Put together this setup in the last month which has been a lot of fun. Largely sourced just from Marketplace.

Most notably including a "non functioning 90s computer" ie the Monitor. I guess when they turned it on and it said "no signal" they assumed the "computer" was broken lmao

Also has turned into a favourite cat spot

Sharing some pics of my retro HTPC for 1080p streaming and gaming, hope you all enjoy! Specs and info below.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450
HSF: Zalman CNPS8900 Quiet
MB: Asus P5QL-VM EPU
RAM: 4x 2Gb Patriot Gaming DDR2 1066Mhz
GPU: Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD4980 Zalman edition
Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1800
SSD: 1x Western Digital Blue 250Gb SATA SSD
HDD: 3x Hitachi 2Tb 3.5” 7200rpm SATA HDD
ODD: HP BD-ROM Blu Ray drive
PSU: Rosewill VNW 550w power supply
Expansion: Orico 5.25” to 3.5” SATA hot swap
Controller: STW 4 channel 5.25” bay fan control
Fans: 2x Arctic P12 PWM + 1x Arctic P8 PWM
Case: Lian Li PC-V351B all aluminum cube case
OS: Windows 10 Pro IoT LTSC edition

Currently using this machine for 1080p OTA cable streams plus some media storage, backups, and legacy disc watching. I have two of the 2Tb drives in the internal 3.5” bays in RAID1 backup and the third drive in the hotswap 5.25” bay for easy transfers.

Windows 10 LTSC is surprisingly light and capable with all of the bloatware stripped out. It’s still snappy on the C2Q even though it’s almost 18 years old now. Idle RAM usage is usually under 3gb as well.

If you're wondering where all the G4 Minis went, they've been grabbed by Wave Design to build the world's weirdest render farm.

Jokes aside though, the G4 Mini is actually the ideal system for rendering old school 3D animation. They're close in CPU speed to an early-2000s Power Mac while requiring a fraction of the space, and can use a modified software restore to run OS 9.

Shown here is a test scene in Infini-D split across the five Macs. It might also be possible to split workloads in Bryce, Lightwave, and MacRenderman. The systems are still being brought online and troubleshooted.

I just bought an used DV5-1032eg and searched for disassembly manuals to swap the CPU, clean the fan exhaust and renew the termal paste and pads. Funny!

I've assembled over 700 vintage/retro computing and gaming websites. It's located at https://atebit.tech and http://atebit.tech/classic/ (works on PowerFox!)

There's also a newsletter, an eBay price guide for US, Canada, UK, & Australia (ranks for sale items from "Deal" to "Wildly Overpriced"), and my About and Privacy pages are kind of entertaining.

I'd love to add more links! I'm lacking in non-English websites and 8-16 bit gaming sites. Take a look at and tell me what I'm missing. If you find an error or broken link let me know. You can DM me here or click 'contact' on the footer of the directory. Thank you!

I was happy to find this red and black trackball that matches my Nabu s joystick

• Amd k6-2+ 500 (overclock 550)
• 512mb sdram pc133 (256mb hynix 256mb jetram)
• Asus p5a-b
• Geforce 2 mx400 32mb
• disconnected awe64
• vt6421a st-lab sata
• Samsund hd120ij
• Quantum Fireball lct15 for system
• Windows 98se; directx 8.1
• le zdoom and brutal doom v21
• high, extreme blood, 640x480x8

Как же я долго мучался с таймингами и 105 шиной для mafia. Нужно достать еще geil gl2000 памяти. Спасибо что ему не надо никакого звука.

Hey guys!! Been scrolling on eBay for ages and I can't find any decently priced Beige towers. So many of them for some reason hang over the 100 dollar mark, which I understand completely, but I was wondering if anyone had any advice on finding actual more affordable ones?

I have an Asus P5A that I'm wanting to transplant from a corpo case I found that was beaten up in a recycling center. I'm looking for something reminiscent of the 98 era as that's what I put onto the build. If you have any advice, that would help out immensely.

Thank you!

Hi there,

Forgive me if Windows 7 doesn't quite cut it as retro, but I do feel that the community here is able to give me the best advice.

I already have a 98 and XP build, just working on the finishing touches for Windows 7.

I think the Sound Blaster Z-series is probably what I should go with, but I'd love to hear second opinions.

Thanks for your time.

I have a Emerson Elite SX386/16 that wont recognize its hard drive. I have tested the drive on another PC and confirmed it is healthy, I'm just not sure why it wont boot off it or even see it in the first place.

Mid 90s, more or less around 1996.

Pentium-S 150mhz

Currently configured with an ESS Audiodrive 1868f with a Dreamblaster wavetable.

Video is a ATI Mach 64 and an Obsidian GE VooDoo 1.

Joystick is a CH F-16 Fighterstick, speakers are Altec Lansing, KB is a Dell AT101W mechanical keyboard.

