I like to dig with the old iron. Take some old piece of iron and bring it into a usable state that gives me pleasure. For a hobby, I do not think so, because it is not consistent - I am entertained only with what will fall into my hands. Usually I do not run for specific things and I do not collect a collection, I try to approach the choice of "patients" from a pragmatic point of view - old servers, laptops, etc., which can be adapted for some practical purposes. For example, if you take a dual-socket motherboard of the second half of the nulls on the 771 socket, then you can cheaply insert a pair of Xeon and 32 gigabytes of FBDIMM and get a rather budgetary platform for virtual machines, which are more important than the processor.
 
 
 
 
But now something has rolled down and it wanted to collect and calm down simply for love of art a couple of configs. It began, in my opinion, from a long-lying systemist on the Pentium ? who retired to rest not so long ago - he worked as a typewriter and twisted programs on Foxboro, but 1C did not pull. There put a modern:) Pentium4 on which 1C was already started for a tolerant time, and P3 lay down on the shelf.
 
And the other day somehow coincided, that at the same time I read several articles on the assembly of the retro PC, I found a couple of thematic channels on YouTube and wanted here.
 
 
For the most part, retro PCs are assembled in order to run old games - if something does not suit the game on the emulators. Personally, I was satisfied with emulators, because the games are not what I decided to do assembly for. More simply because of the love of art. I wanted to. But the games will still be the scale by which the assemblies will be measured.
 
Builds - because one universal, which will normally go to the game from the digger to the third quake, can not do. There are options that allow using some tweaks to maximize the number of normally run games and build a computer on which you can play both in Maniac Mansion and Wing Commander, and in Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex. At me, the truth, suitable iron under a hand is not present, therefore it is necessary to dance from available, on the sly looking for interesting variants for the future.
 
 

The platform (motherboard + processor)

 
The old system man, who took the starting point. Another production Vist, if anyone remembers such an office.
 

 
 
I suspect that the motherboard in it has not changed since the purchase - I barely pulled it, was so tightly clamped by the power supply (the case is still from those where the power supply was hanging over the motherboard, and not on top). The board was Intel D815EEA - 815 chipset, support for processors up to Coppermine, memory up to 512 megabytes (chipset limitation). AGP, 5PCI, AMR, built-in video and sound, but no network.
 

 
 
Using it as a starting point, decided to collect a computer for the games of the late nineties - the beginning of zero. That is, late DOS and early Windows (9x-ME), for iron - about 2001-2002.
 
XP on this hardware can be installed, of course, but decided to still stay on Windows 98SE - for authenticity. In those days, XP was just emerging and quite a few people were holding NT /2000 for work and internet and 9x for games. The majority of home users did not bother and used up to the release of XP only 9x. I also decided not to bother. Plus, I was wondering if it is possible to use the system on Windows 98 today as a full-fledged computer (taking into account the iron, of course).
 
 
The processor on the motherboard was Pentium ???EB - Coppermine core, 256 KB cache, 133 MHz bus, multiplier, respectively 7.5. Almost the maximum that this board supports (1100 and 1133 were rare, so it can be considered just a maximum).
 

 
 
But I wanted to still plug in the processor on the core of Tualatin. Although the motherboard does not support it, but tearing and bending and closing several legs, it was possible to install Tualatin on a board with Coppermine support. Yes, you could dig a soldering iron in the socket, but the processor is not so sorry to pick like a motherboard. Because in parallel with the games with the available hardware decided to look for Celeron Tualatin. Pentium 3 Tualatin was less common and today they are asking for a lot of money for it, and you can still buy them for 1-2 dollars.
 
As a result, there was a lottery, and not one - but with the motherboard Chaintech 6OJA3T, native Intel cooler and 512 megabytes of memory. There was a couple of blown capacitors on the board, but it started fine, so I decided to use it as a platform.
 
First, 6 PCI versus 5 for Intel. Secondly, support tualatin without games with a soldering iron. Well, thirdly - support for overclocking without bending the legs of the processor. And how does it - to have a Celeron and not put it on the bus 133? At 150-170 to put is not necessary, but at 133 - just necessary. :)
 

 
 
The konderers quickly re-soldered and I slowly began to assemble.
 
 

Memory

 
Memory decided to leave the one that came with the changetheh. In extreme cases, I will change, there is a small stock.
 

