Vintage PC Appreciation Thread

[jaybird3rd]

Wow, I haven't seen a parallel Zip drive in a while! Mine is probably still packed away somewhere. I bought into Zip pretty early on: I was originally pulling for the LS-120, but when Zip looked like it had won, I invested in an external SCSI drive in 1996. I'm pretty sure I still have that one, too.

My employer at the time did lots of on-site data collection. They had been using a 386 mini-tower with kitchen cabinet handles bolted onto it, and they would load it up with empty hard drives and carry it around from place to place, using LapLink cables for data transfers (or 10Mbps Ethernet, when it was available). A handful of Zip disks gave them the same storage capacity, and was a whole lot easier to carry around, so you can see how much of a godsend it was at the time for moving lots of data around. I was still regularly using Zip disks as late as my sophomore year in college, when USB flash drives were still very expensive and slow and only held 64MB of data.

I still like using Zip as a backup medium, usually for smaller, frequently-changing files. It's more convenient to me than a portable hard drive, and seems more trustworthy than optical or flash media.

[Keatah]

These are pics from a practically still-born aborted PC project. It was 2 years into the dark-ages of PC computing for me.

 

Here we have a semi-custom server case all blacked out. Must have cost me $500+, when in reality it sold for about $100 I later found out. I hadn't seen anything quite like it, and I wanted it. Boy was I green or what?!?!

 

Here's a $475 chrome plated steel plasma fan. I had the fan blade assembly custom machined.

 

And my really piss-poor attempt at making a tough-looking industrial H.R. Geiger wiring job.

 

I paid about:

 

$700 for the ECC rambus memory

$665 for the CPU

$1,700 for the monitor

$299 for the sound card

$499 for the graphics card

$299 x 2 for the HDD

$199 motherboard

$50 for cable dressing

$200 power supply x 2

$500 case

$475 custom fan

$3,000 diamond screw heads in select areas

$100 industrial power cord

$600 custom keyboard

$120 gaming mouse

$90 cd-rom drive

$45 floppy drive

$350 silver plated cd-rom tray

$280 paint, enameling, clearcoating, and finishing

And for good measure throw in another $250 for cables, wiring, fittings, hardware, screws, other fans..

 

Guys don't ever bother building a premium PC. They end up as little more than sugar-coated garbage. I eventually scrapped and threw all this out except for the monitor and the diamonds in the screw heads.

 

The bitch ran hot, weighed just under 31-kilos, consumed prodigious amounts of power, was outdated before it was completed. I do not miss it.

[Keatah]

These are pics from a practically still-born aborted PC project. It was 2 years into the dark-ages of PC computing for me.

 

Here we have a semi-custom server case all blacked out. Must have cost me $500+, when in reality it sold for about $100 I later found out. I hadn't seen anything quite like it, and I wanted it. Boy was I green or what?!?!

 

Here's a $475 chrome plated steel plasma fan. I had the fan blade assembly custom machined.

 

And my really piss-poor attempt at making a tough-looking industrial H.R. Geiger wiring job.

 

I paid about:

 

$700 for the ECC rambus memory

$665 for the CPU

$1,700 for the monitor

$299 for the sound card

$499 for the graphics card

$299 x 2 for the HDD

$199 motherboard

$50 for cable dressing

$200 power supply x 2

$500 case

$475 custom fan

$3,000 diamond screw heads in select areas

$100 industrial power cord

$600 custom keyboard

$120 gaming mouse

$90 cd-rom drive

$45 floppy drive

$350 silver plated cd-rom tray

$280 paint, enameling, clearcoating, and finishing

And for good measure throw in another $250 for cables, wiring, fittings, hardware, screws, other fans..

 

Guys don't ever bother building a premium PC. They end up as little more than sugar-coated garbage. I eventually scrapped and threw all this out except for the monitor and the diamonds in the screw heads.

 

The bitch ran hot, weighed just under 31-kilos, consumed prodigious amounts of power, was outdated before it was completed. I do not miss it.

