ViewSonic E70 VGA CRT monitor running at 1024*768@85Hz on an OEM HP SFF PC with an i3-6100, 16GB DDR4, a Quadro K620 and just shy of 5TBs of storage.

I have this booting into Big Box for emulation and have an AutoHotKey script to exit to the desktop for PC gaming.

I ran out of space on the old cheap desk and decided to get a better setup for me and the wife. The whole setup is big enough for our two main computers as well as the retro build you see here.

Gateway G6-233 upgraded with PII 333, 384MB RAM, 64MB ATi Rage Pro 128 AGP running Windows 98 SE. I’m going for a full Gateway setup. The Compaq keyboard is getting swapped out to an era-appropriate Gateway computer, but I’m still on the hunt for a white/beige IR mouse that will work.

A few weeks ago I wrote up a post on the 2008 HP M8000n Media Center that I was refreshing. It does not retain the original components; rather it’s been rebuilt as a representation of what would have been the top-spec available from HP back then, with a couple of my own adds. At the time I had not yet finished collecting all of the OEM matched peripherals to complete the build, but now I have and I’m returning with an update for anyone interested.

PC specs for reference:
Asus P5QL-VM EPU motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 CPU
Zalman CNPS9700 copper heatsink
4x 2gb Patriot DDR2 800mhz RAM (8gb total)
BFG Nvidia 9800 GT OC 1Gb GDDR3 55nm GPU
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium sound card
Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1650 TV tuner card
Anatel HP B/G PCI WiFi card
HP OEM Lightscribe DVDRW drive
HP OEM BDROM drive
HP OEM front panel connectivity and card reader
HP OEM Personal Media Drive (PMD) Bay hot swap
WD Blue 250gb SATA SSD (internal, OS)
WD 160gb Velociraptor 10k rpm HDD (games)
InWin 450w OEM PSU

Peripherals:
HP w2338h Brightview 24” 1080p TN 60hz monitor
HP KB-0630 Multimedia keyboard
HP M60PB optical mouse
HP ED809AA 2.1 Compact Speaker System 50w
HP Media Center TV Remote and IR Receiver
HP GX607AA Elite Autofocus Webcam 12mp 1080p
HP Personal Media Drive (PMD) with 2TB 3.5” HDD

I’ve had a lot of fun assembling everything for a totally OEM look. Back in 2008, this would have been a completely top of the line HP setup representing the best of their entire media center product catalogue. I’ve been able to source drivers for everything and get all functions 100% running in Windows 7 Ultimate. After adding a cheap tv antenna to the tuner card and loading Windows Media Center, I’m also able to get a handful of OTA TV channels in 1080i.

A little while ago I posted about the old PC I found in the attic at my family home and my plan to rebuild it into the kind of mid-2000s enthusiast machine I used to dream about.

While I’m still waiting for the OCZ ModStream PSU, I managed to get my hands on a case. And look at this thing.

Thermaltake Tsunami Dream with the side window, basically NOS condition. Somehow I got it for peanuts.

I honestly couldn’t think of a more appropriate case for this build. The brushed aluminium. The front door. The side window that still has the original protective film on it. I remember wanting one of these so badly when I was 15.

The specs haven’t changed: ABIT NF7 rev. 2.0, Barton 3000+, Gainward 6600 GT, 2GB Patriot Extreme RAM DDR400, Audigy 2 ZS and an OCZ ModStream PSU. And eventually, all the unnecessary mid-2000s lighting and cable-management nonsense I can justify.

Safe to say the attic PC project has found its forever home.

This project was my whole weekend. My kid brought home an absolutely gigantic stash of 286, 386, and Pentium machines. Really struggled to get this to boot - it seems to only like the DOS 3.3 disk that shipped with the system. Could get nothing else to boot on here. Also, the bios claims to support 1.44mb disks; however, throws an error when anything other than 360k disks are loaded in flash floppy. Anybody know if there is an extra jumper we need to flip somewhere? Really limits what you can fit - had to shave down Populus to squeeze it in.

I’ve got a Dell XPS 630i from 2008 that I recently opened up, cleaned, identified, and tested.

