r/retrobattlestations

Man, how time has flown and how technology has utterly changed from a quarter of a century ago when I first joined the pre PC master race before it was ever such a thing. Jesus, has it really been that long!??

I was taking my first semester of college to get Associate Degree of Information Systems Management, and since it was a whirlwind of information to learn at the the time, I felt it would help mu studies as well as also get off the slow ass family 1998 Pentium 2 233mhz box downstairs and have my own to learn from and also break after learning that the hard way after I deleted ini files to recover HDD space on family PC only to have my father not be able to finish his companies sales since windows 95 would no longer boot after that.

I spent months reading page after page on the late, great Anandtech website using the school computer labs, finding out what exactly was a "AMD" and why it was a better processor than Intel. Along with new fangle things like "SATA will replace IDE soon, is it worth the cost? " and "Why 56k bauf modem is all the speed you will ever need!" On top of thst, I was also visiting a website called virtual-hideout.net and 2coolTek learning I could make my pc run cooler and faster by modifying the case with a "blowhole" for a 80mm fan and that you can actually buy window kits to be able to see inside and even add a cold cathode light tube just like the sweet tuner cars in Fast and Furious! I was getting more and more excited as I kept going down the digital research rabbit hole reading up on more websites like MadOnion benchmark forum, FiringSquad, HardOCP, Cooler Guys, mwave.com, and old school Tom's Hardware. My parents pc was so slow for internet usage, I read the Brady games How to Build Game PC book instead when I wasn't at school using computer lab for research

After slowing collecting all the essential pieces from a variety of sources and as my part time Walmart paycheck could manage, I finally had everything I needed at long last to build my very first PC! I even used the family's extra wide format kodak film camera to take a picture of all the parts, digital cameras were well beyond my price at that time and I didn't even own a cellphone either, texting was per message and phone call plans were expensive so my parents wouldn't pay for one.

I don't remember much about the building process but I do remeber after finally getting windows 98se to boot and install correctly and getting my dial up modem connected, it forever changed my life, my hobbies, my proffesional career. It began an obessesion that lasted for over a decade for doing dozens of modified computer case projects, hacking up cases with grinders and jig saws, learning how to paint and wire lighting long before LEDS. Doing self upgrades on hardware and going to my first LAN party and experiencing the wonders and joy of T1 internet speeds, meeting new people to play EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot and doing raids until 4 am km the morning! Hours of nonstop unreal tournament, Quake 3, Return to Wolfenstein and so many others. And the pron.....oh the glorious pron I could get from Limewire on the T1 line so fast! And all the free music from Napster that I would play using modified Winamp skins for hours on end!

It feels like yesterday in some ways and yet I feel so very old now in comparison, kids these days have it so freaking easy and have choices that I could never even dream of unless you put time and effort into making it yourself from scratch, but that's what made it so fun and so special, every pc build was totally unique. Hell, we were suspending our HDDz on bungie cords or rubber bands to reduce noise and vibration on our rigs, SSds didn't exist back then! And God help you if you had no idea how to manage thick IDE cables cause SATA devices and mobo's were still in design phase.

Here's hoping I can last another 25 years even though I've greatly slowed down building and playing PC games in my age. I coudln't imagine how much desktop technology would be like. When I see and compare my recent build late last year vs my humble starting days in that sunny summer day of May 2001 back in homestate of Montana, I can't help but smile and cry a little....

May 2001 specs: "Midnight Enlightment"

• AMD Athlon Axia 1.33ghz overclocked to 1.4ghz stock fan
• Abit KT7A Socket 7 VIA chipset motherboard
• Crucial 256meg SDRAM 266mhz
• Western Digital Caviar 40gb 72000rpm IDE
• TDK 16x 10x 40x CDRW IDE drive
• Viewsonic 19inch CRT monitor
• 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000. Replaced shortly after for Visiontek GeForce 3
• Enlight 7237 case
• Soundblaster Live xGamer 5.1
• US Robotics 56.6 pci modem
• Microsoft Intellieye laser mouse
• Microsoft Sidewinder joystick

May 2026 specs: "Fr0stC0re"

• MD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
• MSI MPG B850 Edge Ti AM5 socket
• Corsair Vengeance RGB 32GB DDR5 6000mhz
• WD Black 2TB gen5 M.2
• WD Black 4TB gen4 SN850x M.2
• Dell 27" 4k 120hz LCD
• Powercolor Hellhound spectral white AMD 9070XT
• Fractal Design Meshify 3 Pro RGB case
• Thermalright Frozen Warframe 240mm AIO cpu cooler
• SeaSonic 1000w Focus PSU
• Logitech G213 RGB keyboard
• Logitech G403 wireless RGB mouse

I've copied and pasted this from my blog, so please forgive any strange formatting. A few vintage PC communities have expressed interest in the Dual Athlon MP, so I figured I would share the repair of the motherboard and build of the rig.