[Keatah]

In complete contrast to that I currently have this old-betsy still a-run'in. This machine takes a beating, sometimes serves duty outside with my engine buddies as a data acquisition unit. Other times it runs in a sealed closet acting as a backup server hosting a Drobo or running my FTP. I also use it to "beta-test" new software utilities prior to putting them on my mission critical PC - if possible - because doesn't run everything. And sometimes I have to treat it like the first run of Apple /// systems. It need a good 5-inch drop onto the bench to re-seat a power connector for one of the hard drives. I don't know exactly which one. More recently I have it serving as host for verifying disk surfaces and ADT PRO transfers, the composite video to VGA & DVI conversion this machine offers is a nice feature.

 

 

 

I've posted this a long time ago:

 

Currently the system specification is:

 

OS

Multi-boot

Windows 7 Ultimate

Windows XP Professional (sp3)

Windows 98se

Windows 95

Windows 3.1

Dos 6.22

 

Mainboard

Abit BX6R2 motherboard, Slot-1, Intel BX440

 

CPU

intel Pentium III Tualitin @ 1,403MHz, 100MHz FSB, 256KB full-speed L2 cache

PowerLeap socket 370 - slot-1 slocket adapter, with external power supply source

 

Memory

1 GB RAM (256MB x 4 SDRAM) non-ECC, PC-100/133 w/spd

 

Expansion slots

2 ISA

5 PCI

1 AGP 1x/2x (3.3v)

 

Internal Onboard Connectors

2 x IDE ATA UDMA-33 connectors

1 5.25 & 3.5 FDD connector

4 x 168 pin DIMM connectors (data buffered)

SMI and instrument bus

Reset

Power

HDD indicator

Speaker

Keylock

BIOS reset

Wake-on LAN header

SB-LINK header

IR-1 IrDA TX/RX header

FAN x 3

RT2 thermistor

ATX power input conenctor

 

External Onboard Connectors

2 x serial 1650 UART

1 x parallel EPP ECP SPP

2 x USB 1.0

PS/2 keyboard

PS/2 mouse

 

BIOS

Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG 1984-1999

PnP ACPI DMI

4/26/2000

i440BX-W977-2A69KA1JC-QR (last version produced)

 

Graphics

Gainward GeForce 4 4600ti ultra PowerPack Golden Sample Ultra/750 XP

Dual DVI, Dual VGA, Video-in & Video-out, 128MB DDR, AGP 1x, 2x, 4x

1996-2002 NVIDIA 4.25.00.28.00 GFORCE 4600 TI 128.0MB

 

Hard disk drives

3 x Western Digital 120GB HDD (IDE PATA)

 

Floppy drive

Sony 3.5 Floppy

 

Optical drives

CD-ROM PlexWriter 24/10/40A drive (IDE PATA)

DVD52X Lite-On DVD reader SOHD 16P9SV (IDE PATA)

 

Modem

Supra Express 56.6k v.90 non-win-modem (ISA)

 

Sound

SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold CT4390 + memory module CT1930 (ISA)

SoundBlaster Live! CT4760 w/breakout box (PCI)

Additional expansion ports

Belkin F5U220 5-port USB 2.0 card NEC chipset (PCI)

Generic VT6306 based 3-port IEEE-1394 FireWire card (PCI)

 

Internal 1394 - ATA Bridgeboard

FW2IDE02D (Oxford FW911plus)

 

Ethernet Network NIC

3COM Fast EtherLink XL 3C905b-TX 10/100

 

Power Supply

Antec True 550

 

Fans

4 x dual ball-bearing Vantec & no-name generic

 

Fan speed controllers

3 x Cnps FAN MATE

1 x 3-speed controller and generic fan alarm

 

Front Panel Ports

1 Stereo line-in

1 Stereo line-out

1 Microphone in

1 CD audio headset out

2 x USB 2.0

1 x IEEE-1394 FireWire

1 x Compact Flash, SD, and multi-card reader

 

Additional audio expansion ports

2 x optical SPDIF In/Out
RCA optical SPDIF In/Out
RCA Aux-In
RCA Aux-Out
MIDI In/Out
1/4" Headphone Jack
4.1 analog surround out
1/4" line in jack
3 x 1/8" line in
6 Channel AC-3 SPDIF out

2 x RCA line out

 