 
 

Case

 
Then we had to choose the case. I did not want to use the old one, because I just chose the oldest one that was easy to assemble.
 
It turned out to be one of the close relatives of Inwin S500 - already with a hole on the side opposite the processor (that is, taking into account pentium4 was made), but still without USB ports on the front panel. S50? in my opinion. I think that this is moderately authentic for the beginning of zero. The more authentic cans are simply more authentic, in which it is disgusting to dig.
 

 

 
 
There was no recycle bin for hard drives, but this is not a problem at this stage. In the end, either I'll add from another enclosure, or I'll put the disk in another place - still, there are no plans to put a large number of disks.
 
The power unit took the first one from the workers. Some Chinese for 300 watts, in the "plus" - a connector for powering the monitor, also a sign of that era.
 
Blanks for the motherboard was not normal - the one that stood on the old case, it just will not get into new cases - the mounting is different. Because in the store they have unearthed a universal one, only a hole for the network cable, but it's not scary. Better than leaving a hole.
 

 
 

Video card

 
Now we had to choose a video card. The ideal choice would be Voodoo4 or Voodoo? but I do not have them. Voodoo? however, too.
 
Because of the available, probably, it would be worthwhile to take the GeForce FX5200 or Radeon 9200SE as the newest and fastest. Maybe then I'll come to them.
 

 
 
But so far I decided to take the Matrox G400. Because Matrox. This is a budget version with 16 megabytes of memory, but with the ability to connect two monitors. It now has at least two outputs on all video cards. And in those days, connecting a second monitor to the same card was a rare opportunity, but for a matrox it's almost standard. Plus, the matrox was still making video cards with four video outputs.
 

 
 
And in a couple of matroksu decided to put 3dfx Voodoo 2. Because Voodoo. Well, the native launch of the time games of 3dfx domination.
 

 
 
Who does not remember /do not know - in the second half of the nineties there was the notion of a 3D accelerator, a board that only dealt with processing 3D graphics. It was put in addition to the existing video card. I could exchange data via the PCI bus, or connect "on the lumen" - the monitor was switched to the accelerator, and the accelerator was connected to the video card by a cable-jumper.
 

 
 

Sound card

 
With games under Windows, the sound card is not very important, except that in terms of support for various 3D sound APIs it was possible to pick up (EAX, A3D) and as MIDI files playback (FM synthesis or Wave Table, the latter is better). But just in Windows the difference in the quality of MIDI playback began to wear off, the cards began to use program tables of samples in the computer's RAM. Today the difference between the built-in sound box and some audigy is, of course, there, but not as huge as between FM synthesis and Wave Table cards in DOS.
 
So the main task when choosing a card for a retro PC is normal support in pure DOS (and not in the DOS-session of Windows). Usually, for these purposes, sound cards are taken on the ISA bus - they often try to find the Sound Blaster AWE32 /6? if it is impossible - that will turn up on the arm starting with ESS688.
 
In my case, ISA on the motherboard is not present, it means it was necessary to choose among the cards with the PCI bus and the driver under DOS. Here people are divided into two camps - some like Aureal Vortex? others - Creative Sound Blaster Live!
 
I do not belong to any camp, I dance from having. I have some kind of C-Media 8738 - the most popular budget PCI-sound box in our time, a card on Aureal Vortex AU8810 - a low-cost version of vortex and SB Live! 5.1 Digital (SB0220). Itself chose SB Live! This is a fairly late model, because it is rumored that with DOS support, not everything is good, but in other places they say that everything is fine and even offer drivers. Need to try.
 

 
 

Network card

 
There is no built-in network card, so one slot needs to be spent on a discrete one. First tried to put 3COM 3C905C, but it somehow crooked drivers. I was too lazy to understand, therefore I replaced it with the first Realtek 8139 that I got without questioning. Maybe then I'll go back to trick, but for now the realtec is quite happy.
 

 
 

Additional expansion cards

 
There are three free slots - so you can add a lot of things.
 
First of all, additional USB ports will be added, two built-in little even for the retro PC.
 
But in the second and third turn there are no ideas or need to add anything. You can use a SATA controller, but I do not see the point.
 
It is possible that somewhere in the future SCSI will be added. Maybe another Voodoo2 for SLI-mode, if you can catch somewhere. They say that several years ago they sold 300 rubles for 300 rubles, but now they have obviously moved to the status of antiques and start somewhere from 3000.
 
