Hey all my intro & love for retro computers

[Jacky_BEL]

Is that you RJ?

No idea who RJ is.

There is a forummember who goes by @Arjai

 

[A Computer Guy]

Here my vintage Star Wars/G.I.Joe collection that hangs above the computers via curtain rails and 25lb nylon fishing line:

As a kid I used to have that cobra Mamba Gyro Viper Helicopter 1987. The 1980's was a great time for toy design.

 

[blinnbanir]

Hello everyone, I'm Gold Leader from the EVGA & 2CPU forums which sadly have been closed down, 2CPU on September 05, 2020 and EVGA on February 06, 2025, for me this is quite a loss as I had a ton of friends at EVGA forums , almost the entire staff, the things I did there were mainly Retro PC topics, graphics card collection threads and GPU breakdown & maintenance guides for 3dfx, ATiAMD & NVIDIA graphics cards and many other things my aircraft models and what ever else.
Also I am owner of the official x-3dfx community at Facebook, , we also used to have a forum which we had from 1999 - 2006, we as in the x-3dfx staff and me included.
We had around 250.870 members in that timeline, most people came and left ya know how it all goes.
in 2006 the forum got hacked and taken down for 3 years we lost a lot of data, this was very abrupt and out of the blue, in 2009 the forums returned and well not many was left over, Reid Campbell gave BOingball & I the IP of 3dfx.com back in 19999 and we built x-3dfx.com from that, after the 2006 disaster the forum was rebuilt in3 years time and reopened in March of 2009 I believe this was, roughly 40a 50 aka a handful of members came back, in 2011 we migrated to Facebook, I was really against the idea, but the majority had it and yea ya know social media took over there it all went to.
Around May 07 of 2013 they made me owner ,as that the original owner became a father and yea I kept the place always active so they chose me to take lead and well we started with 40 people at the x-3dfx FB site in2011 and now we are just under 1100 people and there is always some activity as well, so hey it's not all grey and dark in the end, right.

Alongside retro & modern computers I also collect diecast metal scale 1:200 Boeing 747 models, some of you from EVGA forums seen a few go by I am sure of it.
On February 23, 2025 my dad & I will go to the Amsterdam Aviation Collectors Fair, there I will hunt down some B747models from All Nippon Airways & Lufthansa, this is the largest Aircraft modeling fair in the world 6 rooms and around 363 tables good for 120K+ Models., O-plenty of choice and I will hold a DA.C forums meet and greet as well, always fun it's like a fair and convention in one.

If this is in the wrong section My bad for that, I could not find a General off topic section for introductions, a thing we did at EVGA, 2CPU and x-3dfx for that matter.

Here all my PC's as of how it looks like at the moment 7 systems currently always trying to build more hah!


And here the models:



And the countless of graphics cards I had in my past can all be seen here:

My Previous VGA cards

www.3dfx.ch

They have been sorted per graphics chip maker.

Here my vintage Star Wars/G.I.Joe collection that hangs above the computers via curtain rails and 25lb nylon fishing line:

Gold Squadron


Raven Squadron


Here a view of Gold & Raven Squads


Dagger Squadron


Here my Descent/Freespace Collection which is the largest of these game types known in the world:



Here the Freespace items:


Here how I store it, to protect it from the sun's deadly UV rays:


sadly due to multiple depressions I have let go from a lot of them, now I am trying to rebuild some of it, to what is even feasible, sadly like the new gen market , the retro market is also packed by scalping sellers driving up the prices to abysmal amounts, that to which is not of need as this only hurts the 3dfx and retro communities in it's whole, at x-3dfx we are fully against these motives, this hobby has to be enjoyable for all classes and not just the rich and greedy.

My entire apartment is one massive man cave , the advantage of living alone rofl, but yea there you have it really.

Imagine if the MS Sidewinder worked like today's sticks?

 

[Arjai]

There is a forummember who goes by @Arjai

What's up?

 

[Gold Leader]

Imagine if the MS Sidewinder worked like today's sticks?