Gameports

Standard analog PC gameports onboard the SoundBlaster cards

2 x DA-15 connectors

Multiplexed 4 x DA-15 connector box

 

Case

Generic beige-white in-winn desktop case

 

Keyboard

Lenovo standard usb keyboard

KU-0225 41A5100

 

Mouse

Micro Innovations

Optical

2 button + scroll wheel

 

Monitor

Samsung Syncmaster T260HD

1920x1200

16:10

[Keatah]

THIS is my first 2D/3D card. A Canopus Total 3D 128V PCI. Here you can see the main chip, the 4MB of SGRAM, BIOS, video input chip, and FPGA to tie it all together. The daughtercard has the video output-to-tv chip and some supporting circuitry on it.

 

I remember playing G-Police on it. Really atmospheric. And I believe it had the fastest 2D rendering of anything that came before it, including many pro-level cards. 3D rendering was 16-bit only, and when I play Quake 1,2, or 3 with it, there is a noticeable grain that even has a dithering pattern to it of a sorts. I was just getting out of the Voodoo II and 3 cards. I knew 3dfx was a complete gonner when this chip hit the market. All it needed was small speed boost and improved image quality - which we'd see in the TNT2.

 

While the PCI version may sound slower by way of the name of the bus. You need to remember that AGP only at 1x or 2x at this point in time. And a good PCI design served quite well.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riva_128

riva-128_datasheet.pdf

BT829 105266_ETC_BT829AKRF_2.pdf

CH7002D mXrqqwv.pdf

Edited July 15, 2014 by Keatah

[Keatah]

And this would be my Riva TNT2 card:

 

A really nice card, feature complete, vivo, all the capabilities of the Riva128, except more and better, and 32-bit color! 32MB memory too. Quake now had seamless invisible smoothing and no dither patterns. It's interesting to note that 2D speed was slower, and for the next several nvidia chip series it got even slower and slower. Focus was heavy on 3D. And today, chips don't even do 2D anymore, the bitmap is simulated by the 3d circuitry. You got X,Y. And then Z=0.

 

The fan on the board is an aftermarket fan. The design sounded nice and looked neat. Lots of layers of aluminum and far more surface area than meets the eye. So for $50 I figured ok.. Ahh bullshit. The layers of aluminum clogged with dust in a matter of days they were so finely spaced. I have long since put back the stock cooler which works 100% better for months and months at a time without cleaning.

 

I used this card quite a bit in old betsy before I put in a GeForce 4600TI. In its heyday I had it running a space simulator for months on end without power off.

 

Both of my Riva cards are retired except for demo purposes and a Sunday drive from time to time.

RIVA_TNT2_pdf.pdf

 

 

[boxpressed]

Here is one of my favorite gadgets that I picked up for my retro builds. It's a Compact Flash-to-IDE adapter in a 3.5" drive bay enclosure. I use a Hitachi Microdrive (instead of a CF card) because it is a real hard drive and doesn't run into problems with the frequent swap disk access. That card is the entire hard drive, and you can swap different installs with the same ease as swapping cartridges on a 2600. I have one Microdrive with Win98SE and games (Quake II, Sin, Heretic II, Diablo II, etc.) and one with MS-DOS 6.0 and games (Duke 3D, Blood, Doom 2, etc.). The adapter was one of the pricier additions to the box ($24), but you can buy bare adapters for about $5. Not as easy to swap, but just fine if you want to keep a single OS install. The Microdrives are about $5 apiece.

[TPA5]

 

$700 for the ECC rambus memory

$665 for the CPU

$1,700 for the monitor

$299 for the sound card

$499 for the graphics card

$299 x 2 for the HDD

$199 motherboard

$50 for cable dressing

$200 power supply x 2

$500 case

$475 custom fan

$3,000 diamond screw heads in select areas

$100 industrial power cord

$600 custom keyboard

$120 gaming mouse

$90 cd-rom drive

$45 floppy drive

$350 silver plated cd-rom tray

$280 paint, enameling, clearcoating, and finishing

And for good measure throw in another $250 for cables, wiring, fittings, hardware, screws, other fans..

 

Guys don't ever bother building a premium PC. They end up as little more than sugar-coated garbage. I eventually scrapped and threw all this out except for the monitor and the diamonds in the screw heads.

