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Hey all my intro & love for retro computers

Joined
Feb 14, 2025
Messages
12 (0.16/day)
Location
Netherlands
System Name Sveta 2002
Processor AMD AthlonXP 2200+ Thoroughbred-A @ 1800Mhz
Motherboard EPoX EP-8K7A+ AMD 761 Northbridge & VIA 686B South Bridge, recapped by Backfire
Cooling Cooler Master S-Dream -X II fpr CPU &2x 120Mil Sharkoon Green Led Fans + 2x 80mil Sharkoon Blue Led
Memory 2x 1024MB PC-2100 DDR-266 Kingston matched kit CL2
Video Card(s) Matrox Parhelia AGP 256MB DDR & 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 PCI Macintosh 64MB SDR + PC Bios 1.18_DVI
Storage Seagate BarracudaV 80GB &120GB 7200rpm HDD's, Mitsubishi F200 LS-120, LG 40x/16x DVD-RW & Plusdeck2C
Display(s) Compaq S710 17" Blackshade CRT from December 05, 2000
Case Addtronics 6896A from November 05, 1999
Audio Device(s) Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro Rev.A 2703
Power Supply Enermax EG465P-VE Recapped by Bakcfire
Mouse Logitech Cordless Mousman Wheel Optical from 2002 800 Dpi
Keyboard Logitech Internet Navigator Keyboard from 2002
Software Microsoft Windows XP Professioanl + Service Pack 3
Benchmark Scores 6874 points 3D Mark 2001 SE B330 with the Parhelia 2112 points 3D Mark 2001 SE B330 with the Voodoo5
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:
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.
 
Incredible achievements.
Days before the EVGA Forum archived ...
I did see your post and the pieces in your post looked NEW.
I know you do outstanding work.
Glad you found Techpowerup!
There is lots of cool sections here...and over time more cool ones reveal themselves
Or so I have been told..;)
Have fun Bro..You deserve it!:).
 
Incredible achievements.
Days before the EVGA Forum archived ...
I did see your post and the pieces in your post looked NEW.
I know you do outstanding work.
Glad you found Techpowerup!
There is lots of cool sections here...and over time more cool ones reveal themselves
Or so I have been told..;)
Have fun Bro..You deserve it!:).
Anytime friend, I'll see what I can do here, much has changed tho, as the reworks go they were done by Backfire from Voodoo Alert forums, Germany, I have known him for over 25 years, he has don electro engineering for the past 48 years an his job is repairing an maintaining he APU's an Jet Engines of the TUI Airways Boeing 737 fleet, he has don this for the past 28 years now, so if parts are needed for recaps, reworks or even certain trace repairs, I mail Backfire an present him the problem an he i like oh sen it over an I'll se what I can do, he then order the needed parts directly via his work from Japan, here by avoiding any high shipping costs, import an VAT fee's as well,all worth it in the end too.
 
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Well here the post from EVGA of my latest retro rebuild, the recaps of the PSU, Terratec EWS64 XL and the Gainward Voodoo2 were done by Backfire and the recap of the EP-BX3 mainboard was done by SWZSSR.

The EWS64 XL was fully gold recapped with 55 Nichicon FG Professional Audio Grade Gold Capacitors, 49 on the card + 6 on the 5.25" IO Drive unit
The mainboard was flashed with a custom made Bios version 4.23 so all Pentium !!! Katmai & Coppermine CPU's are supported + Slot 1 to Socket 370 convertors aka Slotkets for Socket 370 CPU's with Coppermine & Tualatin cores as well as long the FSB is 100Mhz, so Celeron Tualatin 1400Mhz CPU's with 256KB L2 and a 100Mhz FSB per example.

So here the name and specs this project took a little longer than expected, 3 years and 7 months but it's fully operational and no bad sectors on the original HDD's either everything works as if it was bought new yesterday.