Well it can be done with the Arduino device and some modifications... A few Descent Rangers & Ascentroid members that I know have successfully done this and use their Side Winders with their new-gen Win 10 systems.

And a few at Descentbb.net also gave it a go

https://www.descentbb.net/viewtopic.php?p=391296

 

[Gold Leader]

Here my AMD K7 Athlon Thunderbird 700Mhz Slot A build, this was my second Retro build, also the one I built before my Pentium3 build as seen on page 01 of this thread.

This is a system that took me 3.4 years to complete, mainly by finding parts in pristine of top recapped qualities, the AthlonXP build took around 4 years, this is also AMD based but using the AMD 751 Irongate + AMD 756B Viper Chipset, back in the day this chipset was an absolute pain to get stable, but with all the bios updates it has matured a lot big time!
For the name it is dedicated o the Lockheed Martin/Skunkworks F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter, even in reality it was a strike bomber.

So here the system name & specs:

Nighthawk

AMD K7 Athlon Thunderbird 700Mhz Slot A
3x 256MB PC-133 Legend / Hynix @ PC-100
MSI MS-6195 AMD Irongate AM751 Chipset
3dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP 16MB Rev.A 3199 (Eur PAL variant, mint in box)
Samsung 3.5" FDD Drive
1x 40GB Seagate Barracuda V 7200 rpm HDD Main drive
1x 80GB Seagate Barracuda V 7200 rpm HDD Main drive
LG 40x/16X CD/DVD RW Drive
NEC 5 port USB 2.0 PCI Card + Front Panel 3 in PCI Card 2 in Front Panel
3-Com 3C 905C 10/100Mbit Ethernet PCI Card
Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold CT4390 4MB ISA PCB Date 3197
CT1950R 28B Sound Font Module for AWE64 Gold by Anthony Zxclxiv
2002 A-Open H-600-B ATX Case
A-Open 350 Watt PSU or equivalent.
Compaq S710 17" Blackshade CRT from 2001
Reso @ 1024x768x32 ! 85Hz | 0.22.5 Dot Pitch

Win2K Pro UK + SP4 & RU01 for SP4
AmigaSport 3.0 for Win2K/XP by AmigaMerlin for V3 3500

Here the desktop showing an art named Night Stalkers which was made by Peter Chilelli & 2nd pic showing it as my desktop:


Here the device manager revealing the neatly installed parts:


Here the insides of this beauty and thankfully I did a far better and neater job with this build


Here the Vantec Spectrum slot cooling card it's self:


The 1st pic shows the fan adjustment slider on the card it's self;
the 2nd pic shows that I made sure there was enough space between the Vantec and the V3 3500,
with this it gets the chance to create some airflow towards the heatsink of the V3 3500:


Here the 3dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP which I bought back in 2019 mint in box via Ebay for around 280 Eur
Which is the same price it was sold new for in 2001 in Germany which was 549 DMark at the time.
The price tag can also be seen on the box in the 2nd pic






Here the contents of the box and everything unpacked:


Here the white box that contains the IO Pod with drivers & manuals:

 

[Gold Leader]

And here the fully recapped MSI MS-6195 AMD Irongate AM751 Chipset, it has been recapped with Japan made SANYO & Oscomp Capacitors, there are not Low ESR type as they are not compatible with this board, the recap was done by a friend of SWZSSR from Adelaide, South Australia.
The Bios chip was also reprogrammed and rewed and the CMOS battery was also renewed, pics show the mainboard without the CMOS installed, as this was how it was shipped to me, I obviously added one before use

A lot was done to get this rare Slot A board back to life, but it was all worth it in the end

MSI MS-6195 AMD Irongate AM751 Chipset Rev 1.0 0002 ( Year 2000 - Week 02)






It also came with the original manual:


Here the CPU that came with an original Thermaltake Golden Orb!

