Somewhat restored an Advent 5480DVD to its former glory. A bit of the plastics had to be melt-fused together with the soldering iron, a new CMOS battery was needed as well as a HDD.

Installed WinME OEM since it had the COA for it and all's great.

Gutted this cool Antec "HTPC" case I have and plan on setting it up with a modern MATX Ryzen 5 5600 based "server". I just love this cases retro stereo aesthetic!

The current case the server is in will be repurposed as a small Windows 98SE system for Win9x 3D gaming.

I'm going to start with an AMD Sempron 2500+ and AGP Radeon 9250 as the core hardware for the 98 machine, simply becasue it's what I have on hand. All the other AGP cards I have likely have no Win9x support. I may invest in an Athlon XP 3000+ for it, can be found for about $25. Though, I'm not sure what better AGP GPU I can throw in it would be...I don't want to spend a lot on it. I just want 60+ FPS 3D gaming on most Win9x titles. No DOS gaming on this one.

Sound will be either a Sound Blaster Audigy EAX Advanced HD SB1394 / SB0090 or Audigy EAX Advanced HD SB0160. I don't think there's a big difference between them.

Also have an Athlon 64 3200 CPU and board (PCIe) I'm debating on what I can use it for.

StriderTR wrote on 2025-01-28, 02:43:

Gutted this cool Antec "HTPC" case I have and plan on setting it up with a modern MATX Ryzen 5 5600 based "server". I just love this cases retro stereo aesthetic!

Nice case !!

Started putting together an early Windows XP machine

Case: Classic 2003 case
OS: Windows XP Professional SP3
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.4 GHz "ClawHammer" (Socket 754) / Memory: 1GB DDR1 (CL2.5)
Motherboard: MSI K8T Neo / VIA K8T800
Video: ATI Radeon 9800XT 256MB
Audio: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS (SB0350)

Part of me regrets that I missed that sweet early Athlon64 era, as I went for a Pentium 4 system back then.
I also have an Audigy 2 ZS in that system and I love it. 😀

zuldan wrote on 2025-01-29, 07:37:

Started putting together an early Windows XP machine […]
Show full quote

Started putting together an early Windows XP machine

Case: Classic 2003 case
OS: Windows XP Professional SP3
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.4 GHz "ClawHammer" (Socket 754) / Memory: 1GB DDR1 (CL2.5)
Motherboard: MSI K8T Neo / VIA K8T800
Video: ATI Radeon 9800XT 256MB
Audio: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS (SB0350)

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The attachment FA1734D7-043C-49C2-850C-51609FDB0254.jpeg is no longer available

a powerhouse indeed. if it was early wouldn't that be more 2001/2 ? although support went on for years so in retrospect is is kind of early

with those specs it'll be fast and play just about anything 2003 (and many games from a bit later) can throw at it 😀

dr_st wrote on 2025-01-29, 09:30:

Part of me regrets that I missed that sweet early Athlon64 era, as I went for a Pentium 4 system back then.
I also have an Audigy 2 ZS in that system and I love it. 😀

I only did AMD in those days for gaming. Sold too many Pentium 4’s at work so saw that a business CPU. I love the Audigy 2 ZS‘s. Glad they are still cheap to get. Great for dual boot XP / 98.

gerry wrote on 2025-01-29, 09:53:

zuldan wrote on 2025-01-29, 07:37:

Started putting together an early Windows XP machine […]
Show full quote

Started putting together an early Windows XP machine

Case: Classic 2003 case
OS: Windows XP Professional SP3
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.4 GHz "ClawHammer" (Socket 754) / Memory: 1GB DDR1 (CL2.5)
Motherboard: MSI K8T Neo / VIA K8T800
Video: ATI Radeon 9800XT 256MB
Audio: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS (SB0350)

The attachment 08608873-F793-4112-B498-20386D12B55C.jpeg is no longer available

The attachment FA1734D7-043C-49C2-850C-51609FDB0254.jpeg is no longer available

a powerhouse indeed. if it was early wouldn't that be more 2001/2 ? although support went on for years so in retrospect is is kind of early

with those specs it'll be fast and play just about anything 2003 (and many games from a bit later) can throw at it 😀

I guess it’s not super early, kinda between early and mid 2000’s. This machine does have a brother that’s already built.