 

The bitch ran hot, weighed just under 31-kilos, consumed prodigious amounts of power, was outdated before it was completed. I do not miss it.

 

 

Holy shit, 3k for some screws? I didn't even think that was possible, what kind of job did you have to afford that!

 

In fairness, you have to admit that cost-sheet is more than a little extravagant. I built a rig about 3-1/2 years ago, spent about 500 on it, and my brother now uses it and still runs current games with no problems. So you can build a solid rig for meager bucks these days.

 

By the way, what's the name of that space simulator you're running in those pictures?

Edited July 15, 2014 by TPA5

[boxpressed]

I tend to think of the PC platform as a nostalgic filter of the finest grade. You had to have actually owned one and had good times with it. You would have to have spent time setting it up and playing with it. And not just any old activity, but typically engrossing work or something creative.

 

I think that this is probably true. If you weren't building your own boxes back in the day, you probably won't find these retro builds very interesting or engrossing. I think I'm in the minority on this position on Atari Age, but playing games has always taken a back seat to messing around with the hardware and even curating a collection. So, DOSBox has very little appeal for me, although it is clearly an awesome resource.

 

So, over the past couple of years, while I had a fun time picking up old platforms and games I never had as a kid (Atari 5200, Astrocade, 8-bit, Odyssey 2), I've kind of reached a plateau. So, now it's fun grabbing all that PC hardware that is either highly collectible or the stuff that I lusted after and couldn't afford in the 1990s. My favorite pickups so far:

 

* Gravis Ultrasound Classic. I was an original owner of the GUS ACE, but it's nice to have the original. Plus I nabbed a BIN for $20.

 

* Creative Sound Blaster Pro 2.0. No other SB had the compatibility of this one. SB16 and on only had compatibility with the original SB because of cost-cutting choices with ICs.

 

* 3dfx Voodoo3 AGP and PCI. Only had the Banshee BITD. If you're okay with 16-bit color, this is a GREAT 2D and 3D card for most builds through the Coppermine PIIIs. PCI version good for OEM boxes without AGP.

 

But I have to say that my favorite pickup (and the one that has taken much of my time and energy) is a Roland MT-32. Just impossibly out of reach when I was younger, now only about $70. Just get a MIDI cable with a 15-pin connector for your Sound Blaster and fire up SoftMPU to play those great Sierra and Origin titles the way they were meant to be heard. I went the hardcore direction and finally sourced an intelligent MPU-401 card, but I think I like SoftMPU better.

[Keatah]

 

 

Holy shit, 3k for some screws? I didn't even think that was possible, what kind of job did you have to afford that!

 

In fairness, you have to admit that cost-sheet is more than a little extravagant. I built a rig about 3-1/2 years ago, spent about 500 on it, and my brother now uses it and still runs current games with no problems. So you can build a solid rig for meager bucks these days.

 

By the way, what's the name of that space simulator you're running in those pictures?

 

The same as always, IT data backup and recovery. Nowadays it's almost all data backup. While I still have access to the lab and influence the technology roadmap, all my efforts are focused on prevention. Successful Backup/Restore makes one a tech hero every single day. Customers lose nothing but a little time.

 

The screws were regular $5.00-a-pack, but I glued the stones in the center where the screwdriver would normally go. I thought to myself WTF, how will I get the screws out later? Needlenose locking pliers! Later on I made use of the stones in tooling. They were industrial to begin with.

 

The name of the simulation is Orbiter Space Flight Simulator. It's been around since the Pentium II days. It has a great community following. And is highly technical. If your looking for shoot-em-up style stuff, this is about as far from that as you can get. It's all pretty nice and good and all, but getting long in the tooth.

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/

http://orbithangar.com/

http://alteaaerospace.com/

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/

http://orbiter.dansteph.com/forum/index.php?page=download

 

Something more modern looking is this:

http://en.spaceengine.org/

..but its still in early development.

 

Then there's the fun Kerbal Space Program.

https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/

[Keatah]

 

I think that this is probably true. If you weren't building your own boxes back in the day, you probably won't find these retro builds very interesting or engrossing. I think I'm in the minority on this position on Atari Age, but playing games has always taken a back seat to messing around with the hardware and even curating a collection. So, DOSBox has very little appeal for me, although it is clearly an awesome resource.