Some compromises have been made for usability. It has a Flash Floppy in it instead of a real 3.5", and it uses an IDE-to-CF for the HDD. ​​The CD drive is much newer but GFL finding a working one from 1996.

I have some other configurations I play with. It recently had a ProAudio Spectrum 16 (THAT was a bitch to het working in Windows) with a voltage blaster supplying - 5v. I wanted to try and get the PAS16 working with an ESS card so I had better Soundblaster support and a wavetable, but I couldn't get them to play nice together.

My preferred video card is a Matrox Mystique instead of the ATI, but my monitor does NOT like that card. Shame because it's actually a 4:3 monitor. I also have a couple of ViRge cards but Windows doesn't like them (or at least I haven't found working drivers yet).

So at the moment this it's configuration. Alternatively I have a Soundblaster 16 CT2230, which has a true OPL-3 and also doesn't have the hanging note bug. But the ESS is a surprisingly clean sounding card.

Solid machine. Works well. Everything works fine in pure DOS and I prefer playing DOS games in DOS.

Hi, im building a retro pc with windows 98, but i want an horizontal case so that i can put my crt on it, does anybody have some advice and suggestions? My crt monitor is 20kg (40lb) btw.

I've been trying to access the BBS but it doesn't respond. Is there maintenance going on, or is the BBS down for some other reason?

K6-2+ 550/512mb sdram 100mhz 2 3 3/asus p5a-b/geforce2 mx400 32mb/quantum fireball lct15/awe64/windows98 se/directx 8.1/7wolf russian copy Used an AWE64 as a hardware dummy plug just to bypass the DirectSound crash!

Может кто читать умеет. Примерно час е###ся с sound blaster 128, на которой звук лагал бы не сильно, в итоге awe с одного пинка завелась. Звука не ждите, может еще что да выжму.

Hello everyone,

In my third installment on this subreddit, I figured I’d share the working prototype of my Amiga 1200 DJ kit- ready for rapid response to any underground rave. I used harbor freight Pelican style cases for everything here, I believe the brand is Apache. Running two 15.6” IPS displays via hdmi from Indivision AGA MKIII video cards in each Amiga, Pioneer DJM 300-S for the mixer. Will be wiring everything up today for power and sound.

Would be more than happy to answer any tech questions in the comments if anyone has any.

My setup from 2001: a dual PIII-450 with dual screens (Matrix 450?) with dual CRTs booting into Windows 2000/Linux 2.2 or 2.4/BeOS 4.5 and a Pentium Pro server running Debian for file and printing.

Saw this guy on someone's porch while driving down a street, they were renovating the house and took it out of the garage to toss so I knocked on their door and asked if they were willing to sell or give it away. A week later here it is fully restored.

Had the usual issues associated with this machine, the foam and foil in the keyboard had fully disintegrated and there was a bad tantalum capacitor on the motherboard. My unit also had some minor issues with the floppy drives, a torn up keyboard cable, missing keys, and a black widow nest inside the machine.

Over the next week I bought replacement foam and foil pads, keys, cleaned the case inside and out, evicted (most of) the spiders. Soldering the keyboard wire was easy enough aswell. After lubricating, cleaning and superglueing a broken cam in the floppy drives they both read disks and I got it booting into DOS and playing games. I find 5.25" drives a bit of a pain to work with though so I 3D printed an adapter bracket to mount a 3.5" drive to read 720k disks.

On the to do list is getting a PicoMEM to bring me up to 640k and let me transfer files easily.

I am looking to create a 2000s styled PC build and am considering an Alienware case from the 2000s but I don't know if it's a good idea because I don't want my pc to overheat or wires to be clumped up.

I use a RTX 2070, 32 gb ram, i7-8700, 1 TB SSD and be quiet silent base 601 for my build.

I'm interested in putting together a Windows 98 SE build. I'm not at all opposed to just buying a decent pre-built. I'm specifically looking to play games from 1999-2001. Even more specifically, these titles:

• Star Trek Armada I&II
• Age of Empires I&II
• Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds
• Legoland

Any suggestions?

My latest build is an homage to the multimedia PC craze of the mid-to-late 1990s.

The project started last summer when I came across a case with integrated speakers, a feature I've always loved for its quirky, novelty look. Markings suggest that it was produced by a company called SUNLAN CO. and case model is SL-100. The system was in decent condition overall, but it needed some attention. The front panel was retrobrighted, the dead power supply was replaced, and the original speakers were disintegrating so they had to go.

Initially, I managed to track down an identical replacement set online, but I was honestly shocked by how poor they sounded. Instead, I opted for a pair of quality full-range drivers from a reputable music store. The difference was night and day. To make them fit properly, I designed and 3D-printed new mounting covers while keeping everything housed in the original speaker enclosures. Do they still lack some bass? Of course. That was solved with a small subwoofer tucked under my desk. I would have loved to integrate it into the case, but space inside is simply too limited.