AMD K7 Athlon Thunderbird 700Mhz for Slot A



Here the CT4390 that was Gold recapped by Backfire, he used Japan made Nichicon Gold Capacitors.
Backfire is from the Voodoo Alert Forums, Germany:

Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold the CT4390 Rev.A 3197

 

[Gold Leader]

All seems to be fixed, it seems after copying my old backup of this topic from the Overclock forums, somehow the old links from abload(dot)de came with it, all fixed now btw
Abload(dot)de closed down 2 years ago if not more.

 

[Fokker]

Here my AMD K7 Athlon Thunderbird 700Mhz Slot A build, this was my second Retro build, also the one I built before my Pentium3 build as seen on page 01 of this thread.

This is a system that took me 3.4 years to complete, mainly by finding parts in pristine of top recapped qualities, the AthlonXP build took around 4 years, this is also AMD based but using the AMD 751 Irongate + AMD 756B Viper Chipset, back in the day this chipset was an absolute pain to get stable, but with all the bios updates it has matured a lot big time!
For the name it is dedicated o the Lockheed Martin/Skunkworks F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter, even in reality it was a strike bomber.

So here the system name & specs:

Nighthawk

AMD Athlon Thunderbird 700Mhz Slot A
3x 256MB PC-133 Legend / Hynix @ PC-100
MSI MS-6195 AMD Irongate AM751 Chipset
3dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP 16MB Rev.A 3199 (Eur PAL variant, mint in box)
Samsung 3.5" FDD Drive
1x 40GB Seagate Barracuda V 7200 rpm HDD Main drive
1x 80GB Seagate Barracuda V 7200 rpm HDD Main drive
LG 40x/16X CD/DVD RW Drive
NEC 5 port USB 2.0 PCI Card + Front Panel 3 in PCI Card 2 in Front Panel
3-Com 3C 905C 10/100Mbit Ethernet PCI Card
Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold CT4390 4MB ISA PCB Date 3197
CT1950R 28B Sound Font Module for AWE64 Gold by Anthony Zxclxiv
2002 A-Open H-600-B ATX Case
A-Open 350 Watt PSU or equivalent.
Compaq S710 17" Blackshade CRT from 2001
Reso @ 1024x768x32 ! 85Hz | 0.22.5 Dot Pitch

Win2K Pro UK + SP4 & RU01 for SP4
AmigaSport 3.0 for Win2K/XP by AmigaMerlin for V3 3500

Here the desktop showing an art named Night Stalkers which was made by Peter Chilelli & 2nd pic showing it as my desktop:


Here the insides of this beauty and thankfully I did a far better and neater job with this build


Here the Vantec Spectrum slot cooling card it's self:


The 1st pic shows the fan adjustment slider on the card it's self;
the 2nd pic shows that I made sure there was enough space between the Vantec and the V3 3500,
with this it gets the chance to create some airflow towards the heatsink of the V3 3500:


Here the 3dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP which I bought back in 2019 mint in box via Ebay for around 280 Eur
Which is the same price it was sold new for in 2001 in Germany which was 549 DMark at the time.
The price tag can also be seen on the box in the 2nd pic






Here the contents of the box and everything unpacked:


Here the white box that contains the IO Pod with drivers & manuals:

You hopped in a time machine to my early twenties. I miss those golden days of gaming.

 

[Gold Leader]

Hey many thanks, hereby I hope to show you guys how Gaming PC of the Golden era of PC gaming looked like,
I used these to play games during the Golden PC gaming era, to relive them at the fullest with the date correct hardware from that timeline, to gain the accurate and real experience, something not one emulator could ever give me, that real atmospheric retro PC gaming experience.

Got a few more Retro PC's upcoming after this one, sorry that it took me a while to post here, but I finally figured it out on what to do with that.