One of my occasional hobbies is restoring vintage electronics, mostly computers. What I do with them after I’ve mended them all completely depends. If it’s interesting to me and I’ve got the space, I will keep it. Otherwise, I will usually sell them or gift them to friends who would enjoy some of these bits of kit.

This motherboard – the MSI K7D Master – was of particular curiosity in my youth and quite frankly, classed as unobtanium at the time: dual-socket or dual-processor machines. Windows NT, 2000, and XP could take advantage of these configurations at the time, whether or not the underlying software you were running could was another matter. However, these were multitasking powerhouses back in the day, but they probably wouldn’t do anything to make my retro games faster!

That said, I think dual socket boards are cool (in retro geek terms) and great platforms for some of my nostalgic games. The K7D Master features an AGP slot and a good amount of expansion for sound cards, fast storage, etc.

Like any old contraption, this board needed a bit of TLC to work properly. Components fail with age, and things get damaged as they get handled.

The MSI K7D Master-L is a fairly early SMP Athlon board, sporting 2x 462-pin CPU sockets (socket A/462) and an AMD 760MPX chipset. This enables the board to do some rudimentary overclocking of some Athlon MPs or modified XPs, which is pretty rare for an SMP motherboard, typically speaking. Given I was overclocking Pentium 2s, 3s, 4s, and Athlons in my youth, you can see the appeal. Further to this, the board features an AGP Pro slot, 2x PCI-X 64-bit slots, and 3x PCI slots. As standard, it has 2x IDE controllers, a game port, AC97 audio, Intel 100Mb Pro Ethernet, a couple of USB ports, and PS/2 ports to boot. In summary, it has SMP support, can do some (very basic) overclocking, and plenty of connectivity and expansion.

I got my board for free from my friend Emma, who was downsizing, which came with a pair of Athlon 2000+ MPs. It worked, but had a few niggles. Retro game installers would throw CRC errors – despite different HDDs and RAM configurations, the Intel NIC wouldn’t negotiate a connection properly, and sometimes the machine would just refuse to boot at all. My gut instinct told me there would be some electrical gremlins on the board that need attending to.

The capacitors, on a first glance, looked OK. There was a mix of Rubycons (awesome) and some Teapo (Taiwanese) capacitors. There were no obvious signs of bulging. A further, closer look with my glasses on had me noticing some goop under the capacitors. On some boards, this can be a glue used in the manufacturing process to keep capacitors in place. However, this was not consistent, so I thought I might as well buy caps for the entire board.

I then took a third look at the SMD components on the board. Some of them were clearly missing!

That added to my list of components for the board. I used some high-resolution photographs from The Retro Web to verify what was missing, as I didn’t have schematics.

I ordered my components from a mix of RS components and CPC Farnell. CPC Farnell is my first go-to as they are less than a 30-minute drive from me if I need something quickly. It is worth noting that the Teapo capacitors have an 8mm footprint, which can be difficult to find. This footprint must be observed, as these capacitors are bunched together very tightly. Anything larger won’t fit properly and will look untidy, and won’t be mounted in a stable manner to the board. Anywhere else, I ensure the leg pitch is the same where possible.

I also make an effort to find components that have a similar ESR and are from a reputable manufacturer. Rubycon, Chemicon, Panasonic, etc, are my go-to here.

The shopping list for those who are following along at home or recapping a similar board:

• Rubycon 16ML100MEFC6.3X7
• Panasonic EEUFM1C471L
• Panasonic EEUFM0J222L
• Chemi-con EKY-6R3ELL102MH15D
• Rubycon 16ZLH1800MEFC10X23
• Panasonic EEEFK1C100AR

I started trying to desolder some of the suspect caps, the key here being trying. The K7D’s ground planes are big and contain a lot of copper; it was going to be a huge effort to heat. I could pre-heat the board, but I had also lost my big soldering iron. Regardless of preheating, it was taking my small 18w iron far too long, and I didn’t want to risk damaging the board. Long gone was my proper soldering station. This sounded like a good excuse to browse CPC’s catalogue…

I ended up finding a Weller 85W soldering station that was significantly cheaper than the usual suspects online, so I jumped in the car and picked it up without hesitation. I haven’t used a station in the last few years of repairing retro electronics, and I had forgotten how much easier it made this process! So much so, I decided to start replacing some more of the Teapo Taiwanese capacitors so my inner snob could be satisfied.

