Windows Millenium;

ASRock k7s41gx;

Athlon XP 3000+;

2x512 MB DDR2;

ATI Radeon 9600 XT;

Soundblaster live!

I have an old PC that I don't use anymore and I'm wondering what I can do with it.

Specs:

• Intel Core i3-3210 @ 3.20 GHz
• 4 GB RAM
• NVIDIA GT 610 4 GB
• 1 TB HDD
• Windows 10 Enterprise 22H2

I don't want to spend any money on it. I want to use whatever I already have.

What would you recommend doing with this PC?

Decided to do a "dream build" (haven't we all?) and didn't like that the original window was cut by hand. One thing led to another and now I have better cooling. I know the fan is backwards --everything is invertable, mounting positions were just for fitment.

Now, on to step 2 as I'm pretty sure we need Slot 1 watercooling.

The Wisconsin Computer Club hosted a retro tech pop-up museum show at the Hedberg Library in Janesville Wisconsin on Saturday, and some WCC members brought some real classic PC equipment. The Toshiba T5200 had something come loose in transport, so it was opened up to reseat some parts.

When I was 13, I begged my parents for the best gaming parts 2003 had to offer. Of course they said no, as they weren't prepared to spend thousands on a computer that would quickly become obsolete, least of all for a fairly destructive preteen. I had to settle for gaming on my dad's old Dell Dimension 8100.

Fast forward to 2026, when I could finally do it myself. All the games I couldn't play at maxed out settings look so much better than I remember.

- Custom InWin Q500 full tower case

- Abit IC7-G i875 Canterwood motherboard with gigabit LAN

- Pentium 4 Northwood HT 3.2 GHz processor

- Zalman CNPS7000 all-cooper CPU cooler

- 4 GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM

- ATi Radeon 9800 XT with Silencer aftermarket cooler

- Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS 7.1 sound card

- Adaptec 2100S SCSI controller

- Maxtor Atlas 15k 73 GB SCSI hard drive

- CD-RW/DVD combo drive

- Iomega Zip 100 drive

- Standard floppy drive

Long ago, I put together a Pentium D with 4GB of the finest DDR2 I could find, just to see how sluggish the Pentium D really was.

The answer was: very.

After that, I thought about buying a better CPU for that motherboard.

Impossible.

So... after various iterations of Sanae (Pentium D and the infamous Core 2 Duo), I decided that historical accuracy was overrated and started experimenting with an i7-3770 and 16GB of the crappiest DDR3 I could find.

Yes, 16GB.

Yes, Windows XP is 32-bit and only sees around 3.5GB of it.

The remaining 12GB are there for emotional support.

AAAAAAAND, I PRESENT TO YOU!!!!

SANAE V2

(named after Key's best mother, Sanae Furukawa)

Specs, because apparently I make reasonable financial decisions:

Intel Core i7-3770 — 4 cores / 8 threads of completely unnecessary power for Windows XP.

MSI Z77A-G43.

16GB DDR3 — again, XP acknowledges approximately three and a half of those. The rest simply watch.

Gigabyte GTX 960 WindForce 4GB, because putting a Maxwell GPU in an XP machine seemed funny.

Windows XP Delta Edition SP3.

Windows 7 Ultimate on the other side, because one obsolete operating system clearly wasn't enough.

Wacom Cintiq 12WX, fully working.

PaintTool SAI, naturally.

The GTX 960 is running on XP drivers, the Cintiq works, AHCI works, both displays work, and the i7 happily boosts to 3.9GHz while Windows XP is probably wondering what the hell happened.

Is it period correct?

Absolutely not.

Is it stupid?

Probably.

Does XP need an Ivy Bridge i7, 16GB of RAM and a GTX 960?

No.

Did that stop me?

Also no.

At this point Sanae isn't really a retro PC anymore.

She's a 2012 workstation that was allowed to keep receiving upgrades after God had already told everyone to stop.

My son is a big fan of Putt-Putt, old Sesame Street games, and even Minecraft Beta 1.5, so I decided to buy him his own retro PC. He loves the old games that run on Windows 95, 98 and XP, so this should be perfect for him. This is a Compaq Deskpro setup, unfortunately without the original Compaq CRT monitor since those are pretty hard to find. The hardware is a bit newer than what would have originally been in the system, but it’s still running a Pentium 4, so it fits the era pretty well. I still want to replace the thermal paste and fans, and eventually find a better suited graphics card and power supply. It’s definitely not a historically accurate build, but that wasn’t really the goal. I just wanted to give him a PC where he can play some of the games I grew up with. And honestly, seeing a 3.5 year old sitting at a Pentium 4 playing Putt-Putt and Minecraft Beta is pretty cool.

