Classic Rigs?

[rodneyhchef]

Does anyone else have a 'classic' rig? ie one that is of little use today other than perhaps nostalgia? Someone lent me phantasmagoria at work the other day and I couldn't get some of the video sequences running satisfactorily on my system with dosbox (Which probably means there is something wrong with it) but it was enough of an excuse to fire up my 'classic rig'

The story behind it is I first built it in around 1997 from 2nd hand parts on the cheap because new PCs were still retailing for around the £1,000 mark with early Pentium II processors. It was my first and the house's first PC. I think I put the whole thing together for about £250.

Here was the spec of it when I'd finished:
Full Yes Intel 82430VX motherboard
Intel Pentium 75
32MB PC66 SD RAM
2.1Gb WD Caviar HDD
12X CD-ROM
'Audio Excel' Sound card (SB16 compatible CM8330)
Cirrus Logic 5446 2MB PCI video card
15" Compaq monitor.
Desktop case complete with turbo button

Pretty poor even then, but I o/c'd it straight away to 100MHz. I upgraded it a bit here and there before moving over to a couple of super socket 7 mobos the following year and finally a socket A at which point I'd caught up with the times! Most of the other setups are long gone but I kept the fullyes board and a few years ago I decided to put it back together. The main reason I kept it is the board seems to be fully legacy compatable and everything dos runs perfectly on it (on newer boards I had many compatability issues playing games like first encounters, usually from the sound/video card not being ISA/PCI.)

Specs for it now are:

Intel Pentium 200 MMX (it's actually a 233 but board multiplier doesn't go higher than 3x)
64MB EDO ram. Had to choose between 32MB SD and 64MB EDO, so went for the latter as it has win98 SE installed on it.
Sound Blaster AWE32 with 2mb on board
S3 Virge DX 375 4mb
Voodoo 2 12mb (bought new in 1998, still working)
6gb Maxtor HD.
16x DVD-ROM
19" Compaq CRT.

It currently lives on a desk in the loft out of the way. It would offend the laptop generation with the amount of space it takes up.

I'm thinking I might upgrade the graphics card to a radeon 7000 or Geforce 2 MX PCI, and maybe splash out on an AWE64 gold. Could do with a usb card too.

Well I hope I'm not the only one with a soft spot for 'old' PCs. I'd say in the grand scheme of things it's not that old, but in computer terms it's definitely an OAP.

 

[MRCL]

Well I have that PII rig with a Voodoo card (and another Matrox) in it, and I have it since over a year (friend wanted to throw it away, but fortunately asked me if I want it) but... I am shameful to admit, I haven't even turned it on yet. There are some Win95/98 games I still like and play, and won't run on anything new.

Oh and don't forget my Toshiba Laptop from 1992. A 386 sporting 16MHz, stunning 1mb RAM, can even be expanded to NINE MB! And a 20mb HDD. You can even add another 386 for ultra dual CPU power.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

mines not so much really CLassic but its close

Socket 939 athlon 64 3800+ 2gigs DDR PC 2700 8600gts 256mb + eventually 6200 128mb with Windows XP 32bit.

 

[Red_Machine]

I used to have a custom Pentium III rig with a Voodoo 5, but I chucked it (keeping the Voodoo, of course!) in favour of a laptop with the same power and the world's first laptop GPU.

I also have a 90MHz Pentium Toshiba laptop currently serving as an MS-DOS gaming machine that we've had from new. My mum got it when she worked at Motorola.

 

[rodneyhchef]

Ah, now you mention it I've got a compaq armada P3 laptop with an ATI video card in it. Forget now the model, it's an early one though with 4mb of vram. It played the sims 1 alright on it. I'd use that for dos stuff, but the sound card has no dos support.

 

[xBruce88x]

oh where to start... I guess I'll just list my 2 favs.

