r/retrobattlestations

I have a bunch of old and esoteric hardware and have been playing building a retro right with it... The specs are:

motherboard: ECS GameUnion K7S8AG

graphics: Onboard SiS Xabre 200 64MB

2GB RAM DDR400

SoundBlaster Audigy

All in all its a nice weird build, but a weird build needs a weird chassis... I have a couple of these generic white and blue chassis laying around, and I always wanted a yellow chassis. You can see were this is going... I asked a friend that paints cars to paint me a couple of pieces... This is the result of said job...

It all started almost 2 years ago... Só this is taking a bit to complete... And now i've lost the bezel that I had already cleaned for this... But it will be done this year...

Linux Mint 21

GTX 980 4GB

Ryzen 5 5500

16GB DDR4

256GB Inland NVMe SSD

SilverStone FLP02

The RAM was by far the most expensive component 😅

I actually started with a 750 Ti, 8GB DDR4, and a 500GB SATA HDD but now that I'm using it more I decided to give it a little more juice, plus driver support for the 750 Ti was a bit of a pain.

the "new" Book386 with its custom floppy interface cable

i can't wait to bring this to a starbucks and make floppy drive noise

The grey plastic side panels and front bezel are dinged up a bit. I may repaint them at some point, but other this issue the system is super clean.

Specs:
Pentium 4 2.66GHz
1.5 GB ram
250GB SATA hard drive w/IDE adapter
Radeon x1650 256MB vram
Onboard sound (SoundMax)
DVD and floppy drives

There are several, but the classics are still better

I can't believe some idiot tried to throw this Apple IIgs system with printer in the trash! I stopped by the community electronics recycling bin to toss out some broken stuff, and I couldn't believe what i saw! I immediately rescued this from the dustbin of history and was thrilled to see what great condition it was in.... Not a speck of dust as you can see in the second picture (I did remove the battery, but no leakage!). Everything works great, and someone lost out on hundreds of dollars. No chance of selling it now, as it has a good home here surrounded by period appropriate decor.

This is the computer I was looking for when I was a kid, but I was not able to afford it at that time. The RS-232 port is really the "jack of all trades" for external device: back pack drive, portable diskette drive, wifi modem, external display, etc.

Running M.U.L.E

I found this old beast and restored it.

Specs:

C2D T9300

Dual 8800M GTX running in SLI

2x 512 GB SSD's running in Raid

AGEIA PhysX Card

I have applied Thermal Putty and PTM 7950 on Both Dies and etc.

Idle Temperatures dropped from 67c to 53c

and under full 3DMark Vantage Load a Peak of 76c.

I overclocked Core, Memory and Shader to 575/880/1438 and achieved a healthy 16% Performance Boost over stock clocks seems I have some silicon lottery on my hand, I did not check the date code on the dies or check if it is Milky I will do that further on.

The last of Acer's 3000 series which first came out in late 2003, this one has the beefiest specs but an inept cooling system because of the newer specs. My unit worked fine but for some reason after finally coming across the recovery discs, I can't get the OS to install.

Recently restored an IBM PC 300GL/6287 (Pentium II 400MHz, 256MB RAM) with an S3 Trio3D. Added a Voodoo2 12MB and a refurbished 120GB HDD. Running on the onboard ESS Solo-1 sound chip for now.

The case has yellowed, still deciding whether to dismantle the monitor to Retrobrite it, but I’ll definitely do the front case.

After DAYS of tinkering.

It's finally alive and working perfectly fine on windows 98SE.

The culprit was ...

A dust bunny in the AGP slot.

PC would boot up just fine, but as soon as I tried to install the Nvidia Detonators it crashed.

Also crashed during the Windows XP install.

Ended up buying a Radeon 9200SE AGP and a NVS280 PCI to test everything, but when I saw the Radeon not booting I knew something was up...

Specs are :

AMD Athlon Slot A 700Mhz with Alphapal radiator (waiting for some noctuas...)

Ninja Free speed Pro (Not currently installed)

MSI 6167

3*128MB od SDRam PC133 @ 100Mhz

MSI GeForce 2 MX 400 64MB AGP / ATI Radeon 9200SE AGP 128 MB / Quadro NVS280 PCI 64MB

Sound Blaster Live 5.1

Maxtor 40Gb 7200rpm HDD (have some others I will try)

LG DVD Burner & CD Burner

Realtek network card

Via USB2.0 Card

iCute case with Noiseblocker S2 Fans

New Gigabyte P650SS power supply

Gateway 2000 Vivitron 1572 15" Monitor.

Cheapo "Amarina" keyboard from 15years ago at the supermarket.

Microsoft Intellimouse 3000 (had an white USB intellimouse, but every part broke when I disassembled it for retrobrihting... I'm looking for a good PS2 mouse now)

This is my IBM PC, upgraded with fixed disk

My 16.5 year old Alienware M11x, which I’ve owned since its launch in March 2010, features an Intel C2D SU7300 processor running at 1.73GHz and a GeForce 335M graphics card. Back when it was released, it was a complete mini powerhouse capable of playing games like Modern Warfare 2, Dishonoured, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, The Mass Effect Trilogy, Star Wars: The Old Republic and more.

This machine served as my daily driver from 2010 to 2015 and I managed to complete over 90 games on it. Despite extensive use, it still looks as good as new with no visible wear and tear on the entire chassis. I’ve taken great care of it from the start.

Currently, it runs on Windows 7 and is primarily used for internet browsing and video streaming via Firefox. It still streams video smoothly at 30fps on Netflix, Disney+ and YouTube.

Laptop from 2004. Yes it's steaming. Btw Cpu is pentium M without hardware decoding h.264 natively. Graphics card is Intel graphics.

Mouse (style from cyberpunk) and mechanical keyboard.

Really liking this machine. Loading the Kickstart from disk is an extra step, but since you don’t have to re-load it when rebooting, it’s not that big a deal.

Video output seems to be cleaner than my 500s, this is with a non-buffered straight A23 RGB to VGA cable, and it looks about as good as 640x200 can on an LCD.