FInally completed my "dream"-build. I owned the exact case back in the day (late 2000). Specs were a little worse back then though (Thunderbird 1000 + Geforce 2 mx).
Really happy with the slot-in CD-rom and the zip-Drive, which of course I didn't own back then.

AMD Sempron 2500+
FIC AM39L
1,5 GB DDR-RAM
GeForce 6200 LE 512 MB DDR2
Soundblaster 128 PCI ct 4810
3.5 Zoll 1,44 MB Floppy
Iomega Zip 100 SCSCI
Pioneer DR-506S Slot-In-CD-ROM
CD-RW/DVD-RW
128 GB SSD (IDE to SATA Adapter)

Nice! The blue color of the ZIP drive and of the case buttons actually go well together. 😀

Looks good! What OS are you running?

PD2JK wrote on 2024-08-09, 11:39:

Looks good! What OS are you running?

Windows XP

Obijuan1983 wrote on 2022-09-07, 19:24:

My recentrly restored-Retrobrighted PC's 😀

What PC case is this? I'm still looking for it online:

As far as I know that is a generic OEM AT case from the mid-90's. These are usually unbranded and would carry the sticker of the shop that sold the PC.

devius wrote on 2024-08-10, 11:47:

As far as I know that is a generic OEM AT case from the mid-90's. These are usually unbranded and would carry the sticker of the shop that sold the PC.

Yeah, sounds about accurate.

I'm trying so hard to find it though, in very good to excellent condition, online. I'd pay quite a bit for one. Sentimental value for that OEM case is why, and I want to rebuild my system (I still have all the original components).

Hello Retro Fans,

I was solely reading the vogons forum until recently and am very grateful for having this source of information. Thanks a lot, guys!
As I now finally created an account here I would like to add my latest 'Retro PC' (re)build as a first post:

While it is not period perfect it is more or less the system I (mainly) played games some twenty years ago.
It is an AMD Athlon XP 2100+ on an ASRock K7VT2 (VIA VT8366A/KT266A) with 256MB RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce 6200 with 256MB RAM for graphics card (with DVI socket so one can hook up modern monitors).

Sound is provided by a my beloved Soundblaster Live! although the motherboard has onboard audio (which kind of sucks).
The original case was lost over the years, I don't remember what it looked like in the first place, so I used one I found in the basement.
The hard drive certainly died years ago thus I used one originally from some ThinkPad connecting it via an IDE-SATA adapter.
I also replaced the case fan with a more silent one making the whole system running with almost as little noise as my current workstation 😀
A true godsend is the Gotek floppy emulator (FlashFloppy firmware) making it so much easier to handle boot disks etc.

While it was fun assembling the system and making it work I am glad that the times of thumbling around with DOS and EMS/XMS/... are over!
As for throttling down the PC the motherboard is not very "underclocking" friendly – The system becomes quite unstable for any non-auto setting so for really speed sensitive games I have to rely on DOSBox.
Besides that I could manage to run all my old games (also the not so old ones as the CPU+Graphics card are quite powerful) quite well either in plain DOS (using boot disk images for the XMS/EMS/Himem/EMM386 hell) or with Windows 98SE.

So here we go .. some pictures:

Benchmark:

Cheers,
Flo

Looks great, that's some tidy cable management (that probably no one bothered with at the time). I always love to see an earlier Athlon XP machine, these are way underrepresented.

When you tried to throttle down the system, which software did you use? I have used Throttle with some success on my Socket 7 systems, but I always wondered how well it would work with a more modern CPU.

Throttle also works with P4, S939 A64x2 and S775 AGP systems - tested. Above these, CPUSPD is recommended.

asdf53 wrote on 2024-09-03, 09:05:

Looks great, that's some tidy cable management (that probably no one bothered with at the time). I always love to see an earlier Athlon XP machine, these are way underrepresented.

When you tried to throttle down the system, which software did you use? I have used Throttle with some success on my Socket 7 systems, but I always wondered how well it would work with a more modern CPU.

Hi,

I tried the following:

1. BIOS – The K7VT2 does not offer too many options, the most promising was overriding the Clockspeed manually. If I wouldn't do that in decrements of 8MHz the system would stop starting. The lowest I could reach was 85MHz which would lead to the CPU being detected as XP 1700+ (if I remember correctly). This approach would slow down the system a bit but Monkey Island 1 would not start but show a runtime error
2. setmul – only level 1 cache could be disabled. Monkey Island 1 would die with a runtime error
3. throttle – The lower/lowest settings would allow Monkey Island 1 to run but its sound would be garbled (the same result when using in combination with setmul for disabling level 1 cache first)

I have not tried CPUSD yet but will give it a shot if time, thanks!