 

So, over the past couple of years, while I had a fun time picking up old platforms and games I never had as a kid (Atari 5200, Astrocade, 8-bit, Odyssey 2), I've kind of reached a plateau. So, now it's fun grabbing all that PC hardware that is either highly collectible or the stuff that I lusted after and couldn't afford in the 1990s.

 

Messing around, playing games, doing real genuine work are important, and I do'em all. I don't actively curate or baggie-chase material to finish a collection. I do accumulate nice things from time to time. Because when a collection is large, and you're a completist, you accumulate so much fluff and filler material. And you get obsessed with getting everything. This sort of ties into (thankfully) being nostalgic about only what you owned.

 

IDK.. For me to feel nostalgic about anything PC. I had to have owned the specific hardware or worked extensively with it; otherwise it's just raw material and parts and stuff. With one exception.

 

The only thing I really really really lusted after BITD would have been a Pentium Pro system built around the Intel VS440FX mainboard. I walked around with the data sheets and instruction manuals. I took them into the crapper, and the gym sauna, and everwhere I went - I was so SO obsessed. By the time I could have afforded it, the affordable Pentium was in full swing and the Pentium-II (pentium-pro w/mmx) was on the horizon. And my DX2/50 was still serving me well.

 

For a short amount of time, I had "upgraded" my DX2/50 to a Pentium 90 with MMX. Micronics M54Pi motherboard with Neptune chipset IIRC, and a "cool running" "low-voltage" P90. But I couldn't find a case badge that looked nice. I felt uneasy that the nice set of documentation I assembled didn't match. And I got flustered and returned all the hardware, mem-cpu-mobo. Seeing the P-II was coming out I didn't want to spend money on something outdated anyways. I felt like I was busting up what would become a legacy/classic. And I was correct! High framerates be damned. My DX2/50 would stay intact.

 

Software was moving fast, and new instruction sets were coming out more and more frequently. And unlike not meeting the clock speeds which would just cause slow and laggy operation, not meeting the instruction set requirements would mean no-go across the board.

 

I might have builded it up (p-pro) but I blew money and wasted too muh time with the Amiga - a whole'nuther fiasco for a rant thread.

 

I do, now, have the vs440fx motherboard and all varieties of the p-pro I picked up along the way for a song and dance. I think, now, I really could build it up! And just might do so! I've not trashed the stuff and don't intend to. I believe I have the Win311, 95, 98 drivers for the RIVA-128, which would be a powerhouse card for the machine.

 

I was always thinking for a specific use for the not-yet-born p-pro machine I wanted to build BITD. It might have been a Lunar Lander game or a Mandelbrot Zoomer - however unsuited to the task the 16-bit portion of the p-pro was(is). I didn't give a shit.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_Pro

[Osgeld]

Guys don't ever bother building a premium PC. They end up as little more than sugar-coated garbage.

 

not that post(s) has anything to do with vintage pc's it just looks like you bought a bunch of well overvalued crap, really, who buys 3,000$ screws and a 500$ fan? thats like 20 bucks total EVEN back then. Dont be hating cause your a sucker. (not to mention you did such a poor job with the power cords its blocking the aftermarket plain jane cpu cooler)

Edited July 16, 2014 by Osgeld

[TPA5]

 

The same as always, IT data backup and recovery. Nowadays it's almost all data backup. While I still have access to the lab and influence the technology roadmap, all my efforts are focused on prevention. Successful Backup/Restore makes one a tech hero every single day. Customers lose nothing but a little time.

 

The screws were regular $5.00-a-pack, but I glued the stones in the center where the screwdriver would normally go. I thought to myself WTF, how will I get the screws out later? Needlenose locking pliers! Later on I made use of the stones in tooling. They were industrial to begin with.

 

The name of the simulation is Orbiter Space Flight Simulator. It's been around since the Pentium II days. It has a great community following. And is highly technical. If your looking for shoot-em-up style stuff, this is about as far from that as you can get. It's all pretty nice and good and all, but getting long in the tooth.