Avenger M99

Intel Pentium !!!/E Coppermine 850Mhz S.E.C.C. II Slot1 CPU
Thermaltake Golden Orb for S.E.C.C. II Slot 1 CPU's
2x 256MB PC-100 Legend CL2 matched kit (Kingston ram chips)
EPoX EP-BX3 + Modified Bios 4.23
Matrox Millennium G400 MAX DH AGP 32MB 128Bit Rev.A 4399 + Soltek Bronze Orb
Gainward Dragon 3000 PCI 12MB Rev.A 9846 (Voodoo2)
Terratec Promedia EWS64 XL Audio System Rev. 1.2 3397 + Full Gold Nichicon Recap & Stereo sound reworks done by Backfire from Voodoo Alert, Germany
1x Maxtor DiamondMax 9+ 30GB 7200 rpm HDD (Main drive)
1x Western Digital WD1200BB 120GB 7200 rpm HDD (Game drive)
1x Creative Labs 12x DVD-Rom Drive
1x Mitsumi Electric 3.5" FD Drive
FKI FK-6043 Midi Tower

Win98 SE USA + Un-Official Service Pack 3 Version 3.66
Latest G400 Max drivers from 2002
3dfxzone.it's FastVoodoo2 Driver kit Version 4.6



Here 4 pics of the system with the PSU removed, to reveal the inner parts:



Here the bootup screen, the green setup menu is the EWS64 XL Configuration program, that allows you to manually set up the IRQ's, DMA's and Ports for the card, as this can vary per mainboard you use it in and with what chipset you combine the card with as well.
Other pics show my Win98 SE desktop and all the installed components within the task manager:



oqmln9gs.jpg
pvw5y7cj.jpg
otxwx7ub.jpg


Here the three hand applied trace repairs to the EWS64 XL:



And here the gold recapped EWS64 XL it's self, it's a piece of beauty and it sounds phenomenal too, it's EDO ram stick is a 32MB 72Pins 50ns EDO Ram stick, plus the 2MB on board this card has a total of 34MB Sound Font memory, max supported EDO ram is 64MB for a total of 64+ 2MB = 66MB, I am not even using 14MB of it rofl, so yea 34MB is plenty for my doings.






And here the final showcase of the card + two flat data cables and the 5.25" IO drive bay unit all fully renovated and recapped, this card never had such a good treatment in it's life.


Here my fully reworked & Gold recapped EWS64 XL playing some 80's Midi music files!

01. George Benson ~ Give Me The Night (1980)
02. Jermaine Jackson, Pia Zadora - When the Rain Begins to Fall (1984)
03. Mental As Anything - Live It Up (1985)

 
Ok
I must ask.
What do you do with these works of art when you get done with them?
 
Ok
I must ask.
What do you do with these works of art when you get done with them?
Well I use them to play my retro game from 1992 -2002 on them, most game I play are from 1994 - 2000., the upside having these date correct parts in perfect working order I will never to rely on crappy emulators, I tried them and I didn't like in what I was experiencing, so these retro PC's will give me the exact experience an feeling how them classic gameplay an feel like, emulators will not even come close to the hardware I use, so yea this was a very easy an logical choice for me to make.
An currently I own three fully fledged retro PC's , that are these:

P3/E 850 with Win 98SE + Un-Official Service Pack 3.66 from 1999-2000
K7 700 with Win 2K Pro +SP4 & Rollup 01 for SP4 from 1999 -2000
AXP 2200+ with Win XP Pro + SP3 from 2001- 2002

Hmm What I can do is pod the other two retro PC's kn this thread so they are all in one thread, but now I chill in VR Chat with my GF a rave, this post I typed with my Pico 4, took ages lmao.
 
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I will chat you up with some photos, sometime, to see any of it would be of interest to you.
Could take awhile before I do....or not lol
Any of your machines have the old floppy disk drive 2.5 inch I think?
 
I will chat you up with some photos, sometime, to see any of it would be of interest to you.
Could take awhile before I do....or not lol
Any of your machines have the old floppy disk drive 2.5 inch I think?
nah all use 3.5", the LS-120 is also 3.5'
 
Well that was embarrassing..lol:kookoo:
I should of said Are any of your machines using the old 3.5"?
and your answer would of been..
Yes!
Doh!
Good to know
 
Welcome @Gold Leader , here's a couple threads you which will probably want to participate. :) Many members will be happy to see all your collections.

retro hardware/software

collections
 
Welcome @Gold Leader , here's a couple threads you which will probably want to participate. :) Many members will be happy to see all your collections.

retro hardware/software

collections
hmm is an idea, I'll see what I can do, gonna read them first to, just love seeing what people are in to these days :)

Is there a way to set up Dark Mode for this forum? my eyes are rather sensitive to white pages.
Thanks in advance.
 
hmm is an idea, I'll see what I can do, gonna read them first to, just love seeing what people are in to these days :)

Is there a way to set up Dark Mode for this forum? my eyes are rather sensitive to white pages.
Thanks in advance.