The Weller is very easy to use and very responsive to heat demands. I managed to get away with doing the rest of the repairs without preheating the board.

My process involves testing each capacitor before installation to reduce the risk of installing defective capacitors. This multifunction oscilloscope, which I primarily use for testing electronic fuel injection sensors, also has a capacitor and circuit tester built in. Quite handy!

Once I soldered the capacitors in, I got a tin of isopropanol out and started using a clean toothbrush to scrub the work area and eradicate any flux on the motherboard.

The next stage was to build the system up with components I had in my spares box. This is built up of a mix of stuff I’ve had for over 20 years, with stuff I’ve recycled from other computers over the years, acquired when I’ve found a good deal, or been given by friends. To put a long story short, I decided to go overkill so I could really see what the Athlon MP platform could do.

Overall Specifications:

Dual AMD Athlon MP 2000+
2GB DDR 3200 RAM
Nvidia GeForce 7800GS AGP 256MB
MSI K7D Master L
Toshiba Q Series 128GB SSD SATA
Seagate 2TB 7200RPM HDD SATA
2x Hitachi Deskstar 250GB 7200RPM ATA/IDE
Promise TX4 SATA controller
Asus Xonar DS Sound Card
NZXT C750 Power Supply
Chieftec Dragon ATX Full Tower Case
Arctic 80mm fans for the case
3.5″ Sony Floppy Drive
3.5″ Gotek Floppy Emulator
Pioneer DVR-107 DVD-RW ATA Writer
HL DVD-RW DL SATA Writer

To make the build happen, I used a mix of new-old stock cables and splitters off eBay, and some interesting bits from Aliexpress. E.g. the Gotek floppy emulator and a “Bay Filler” Fan controller. Although the fan controller serves no functional purpose, it does fulfil the "Maplin Itch" aesthetic element of custom PCs in the era. Having Newlink round ATA/IDE cables really did make me feel like I was taking a PC apart in 2003 all over again.

And strangely enough, this Nvidia GeForce 7800GS AGP was advertised at an absolutely bargain price on Aliexpress at the time of buying. Turns out it’s for a later SEGA arcade cabinet, or my Windows XP Athlon MP Rig… Some new Noctua thermal paste, and the card is merrily on its way into the rig. I was originally going to use my X800GTO, which also needed some repairs due to poor storage. However, even after repairing the missing components, I still have strange issues with the card. Perhaps it is a machine incompatibility, but I won't find out unless I can pick up another late AGP machine dirt cheap.

Assembled inside, with some rudimentary, but probably period-correct cable management.

Next came a clean installation of Windows XP Professional, now that I had picked and installed the hardware I was going to run in the system.

The finished article currently looks like this. Pardon the mess as I am midway through re-decorating my office.

Overall, the project has been a success, with the only real outlay being a strange Aliexpress card, a Chieftec Dragon I found for buttons on Facebook Marketplace on the way back from work, and some nostalgia-trip ATA cables. The machine currently runs NFS Most Wanted without a problem. I’m yet to spend the time to install my other retro games – at some point, it will happen, I am sure.

Previous post: Sharing a desk with a modern PC... What would you do? : r/retrobattlestations

Since my initial question, I did some browsing and googling and thought I'd share my answers here. At least if anyone asks ChatGPT in the future, then there's some real answers...

I have started testing this Lindy DVI-D to HDMI converter, it is about £20 posted new. I figured it ought to be a good option for mid 2000s PCs with DVI and no HDMI, like my dual Athlon MP with a 7800GS (pictured). It caps at 16:9 1920x1080, which I am fine with as I am not sure XP on an ultrawide is a desirable experience. So far it seems to work ok, haven't done any input latency testing, but a quick game of HL1 is good, and the desktop experience is nice and crisp. It also bundles audio, which is extremely useful. The power cable is a bit finicky, however, so I welcome alternatives if anyone has any to post. With that said, I may just make some USB power cables to power off a USB power supply I bought for another KVM-related purpose.

How does this build into the bigger picture, you may ask? Fundamentally, I think I can use an HDMI KVM switch with USB 2.0 to get a stable keyboard and mouse experience across all the computers, and transport audio too. I've found some other analogue-to-digital converters that are powered and will hopefully offer a good artefact-free experience. In principle, I think I will put my keyboard and mouse into the HDMI KVM, use port 1 as a USB pass-through to my DisplayPort KVM, which my modern PCs use, and the rest for my retro adventures.

My Das Pro 6 also works on USB2 via a type C to A adapter.

