The Dolch Demigod (The reincarnation of an old PC into a God like system.)

Yea. That and the SFX could conflict. But I'll figure it out ;)
I'm going to block it all out and take photos.
Not sure how the roll up screen would help... There's plenty of room to put my 13" 1080p laptop screen with adapter inside where the old monitor is...

That sounds cool, and involved as heck. Collecting old PC's is a great hobby, Drove my wife nuts. Finally got rid of most except those that could be easily stacked in the garage from the PS/2 line. Probably my favorite line. Only 2 work now, a 486sx value point and a model 30 286 with the 287.
There used to be companies like PLBM that made arcade games for older PC's. That was years ago.

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Thanks.
Hah I'm 19 so I don't have wife problems yet... But I am starting a non-profit to open a museum so whoever I (hopefully LOL) end up with will have to deal with it.
I have quite a few PS/2s a 55SX, 25, P70 (fun fact, this is what I ORIGINALLY planned to build this luggable powerhouse into but I couldn't bring myself to destroying that old of a machine).
But that's NOTHING in my collection, I have an IBM 026 keypunch and 082 card sorter from the 50s, punched card technology. I have a Data General Nova 4, an 80s minicomputer in its original rack with a 5MB 15" Disk pack drive, yes 5MB...
I have a PDP 11/23 in a rack with a 9-track tape drive...
I have a Commodore PET, TRS-80 Model 3 and 4, IBM PC and a PC AT...
And much more...
Also I have a Mainframe ;)

So I think with the realization that the Xeons available for my price range will be too slow or a quad core like I already have I am going to instead buy an expensive active riser for my current desktop board and transplant it into the Dolch.
It turns out cheaper than the Xeon build anyway so this is fine.
I just bought a Corsair SF600 for it, wow is this thing TINY!
I also bought a Corsair H5 SF to replace the H100i I have since it would have been a challenge fitting that in without modifying the hell out of it for airflow.
Question is, should I edit the original post removing all the old info or should I just post the new parts list in a reply, or start a new thread?

Keep this thread, but please start a vintage computer thread. You have a collection that could keep that alive for a year.

I had the trs model 4. Guy I bought it from for 50 bucks in the 90's gave me a huge box of software. He started collecting mechanical calculaters and for an hour showed me his new collection. It was fun playing around with cp/m and TRS-DOS. Had the PC, XT and AT. My Gaming rig i the 90's was an AT with a 5x86 inside, weighed a ton. Also had some apple stuff.
I got into it after coming across http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org.
Thanks!

A thread? God no, we would need a whole category...
It could range from really old shit like the 70s all the way up to people recreating or looking back on old builds they had in the 90s or early 2000s.
If something like that got opened up, then it would feel more worth posting about everything I have.
Otherwise, it would become too much of a mess way too fast.
I may post about one or two machines, but yea...

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totally agree.....so anything with core memory? That stuff is cool
There is even a fan site for the Data General Nova: http://www.novasareforever.org

I have a PDP 8 clone from a company called Fabritek with 4k of core memory.
Yup, I knew of it, I believe I also personally know some people who run that site as-well.

Ok here is a photo dump of the main chassis out of the Dolch I am working with.

http://imgur.com/a/yZs0q

I am currently 3D modeling that chassis in Inventor so I can work on adapters to 3D print.
Going to be fun 3D modeling all of this...

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One piece down... A couple more to go.
Then I can start designing the pieces that will need to be 3D printed :)

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Update!
I got the Supermicro riser in the mail and did some testing on my little PCIe 'test bench'.
aka. A laptop running linux with a express slot to PCIe adapter...
Tested my Corsair SF600 too, used it to power the PCIe adapter and the cards I was testing.
Linux shows the PLX bridge chip under LSPCI as a x48 5 port PCIE Gen 3 bridge chip, woot!

Started simple, tried two 10Gb NICs which worked fine.

Then I tried something a little closer to my ideal configuration, my old GTX 770 and a 10Gb NIC.
Unfortunately the GTX 770 didn't show up under LSPCI...

Then I tried my old R9 290 and a 10Gb NIC, and lo and behold both showed up in LSPCI!

So awesome news to anyone who wants to bodge some SLI/Crossfire shenanigans into a min-ITX system, this riser DOES work, in Linux at-least, Windows testing to come soon!
Now it does cost 115 bucks, ouch, but if your going SLI you probably have the money :)

I ordered mine from this site, as another site I tried first, which looked more reputable, said they don't accept anything but paypal for your first purchase... Did not want to deal with that. So I tried this sketchy looking site, but it arrived quickly and was packaged very well.
http://www.ebizpc.com/Supermicro-RSC-R2UG-A2E16-A-2U-Left-Riser-Card-p/rsc-r2ug-a2e16-a.htm

The cards from this site appear to be brand new, thus the price tag by the way.

More to come soon!
I am going to be adding photos to this post when I get home of the LSPCI readout and what the riser looks like with two graphics cards installed into it to show an SLI/Crossfire config.