Case: Classic early 2000's
OS: Windows XP Professional SP3
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.4 GHz "ClawHammer" (Socket 754) / Memory: 1GB DDR1 (Team DDR400 CL2.5 RTM512EB4006EL)
Motherboard: ABIT AB-KV8-MAX3 / VIA K8T800
Video: Geforce FX 5950 Ultra 256MB DDR (Leadtek Winfast A380 Ultra)
Audio: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro (SB0360)

The 5950U is good for DX8 and the 9800XT is good for DX9.

Setting up the 5480DVD.

Man, Lukeno94 really nailed it. These things are as modular as possible, with this one being a near 1:1 copy of my Tually capable Gericom 1230i. The only difference is the mobo revision - Gericom uses the N340S8, the Advent uses N340S2. Oh, and I need some new speakers for the S8.

I got an USB Wi-Fi adapter from 2021 working on my Pentium III with Windows 7. Installing the drivers blue-screened the system, but they proceeded to work anyway. :P

GemCookie wrote on 2025-01-29, 15:22:

I got an USB Wi-Fi adapter from 2021 working on my Pentium III with Windows 7. Installing the drivers blue-screened the system, but they proceeded to work anyway. 😜

That's quite cool. I'm also curious as to how windows 7 runs on a P3?

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2025-01-29, 15:27:

That's quite cool. I'm also curious as to how windows 7 runs on a P3?

It's just about usable on this CPU; however, installing the Wi-Fi adapter slowed the system way down. It has 256 MiB of RAM, which is just enough to fit the OS; the driver must have pushed it over the edge. This screenshot took about a hour to create.
Windows Vista actually runs better.

It's amazing how top-heavy operating systems are now. If only they were are simple and lightweight as in the 90s, things would load instantly.

Sometimes when I leave my system on for so long with Windows 10 without rebooting, the calculator app lags and takes like 30 seconds to open. I don't even understand why this happens.

I wish the systems wouldn't do so many automated background tasks. I'd rather just run everything manually when I need to. I miss anyways choosing what my computer was up to.

Windows 2000 was "peak" Windows for me. It's too bad we got XP instead of the watercolor-theme evolution that was previewed in Office XP. I thought that design language was pretty cool.

Likewise, GNOME 2 was peak workstation/desktop Linux for me. Everything that has come after has been pretty trash UI-wise. Especially all of those years where desktops tried to merge the desktop, tablet, and smartphone UIs.

Since last week, I went to work on a Bondwell B310 laptop that I paid $30 for at a thrift store. The main issue was the display was acting weird, and I figured those LongLife capacitors took a piss.

So, I decided to recap the whole system since the other caps had probably thousands of hours, and they were 30+ years old. I also made a boot diskette with GSETUP so I can determine the correct HDD parameters so I can boot from it, I replaced the 3.6V clock battery with a 3V coin cell battery, and it's working without issues. Well, somewhat. The display is still acting a bit weird (the contrast goes down on its own), which makes me think the slider is failing and not capacitors since I replaced all of them.

It has a Conner CP-3044 43MiB/40MB HDD, 1.44MB Teac FDD, Harris 286-12 0WS, 1MB RAM, CGA video, mono 640x200 display (no backlight), and for $30, it's a keeper. I just need to install a better version of DOS, like FreeDOS and see if I can get my one device to work on it.

I decided to dive into the deep end and replace the thermal paste on a Slot A 600Mhz CPU. I really want to replace the factory TIM on my 950Mhz Thunderbird, so I used this 600 to "learn" the opening process..

I gotta say it doesn't feel great, those pins are tough and you really have apply a lot of pressure. However seeing the garage factory TIM on the inside of the 600 makes me wonder how hot these things really get, and further entices me to now replace the 950's.

I also found out my 600, has a 700 core. Interesting 🤔.

Everything went well and the CPU still works with no damage to the exterior case.Feels good. I think I'll practice one more time on a 650.

It's really hard to separate those pressure fit pins. I destroyed a Pentium 2 cartridge trying to extract one once. Well done.

I much prefer the newer Coppermine design with the exposed core. Much easier to pop out the processor card for cleaning.

Changed the PS2 tower and dreaded "C151" on a CUSL2. Seems to work now a lot better.

Currently waiting a few mobos so I can triage my recapping stash. I have a Chaintech 6BJM0 waiting for caps however I also have a BX133-RAID on the way which will likely need new caps.

Basically, I need to figure what diameter are most caps on BX133 so I can figure if I need any of the caps I originally saved for the 6BJM.

As well as waiting on a P2B-S so I can check whether I need to ultrasonic clean it.