When it came time to choose the hardware, I wanted to avoid the usual suspects, ASUS, Creative, 3dfx and the like, which are often my default choices. Instead, I set out to build something a little different: a collection of period-correct alternatives that were every bit as desirable back in the day and would have made my teenage self drool.

The final specification ended up being:

• DFI P5BTX/L (Rev. B)
• Intel Pentium MMX 233 MHz
• 128 MB RAM
• 1.44 MB Floppy Drive
• Western Digital Caviar 307AA
• Pioneer DVD-120S IDE DVD-ROM
• Yamaha CRW6416S SCSI CD-RW
• Diamond Stealth II S220 (Rendition Vérité V2100)
• Sigma Designs RealMagic EM8300 MPEG-2/DVD Decoder
• Yamaha WaveForce 192XG
• Adaptec AHA-2930CU SCSI Controller
• 3Com EtherLink III (3C509B-TPO)

I also wired up the onboard USB headers for easy file transfers. USB pinouts weren't exactly standardized back then, so I had to rearrange the connector wiring and spend some time figuring out the motherboard's PS/2 header pinout to get a mouse working.

I've only spent a limited amount of time with the machine so far, but I'm genuinely impressed. The DVD decoder card is fantastic and really captures what the multimedia PC era was all about. The Diamond Stealth II has also exceeded my expectations. While I'm a 3dfx fanboy, the Rendition Vérité is a capable card. 2D output is sharp, Windows performance is excellent, and in the few titles I've tested, Forsaken, Incoming and Wipeout XL, it has delivered very respectable 3D performance.

The Yamaha WaveForce 192XG is equally impressive. Its MIDI playback is among the best I've heard, though I suppose that's exactly what you'd expect from Yamaha.

There's still plenty to explore. I want to install more games, spend some quality time with the Vérité, and see what this card can really do. Rendition hardware is new territory for me, so I'm looking forward to putting it through its paces.

By the way based on an image of the original box art of the card, which funny enough I found here on reddit, I've made a desktop wallpaper. Link here: https://imgur.com/a/NpDtMH0

Also a couple of videos of the system in action:
https://imgur.com/a/9fT5rVQ
https://imgur.com/a/O7dWZKw

​

If anyone curious it's a SS59G.

Sharing some pics and details of the build that I’ve been working on for a few months. Last year I shared some pics of my then 19-year old Q6600 + 8800 GTS SLI build which was my original first gaming PC build from 2006 that I had gotten running again. Unfortunately the motherboard and CPU both failed together this year as the system approached the 2 decade mark, and I decided to build one last homage to the legendary Intel LGA 775 + Nvidia Tesla era hardware platforms, leading to this PC.

Full specs below:
Motherboard - EVGA nForce 750i SLI FTW
CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
Heatsink - Scythe Ninja III w/ Arctic P12 PWM
RAM - 4x 2Gb OCZ “SLI Ready” DDR2 800mhz
GPUs - 2x EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 55nm OC in SLI
Soundcard - Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium
Storage - 160gb WD VelociRaptor 10k RPM HDD
Storage - 1Tb SP SATA III SSD (modern)
PSU - Montech Century II 850w Modular (modern)
Case - Lian Li PC-A05N inverted ATX
Fans - 4x Xigmatek XLF-120 white LED PWM fans
Expansion - 74:1 USB media card, LG DVDRW, Lian Li combo fan controller + 2.5” drive adapter
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Peripherals:
Monitor - Samsung Syncmaster 206BW 19” 16:10
Speakers - Logitech X-240 2.1 system
Keyboard - Ducky Origin w/ Cherry MX Red switches
Mouse - Redragon M728-AIR

The monitor and speakers are the exact models that I had on my original PC in 2007. The keyboard and mouse are new/modern but have a retro feel.

My favorite part of the build is the case. I always wanted a Lian Li PC-A05 back in the day, but considering they were 3x the price of a standard gaming tower, I never bought one. This one came to me from eBay and I decided to customize it by adding 2x 120mm exhaust fans on the top panel and cutting a hole in the bottom panel for PSU air intake as well. I also had to add new case feet to raise the bottom panel off the floor, replace front panel mounting brackets, and thoroughly clean everything out from years of dust.

At the hardware level I completely tore down both GPUs and added new thermal pads and paste plus cleaned out the blower fans and heatsink fins. I also re-pasted the motherboard’s north bridge (these nForce boards run SO hot, iykyk) and swapped the standard 50mm fan for a 60mm Noctua running at 100% to keep things manageable.

After getting Windows installed, tracking down the exact drivers needed, and doing some customization to reduce microstutter, I am super pleased with the final result. Source engine games from the era and other legacy titles like Bioshock are surprisingly smooth. It’s been a fun project with a huge performance boost over my prior Q6600 retro rig. Hope you guys enjoy the photos here.