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that's genius

IT WORKS.
Currently typing this post on this beautiful monstrosity, while ray-tracing in Inventor maxing out my CPU to test the water cooler :)
Been doing this for about a half hour or so and we are up to 65C, 63C, 61C, 60C on each respective core.
This is on the standard fan setting in the bios for the CPU, will probably set it to 'turbo' since I don't care about the fan noise, its quiet in my opinion, but then again I work on mainframes for a living and god those things have fans that will literally give you hearing damage.

By the way, that motherboard tray is out of a Bitfenix Prodigy.
And yes that fan is just for the PLX chip, it gets HOT without any kind of airflow.
One side is supported by the metal frame itself, the other half by an old Quantum hard drive... heh...

Bonus, GTX 770 and R9 290 in the same riser:

One very very unfortunate thing is the H5 SF isn't really compatible with the Asus Maximus VI Impact, like at all.
The VRM riser gets in the way of letting the tube out.
I used the 2011 risers included to rise it up just enough... But the thing isn't secured, its just resting on those risers.
I will get proper risers to add later.

One problem I am seeing now is that since the H5 SF is offset and not centered on the motherboard, and can't really be because of the PCIe interference. Why is this a problem? Well with just the motherboard, water-cooler, and the riser, we are already at the max width allowance I have. There is enough room for PCIe cable risers to be plugged into the riser card so I can probably make it work... But I still need room for the GPU to be next the board somehow because of length constraints.
I think I can shave a half inch easily, and up to a whole inch depending on how fancy I want to get with mounting the cooler, I could design and 3D print stuff to really go crazy but I am getting lazy haha.
But if I need to do it to make it work, so be it!

I haven't tried the 10Gbe adapter in it yet, but I will probably tomorrow night when I have more time, and try some transfers between my desktop and NAS.

I will end up doing a bunch of benchmarks on the CPU to see if I hit performance at any level.
So without riser, with riser and GPU only, with GPU and 10Gbe doing nothing, with GPU and 10Gbe maxed.
See what happens, mayyybeee I will put the R9 290 in and see what MDA technology can do ;)
I will put all the benchmark info in the original post, but a sneak peak of running with the riser:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/14229258

Which is worse than I should be getting, although I am running a ref cooler 980 TI...
It hit 80~C when benching... So yeaaa may have to do something about that.
That or its the riser, I guess we will find out tomorrow!
Anyway, signing off for the night!

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I was looking at this thread and my waifu yelled at me and told me to stop looking at porn ;_;

I understand the feelz.
I post this kind of stuff in the discord channel me and my friends hang out and chat about this kind of stuff in and I get yelled at for posting porn all the time.

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Its ok she got totally sick of me for a few months while I was researching and working on my own build project... And when I finished it was amusing cos she said now she wants me to build her a rig next year, and she wants me to make it purple, with purple fans and LED's and paint. ^_^;

So long overdue update.
Been super busy at work. Turns out the SF600 power-supply quickly developed some problems after purchase...
Just getting around to RMAing that now :/
But I've been working on the 3D models a little more...
Downloaded a few, made a few rough shaped ones, and yea have this so far:


3D printed an adapter/template for the motherboard tray. Either I can use it as a template to draw were exactly I want the holes for the motherboard standoffs and drill into the case to save the 4mm of the adapter plate. Or I can just put the standoffs on the adapter plate and the adapter plate will screw to chassis using the existing holes.

Also figured out what I will do for a cooling fan since I only really have room for an 80mm and a 60mm fan...
I'm going to get some fans with the most static pressure I can find and that's these beautiful beasts:



San Ace 80, 12V 5.5A, 66W (about 160CFM) and a San Ace 60, 12V 2.1A, 25.2W (69CFM) of fan goodness. They do have PWM control though so the fan curve is likely going to be a LOT less than 100% for noise reasons. But it will get me a ton of static pressure still with the counter rotating fans on the 80mm and the 60mm since its a server fan as-well.
Will just duct the air from the 80mm to mostly the radiator of the H5 SF where it will be needed most, some will just go to the case for positive pressure and airflow.
The 60mm will mostly be for motherboard airflow and the graphics card / 10Gb NIC air feed.

I need to buy a nice PCI-e riser cable for between the motherboard and the PCI-e splitter. Found a nice one for about 60 bucks, just need to buy it... Been spending a lot of money on stuff for this recently and have RV payments and rent so yea trying not to spend too much too fast hah.

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HUGE UPDATE

I am pretty much 80% done with this project now. No 3D printing required thus far, waiting for an RMA on the SF600 so I can retrofit that.
But here it is:

Yes everything other than the powersupply, remember RMA, is inside this beast.

YES I DID SOLDER TO THE BACK OF MY 980 Ti FOR POWER. YES I AM INSANE.
There was no other way to get the power connector to fit in the top, not enough clearance... Even with low profile power connectors... Which yes I know exist.

I need to cut down the case a little to get access to all I/O but yup the motherboard and the H5 SF water cooler is in there!

980 Ti AND 10Gb nic! San Ace 60 above and that MONSTER San Ace 80 below.

Anyway. Cooling is pretty good with the fans spun down to bearable levels, thats with the back open and letting out a lot of satic pressure too. Once I get the SF600 in and 3D print some shrouds/mounting for some random bits this should be great.

So yea this project is well on its way.

Whole gallery of more photos HERE.

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That is looking great!