I’m starting on my journey trying to build my original windows 98 computer, an old Pentium III Gateway with a voodoo 3 3000.
Right now this is purely conceptional, and was wondering if any of you had any ideas on a good way to find this hardware without paying ridiculous Ebay scalper prices. I’ve been trolling around goodwill for a few months with no luck either.
Any advice would be appreciated, or if you have some hardware from that era you’d like to get rid of, I’d be happy to take off your hands, for money obviously.
Thanks everyone!
Build:
Gateway 4000684 A19243-207 Socket 370 Motherboard
SL5QV CPU Pentium 3 Intel® Pentium® III 1.00 1 GHz, 256K Cache, 100 MHz FSB
SD Ram (Not sure on this yet)
Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Creative Sound Blaster Live 5.1 PCI Sound Card SB0100
PCI networking card, probably intel.
Some IDE drive I have lying around
3.5 Floppy
CD Drive
Case - This is going to be super hard to find as I want to find the one I originally had (https://www.recycledgoods.com/gateway-tb3-performance-500-pentium-iii-500mhz-128mb-1-6gb-tower-computer/) Thats what it looked like, but it had something else where performance was)
Monitor - I actually have a gateway CRT
Keyboard - Found my original!
Mouse - Trying to find a gateway ball mouse thats not disgusting, lol.
Yeah, I get you. I have revisited many old machines. C64, Amiga 600, 1200 and Amiga cd32. After playing a few old games I sell them and go back to emulators.
What’s nice about Windows is how easy it is for publishers to rerrlease old games. I own all the games I mentioned above on Steam or GOG. It probably means I never will rebuild my first proper gaming PC which had a cyrix CPU and the Voodoo2.
Truth be told I wonder how many old components survive? Check out Amibay many of the users are into other retro machines as well as Amiga.
I’ve definitely done emulators, or just playing the games I want to play on my newer hardware.
Specifically I play older blizzard titles (Diablo, Diablo II, Warcraft 1-3, etc) all of these have newer releases. But I’ve really been missing that old feel. And the nostalgia of playing those games with my dad on our old gateway.
I’ve never heard of Amibay, I’m definitely checking it out right now.
Seeing the OP talk of nostalgia and wanting to build a retro Windows 98 pc I can say this guy’s videos are awesome to watch …
I, myself, want a retro AMD K6 pc which was my original pc and I also just want something appropriate to run certain games I have that are older including some on floppy.
Totally get wanting to play games on what they originally were on. The frame rates and sound quality (or lack there of) are what I want for certain titles.
Best of luck with this build and future builds OP and give that guy’s channel a look. Very entertaining in that is is a quieter, not in your face show on YouTube.
Thanks man! I hope you get your k6. I’ve seen Phil’s videos they’re awesome. Let me know if you’re looking for any particular parts. If I run across them I can let you know.
rebuilding old pc’s has its rewards with the older os’s the crucial thing to remember is to make backup copies of your installation media because many of the os’s are no longer supported!
I currently have an old machine with dos 6 on it yet ( for games and some automation programming software).
also getting drivers may be an issue so you will have to do a lot of searching, when you find them make copies of the installation programs as well.
One I recommend is too look at different numbers on Graphics and sound cards and type those into Ebay, some times people don’t know what they have, or you can find a card that was built for say HP or Dell with higher or lower specs than the original at a lower price. My ATI Mach64 doesn’t have that anywhere on the card unless you look in just the right spot with a magnifying glass, My Sound Blaster 16 also doesn’t say Sound Blaster on it anywhere either.
I’d also like to build a computer from my past. I consider it to by my first custom built computer even though my parents bought it at a shop that built custom computers. But I modified and added to it enough that I considered it mine.
I actually have the case, found it on Craigslist a few years ago. I have the original motherboard and video card, but I’m pretty sure they don’t work. Might even have a couple Athlon XP processors tucked away somewhere. Probably have some DDR PC2700 memory, too.
Someday I’ll gather the parts and try to put it back together.
LazyGameReviews also did a couple retro builds. One of my favorite YouTube channels.
Metal Jesus Rocks did it too, another awesome channel.
You’re going to have substantial difficulty duplicating your childhood computer. If you’re primarily interested in playing games, my suggestion would be to build a representative Windows 98 era computer and not get too caught up on making it exactly the same. Of course if it’s all about the nostalgia that’s the point and ignore what I just said.
Based on how the Metal Jesus built his, have you tried going to your local computer recycling warehouse?
I’m this way… But with mobile devices. I bought a Kindle Fire HDX for $30 today. Cracked the screen on my old one but it was such an awesome device. I plan to put CarbonROM on the one coming in the mail.
I’ll also probably pick up a Droid DNA and iPod Touch 2nd gen too when I can justify it. Actually, I might have the iPod lying around.
The Kindle in specific though is close to me. My first personal device was a Kindle Fire (2011). At school I had been using a Kindle Paperwhite (?) for a while, and my mom got me one for Christmas. I used Kindles for 4-5 years after that until my Fire HDX cracked. Had an iPad Air at the time and couldn’t justify getting a new one. Had always dreamed of unlocking the bootloader on it and compiling my own ROMs but that never happened until I got my OnePlus X.
But like I said, it’s really a sentimental thing. Even better when you can find an actual modern use for it. My HDX will just be an eReader and a device for development. Wanted a challenge too.
So, I actually got super lucky. A good friend of mine actually has my exact model and is sending me his parts. so i’m already 90% done with the build now, lol.
I wish there was a local computer recycling place. I’d be a kid in a candy store.
I hope to once everything gets here. At the very least I’ll be doing a clean-up and potential recap depending on need. I may do the same for my P4 system for fun.
That would be awesome! I’ve never owned an Intel system. I’ve used them plenty, but never owned one. I was so damn jelly when the Pentiums that were on a daughterboard came out, cause they had so much raw power at the time. But I’ve only ever been able to afford AMD stuff. Being poor sucks ass.