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/

http://orbithangar.com/

http://alteaaerospace.com/

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/

http://orbiter.dansteph.com/forum/index.php?page=download

 

Something more modern looking is this:

http://en.spaceengine.org/

..but its still in early development.

 

Then there's the fun Kerbal Space Program.

https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/

 

That Space Engine one looks sweet, and the Orbiter Space Flight Simulator looks cool too, thanks for the links!

[jaybird3rd]

Guys don't ever bother building a premium PC. They end up as little more than sugar-coated garbage.

Wow. That's certainly much more expensive than anything I've ever built (at least for my own use).

 

I've never been enamored of the idea of building tricked out computers with transparent cases, flashing Knight Rider lights, bubbling lava lamps, and all that other junk. I've seen too many people waste lots of time and money building ultra-high-performance gaming rigs, with all sorts of elaborate cooling to keep their overclocked processors alive, only to learn that in less than a year, a non-overclocked processor with a cheap aluminum heatsink and fan would give them the same performance.

 

One of the things I like about building my own machines is that I can focus on the essentials, saving money by (re)using older components when I can. The workstation I'm using now (my main workhorse) consists of the following:

 

Antec P183 Mid-Tower ATX Case

EPoX EP-MF4-J3 Motherboard (Socket AM2, NVIDIA nForce4 4X Chipset)

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ CPU (~3GHz Dual-Core)

8GB DDR2-800 SDRAM

NVIDIA Quadro NVS 285 Dual-Head Video Card

2 X Samsung SyncMaster 943BT Monitors (19", 1280x1024 Native Resolution, Not Widescreen!)

3Ware 9650SE-2LP SATA2 RAID Controller

2 X 320GB Maxtor SATA2 Hard Drives

2 X Plextor PX-891SAW DVD-RW Drives

Iomega Zip750 Internal IDE Backup Drive

Sony 1.44MB Floppy Drive (still gotta have it)

Offboard NEC USB3 Controller

SIIG CyberSerial Dual 16550 Serial Port Card

Unicomp Model M PS/2 Keyboard and CST1000 PS/2 Trackball

 

Some of these components have survived several upgrade cycles and are getting pretty long in the tooth, but they haven't given me a bit of trouble over the years, and they still get the job done.

[jmetal88]

Well, I've been doing more testing with my 'legacy interface' box, and it's become pretty apparent that, due to the three floppy drives I have installed, DOS and Linux are pretty much my only options. I can also go with Windows 95 prior to the addition of FAT32 support (because whatever additions came along with FAT32 support cause the GUI to fail to boot with more than two floppy drives installed), but it seems to have some stability issues with the only working graphics drivers I can still find for this setup (they work, but the settings panels cause errors).

 

But I kind of also want a really fast Windows 98 box to run bleem! on (for nostalgic purposes, since bleem! is the way I first played Playstation games, before I bought my first game console). And obviously Windows 98 doesn't work with three floppy drives like I have on this box. So maybe I'll try to go full DOS on this machine soon (Linux supports the hardware better, but is slow enough that I'd still want a CPU upgrade if I stuck with it -- it's fine with DOS, but the graphics card and USB controller might be overkill) and just build another box for running Windows 98.

 

EDIT: Oh wait! I forgot, I have an old Soyo Dragon motherboard back home (at my parents' house). Can't remember the model number off the top of my head, but the KT600 is the closest I can get based off a Google search for what I can remember about the board. One of my friends gave it to me when I was considering building my first system because it had become too outdated for him (it was AGP and he decided he wanted a PCI Express machine), and unfortunately, I ended up never using it and left it in its box because two years later when I finally started my build I also wanted to build a PCI Express machine. From what I can find about the board (or the similar board if I didn't manage to pick the right model number in my search) it supports Windows 98 and processors in the 1-to-2GHz range. That would be awesome for a bleem! box, although since I never bought anything to go along with it I'll have to find a decent CPU, GPU and some compatible memory for it. I'm pretty sure neither my friend nor I never used it for anything, especially since the voltage level warning sticker was still in place over the AGP socket last time I checked.

