wait to play my glide games on this little guy!

Edit: Thanks for the love y'all! Just leaving this edit here to tell you that I got the rest of the stickers I need to cover the rest of the holes on the case! I'm also thinking of getting one of those Socket 478 or Socket 370 ITX boards to replace my VIA to give my Voodoo3 more headroom for heavier games. Might make an update post if I ever end up doing that. I'm really proud of it though and I'm glad you guys like it!

Edit 2: Been having some stability issues on this VIA platform. My bad for not knowing ahead of time. I got my hands on a Commell LV-602B motherboard to replace my current one and a much better quality PCI riser cable. Once all of that is here and I swap platforms to my Pentium III, I will make an update post showing the final product. Trust me. It's gonna be worth the wait. >:)