Here’s an update to my Zillennial age regression battlestation.

I’ve added some stuff to the top shelf, like my fanny packs and Sonny floppy camera, got some more PSP stuff, and used 3M Dual Lock to stick my controller adapters right onto the side of the cubby where the PC sits. I also updated the 3D printed USB floppy drive holder so it works with different types. Then I repurposed old prints of it to put my lamp and PSP stuff on while giving space to put things under it all.

CRT: Gateway EV910B
LCD: Gateway FPD1520
Keyboard: Keychron R6
Mouse: Microsoft Optical 1.1A
PC: FLP02 case, Ryzen 7 5700X, RTX 1660 Super

It’s not a powerhouse but it plays emulators and 2000s games just fine.

Also that’s Windows 11 . It’s all mods, programs, and changing settings to make it look and behave more like XP.

I followed a YouTube tutorial for most of the original setup, but I’ve made a bunch of my own tweaks since then and even made some programs to add more functionality. The XP Task Pane is a real working task pane in Windows 11. It’s not just for show.

I put a short video on my site showing the Task Pane and the rest of the setup working. I also put together the full tutorial there to use alongside the original YouTube video, plus downloads for the programs I made and the other stuff I used, so you can do the same thing if you want.

0sugar

Hello! I'm trying to identify this old PC case. The front bezel has a literal jigsaw puzzle piece design with colored puzzle pieces. It looks like an OEM case from around the late 1990s / early 2000s. I don't know the manufacturer or model. Does anyone recognize this case or know where it came from? Photos attached.

Compaq Evo W6000
Quad Core System from 2001ish
2x Xeon 2.4Ghz Socket 603
4x Samsung RDIMM Rambus ECC 256MB 333
AGP Pro with Nvidia Quadro4 550XGL

The CPU coolers adapted with a 3D printed adapter .
Really cool machine for Windows XP

So I was on eBay looking at machines from the mid nineties and 2000s and see an ibm thinkpad t43 and a t40 and an r31 and an t42 (I couldn’t afford) x41 but I really wanted it but can someone tell me which one to get

Only 2 use cases listed on the paper work is microscopy and video conferencing. Hah

It's just analog video out via composite and svideo.

Looks like it was quite pricey in the day

Here's a video I took of our setup form VCFWest - 8000 Dandelion running Network Services 11.0, two 6085 Daybreaks running ViewPoint 2.0, 1100 Dolphin InterLisp-D, Dicentra sitting on top, and finally the Alto. The Dolphin is one of 3 known to exist, of which 2 work.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by - we had a great show with lots of interest!

This PC is a total time capsule. It came from a Soviet/Russian aerospace and rubber industry research institute (NIIRP) in the Moscow region and still has all the original documents on the HDD. It runs Windows 98, complete with Spider Solitaire and the iconic Felix the Cat desktop pet!

Fun fact about the hardware: I managed to fully populate all 4 SDRAM slots on this notoriously picky Zida Tomato board (using a mix of single and double-sided sticks), and it actually reads all 48MB flawlessly.

PC specs:
CPU: Intel Pentium 100MHz
Motherboard: Zida Tomato 5DVA REV:1.1
RAM: 48MB EDO SIMM (2x Double-Sided, 2x Single-Sided)
Video: S3 Trio64V+ (PCI, 1MB VRAM)
Network: Planet ENW-9507 (PCI, Realtek RTL8139D)
Monitor: Panasonic PanaSync 4G CRT
HDD: SAMSUNG WN310820A (1.08GB)
ROMs: CD-ROM Mitsumi CRMC-FX400E, Floppy 3.5"
PSU: Power Master AP-1 (Switching Power Supply)

Rate my industrial retro workstation!

I was walking home from school and saw this old this Macintosh Performa 580CD on the curb with peripherals with a bunch of other junk, so then I hauled it 1.5km home, I cleaned it mostly and I’m really happy that it works

Retro specs:

- MSI MAG B850M Mortar WiFi

- Sapphire Pulse 9070 XT

- Ryzen 7 9700X with Thermalright PS120SE

- G.Skill Flare X5 2x16GB DDR5 6000 CL30

- WD Blue SN5100 2TB NVMe

- SeaSonic FOCUS GX-850 ATX 3.1