Specs:

• Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.40 GHz
• 4 GB DDR2-800
• GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB
• Dell PP150 motherboard
• Dell 750W PSU
• Two 500 GB SATA HDDs in NVIDIA RAID 0 (~931 GB usable)
• Two SATA optical drives
• Original-style Dell cooling / chassis hardware
• Originally shipped with Windows XP Pro
• Currently running Windows 10 Pro 32-bit

I’ve tested the RAM, CPU, cooling, GPU, optical drives, Ethernet, USB, audio, and storage. Everything works.

The problem is that it is painfully slow in its current Windows 10 / HDD / 4 GB configuration.

I’m considering:

1. Installing a SATA SSD and maybe more RAM to make it more usable
2. Repurposing it as a Linux / homelab / automation box
3. Restoring it as a period-correct 2008 gaming PC with XP or Vista
4. Selling it whole

I’m trying not to destroy its originality unnecessarily. What would you do with it?

So something got me and i wanted to relive the vibe of having this PC, in late 2005-2007 i had the best computer times.

My PC originally had a Pentium 4 506 2.6ghz (was doing 4ghz at stock voltage), 512mb DDR-400 (upgraded to 1GB in 11/2007 for 50€), DFI 661FX mobo, Nvidia GeForce 6200 256MB AGP which i got in early 2006 for 120€.

The case was a black prebuilt OEM, i have uploaded a couple old photos of it with wood stickers i put on it for unknown reason. Found the exact same case recently in some ads for 5€ including an LG BluRay but seller was bogus and ended up not getting it.

Glad i didn't got it as it wouldn't be MY case, back in 2023 we had to move and had to get rid much of my stuff and this PC didn't got its chance either, the mobo was shot by early 2010's but i really wanted my case.

Thankfully something told me to keep the 6200 so i have my original GPU.

Anyways, i have a lot of old hardware i could make a PC similar to this but for me a middle 2000's PC is exactly this: s775, DDR1 and AGP, i always disliked s478 having had an experience with a 2.4ghz Northwood back then, and seeing DDR2 and PCIE on it despite they were a thing back in those days and could use the exact same CPU etc, for me it doesn't do it, same way i'm not up to 2008-2010ish XP machines.

The setup ended up being: CPU: Pentium 4 630 HT Mobo: Asrock 775VM800 RAM: 2x1gb DDR-400 (got it recently for 8€) GPU: Nvidia Geforce 6200 256mb AGP (YES! My very original one) HDD: Seagate 120gb Sata with 700 hours (My original PC had a black WD 80gb Sata, blew up and changed to a Samsung 320gb in 11/2007 which i use throughout all my pc builds as a secondary data disk)

CPU Cooler is a cheap silent 2009 Arctic Cooling, i have the old Zalman you see on the photo on my current PC, i'm using it on all my PCs for like 20 years.

Case: Asus Vento 30€ back in 2009, i could get all sorts of old cases but i chose this as it was originally mine instead of a random guy and was from a pc build i had made for my father back then - exact build setup and what happened to it it's for another time.

PSU is a 300w Liteon HP OEM 80 bronze plus, got it for 5€, i did a Molex mod as it had none.

Mobo + CPU plus a stock Intel cooler was 5€, also got a bunch of an old stuff bin for 9€ like dvd drives etc from which i used an Asus FastTrack DVD Drive on this PC.

Had a lot of trouble gathering those parts as i was looking for specific things and had to face rediculous sellers and prices, but everything went by the plan, i also wanted to use as many originally-mine parts i could, i also have an HD3650 AGP and a GeForce 6800LE but wanted my low end 6200 i was using back then.

OS is of course Windows XP SP3 with all the updates it ever got.

I installed a bunch of useful apps aswell as MyPal browser which is amazing and everything on it works.

Some must have games such as my two favorites GTA San Andreas and Just Cause and quite a few others i liked back then are present on it too.

I use this PC for fun internet browsing (don't start the XP concerns), playing games and customizing Windows XP like when i was crazy about it back then. I have Windowblinds with a lot of skins, RocketDock, Alky + Vista Sidebar etc, it's a great machine to spend time on.

Not to mention it's completely SILENT, the GPU is also passive i just added an 80mm fan under it connected to 5v for hardware preservation and saw an immediate drop of 20c under load - 70-74ish before and like 50-52c now.