Welcome to TPU! Unfortunately, the forum does not have a native dark mode, but you can use the Dark Reader extension for your favorite browser, it works well! :)

Love your collection, man. That takes some serious dedication! :toast:
 
Welcome to TPU! Unfortunately, the forum does not have a native dark mode, but you can use the Dark Reader extension for your favorite browser, it works well! :)

Love your collection, man. That takes some serious dedication! :toast:
Hey that is fantastic, many thanks for that, yea quite the healing :toast:

yea I have so many more, that were just a few of what I currently have. Hmm if it is okay, I may just make separate threads, because it's kinda too huge to explain in little words.
ah well I'll see what goes round :cool:

The collections lot of years, multiple decades in that sense, but it sure was worth it, There may be a thing I may of done different, like not letting my depressions take over when I sold all them 3dfx, ATi, NVIDIA, S3 an Matrox cards, but sadly the mind often does things and things just don't always pack out.

No one and nothing will ever be perfect and that is what I discovered myself over the years, now I am trying to rebuild in what I lost so many years ago, just not all of it, just some of it an that is going very well thus far, not all hope is lost yet :)

It all just takes time.
 
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Hey that is fantastic, many thanks for that, yea quite the healing :toast:

yea I have so many more, that were just a few of what I currently have. Hmm if it is okay, I may just make separate threads, because it's kinda too huge to explain in little words.
ah well I'll see what goes round :cool:

The collections lot of years, multiple decades in that sense, but it sure was worth it, There may be a thing I may of done different, like not letting my depressions take over when I sold all them 3dfx, ATi, NVIDIA, S3 an Matrox cards, but sadly the mind often does things and things just don't always pack out.

No one and nothing will ever be perfect and that is what I discovered myself over the years, now I am trying to rebuild in what I lost so many years ago, just not all of it, just some of it an that is going very well thus far, not all hope is lost yet :)

It all just takes time.

Nice. I understand how you feel, I once had a very large collection of graphics cards in the past, almost all of them Radeon models. Nowadays in this forum I have a bit of a reputation for being opposed to them (too many issues to recount lol), but that's pretty much the reason why, I've always known they could do so much better than they are doing these days.

I suppose I grew over the years and alongside it, so did my expectations. There's only a few things that I've come to regret parting with, mostly the Radeon VII and one of my backwards compatible PS3's (still have one, though, so it's alright). Bills needed being paid, though! :D

There is someone here at TPU that also has a large retro hardware collection and has kept a thread on it, they only come online once every few months but I think you should check it out!

 
That is an interesting fellow indeed, yet I never heard of him though, Retro computing is very large where I come from, in Germany it's an even bigger thing.

It does look like that he has a ton of experience considering the parts he has, this is onlya good thing, very resourceful such people, many can learn a lot from them as well, what I can do even I don't have all my 3dfx engineering samples anymore I can make a topic with all the revisions and differences of all Voodoo5 6000's & 5000's, nether of these cards ever made it to the market, I can add the Rampage cards as well, my 3dfx archive goes well over 1270 photo's, I won't post all of those but there are some very nice ones in there many have not seen here yet, well from what I can tell, I been doing a lot of reading here and there in those threads and yea I Kinda think I know what to do now.
Before anything major I always like to read what others are doing, to get an idea of topic build up again as it has been quite a while I made a review of this kind.

What I also have done was that I created made the Voodoo5 6000 & 5000 world owner lists , this was way back in 2005 to around 2009 as the 6000's went and with that a mainboard support guide, this does need updating as many more mainboards were added and a few were also removed.
the 5000 owner list I made in 2009 and ran this alongside the 6000 owner list to around 2014, Everyone just mailed em what card revision they had and how many of each revision what cards worked what cards did not work, plus mainboard support on what they found out , all in all I even helped Gary Donovan with his Voodoo5 6000 FAQ page as well, at x-3dfx and at FalconFly I used to go there as Obi Wan KenobiV6K, later in life I changed my name to Gold Leader, being a fan of Jon Dutch Vander and of Y-wings as well., Obi or Goldie as most call me ,goes either ways really

Hmm yea I kinda know what to do now.

