The official "Brag About Your Computer" thread
Posted: April 22nd, 2007, 4:10 pm
Note: This thread was split from this thread.
It's a bit off topic, but I've been asked about the new computer, and it's good enough that I guess I can brag about it.
Athlon 64 3200+
Asus A8N-SLI SE
2 GB OCZ Premium DDR-400
MSI GeForce 8500GT OC 256 MB
SoundBlaster Live! 5.1
Maxtor 200 GB SATA
OCZ PowerStream 520W
Lian Li PC60 (I think)
I'm A+ certified, so I build my own computers. I bought the Lian Li case years ago because it's a light aluminum case with a removable backplane (essential if you ever change the motherboard), four quiet fans and a dust filter. I replaced the fans with SilenX 80 mm 14 db 28 cfm fans. They're still below the threshold for human hearing, but they move more air.
I've also had the RAM, the power supply and the sound card for years. I picked up the hard drive for $100 about 2 years ago. All of that stuff was in my Athlon XP systems (first an MSI board, then the crappy Asus board I replaced it with when I put the MSI in the computer I built for my mother).
My mother found an Abit AV8 motherboard for $2 at Goodwill in December. It's a Socket 939 enthusiast board with SATA, FireWire, four dual channel DDR slots, and AGP 8x. That last part is a bit surprising. It's probably one of the best AGP motherboards ever. Anyway, it was time for an upgrade, so I picked up the last Socket 939 CPU they had at my local computer store, an Athlon 64 3200+. I figured I was getting a whole new computer for less than $100. Unfortunately the board was unstable and died in January. I finally found a scorch mark near one of the capacitors, which explained why it was given to Goodwill.
So, I had already bought the Athlon 64 3200+, so I bought another Socket 939 motherboard, but it's still not a computer without a graphics card, and I have never owned a PCI Express graphics card. Now that I have the card, and the fans, we're ready to roll again.
Another reason why I bought the Lian Li case is because it has four 5.25" bays. I've been filling them with a removable IDE hard drive, one DVD writer and one DVD reader, and a 5.25" floppy drive. As a technician who does a lot of work at a local high school, I had an abundant supply of small, obsolete hard drives available to me, and I could put a different OS on each one. I could swap between Windows 9x and Windows XP, or Linux, or whatever else I might want, just by swapping hard drives. My plan was to get into virtualization and load other operating systems from other hard drives, rather than partitioning an internal drive. The problem is the hard drives aren't easy to swap, they have a high failure rate, they use up a lot of power, and create heat and noise.
The solution is a $25 CF-to-IDE adapter that sits in an expansion slot (you can also get a bracket it to put it in a drive bay). I have a few spare CF cards, and they're pretty cheap to acquire. Swapping them is easy, a stack of them hardly takes up any space, they use almost no power, create no noise or heat, and they're way faster than hard drives. I plan to have a Windows 95 card, Windows 98, ME, XP, etc. That way I can load any OS, either as the host or as a virtual OS, so that I can test compatibility on any OS whenever I want. Oh yeah, one of those cards is going to be just DOS, Windows 3.1, and every game on this site. Sweet!
The CF-to-IDE adapter is also a great way to keep a real DOS gaming computer alive. DOS will only recognize partitions up to 2 GB, and the BIOS from motherboards of that age won't recognize today's massive hard drives. Hard drives that are old enough to work in a Pentium-class computer are at very high risk of getting bad sectors, or failing completely. Anything that moves will eventually fail. 2 GB CF cards are inexpensive, and they have no moving parts. Now, other than your CD-ROM drive and possibly a fan, you've removed the moving parts from your classic computer. Hard drive access will be instantaneous, and your CF card will last for decades. I'll be adding a tutorial on how to build a real DOS gaming computer with a CF card for a hard drive shortly.
It's a bit off topic, but I've been asked about the new computer, and it's good enough that I guess I can brag about it.
Athlon 64 3200+
Asus A8N-SLI SE
2 GB OCZ Premium DDR-400
MSI GeForce 8500GT OC 256 MB
SoundBlaster Live! 5.1
Maxtor 200 GB SATA
OCZ PowerStream 520W
Lian Li PC60 (I think)
I'm A+ certified, so I build my own computers. I bought the Lian Li case years ago because it's a light aluminum case with a removable backplane (essential if you ever change the motherboard), four quiet fans and a dust filter. I replaced the fans with SilenX 80 mm 14 db 28 cfm fans. They're still below the threshold for human hearing, but they move more air.
I've also had the RAM, the power supply and the sound card for years. I picked up the hard drive for $100 about 2 years ago. All of that stuff was in my Athlon XP systems (first an MSI board, then the crappy Asus board I replaced it with when I put the MSI in the computer I built for my mother).
My mother found an Abit AV8 motherboard for $2 at Goodwill in December. It's a Socket 939 enthusiast board with SATA, FireWire, four dual channel DDR slots, and AGP 8x. That last part is a bit surprising. It's probably one of the best AGP motherboards ever. Anyway, it was time for an upgrade, so I picked up the last Socket 939 CPU they had at my local computer store, an Athlon 64 3200+. I figured I was getting a whole new computer for less than $100. Unfortunately the board was unstable and died in January. I finally found a scorch mark near one of the capacitors, which explained why it was given to Goodwill.
So, I had already bought the Athlon 64 3200+, so I bought another Socket 939 motherboard, but it's still not a computer without a graphics card, and I have never owned a PCI Express graphics card. Now that I have the card, and the fans, we're ready to roll again.
Another reason why I bought the Lian Li case is because it has four 5.25" bays. I've been filling them with a removable IDE hard drive, one DVD writer and one DVD reader, and a 5.25" floppy drive. As a technician who does a lot of work at a local high school, I had an abundant supply of small, obsolete hard drives available to me, and I could put a different OS on each one. I could swap between Windows 9x and Windows XP, or Linux, or whatever else I might want, just by swapping hard drives. My plan was to get into virtualization and load other operating systems from other hard drives, rather than partitioning an internal drive. The problem is the hard drives aren't easy to swap, they have a high failure rate, they use up a lot of power, and create heat and noise.
The solution is a $25 CF-to-IDE adapter that sits in an expansion slot (you can also get a bracket it to put it in a drive bay). I have a few spare CF cards, and they're pretty cheap to acquire. Swapping them is easy, a stack of them hardly takes up any space, they use almost no power, create no noise or heat, and they're way faster than hard drives. I plan to have a Windows 95 card, Windows 98, ME, XP, etc. That way I can load any OS, either as the host or as a virtual OS, so that I can test compatibility on any OS whenever I want. Oh yeah, one of those cards is going to be just DOS, Windows 3.1, and every game on this site. Sweet!
The CF-to-IDE adapter is also a great way to keep a real DOS gaming computer alive. DOS will only recognize partitions up to 2 GB, and the BIOS from motherboards of that age won't recognize today's massive hard drives. Hard drives that are old enough to work in a Pentium-class computer are at very high risk of getting bad sectors, or failing completely. Anything that moves will eventually fail. 2 GB CF cards are inexpensive, and they have no moving parts. Now, other than your CD-ROM drive and possibly a fan, you've removed the moving parts from your classic computer. Hard drive access will be instantaneous, and your CF card will last for decades. I'll be adding a tutorial on how to build a real DOS gaming computer with a CF card for a hard drive shortly.
) swapping the ancient 500M hard-disk out for a 2G Flash-Card would great!
