Me likes. As fun as messing around with period correct hardware is I find that the machine I leave sitting on my desk is the one that I can just fire up and play whatever I want on. And once you've seen late DOS SVGA games running lag free you can't unsee it.

Excellent work.

Great project.

I like builds like this. To me it's not important to make builds period correct. I choose function and convenience over historical correctness and I've never really liked the beige look. Back in the day I wanted black cases, so mine got spray painted. I was so pleased when black cases, optical- and floppy drives became a thing. Not to mention the old computers made terrible noise with their small and whiny coolers and fans.

This looks like a fun and practical machine. Good stuff.

The requirements for Windows 8.1, 7, and 10 are all almost identical...

oeuvre wrote:

The requirements for Windows 8.1, 7, and 10 are all almost identical...

They might have similar requirements on paper, but when my father upgraded his old windows 7 laptop os to windows 10, it became much much slower.

I wouldn't use 8/10 on anything core 2 duo or older with less than 8GB RAM and SSD

oeuvre wrote:

I wouldn't use 8/10 on anything core 2 duo or older with less than 8GB RAM and SSD

I agree with you on Windows 10 - there's a lot more going on there that you'd want more grunt for. Or, you'd have to do some real tuning in Group Policy/etc to shed background tasks and try to optimize. Then it would upgrade itself twice a year and this poor machine would just get gut punched.

As for 8.1, the performance is pretty good in this case, so long as you do not burden it with lots of tasks. The Wolfdale E5800 is potent and can stand next to a Core 2 Duo, but will run out of steam if you ask it to juggle lots of processes or browser tabs or what-have-you.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Pe … o-E8500/1102vs5

8GB RAM: although we had Netbooks and tablets and such far prior to Win8, remember this was the first time it really ran on ARM phones and tablets with far less RAM than a typical x86 PC; there had to be a ton of work put into optimization and I think it shows through even just booting it and looking at RAM usage..significantly less on 8/8.1 versus 7. No need to mention Vista. Would it run better on 4GB or 8GB or more? Yep, but that's part of the sacrifice in this particular build to get the wide breadth of supported OS versions.

SSD: no question, definitely.

All that said, I see XP in the future for this box just to really maximize hardware and game compatibility, but I want to finish building out my RIS image for XP and get the Steam games playable.

Thanks all for the comments on the build.

Wow, this machine looks very, very nice. Good work!

I like machines that max out OS's that weren't really meant to go quite that far... it feels like back in the day when I would try to put Windows 98 or XP on every new computer just because I didn't like MS shoving new operating systems down everyone's throats. I eventually gave up on putting Windows 98 on anything post-2004-ish 🤣

oeuvre wrote:

The requirements for Windows 8.1, 7, and 10 are all almost identical...

I agree with that on the 32-Bit versions. The 64-Bit versions of 8.1 added the requirement of the CMPXCHG16B instruction,
which some early x64-CPUs didn't support yet. 🙁
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2058683/new-w … -windows-8.html

badmojo wrote:

Me likes. As fun as messing around with period correct hardware is I find that the machine I leave sitting on my desk is the one that I can just fire up and play whatever I want on. And once you've seen late DOS SVGA games running lag free you can't unsee it.

Excellent work.

Agreed I love my period correct but my two main rigs are my main desktop and my Opty with 7900gtx

I knew I'd get some great feedback from this forum. I started down the path of making a viable, updated XP Pro image for gaming as well as server admin, disk archival and so on. This will replace the Win8.1 partition.

Loosely, I followed https://ryanvm.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=10609, which results in a slipstreamed XP uSP4 image with whatever options you want, and the install will trigger a series of batch files after it is done. This allows us to do any additional customization we might want.

I prefer to install OS images (and everything else I can) from my network, which for my retro machines, there's a dedicated/isolated VLAN and a Server 2003 R2 VM running the show.
OS deployment for 2000 and XP is of course done via RIS, but in general the process works just fine if you wanted to install via optical media (or USB - I've seen some tricks to getting XP installed from USB, but I haven't tried it).

In my case, nLite was there only to slipstream the service pack. USP4 also seems to handle at least the various C runtimes as well as .NET Framework, so be advised that you'll see some "extras" come along for the ride.
I re-spun much of my Windows 2000's ristndrd.sif answer file to handle setup all the way through, and did some heavy customization of the batch files (runNn.bat) included with the package. Rather than living on the CD/DVD, we'll call them from the storage server.

I've got an OS install process that, outside of the disk layout in text mode setup, asks zero questions. Beautiful.
The next couple of things I'm experimenting with:

• AIO DotNetFx installer
• Post-uSP4 update pack

My hope is that by installing these in the automation routine that follows the setup process, we'll have a totally updated XP install out of the box. Boot from the network, grab coffee, come back to a ready-to-roll machine.