 

Removable storage media

 
Optical drive. It would be fun to get a multi-disc changer, but they, it seems, only in the form of CD-readers were made. And I already wanted to read DVD. Usually in those days there was a writing drive for CD and reading for DVD. Somewhere in 200? combo drives (CD reading, DVD recording), mass DVD writings have already spread around somewhere from 2005-2006. And then still it was necessary to choose, what to you the standard is necessary DVD + R or DVD-R.
 
CD-writer for authenticity, I can find, on the shelf is a couple - Teac (who remembers) and NEC. But the DVD-reader is worse. But there is a Toshibov combo in 2003. But if you take the 2003 - that is, the Pioneer DVD-writer of the same time. So what to choose was what, it was necessary to be determined by efficiency.
 

 
 
And in general, to put exactly authentic ancient iron in this case, I do not see much sense - unless it is expensive as a memory or it is worth collecting exactly that. Some even complicate their task and look for unopened boxes with details of those times. And find, oddly enough. And then they look for an unopened box with 98 Windows or even with a dos. :)
 
So in the end I decided not to fool myself and not to go through old devices in search of workable ones, but simply took exactly the live NEC, like 2005.
 
 
Drives for floppy disks. ??? "I do not have any floppy disks or drives, so I do not even look at this side, but I must put ?5" on it, in those days it was impossible without a floppy drive. Flash drives just started to go to the people in 2002-200? the volume was small, speed and reliability, too. My first flash drive was 32 megabytes (like EasyDisk), I worked a little more than a year. Writing drives were not all at all, and the blanks were not particularly cheap. So the voluminous information was dragged on hard disks (and hardcoders often had a hard drive in a mobile rack, and small things were carried with floppy disks.) Initially, it was decided to put Alps, but as it turned out, the disk drive is placed without a front panel - and I just is Mitsumi with a broken socket.  

 
 

The hard disk is

 
Here, some prefer to use CF or SD memory cards via an IDE adapter, but I did some experiments and decided that with normal hard disks only SSD can be compared. But SSD is rational to put only for a permanent job at the computer, and for a sporadic inclusion the hard drive will come down.
 
Seagate Barracuda ???GB. This is, of course, a somewhat later disk, but it does not at least raise questions in terms of state. Works, SMART is clean. There are several disks for 40 gigabytes of 2003-200? but they do not want to connect with them once again. Let them lie. And any earlier small things 2-20 gigabytes I have long ago let on magnets.
 

 
 

Assembling

 
There are no subtleties, it's not DIP'y in the early 386 stuck. It's no different from today's computers, only bigger boards and wider trains, but the cards themselves are much smaller than the current video cards.
 
The hard drive due to lack of a basket got into the external 3.5 "bay and there were two free ???"
left.  

 
 
At 133 megahertz the processor got up without questions, the frequency became 1.6GHz, but for normal operation it was necessary to raise a little bit the voltage.
 
After that, the computer stayed night in prime9? all tests passed without errors. The memory also runs at 133MHz.
 
Above the base frequency decided not to raise, and so normally it turned out.
 
 
As a result, we got Celeron Tualatin 1.6GHz, 512 MB RAM, Matrox G400 + Voodoo? SB Live! 5.? HDD 80GB.
 
In 200? if my memory does not change, I had AMD Duron 700MHz, 256 MB RAM, Riva TNT2 M64 and a 60GB disk. The sound machine, in my opinion, was Yamaha 724. The main OS was then Windows 200? 98 was for toys, and XP as a test - to go to it or not.
 
 

Installation of OS

 
The installation was ok withthe Windows 98SE startup disk. The distribution, however, was not the "classic J3QQ4". :)
 

 
And not the one in the photo. ;)
 
Some recommend that you use the 98IF assembly when installing Windows 9? but I dislike other people's assemblies. It hurts a lot in them too much. If you use it, it's yours. Well, or the original, and then add the necessary.
 
Next I had to start installing drivers and necessary software, but at this stage I decided to complicate my life. And instead of finding and downloading distributions on the main computer, I thought, "What, what did I collect - not a computer? Let him shake everything himself. "
 
Although for the beginning still
issued a fishing rod
threw the necessary minimum in the form of a driver for the video card, the archiver and the driver of the network card, so as not to hit very much into purism and search for a network bus that 98SE will understand without additional drivers.
 
 
But about this in the next part.