 

[Gold Leader]

Here some pics of a few games I ran with the K7 build, just to relive the good old days of PC gaming at it's best:

Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders by id Software & Raven Software, this 5 episode version of Heretic released on March 31, 1996
as where the original 3 episode Heretic launched on December 23, 1994:












Hexen: Beyond Heretic by id Software & Raven Software, released October 30, 1995:








Half-Life by Sierra, released on November 19, 1998

 

[Gold Leader]

Hey all, here an other one that I first started working on, on January 24, 2016 to around completing it April 24, of 2020
This build consists of parts from 1998 - 2003, they are all date correct from that five year time line.
And as being a major fan of retro PC's in perspective, mainly the ones AMD had back in the day when 3dfx Interactive was the master of all graphics cards as well especially that over 500+ games used the Glide API it's self, the golden era of PC gaming in that aspect has always kept my mind focused to do rebuilds from this era and relive the games, programs as well as flight simulations from those times with date correct parts from that timeline or mixed timelines with a 5 year difference, as long the setup made sense you were as good as gold.

This is not a cheap thing to do, but it's the one thing that has always kept me going, it is a very worthy challenge to take on to as well
Mainly by finding the right parts in pristine quality or parts you need to recap or rework with the help of good friends or great contacts that have good knowledge on how to take on such things, people you met and have known for over the past 25 years or so, this is where my life is at all this time.

This is also my main retro system at the moment.

Her specs & name:

Sveta 2002

AMD AthlonXP 2200+ Thoroughbred-A, 1 Core @ 1.8Ghz
EPox EP-8K7A+ AMD 761 Chipset with Via 686B SB
2x 1GB PC-2700 Kingston @ PC-2100 266Mhz DDR
Matrox Parhelia AGP Universal 256MB 256Bit DDR Rev.A 5103
3dfx Voodoo5 5500 PCI Macintosh 64MB Rev.A1 2900 + PC Bios 1.18_DVI
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro SB0360 Rev.A 2703
Mitsubishi Electronics LS-120 F200 Super Floppy Drive
1x Seagate Barracuda V 80GB 7200 RPM Main disk
1x Seagate Barracuda V 120GB 7200 RPM Game Disk
Belkin 5 port NEC USB 2.0 PCI Card
3-Com 3C905C-TX-M PCI 10/100Mbit Ethernet Adapter Rev.A 1702
LH HD-DVD Drive 16x / 40x
BTO Plusdeck 2c Cassette Tape Convertor/Player/Recorder Drive
Enermax EG465P-VE 365 Watt PSU
Addtronics 6896A Entry Level Server Tower
Compaq S710 17" Blackshade CRT from 2001
Reso @ 1024x768x32 ! 85Hz | 0.22.5 Dot Pitch

WinXP Pro USA + SP3
Matrox PowerDesk-HF 1.13.0.158 from May 2007 with Control
Panel 1.50.107 from September 2003 for Parhelia AGP
SFFT Alpha 41 Modified by ps47 & myself from 2008 for V5 PCI Mac
A decal of the flag of Ukraine to respect and support my friends in Ukraine during their current situations


Here her insides:


Here the installed parts & Windows XP Pro desktop, that last pic I just made a few minutes ago, as that this is also my main retro gaming/workstation build.




The Lian Li 120mil side fan mod is what my dad & I modded in to the side of the Addtronics 6896A Entry Level Server Tower, the fan gets it's air from the creases in the case, I didn't want to harm the artwork on the case, either way it does have some influence which is good enough for it's purpose and my needs for it.
My cable management isn't great, that I will admit as this case is not easy to work with, also due to my heavy arthritis like pains building a PC is always painful this took me 2 a 3 days to get it all in the right place, it runs dead stable and temps are very good, so yea as that goes it's all just fine.

Here the fully recapped with Japan made Panasonic Low ESR Type capacitors plus it's ATX 20 pin connector renewed after a power arc incident with an old Antec True Power 550 Watt Bronze 80+ rated PSU.
This was all done by my friend Backfire from the Voodoo Alert Forums:

Here the burnt 20pin ATX Power connector from the mainboard and the PSU that was used the EP-8K7A+, the power arc caused this to happen:




Here the photo's Backfire applied when he was removing and replacing thee 20 pin ATX Power connector on the board:




EPoX EP-8K7A+ Rev.A 0148-3 with an AMD AthlonXP 2200+ Thoroughbred-A CPU @ 1.8Ghz
& 2x 1GB PC-2700 matched set HP/Micron @ Single Channel PC-2100 / DDR 266Mhz @ CL2 .
This mainboard was made in year 2001, during week 28 on the 3rd day of that week as the PCB Date clearly describes 0128-3






Backfire has over 48 years of electro engineering experience and he works for TUI Airways maintaining the APU's & Jet Engines of their B737 NG fleet, he has done this for the past 28 years, he has always been my go to guy if something with precision and care had to be done like a recap or repairing 3dfx graphics cards etc, he has repaired well over 200 Voodoo5 cards stand alone where of 20 were 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 engineering samples of all six revisions.

Here the PSU of this build that Backfire also recapped by using Japan made Panasonic & Germany made KEMET capacitors;

Enermax EG465P-VE 460 Watt PSU


The second pic shows the system running Freelancer with the newly recapped Enermax EG465P-VE PSU

Here the Mascot of this system that I named Reggy, it's my T.rex toy from 1985 which I used to call Little Rex back then, I just found Reggy a more fitted name after my best RL friends calls Trex' s as Reggies lol, tso that kind came out both ways, it holds an original EPoX Logo from 1999; I kinda gave it a purpose again this way


The art on this case I self painted on November 27, 1999:

Left side the main starfighter from the game Descent2:
Pyro GX


Right side; two starships and one starfighter from Freespace2:
Shevan Strike Cruiser
Vesudan Strike Dreadnaught
Terrain Hercules Mark III Heavy Strike Fighter

 

[68Olds]

I used to love playing Hexen. The crossbow was awesome.

 

[Gold Leader]

Here the main graphics card, the Matrox Parhelia; this is a Universal AGP 2.0 x4/x8 model of the Parhelia AGP 256MB DDR, this was a gift from a Matrox Employee from Matrox HQ for the EU market, he told me only 1500 of these were made and the much more common AGP 3.0 x8 model went by the millions from 2003 right on down to 2008.
He had asked me to make an offer I was like well let's start at 45 Eur, he was like that is okay by me actually, I'll add an other 6 cards, and for 45 Eur incl first class shipping from Ireland to the Netherlands this is what I got from that kind guy!


Matrox Millennium G400 Dual Head AGP 32MB 128Bit SGR Rev.B 4399

Matrox Millennium G400 Dual Head AGP 32MB 128Bit SGR Rev.B 1800

Matrox Millennium G450 Dual Head AGP 16MB 64Bit DDR SGR Rev.A 4500

Matrox Millennium G550 Dual Head AGP 32MB 64Bit DDR SGR Rev.A 4102

Matrox Parhelia AGP 256MB 256Bit DDR Rev.A 5103

Matrox Parhelia LX P650 AGP 64MB 128Bit DDR Rev.B 4505

Matrox Parhelia LX P750 AGP 64MB 128Bit DDR Rev.B 0905


About 6 months later I also got this G400 MAX as a major respected gift from my friend SWZSSR from x-3dfx;
This card is inuse in the P3.E 850 Slot 1 build:

Matrox Millennium G400 MAX Dual Head AGP 32MB 128Bit SGR Rev.B 4399 + Soltek Brass Orb


Matrox Parhelia AGP Universal 256MB 256Bit DDR Rev.A 5103






As drivers go for the Parhelia to get the best optimal performance from it but with the most laid out control panel this is what needs to be done to get this to work:
To get this working at it's most optimal performance and speed. I had to tinker with the drivers to get a best of both worlds kind of scenario.

So what I did first was install the September 2003 driver which is Matrox Power Desk 1.5.0.107:

Here the September 2003 driver installed with it's awesome control panel, that to which will come in great handy later on.
Also note it's classic gaming control panel, it doesn't have many options, it's something to do with:




Here the performance of Descent 2 with D2X Rebirth 0.58.1 and D2X Retro 1.3a with the September 2003 driver kit:




Them frame rates aren't too bad but I know there can be some improvement which you'll see later on in this post 8)
So it was time to make things a lot better!