..once I get this as well-oiled as my Win2k process, I can pile on DosFreak's findings for playing Steam games offline (I'm very grateful for this..thanks)

I really love this thing. I want it.

How has it been going now that it's had some time to settle in? Would you do it all the same way again?

What is this case model? Looks nice.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-03-09, 17:38:

What is this case model? Looks nice.

Cheers,

That would be a Silverstone Temjin TJ08-E. I've got one meself. 😀

I like the case. I would have used it for my WinXP/Core2Duo system, but I built it with a similar Corsair case instead. Is that a floppy drive bay down the bottom right? Not that it would be much use on a modern system but anyway.

you can also get a matching jacket... if you're lucky.

Sorry, I missed these more recent replies!

Indeed, the case is a TJ08-E. And yep, you can fit a floppy drive (or a hard disk) in the bottom of it. I had a Gotek in there for a little while, but there wasn't much point.

Do I like the machine? I'd say so, because I built a second one exactly like it. (No, I'm not kidding.)
But damn, I should have been chasing down that jacket instead!

Did you have much trouble finding the parts? I'm finding it incredibly difficult to find this, or a motherboard similar to it in my part of the world.

tails wrote on 2020-03-14, 23:26:

Did you have much trouble finding the parts? I'm finding it incredibly difficult to find this, or a motherboard similar to it in my part of the world.

Well, the motherboards were a bit of a fluke - Newegg somehow had them at the time, and they disappeared quickly (especially after Phil's video, it seems). Here's a couple of alternative directions on hardware if you're having trouble..

MOTHERBOARDS:
This thread is particularly helpful in narrowing down LGA 775 boards with AGP (along with their CPU support, which can vary widely).

A big potential downside on the ASRock 775i65G R3.0's is the caps - as I look across both boards, I see some suspect (up to 2008 or so, anyway - this board was made circa 2012) manufacturers, in particular the Chemi-con KZG 1000uF units on the VRM input. I have no tangible or visible reason to believe that they are bad or will be bad, but it is a cause for potential long-term concern.

Gigabyte GA-8I865GME-775-RH (Rev 2.0 or later) is perhaps an alternative worth investigating as it was branded as a "corporate stable" board.
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-8I865 … E-775-RH-rev-20

GRAPHICS CARDS: It should be far easier to find AGP-flavored GeForce 6800GT cards. The difference in performance won't be that huge, especially on earlier games.

A modern 2TB spinning disk is a good alternative to the SSD, especially if you fear data loss while the machine is in storage. Partition accordingly of course for Windows 98.

In hopes of giving these 775i65G's a really long lifespan, I replaced the majority of the caps as follows:

(qty 1) CE721 - Note there is a height restriction, however the Noctua cooler I am using has no trouble with a 12mm cap sitting under it.
8mm x 9mm Panasonic FL 680uF 4V
-> Nichicon PLE0G681MDO1 (8 x 12mm)

(qty 4) CE705, CE706, CE707, CE708
8mm x 20mm UCC KZG 1000uF 16V 105C. 0.013ohm, 2550mA ripple
-> Nichicon RNL1C102MDS1

(qty 5) CE722, CE724, CE716, CE723, CE720
8mm x 20mm OST RLX 1500uF 6.3V 105C. 0.021ohm, 1650mA ripple
-> Nichicon RNU0E152MDN1. Note that I am decreasing the voltage tolerance here to 2.5V in order to maintain same capacitance - given this is voltage going to the CPU it seems well within reason.

(qty 19) C262, CE22, CE43, CE52, CE51, CE47, CE54, CE20, CE17, CE10, CE8, CE11, CE15, CE42, CE14, CE21, CE16, CE53, CE50
8mm x 12.5mm Samxon GK 1000uF 6.3V 105C. 0.053ohm, 1030mA ripple
-> Nichicon RNU0J102MDN1

In the end I did not bother with the 100uF, 6.3mm diameter Samxon caps, however I did spec and buy replacements:
(qty 11) CE46, LCE1, CE12, CE3, CE13, CE44, CE18, CE19, CE49, CE25, CE36
6.3mm x 7mm Samxon KS 100uF 16V 105C. 92 ripple
-> Nichicon RS81C101MDN1

This was my first real soldering job, but in the end was a success. It took some more effort to get past the lead-free solder, and adding additional leaded solder to the joint before trying to remove all of it was the key. With the new caps in place (offering far lower ESR and far higher ripple current, to boot) the system is perfectly stable, whereas before there were strange things happening, from crashes that I could not reproduce to sudden lockups of the entire system.

If I were to do it again (and, uh, well, I probably will do the other board now) it is probably perfectly acceptable to just replace the OST RLX + UCC KZG caps near the VRM's, and be done with it.