Vintage PC's

[Rastus]

I have developed an interest in high performance vintage PC's.

It stems from my Asus T2P4 that I have had since 1996 and have maxxed it's performance. I have since acquired a top of the line 486 and maxxed it out too with the fastest and biggest ram and an overdrive.

I am looking for suggestions for other classes of PC's to play with.

What is the best 386 motherboard?

Best motherboard for a Celery 300a?

Best vintage dual processor motherboard?

Ideas for PII, or PIII are welcome.

I also need to match each computer with an appropriate video card.

 

[mettleh3d]

are you spending money for this hobby too? + why are you doing this?

 

[Rastus]

This hardware is very cheap. I'll spend say $10 on a mobo. I get a lot of this stuff for free also. It takes patience, but good things pop up for nothing or almost nothing if you keep your eyes open.

 

[cy7878]

collect systems, not parts. Start your collection with an original IBM PC.

 

[mettleh3d]

Clutter imo. when ur done assembling, then what? A good round of solitaire or 3d pinball? Clutter. =/

 

[theMan]

2d pinball? i thought this was vintage. look for some pre-dos computers. i have one in my basement.

 

[RalfHutter]

This should give you a good starting point.

 

[vegetation]

If you want to play with vintage stuff, then skip PC compatibles entirely and go with the fun machines of the 80s, such as C64, Apple //, Atari 800, Atari ST, Amiga, etc. PC's were zero fun to play around with during this era.

 

[dmw16]

I think this is a cool idea. Although I agree - in general collecting systems is cooler. However, I did buy some classic hardware for postarity (sp). I got a pair of Voodoo2 cards and a Voodoo1 and some other stuff.

 

[CrimsonChaos]

Man, the more I'm on AnandTech Forums, the more I realize how many bitter people there are in the world. The guy has a hobby, give him a break.

At any rate, I think the idea is pretty cool too. It'd be interesting to see what the "max" setup was for some of the older systems, and how they compare to today's systems. It'd also be neat to see a progression curve, to find out if progress has been slowing down or increasing at a torrid pace (percentage-wise). Though I'm not sure if you could get identical benchmarking software to run on all the systems.

Unfortunately, I have no advice for you - but good luck!

 

[Markfw]

I still have the case for the original 5-slot IBM PC (as opposed to the 8-slot post peopla have). If I know what they were woth 15 years ago, I would have kept the rest...

 

[Ze Mad Doktor]

The best motherboard for a Celeron 300A by far is the Abit BH6.

If you are getting a C300A you should just skip the PII as they are basically the same.

I keep an old 486 DX100 around. It's great for all the old games, QFG, Caesar 2, etc.

 

[IGBT]

..make me an offer on my Amiga 500!!

 

[Mrvile]

I'd have to suggest some old Apples and old IBM computers.

But personally I'd rather collect vintage computer PARTS. Since there's not much you can really do with an old vintage computer system, why not just collect some old, rare parts for hanging on the wall (eh) or just to have for good times. That way you don't have to worry about them breaking (most of them probably don't work anyway) and it would be a cheap hobby too, as computer parts REALLY depreciate over time.

 

[Toro 45]

Originally posted by: Ze Mad Doktor
The best motherboard for a Celeron 300A by far is the Abit BH6.

If you are getting a C300A you should just skip the PII as they are basically the same.

I keep an old 486 DX100 around. It's great for all the old games, QFG, Caesar 2, etc.

Agreed, the bh6 and the Celeron300 were the perfect combo and a Voodo video card would be the ticket

 

[Ze Mad Doktor]

Ah yes, everyone back then went either NVIDIA or 3dfx for their video cards. So I got my BH6/300A combo and what graphics card did I go for??? The Matrox G400. I got sold on that whole stupid "better 2d image quality" and "dual-head." That was the last card Matrox even remotely tried to market toward non-graphics industry people. Nowadays they are all crazy expensive and can handle like 16 monitors. To be honest I am surprised they didn't beat 3dfx to the junkyard by a good margin.