Likewise then I downloaded the May 2007 driver which is Matrox Power Desk 1.13.0.158 and just installed the driver package, more not.
Then I went to the Device manager and updated the WDM drivers of the Parhelia AGP 256MB then did a reboot and this gave me the control panel from the September 2003 driverkit as well as the most up to date gaming performance WDM driver kit from May 2007!

This also gave me a lot more OpenGL options in the control panel as well, as with the later control panel all the gaming options were removed, so this little workaround did wonders and I also helped others with this ideal little solution of mine

Here the info tab of the May 2007 driver


Here the May 2007 WDM driver with the September 2003 control panel combined, for the card it's self this is a best of both worlds solution:




Here the performance of Descent 2 with D2X Rebirth 0.58.1 and D2X Retro 1.3a with the May 2007 driver kit:




So nice gains here and there for both drivers I used the following settings:
Max in game settings with Super Sampled Rotated grid FSAA x4 + AF x2 from the Matrox Power Desk control panel.
If anyone ever needs help with this I have archived all drivers for all Parhelia cards, this is after all my favorite

Here two 3-way runs I did of 3D Mark 2001ASE Build 330 with the Parhelia AGP 256MB DDR with the May 2007 WDM & September 2003 Control panel and the V5 PCI Mac using the SFFT Alpha 41 driver modified by ps47 & myself:


And here it running the famous Matrox Parhelia Reef Demo version 1.1






Here some other games I ran with the Parhelia:

Freelancer by Digital Anvil & Microsoft which was released on March 04, 2003 in the US & April 11, 2003 in the EU
This game gets the max out of the Parhelia P512 GPU thanks to Pixel Shader 1.3 for the 3D objects & Vertex Shader 2.0 support for the Nebula's
My Parhelia ran this game @ 1024x768x32 max ingame settings with FAA x16 & AF x2 and it looks glorious!






Command & Conquer Red Alert2 which was released on October 25, 2000 in the US and October 27, 2000 in the EU
With Command & Conquer Red Alet 2: Yuri's Revenge by Westwood Studios & EA Games which was released on October 09 2001 in the US & October 19, 2001 in the EU
With Purple Alert Mod 4.10.28 fmade by Marshall Carnis and released on May 02, 2006.




Last pic was the final score of this battle after a game run time of 9 hours 37 minutes and 45 seconds, no crash either.
RA2 is very CPU heavy which makes this the ideal game to use for stability test runs for long term workloads.

Here the 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 PCI Macintosh card that went through the following nice reworks that were done by two great people from x-3dfx & Voodoo Alert

3dfx Voodoo5 5500 PCI Macintosh 64MB Rev.A1 2900 + PC Bios 1.18_DVI
------------------------------------------------
SWZSSR's friend's Recap & Modifications:
01. Full Polymer Recap
02. Burnt Copper Heatsinks for the VSA's rear side
------------------------------------------------
Backfire's Repairs & Reworks:
01. Renewed Ceramic SMD's on the rear
02. 6ns Hynix VRAM renewal for the main VSA-100 Graphics Chip
03. Renewed Heatsinks & Fans for the VSA's topside
04. Renewed Power Supply Controller Chips
05. Fixed the IC U510 Chip's pins
06. Replaced 4x TSOP-86
07. 6ns Hynix VRAM renewal for the slave VSA-100 Graphics Chip
------------------------------------------------






Here the control panel of the V5 PCI Mac that was made by my friend named "KoolSmokey". he from the 3dfx Zone Forums, Italy:




Here the max FSAA setting for both OpenGL/Glide & Direct3D is FSAA x4, hence being a Voodoo5 5500 series of graphics card and by having two 3dfx VSA-100-200 graphics chips

The Voodoo5 5000 & 5500 series both have two 3dfx VSA-100-200 chips, this makes the max FSAA setting as 4 samples
A Voodoo5 6000 has four chips, those do FSAA x8 as max setting, yet a Voodoo4 4500 only has one VSA-100-220, these only have a max setting of FSAA x2, sae rule goes for the 3dfx Daytona cards named Voodoo4-2 4000/4200 & 4800, all of these do FSAA x2 as max FSAA setting as well.
Alas I have worked with all VSA-100 based graphics cards single Dual & Quad SLI setups.
The people from EVGA seen me post my Voodoo5 6000 a few times, this system is kind of a memory to my Voodoo5 days, the PC flashed Voodoo5 5500 PCI Macintosh is the only Voodoo5 I currently have.

