PC Old and New
Welcome to my page on Single Board Computers and their usage with the Amiga. I will be exploring legacy PC’s (DOS, WIN 3.1 & Windows XP) along with Raspberry Pi’s, Banana Pi, and LattePanda and possibly more.
The grandaddy of these PC Projects will be a 486 DX Sound System
- Full Tower New Case
- AAzza DataExpert 4045 Green 486WB Award BIOS Motherboard AMD 486 DX4 CPU 100 (Mint Condition) 16MB RAM
- EIDE2300PLUS Promise EIDE 2300 Plus VL-Bus Controller
- Gravis Ultrasound Clone Sound Card – XGS 16 DreamBlaster Addon
- Adlib Gold Sound Card Stereo Surround Addon Module
- PCMIDI 8Bit MPU 401 with Roland MT 32 McCake Emulator
- 10BT Ethernet
- Gotek Drive
- 52X CD ROM
There are also two Gateways I am dressing up, both are the same model of Gateway 2000 486 DX2 66 Cirica 1995 and will be sold for around $700 Each.
- Gateway Motherboard
- New CD-ROM Drive – TBD
- Gateway 3 1/2 1.4MB FD
- CD-Rom
- Physical 500MB WD HD
- 2GB CF HD (Card Included and Configured) /Goitek FD Drive Emulator
- PicoGus
- SB 16
- Diamond Stealth 64 Video VRAM 2 S3 Vision968 PCI Video Card Rev 07B
- 10/100 Ethernet Card
- Copy of Original Gateway CD with WFW 3.11
- DOS 6.22
The HD and Floppy will be disconnected in these two PC’s, however they will be provided to the buyer. The machines have been cleaned up the and tested. These will both make quite nice gaming PC’s.
I also happen to have been working on a few XP era retro Systems.
Custom System 1 in the gallery above was purchased fully built, however, I opted to make some changes on the video and sound cards. Here is how the system is configured right now;
- Gigabyte G31 motherboard with Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo 3.1GHz CPU
- 2GB Hynix DDR2 800 RAM
- EVGA Geforce 8800GTX 768MB Video Card
- Sound Blaster X-fi Sound Card
- DVD +/- RW drive (the brand may vary)
- Lexar 256GB SSD (partitioned for both xp and 98) (new)
- Thermaltake 500W PSU (new)
- Copper Heat Pipe CPU fan (new)
- Fractal Mid Tower ATX Case (new)
For Custom XP System 2 I am collecting parts, I hope to find an ASUS Dual PCI Express for SLI Video Cards, then two Gforce 8800 GTX like in System 1, Sound Blast X-Fi and a nicer mini tower case.
I also have two Dell Optiplex Systems, however, I am readying them to resell with XP on them, better Sound Cards like a SB 16 Vibra, and some better video cards. These are getting close now. I was able to mod the cooling system on one and get a GForce 8800 GT 256MB RAM running along with a new upgraded power supply. While the mod is a wee bit ugly and required butchering the video card a little as well. It works wonderfully. More on these later, however, again I will likely sell both!
So what we end up with in the two Dell OptiPlex 755’s are as follows;
Dell 1- Selling for $650
- Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo 3.1GHz CPU
- 8GB Hynix DDR2 RAM
- EVGA Geforce 8800GT 256MB Video Card
- Sound Blaster X-fi Sound Card (Excellent)
- Dell DVD +/- RW drive
- 500 GB HD Drive with Windows XP SP3
- HiMaster 550W PSU (new)
- Original Cooling – Vent Modified to fit Video Card and Cool Both
- Planned GoTek FD Emulator
- Newly applied Artic CPU Paste
- Case cleaned up
- Drivers Updated
- Copies of Original OptiPlex 755 System CD’s
Dell 1- Selling for $600
- Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo 3.1GHz CPU
- 8GB Hynix DDR2 RAM
- BFG Geforce 7900GT 256MB Video Card
- Sound Blaster Live Sound Card
- Dell DVD +/- RW drive
- 500 GB HD Drive with Windows XP SP3
- HiMaster 550W PSU (new)
- Original Cooling
- 3 1/2 1.4MB Floppy Drive
- Planned GoTek FD Emulator
- Newly applied Artic CPU Paste
- Case cleaned up
- Drivers Updated
- Original OptiPlex 755 System CD’s
Differences Highlighted in Green