Edited July 16, 2014 by jmetal88

[Keatah]

I've never been enamored of the idea of building tricked out computers with transparent cases, flashing Knight Rider lights, bubbling lava lamps, and all that other junk. I've seen too many people waste lots of time and money building ultra-high-performance gaming rigs, with all sorts of elaborate cooling to keep their overclocked processors alive, only to learn that in less than a year, a non-overclocked processor with a cheap aluminum heatsink and fan would give them the same performance.

 

I've always tended to assemble efficient and sensible machines. I (no doubt) had some obstinate funk going on and was totally bored for a while. I absolutely had to see what the "scene" was all about.

 

But I always believe cool, quiet, efficient computing is elegant. And the wife appreciates that. Lower electric bill, less noise, all that. I've found that huge fans running at very low speeds like 500-900 rpm work best to solve hot spots in a case. And they're near silent too. Ideally you'd run a heat-pipe from any hot components into a HUGE heatsink.

 

And that's one of the reasons why I call Pentium-4 era part of the dark ages. The market was producing parts that were getting hotter and hotter. And the trend didn't reverse itself till intel's design philosophy went back to the Pentium III. The Isreal design team started the Dothan core, and Core2 "way of doing things". It wasn't until then that intel marketing recognized low power advantages.

 

 

That Space Engine one looks sweet, and the Orbiter Space Flight Simulator looks cool too, thanks for the links!

 

Enjoy! But keep in mind Orbiter is firmly grounded in real physics.

Required reading:

The included manual

Go Play in Space 2nd edition

IMFD Tutorial

TransX Tutorial

Orbit Operations by Smitty

A Celestial Mechanics book

 

 

In my chillout room I keep a system running one of those simulations on 3 large screens where a bridge window would normally be. With a little imagination and NCC-1701D - Ambient playing in the background you can easily imagine you're on a space voyage. I've wanted to do that since the days of Microsoft Space Simulator but cheap hardware and cheap displays were non-existent. Microsoft Space Simulator is actually built on Flight Simulator 4's core engine and I remember running it on my DX2/50 acceptably.

 

Microsoft Space Simulator was made in 1993/1994 timeframe and made good use of the extra VESA modes Sci-Tech Display Doctor afforded.

 

Today I can get MSS running in DosBox, but the graphics frame rate is not consistent and can get a little squirrelly when the engine is not under load. Maybe some combination of MSS and SDD will work? Something to experiment with.

 

Which brings me to another thought about Vintage PC's. I'm tending to want to build them as dedicated function machines. Each with a certain purpose in mind. And minimal hardware to support that function. IDK. Maybe that's a dumb way of viewing it.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Space_Simulator

http://www.planetmic.com/orbit/spasim02.htm

http://www.planetmic.com/mlahren/spasim1.htm

[Nebulon]

 

 

Which brings me to another thought about Vintage PC's. I'm tending to want to build them as dedicated function machines. Each with a certain purpose in mind. And minimal hardware to support that function. IDK. Maybe that's a dumb way of viewing it.

 

 

I think that's a great way of doing things. I've found that PCs can only handle a certain amount of 'stuff' before they start to go flakey. Setting up different PC workstations for different purposes has really helped to alleviate a ton of issues.

[Keatah]

I've got an XP rig filled with so much stuff it feels like a roller coaster full of fat people, threatening to derail at any moment. Or collapse on the way up.

 

In any case what would be the cutoff for determining whether a PC is classic or not? I was thinking 486-class machines. But then I started wondering maybe all x86 machines up to the point where they stated advertising new instruction sets to the general public on TV, Pentium with MMX. You know before the dot-com era started the bloatware trend.

 

Or maybe it's just a 20 year moving target? A machine gets to be 20 years old, then it becomes classic. If so, then my p-pro project shouldn't be considered classic yet. Nor should any Pentium windows 95 systems.

 

It is also my intent to not let the p-pro project extend much beyond $100-$200.