Here that V5 PCI Mac running some games, such as these:

Descent 2 by Parallax Software & Interplay which was released on March 13, 1996 in the US and March 29, 1996 in the EU
Descent 2 is using the mods D2X Rebirth 0.58.1 & D2X Retro 1.3a for improved game play & 3D rendered graphics mode with OpenGL ES 1.2:




Star Wars Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight by LucasArts which was released on October 09, 1997 in the US & October 17, 1997 in the EU:








Hexen II by id Software & Raven Software which was released on September 11, 1997 in the US & September 17, 1997 in the EU:

 

[Gold Leader]

Here the Sound card of this system, also quite a hard one to find, major thanks go to SWZSSR for helping me find one of these fr a nice deal of just 48 Eur / 60 USD which was around 100 AUSD back in the time I bought it which was somewhere in 2018.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro SB0360 Rev.A 2703


The card is named the SB0360, the Audigy2 ZS Platinum and other Audigy2 ZS boards carry the board name SB0350 or an even lower number.
The lesser the features, the lower the number.






Here the LS-120 Super disk drive, these have a read/write speed of about the same from that of a 6 speed CDRW drive, which is very impressive, I also manage to play a 1080p Test video with it and even a 4K Extended Trailer of the Aquaman movie from 2018 which is around 90MB in size in 4K DivX format, the Audigy2 ZS was ideal for the hardware accelerated HD audio acceleration, to get this right I used a 3dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP 16B Rev.A 3199 the one that is used in the AMD K7 Athlon Thunderbird 700Mhz build, to get a fluid motion for the video and perfectly synced audio, OS I used was Windowws XCP Professional USA + SP3.

This LS-120 drive was a very generous gift from my friend nick named "SadTropher" from the 2CPU forums

Mitsubishi Electronics Australia F200 D0 LS-120 Super Disk Drive:




And here the final part which is something you don't see every day either and also rarer than the LS-120 left alone LS-240 drive even being,
This is a Cassette Deck Convertor drive that can also record and play tapes as well, the drive is quite long because the tapes entire it lengthly wise.
My dad used it to convert all his cassette tapes to 256Kbps MP3, tapes from 1980 - 1990, also the time we lived in Australia.
Back in 2018 he passed it on to me to make good use of in this retro gaming /workstation system.

BTO Plusdeck 2C Cassette Deck Convertor Drive


Here the drivers for the Plusdeck 2C and the USB to Comp Port converter dongle, whch can be seen in the device manager as well;
This also indicates that the Plusdeck 2C has been correctly installed.


Here the software that comes with it, it works quite well and has tons of options as well, always nice to see put much care to it:






And there you have it really, this took like a full day for me to get it all sorted out, including the countless edits, that I still make if I find any typo's.
it has been a long time that I made a topic of this size though, just surprised I remember most fo it, even I did grab some notes from topics I made in other places, most of the screenshots are new that I did remake today , just making them more up to date.

Well enjoy this one, the next build will be quite different, that makes topics such as these a lot of fun, even I cycled through all 17 Yotto sets of roughly 2 hours per set, great vbbes to do work like this.
All the photo's were made by myself all the screenshots were also made by myself with the specified systems posted.
The Camera I used was a 2003 built Sony CyberShot DSC-V3 and I still use it today, it's 05:08 AM, yeaps made this an all nighter too, even I started like yesterday afternoon around 7:30 PM or so...

Friendly regards,

Gold Leader.