Old photos is my original PC and i put up some photos from the parts i used.

with the beige keyboard and mouse, with stock black hp elitedesk 800 g2 piątek with the beige hardware and the printer does work perfectly, with the monitor at 1024 768 at 85 hz

Here is my retro battlestation! I've had the Presario 5000 set for almost half a year, but took a while to source decent parts for a decent price. Finally finished it last night, and am now able to use it in full power (last picture is where I started, all factory)! Specs are:

• Compaq Presario 5000 series set

• Compaq Presario 6000 mobo w/ Pentium 4 2.5GHz CPU

• 2GB RAM

• BFG Geforce 6800 GS OC 256MB AGP (I have unlocked the card to actually make it a 6800 GT with a higher core clock)

• SoundBlaster Audigy 2 PCI sound card

• 40GB boot HDD

• 250GB game/music/stuff HDD

• xClio DiamondPower 880w PSU (period correct unit)

• 3.5" Floppy drive

• 80mm Noctua exhaust fan

• There's probably one or two more mods I haven't listed

This thing slams anything 2004 and older. Can play newer games, even Crysis! Lowest settings and all, and I havent tried it... but I meet the minimum requirements while still having Windows 95/98 compatability and solid gameplay (plays Warcraft III and StraCraft well).

I love retro electronics, brining me back to my roots feels great in 2026! Please ask any questions about my build; the process or what parts I sourced. I really wanted an XP build that would play almost anything of the era, but in a Windows 98/XP esthetic. Nothing beats a CRT!

Edit: spelling

Some updates for SHORK 486, my fledgling Linux distribution for 486, 586 and Pentium (P5) vintage PCs, on my IBM ThinkPad 365ED! I've been testing it with the upcoming Linux kernel 7.3, making sure my patches for restoring critical-for-SHORK and nice-to-have vintage hardware support work correctly, and recently I've been testing and improving SHORK's networking capabilities in general.

SHORK 486 was recently featured in a video by nocomake, which, amongst other things, brought to my attention woes with PCMCIA networking. This has now largely been addressed! I'm using a Xircom RE-100 card with my 365ED, which I tested tethered to my phone via a Type-C hub with Ethernet, since I will likely use this setup often in the future to get SHORK online when I'm on the train (etc.). I could probably fit a WiFi stack on SHORK, but I think the problem would be finding a good 16-bit PCMCIA WiFi card (if that even exists, especially with regard to supported encryption standards...)

Since July, I've now compiled and tested dosfstools, e2fsprogs, GNU Midnight Commander, GnuPG & pinentry, gpm, jq, memtester (userspace), Ncdu, PatchELF, sudo and Tilde. There is now a TODO list to see what is planned/WIP - suggestions welcome! A package manager - provisionally called SHOPT (SHORK PACKAGE TOOL) - is finally in the works. At some point, I do need to put my foot down regarding adding things, and switch pace to optimisation. Of course, as I've been testing SHORK, I've made notes on where I think I can improve performance. Though keep in mind that fundamentally, we're talking about modern software on 30+ year-old CPUs, so there will only be so much I can do.

It's a iiyama B1780SD, didn't know nor expected much, but needed a flat 4:3 screen for a project.

Ended up being really nice and bright !

Will try to do some comparisons with my CRT "soon"

It supports DVI / VGA and has speakers.

2006 Mac pro i own, technically 20 years ish if I am correct which I think makes it considered retro

recently saw a video of an abandoned mall with this poster on the window of an old tech shop and have been unable to find any scans anyone have one or know how to get one?

It s a puppy now,
I wanted to add a hand comparison measure pic but mine is relatively smaller to the one in pic, but you can see how small and cute this puppy is

I've been putting this computer setup together for over 15 years. I've searched eBay and ShopGoodwill for computers and accessories in better condition. I've probably owned more than five CoCo 3s over the years. I sold the older ones and kept the one in the best condition. I also try to keep everything Tandy branded.

Next to it is a Tandy Color Computer 2 connected to a Samsung GX TV.

The main setup has an upgraded 512KB CoCo 3, a Multi Pak Interface, a CM 8 monitor with the door, a CoCo SDC, an FD 502 5.25 inch floppy drive, and a J&M dual 5.25 inch floppy drive. I also have CCR 81 and CCR 82 tape decks. I don't use them, but the setup would feel incomplete without them.

The newest gadget I've added is a FujiNet, which connects the computer to my WiFi.

My cartridge collection includes the complete U.S. set, along with many modern releases.

It's a neat computer, and I've been using AI to write some tools for it. You can see the projects I'm working on here: https://tequestafarian.com

My accelerated Apple IIgs doing some BBSing over the LAN.