Next up to test will be these bits:

KVM: 4 Port USB & 4K HDMI 2.0 KVM Switch - NEWLINK | CPC UK

VGA to HDMI adapters: https://cpc.farnell.com/av-link/122-423uk/vga-to-hdmi-adaptor-kit/dp/AV29424 (will test this on a win98/voodoo 2 rig)

The KVM has a remote (important). The VGA-to-HDMI adapter also transmits audio (important).

Hope this post is useful to someone. I would welcome any suggestions, feedback, or improvements!

I find this and another PC that I turner into a nas while helping a friend cleaning his backyard, whe live just a few meters from railroad tracks and some apparently tossed 2 good computers aside, I'm running 98se and xp on this.

Specs:

Optiplex gx260

Intel pentium 4 with integrated graphics

512 gb ram

32 gb storage

Sound card

Working cd player( replaced for a dvd player)

Working floppy drive

I'm working on putting games and stuff so I haven't put to much effort on cleaning it from the outside (on the inside was almost impeccable but I replaced the thermal paste and cleaned it a little bit)

And also, if someone is more knowledgeable, what videos card should I use, as I said Im running a dual boot ok it with 98se and windows XP, if there's no good option I'm happy with only using the 98se part

Playing Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast on Windows XP
HP Compaq DC5000MT desktop
NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS
Pentium 4 @2.8Ghz
2GB RAM

I love the clamshell form factor. Here is a selection of the smallest ones, from palmtops to subnotebooks.

Can you spot and identify the intruder? One of them is not a general purpose computer.

Crazy sight to see looks like vista or xp was some old guy asked him about it it has a usb 3 express card kinda wanna donate them a haswell or so latitude I have 4 haswell latitudes

After so much searching, I finally found one in great condition, and it even came with the 1.6GHz version, which made me even happier!!!

I can’t wait to customize it the way I want and start doing the upgrades.

P.S.: I knew this netbook was small, but I was honestly surprised — it was even smaller than I expected

After a long search, with no avail… I almost gave up. Having a Satellite X205 from Toshiba (that I had as a kid back in 2008 also) I actually wanted to grab the Qosmio X300/305.
Very rare here.
The seller (elderly people) that sold me the X205, recently contacted me that they found more laptops in the closed down shop and if I was interested.
And interested I was, they had the holy godfather of thick boys in the Vista Era just sitting there.
125 euro’s later, I just got myself the best equipped Qosmio X305 available. Fully loaded with the double 9800 GTS Graphics cards, Core 2 Extreme quad core QX9300, 8gb of ram and the original SSD/HDD combo.

The hunt is for software, the factory install is in Spanish and so are the disks.

Anyone that knows where there is media for the X305 in ENG? Needs to be X64 also.

Picture is not my own, but is the machine I got. Picture was made by the seller, I just got home from a 4hr drive.

Got these two beauties from a family member who no longer wanted them. The Gateway is nearly pristine aside from some dust inside. Haven't powered it up yet, but I'm anxious to see what state it's in. Has an unknown video card, sound card, and modem in the back. The Toshiba powered right up into Win98. Hard drive sounds a bit noisy though, so we'll find out how long it lasts... Otherwise, it surprisingly comes with a 10Gbps modem, CD ROM drive, and an I/O Hub before USB hubs were a twinkle in the eye of modern computing.

(late 2015) Acer aspire e5 573g 52g3, 940m 2gb vram in a 2003 compaq presario s3100nx with a matching mint crt compaq 7500 monitor next to my new ddr5 prebuilt.

Laptop to retro sleeper desktop conversion build.

Runs windows 10, has 16gb ddr3 ram and Nividia GeForce 940m 2gb vram, and a dual core, four threads intel i5 5200u 2.2ghz to 2.7ghz boost, 1tb sata 3 2.5" ssd 500mb/s

Rescued this little guy from my local thrift about a month ago. Cleaned it up and its all good!

Specs of IBM Netvista -

• Pentium 4 2.4GHz
• 256MB RAM
• 40GB IDE drive
• 1.44MB FDD drive
• CDRW 8x4x32 drive

I had old peripherals laying around which is a nice fit for this -

• NEC Multisync 75
• IBM PS/2 keyboard
• Logitech mouse
• Logitech Attack 3
• Logitech z313 speakers
• Logitech F710

Attached photos doing cleanup, XP install and some games!

So, after posting my first post here and reading through the comments, I decided to reorganize my setup a bit. Turns out I was an idiot - I already had enough space for a proper desk, I just needed to use a different wall 😂 got much more room now, including for my legs.

Specs in the original post!