 

I already have -

VS440FX mainboard VS440FX_28181203.pdf

Pentium Pro CPU @200MHz w/512K cache 24276905.pdf

16MB ECC EDO 72pin 60ns tin-plated SIMMS x 4

Genuine SoundBlaster AWE32 ISA

Floppy + CD + various HDD to pick from

Supra 56.6K v.90 ISA non-win modem

Riva-128 PCI 4MB SGRAM VIVO

 

Need to get (or pull from junk pile) -

Case

Monitor

Power supply

Mouse

Keyboard

Fan(s)

Switches

Cables

USB 2.0 card with NEC chipset

LAN card (3com 3C905TX-ethernet)

Various odds and ends to tie it all together

Memory upgrade to 256MB (64MB ECC EDO 72pin 60ns tin-plated SIMMS x4)

 

I fear the memory upgrade to 256MB is going to be a barrier. Been looking around on ebay and have not seen anything. If anyone has any leads on this it would be much appreciated.

 

I could also skip the SoundBlaster and use the onboard Crystal Audio, it does FM synthesis, but I didn't check wavetable capabilities. Something tells me not, because the motherboard has a wavetable or midi header.

 

I'm also open to suggestions as to what to change or other ideas.

Edited July 17, 2014 by Keatah

[bkrownd]

Wow, I haven't seen a parallel Zip drive in a while! Mine is probably still packed away somewhere. I bought into Zip pretty early on: I was originally pulling for the LS-120, but when Zip looked like it had won, I invested in an external SCSI drive in 1996. I'm pretty sure I still have that one, too.

 

 

I used an LS-120 on my laptop for a few years circa 1998-2005. My entire thesis project actually still fit on a normal 3.5" floppy at the time.

Edited July 17, 2014 by bkrownd

[Osgeld]

I still have a LS120 superdrive in my workbench computer, though I have never used the 120meg media. They are a faster than a normal floppy drive and since they are IDE you can drop one in a IDE>usb hard drive box and make them portable as well

[Keatah]

I've been spending more time on Vogons.org than on AA lately.

 

Every time I've asked technical questions there I've always received great responses.

[jaybird3rd]

Which brings me to another thought about Vintage PC's. I'm tending to want to build them as dedicated function machines. Each with a certain purpose in mind. And minimal hardware to support that function. IDK. Maybe that's a dumb way of viewing it.

I think that's a great idea. I plan to do something similar with mine. As wonderfully versatile as the PC is, I've found that if I try to spread one machine into too many different application domains, it eventually causes problems because the needs of those domains often conflict with one another. The PC that you play games on should not be the PC that you also use for e-mail and Microsoft Office, for example; virus scanners and e-mail notifications tend to intrude upon emulators and games at the worst possible times. Fortunately, old PC hardware is inexpensive and plentiful enough that it's not too hard to put together a collection of machines for different purposes.

 

I think that applications which do not require Internet or LAN connectivity (such as emulation, solo gaming, writing, and other solitary computing tasks), and which are used often enough to warrant it, should be hosted on their own machines, ideally standalone machines. Everything just gets so much simpler when you run standalone: there's no need for antivirus software, no need to keep up with the latest Web browsers, no need to worry about installing regular updates, and no need to run a new OS when an older one would do the job just as well, or better. When I finally get my own place, and enough space to do so, I plan to have several different dedicated machines: a writing computer in my study which boots directly into a comfortable old DOS word processor, gaming computers from different eras (as I mentioned earlier), etc.

[Osgeld]

there's no need for antivirus software

 

I have never met an antivirus that did less damage than the virus it never protects against

[Nebulon]

 

In any case what would be the cutoff for determining whether a PC is classic or not? I was thinking 486-class machines. But then I started wondering maybe all x86 machines up to the point where they stated advertising new instruction sets to the general public on TV, Pentium with MMX. You know before the dot-com era started the bloatware trend.

 

 

Good question.

 

I like to think of classic as just before the Pentium Pro came out, since that was a definite departure and a radical jump in the PC's evolution. I suppose people could argue the same thing about the arrival of the P4.

 

Or maybe the 20-year cut-off you mentioned is the way to go...

[Keatah]

Or maybe we need to look to software? Once Windows 3.11 fell by the wayside, the intelligent quotient required for operating a PC dropped like a rock in vacuum.

 

Or maybe as soon as the PC became marketed in dumps like wal-mart.

 

Maybe it will forever remain a moving target with the determining factor being when nostalgia develops.