Cheers,
Flo

One of my ongoing retro projects finally finished..😀 Kust the HP burner looks odd, but still cannot find a suitable replacement.
Dell GX110 running Win 98SE
Pentium III 1GHz S370
2x256MB PC133
Hercules 3D Prophet Radeon 9000 64MB PCI
Voodoo 2 12MB SLI
Creative Labs Soundblaster AWE64 Gold 12 MB
Yamaha SW60-XG
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro
Turtle Beach Montego PCI Aureal Vortex AU8820 OEM Dell

Here's a couple of pics of the 486 rig in my sig. I've been working on this one for a while and I think it's about where I'd like it to be now.

AOpen AP43 with 1MB L2 Cache
AMD Am5x86 at 160MHz
128MB FPM RAM
Diamond Stealth III S540
80GB Western Digital Caviar SE HDD
Promise Ultra66
Acer 40X CD Drive
Panasonic ZIP 250 ATAPI
HP Colorado T1000 Travan, connected to CMS FC-20 Controller
D-Link DE-530TX 10/100 NIC
AOpen FM56-ITU2 VoiceFaxModem
Creative Sound Blaster 32PnP, 8MB in SIMMs for samples
Cambridge Soundworks PCWorks 2.1 Speakers
Acer 17" 4:3 LCD Monitor
Acer Keyboard, Microsoft Serial Mouse
Powercom KIN-1000 UPS
Windows 98 Second Edition as primary OS

It was originally put together to read old floppies, zip disks and QIC tapes to archive to a NAS. This was way before there was such a thing as the greaseweazle.

Not sure on the make/model of the AT minitower case, it was purchased as NOS years ago and I dug the early 2000's light beige with translucent accent vibe. The same case popped up on This Does Not Compute's Youtube channel recently, but with nifty lighting upgrades.

Many Bothans wrote on 2024-09-23, 19:55:

It was originally put together to read old floppies, zip disks and QIC tapes to archive to a NAS. This was way before there was such a thing as the greaseweazle.

Wow, talking about utilizing every bay and supporting every disk technology out there. 😆 And everything matches in color, including the LCD. Loving it. 👍

vlad0bs wrote on 2024-09-23, 14:47:

One of my ongoing retro projects finally finished..😀 Kust the HP burner looks odd, but still cannot find a suitable replacement.

Nice build with some impressive hardware in there. Now you need to top up your post showing the desktop and peripherals! 😀

vlad0bs wrote on 2024-09-23, 14:47:

Kust the HP burner looks odd, but still cannot find a suitable replacement.

You ARE evil indeed. HP Dark Gray should be in Kayaks/Visualizes, not in beige Dell.

That HP burner was my first. I have such fond memories of it, and would love to find another..

supergeek wrote on 2024-08-10, 05:58:

What PC case is this? I'm still looking for it online: […]
Show full quote

What PC case is this? I'm still looking for it online:

I have this but I'm in Europe

Hi Everyone! By way of introduction, here's my recent build, closely replicating the computer I had during college. I bought the base computer, which came with a crappy Trident 3D Image and no sound card. Added the AWE32 and upgraded to a Voodoo3. Full specs as follows:

FIC VA-503+ Super 7 Motherboard (no idea what I originally had)
K6-2 533AFX overclocked to 550MHz (Originally a K6-2 300 or 350)
128MB PC100 SDRAM (pretty sure I originally had 64MB)
Voodoo3 3000 AGP (originally a Voodoo3 2000 PCI)
SoundBlaster AWE32 PNP CT3600 (originally a non-PNP AWE32)
SMC EtherPower II NIC (no idea which one I had originally, but comparable)
52X CD-RW (I had something similar)
CF to IDE Adapter with 32GB CF Card (originally 2 or 4GB IDE drive)
USB Bracket (don't think my original Mobo supported USB)
Samsung SyncMaster 753DF 17" Monitor (originally had a CTX that my nostalgia goggles tell me was much better)

Several of the games I've installed were from the original CDs I've kept since then. The rest I bought on GOG, or downloaded from MyAbandonware if they were not for sale.

Cool setup. It's amazing how many K6 setups similar to mine are around (complete with Voodoo, some AWE card and a CRT), and it seems everyone has moved to CompactFlash/SSD storage for the primary drive, except me. 😜