Retro gaming build (late 90's, early 2000's)

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

ok, so i wanted to build a system to play old games from my childhood, so i started looking through my bins of old parts and decided on some parts that i felt were good enough to play everything i want to run. 

 

the specs of this machine: 

Pentium II - 400mhz

384MB of RAM

Nvidia GeForce 3 Ti

Creative Soundblaster AWE64

BeQuiet Power 9 400W

 

other upgrades:

Sata card (still waiting for it, should arrive soon) 

850 EVO ssd (once i get the sata card) 

 

i know the SSD upgrade is overkill, but i want it for reliability. the point of this system is for playing old games from my childhood, and i'm gonna be using it almost everyday for months while i play through them all. i therefore want reliability. 

 

here are some pictures of the hardware before installation: 

Spoiler

 

after that i moved to test it. here is a video of the first boot

Spoiler

 

currently, it has no cover on it as that would greatly reduce the airflow. i am gonna cut holes in the side and top of the cover to put fans into, to keep it cool. otherwise all air would exhaust from the power supply. 

 

here is the end result for now

 

 

 

 

[Metallus97]

Damn this sound card was so awesome. I had one too. Also you're a real baller with 3xCD Drives ND 2X floppy  

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

Just now, Metallus97 said:

Also you're a real baller with 3xCD Drives ND 2X floppy  

lmao the third cd drive is there to fill up the bay. when i originally got this system (it was free so i'm not complaining ) that bay was empty. i can hook it up and i might later but for now there is no point.

 

that 2x floppy config is intentional. if i want to boot from floppy to DOS i can, and use the second floppy to load games. i did that because i'm not sure if i can access the ssd through DOS or even at all so i might have to use a boot disk to initially boot the machine. 

 

3 minutes ago, Metallus97 said:

Damn this sound card was so awesome. I had one too. 

i've had this sound card for a while. it was inside another pc i got for free. i'm just now getting to messing with all of this stuff. i'm looking forward to seeing what it can do. 

[LukeSavenije]

looks great!

 

through i'd aim a compressor on it soon

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

Just now, LukeSavenije said:

through i'd aim a compressor on it soon

i already did. removing all of the dust would be a bunch of work that i'm not going to put into it. like i said, this machine will be well used. i'm not aiming for perfection here. 

[LukeSavenije]

1 minute ago, Twilight said:

i already did. removing all of the dust would be a bunch of work that i'm not going to put into it. like i said, this machine will be well used. i'm not aiming for perfection here. 

guess it's then because i'm looking that close to it then

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 minute ago, LukeSavenije said:

guess it's then because i'm looking that close to it then

only the last 2 pictures and the video are after dusting. the pictures of the parts are before i cleaned them. so it's not that bad anymore. 

[FunkyHunk]

You should get some pc133 ram chips, and run the front side bus to 133mhz, very easy overclocking on these processors

I believe your processor had multiplicator set to 4x100mhz, so if you got a hold of 133mhz ram you should break 532mhz easy peasy. 

You just have to set the jumpers on the motherboard according to the table corresponding to 133mhz. 

Jumpers and table circled in red on this photo you shared: 

 

 

I believe there was also available pc150 ramm modules back in the day. Also making overclocking with fixed multiplicators easy. 

I ran my 650mhz pentium III on 864mhz for years. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

update: ssd upgrade didn't work. i can't install to it. oh well.