@Veseleil I already have a good plugin for Firefox for Dark Mode thanks to @Dr. Dro , as they posted here:
 
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So I been thinking and not sure what to do, is it possible that Ic an just make a topic where I post all my computer related subjects in all my retro & modern systems ina single thread and the same for non computer related hobbies like the aircraft models for example?

Is that acceptable here or would I really need to revert to them two threads @68Olds linked me?
Which they posted here:

It's that I prefer to ask before doing something wrong and all, since my topics will be quite large and packed with info even regarding lab cards many have not seen here as 3dfx Development boards go.

I thought to ask this here since well, I didn't find it worthy to dm people or left alone make anew thread anyway, well not yet.
 
So I been thinking and not sure what to do, is it possible that Ic an just make a topic where I post all my computer related subjects in all my retro & modern systems ina single thread and the same for non computer related hobbies like the aircraft models for example?

Is that acceptable here or would I really need to revert to them two threads @68Olds linked me?
Which they posted here:

It's that I prefer to ask before doing something wrong and all, since my topics will be quite large and packed with info even regarding lab cards many have not seen here as 3dfx Development boards go.

I thought to ask this here since well, I didn't find it worthy to dm people or left alone make anew thread anyway, well not yet.
If you consider that your collections are too big to contribute to the existing threads (796 pages in the nostalgic one) 68Olds suggested, and you have enough material, you can make 2 separate threads here for your own collections:


Someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

You won't be doing wrong either way, Check those suggested threads and then make up your mind. There's no need to hurry.


EDIT:

Now that I think of it and did a bit of search, we really don't have a subforum that's the right place for people to post their collections in a form of their own threads. The only places with such arrangement are the project logs and case mods subforums.
The club subforum isn't really a suitable place for an individual collection threads, except maybe for the aircraft models thread, which I think we don't have yet.
Any suggestions people? I've kinda lost my reasoning here...

@tabascosauz @Count von Schwalbe your thoughts on the subject please?
 
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So I been thinking and not sure what to do, is it possible that Ic an just make a topic where I post all my computer related subjects in all my retro & modern systems ina single thread and the same for non computer related hobbies like the aircraft models for example?

Is that acceptable here or would I really need to revert to them two threads @68Olds linked me?
Which they posted here:

It's that I prefer to ask before doing something wrong and all, since my topics will be quite large and packed with info even regarding lab cards many have not seen here as 3dfx Development boards go.

I thought to ask this here since well, I didn't find it worthy to dm people or left alone make anew thread anyway, well not yet.

you would ideally find a thread that already exists if you would like to contribute. If you want a personal thread to show off specific things like you are doing now that will go in project logs. If you have something non tech related that is not a club that will go to the lounge.
 
project logs hmm alright, yea all new to me here, at 2CPU.com. there we had a section named general hardware all the non 2CPU stuff or retro stuff went in there EVGA had MODS RIGS; this was for ideal for all sorts of computer builds from all years and time lines. even if you had something from the mid 1980's it was welcome, it was all more straight forward, but alas not every forum is the same, i respect that though.
At x-3dfx he had 3dfx hardware 3dfx builds but also general hardware and off topic general in there non 3dfx related content was posted.
2CPU, EVGA like x-3dfx has places for all sorts of things even those with massive collections they just had their own threads, everything they added or got rid of was posted all in one thread.

From 1999 till 2006 x-3dfx had around 250.870 members and a crew of 22 people, imagine a quarter of a million people posting all what they have in one thread, it would get messy and clouted, hence why I ask first before doing anything major here.

But alright I will look in to it afterwards.
 
No idea who RJ is.
 
Welcome!!
I love the work you do(I have done some myself). But haven’t in a while, I joined the EVGA forums when the 6800 Ultra came out, then was banned a few years back(for arguing).
Keep the pictures coming!!!!
 
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:
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.


There's a lot of my childhood and youth on display in this post. Welcome to the forums.
 
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