Rig 1: I got it for helping with a yard sale, some off brand pc that i can't remember.
Not sure what the motherboard was but i think it was socket5
had an amd "p75" in it clocked at 133mhz (486cpu)
a 4x optical drive
some Opti sound card with 4 channels, volume control on the back of the card
48mb edo ram
Opti video card with 512k memory. was actually 1mb but the add on chip died.
win98se on a 3gb BIGFOOT drive.

the other is a voodooII sli rig. I'm missing the external crossover cable though, and the proprietary one used on a Canopus card. I have 3 voodooIIs in total. 2 from creative. the creative ones i know work, used them recently.

specs:
533mhz PIII slot1 oc to 667 i think. with ghetto rigged cooling (see that thread)
512mb pc133
agp 2x voodoo3 16mb (till i get those cables)
80gb wd ata133 with XP Pro 32bit and 98se dual boot.
ac '97 audio
gateway mobo
280w psu

@rodneyhchef a had an armada with a k6-III 450 and 4mb ati my 11th grade year

actually my all time fav. rig.
Athlon XP 2500 oc to 3200 speeds
1GB XMS DDR400
160GB IDE WD
128mb ATI Radeon 9600XT oc to 575mhz
Abit NF7-S 2.0
XP Pro

 

[rodneyhchef]

This one is a P3 500 I think (might be 600) with 192mb ram. It was good when I got it but has aged beyond its usefullness now.

I always wondered what a couple of voodoo2s would be like sli'd. I've got the 34-pin internal connector I just need another card and a pass-through cable. Could you connect more than 2 together? I think mine is an apollo one.

 

[xBruce88x]

2 was the most you could connect

here's some gameplay vids i made with my athlon xp rig

http://www.gametrailers.com/users/Bruce88wX/gamepad/

all of them except for the halo one.

 

[rodneyhchef]

I can't see which ones you mean, and the 30 second unskippable ad at the start of every vid is wearing a bit thin.

 

[xBruce88x]

yea i haven't logged on in forever so srry about those ads. the one with "farcry explosives" it the only one they didn't remove yet that shows my pc gaming.. but not the best i've made. that and the mines in HL2.

them deleting videos at random is why i quit using the site now that i think about it. and the fact i still have to watch the BS ads even tho the video doesn't play

 

[rodneyhchef]

I looked at that but didn't think it would be a voodoo2 SLI vid?

I was crazy about benchmarks even back then and I have all sorts of utils on my classic rig for benchmarking, 3dmark98 (or 99 whichever was the first one) sandra 98 and a few others. Might do a superpi test on it. Will definately be doing some benchmarks if I get a new vid card!

 

[xBruce88x]

i got 3dmark98 and 99 also for the voodoo3 rig/sli rig. i'll post screens later when things cool down.

 

[rodneyhchef]

s'pose I'd better post some too! I'll have to put them on floppy disk

 

[LordJummy]

I have these 2 old rigs that are collecting dust. I believe both are still completely functional. These aren't as old as some of my non functional ones, but they are more relevant. I haven't tested them in a while:

Celeron300A@504MHz - 128mb pc100 SDRAM, 1 quantum 20gb, 1 WD 8gb, 32xcd, 4usb/floppy Voodoo3 3000 PCI

K6-2 @ 550MHz - 256mb pc133 SDRAM, 12xcdrw, 4x dvd, 2 usb, ATI Radeon 8500 AGP.

These haven't been modified since 2000 or so. I would like to restore them a bit and see if they would still run. I didn't want to let go of that cellery 300 machine. I remember popping the V3 3000 PCI card in there because it had no AGP lol. I played Need for Speed Hot Pursuit and Unreal Tournament on there, and they both ran fantastically. Glide was amazing.

I actually found a screenshot I posted on customize.org a long time ago. It was so leet back in 2001 or whenever I took it:

(Windows 2000 + Litestep)

 

[Yukikaze]

I have my old Pentium 3 Mobile laptop (Asus A1000) still in perfect working order (of course, the battery doesn't last more than 1.5 hours since it is incredibly old). It was bought back in 1999 with 64MB of on-board RAM plus a 128MB stick of RAM, a 10GB HDD and a 700Mhz Pentium 3 CPU. The monitor is 14" and sports a 1024x768 resolution.

A few years ago I upgraded it via ebay to the fastest CPU it could support, which is a 1Ghz Pentium 3 Mobile and a single stick of 512MB of RAM (576MB in total, 32MB allocated to the GPU). It happily runs Vector Linux at the moment, and it runs Windows 2000 perfectly should I ever need it.

I have nothing older than this left, unfortunately.

BTW: That laptop cost near 3,000$ back then, heh.

 

[D007]

lol is it funny that I don't consider a rig "classic" unless it's from like 1980?
I wanna see wrapped wire as memory and a hamster wheel as a cpu..lol.. Then it's classic. XD

 

[Frick]

lol is it funny that I don't consider a rig "classic" unless it's from like 1980?
I wanna see wrapped wire as memory and a hamster wheel as a cpu..lol.. Then it's classic. XD

That is the correct way of seeing things. Anything PC related is to new for "classic" imo.

 

[HELLSPAWNPR]

I have a PIII 500mhz / 96MB Ram/ 14GB HD/ 8MB ATI RAGE AGP/ZIP disk reader/DVD/CD 4x if i recall dont remeber andWIN 98.ITs burried somewere in my closet. But man i remeber when i first got i was HOLY @#$%! this a fast pc 500MHZ CPU im living the good life jeje. costed almost 2k back then with a 15 inch crt screen.

 

[rodneyhchef]

I think you are confusing the word classic with antique, but as for how old stuff has to be I guess it depends how old you are. The first computer I remember was the bbc micro in primary schools in the mid-80s, so that to me is proper old (and not much use unless you like typing programs in basic) The mid 90s were a bit of a golden age for the PC, with lots of great games about, that's why I refer to it as 'classic'

 

[scoutingwraith]

I have a P4 2.4Ghz "Northwood" with a FX5900XT 128Mb (And a GeForce 4200 Ti as a backup) with 1GB DDR400, Windows XP 32bit computer to play the classic games that i used to play. xD

And then i have a PIII 1Ghz Tualatin CPU and Motherboard + 256MB sitting in my closet just in case. xD

 

[MightyMission]

i was forced to dig out a classic/relic today as my main computer kicked the bucket and i couldnt get anyone else to relinquish there's!
sooooo
celeron 2.4 (478)
768mb of sd ram
and a monstrous 20 gig hd thats half full with just windows xp on it.
and a geforce 2 ti

i dont think its the oldest/slowest computer i have had the displeasure of using,but it seems the worst!

 

[Frick]

i was forced to dig out a classic/relic today as my main computer kicked the bucket and i couldnt get anyone else to relinquish there's!
sooooo
celeron 2.4 (478)
768mb of sd ram
and a monstrous 20 gig hd thats half full with just windows xp on it.
and a geforce 2 ti

i dont think its the oldest/slowest computer i have had the displeasure of using,but it seems the worst!

Back in 2009 I was on a Celeron 900Mhz/256MB Ram machine for six full months. I was running DSL (Damn small linux) though so it wasn't an issue really.

Still not a relic imo. ^^

 

[arnoo1]

if p3 400mhz oc to 650mhz 384mb 8.9gb hdd and a voodoo thingie card is classic, then yes, it runs windows xp x86 fine and gta 3 xd

back in the days it cost me 5k euro's with mouse, keyboard 17'' crt, printer and scanner xd

 

[_Zod_]

Oldest thing I have on hand is this: http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/hp-pavilion-n3150-c/1707-3121_7-30004844.html

Battery is dead but the two power supplies I have work. Has 128 meg of ram and a 20 gig hard drive with Win2k on it. It shall be laid to rest shortly as it is just incapable of doing anything useful.

 

[Maban]

I have at least one LPX based system.