Repurposing a 2004 Athlon 64 system in 2021

[clearchris]

I haven't worked with them much recently, but nodeMCU modules have wifi and are pretty cheap (under $3 if you buy from china). If you go the arduino route, that would be an easy substitute. When I worked with one probably around 5 years ago, the esp modules were pretty rough, but I imagine they have matured since then...

I plan on doing this with one of those old flat and deep power switches that were meant to go under the CRT monitors.

[TechGeek]

Just a bit of an update on things:

1) The Advantech UNO-3072LA is now completely mothballed and in cold storage. HDD and CMOS battery pulled.

2) We should be getting FTTH within the next 18-24 months or so, thanks to a Trump-era program to give rural homes access to current-gen Internet. If/when we subscribe to that, the current firewall system will be retired and replaced with a brand new system, likely a Mini-ITX Ryzen based system.

P.S.: The firewall system has been rock solid since the motherboard recap.

[Uranium-235]

Haha, nowhereland, TX. I used to live there. Twice.

[TechGeek]

Originally Posted by Uranium-235

Haha, nowhereland, TX. I used to live there. Twice.

Did you enjoy it?

[Uranium-235]

Circleback? Didn't remember it much
Veribest? meh

[TechGeek]

Something big coming soon for this system...

[eccerr0r]

Still not sure what I'll do with my Xblade case with the P4 in it...

[TechGeek]

Another big hint here.... work on it starting soon! Take a guess as to what it might be becoming...

[momaka]

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Another big hint here.... work on it starting soon! Take a guess as to what it might be becoming...

Retro gaming PC??
I mean, that's honestly what it should be IMO, given the GeForce 4 TI GPU. Otherwise, if it'll be some office/firewall/server stuff again, then sell that GPU on eBay and make a good buck out of it. Most GeForce 4 TI cards go for a minimum of $50 and more often ending around the $80-100 mark... though sometimes higher too. And that's if you can even find them in working condition anymore. Despite being built on older non-BGA tech (not for the actual GPU core anyways), they still fail. And it seems that it's not a matter of if, but when. So that's the only reason I suggest you replace/sell that card: might as well make good money out of it while it's still working. If all you need is a basic video output, a GeForce MX 4000 or MX 420 or Radeon 7000 should do the trick, and those can be found for under $10 shipped. Or occasionally the cheap "Turbo"-Cache GeForce 6200 variants can be found for about the same price too. Only downside of this last one is cheap caps and don't leave it with passive cooling (which many are.)

[TechGeek]

Originally Posted by momaka

Retro gaming PC??
I mean, that's honestly what it should be IMO, given the GeForce 4 TI GPU. Otherwise, if it'll be some office/firewall/server stuff again, then sell that GPU on eBay and make a good buck out of it. Most GeForce 4 TI cards go for a minimum of $50 and more often ending around the $80-100 mark... though sometimes higher too. And that's if you can even find them in working condition anymore. Despite being built on older non-BGA tech (not for the actual GPU core anyways), they still fail. And it seems that it's not a matter of if, but when. So that's the only reason I suggest you replace/sell that card: might as well make good money out of it while it's still working. If all you need is a basic video output, a GeForce MX 4000 or MX 420 or Radeon 7000 should do the trick, and those can be found for under $10 shipped. Or occasionally the cheap "Turbo"-Cache GeForce 6200 variants can be found for about the same price too. Only downside of this last one is cheap caps and don't leave it with passive cooling (which many are.)

Nailed it! RE GPU: It ran basically 24/7 for 14 years on that GeForce4 Ti 4800SE, plus however long it was on in it's previous leases on life. It's out of service now, but I'll be putting it back in soon. Still have a few things to get squared away before I can start on this project.

[TechGeek]

So it begins! The next phase of life for this old beast!

System hooked up for a quick test to make sure it still works before I modify it.


Booting into OPNsense one last time...


Confirmed alive, shutting down.


Under the knife once again...


Hard drive cage pulled. HMMM, what to do with that fan slot?


Fan upgrade time! Putting this Apevia 120mm fan in the back and moving the old rear case fan into that hard drive fan slot. But...


...It's got one of those annoying Molex connectors that do not in any way belong on a fan that's also got a 3-pin connector. Don't hardwire it on there, just give me an adapter.


And cured.


Fan installed.


Rear case fan moved.


SATA hard drive reinstalled. This is a WD Velociraptor 10K 73GB drive. It's the drive that this system came with back in 2004 when it was built.


Removed the old, slightly busted but still working DVD reader.


Moved blanking plates around again. I'm going to install a floppy drive so that I can load the SATA drivers for the SATA controller on the motherboard before installing Windows 2000 and XP.


Here's the "new" DVD burner installed in the system.


And that's about as far as I got this morning before I sent myself on a wild goose chase looking for other stuff that I'll need to complete this build, such as a 34-pin floppy drive cable, 4-pin cable for the digital audio (from the optical drive), and some other odds and ends. More to come later!

[TechGeek]

LOTS of high-res inline photos incoming!

Now that I've weeded out dial-up/DSL users by incinerating their modems and phone line gateways, let's begin.

Several hours later- all odds and ends found. Floppy drive, 34-pin floppy cable, a USB adapter (which I ended up not using), and one of those CD audio cables.






CD audio cable plugged in. It was rather tricky to get to due to all of the other cabling that was in the way.


Motherboard audio header populated.


Floppy drive installed.




Yes, that is EXACTLY what you think that is. Floppy drive is sitting on top of a dead Seagate drive. It's kept from floating around with 2 blue zipties and a bullet casing to keep it from slipping back into the case.

Front panel audio hooked up. First time in the 17+ years it's been since the system was built that this header had ever been connected.


Wireless card and USB 2.0 card installed. The card reader part of the combo floppy drive is plugged into it.


GeForce4 Ti 4800SE GPU reinstalled.


And this is probably why the onboard audio had never really worked right. These were connected across sense pins that told the audio controller that there were headphones connected.


Fully reassembled.


Hooked up...


...and IT'S ALIVE!




Butt shot...


Side shot...




Headed into the BIOS to configure things.
Enabled the FDD...


Set the AGP aperture size...


...and more to come soon.

[Topcat]

GeForce4 Ti 128mb, very nice!! Those are getting harder to find and fetching decent prices when they do pop up. This better be more of a system than some linux firewall sitting in a closet.

[TechGeek]

Originally Posted by Topcat

GeForce4 Ti 128mb, very nice!! Those are getting harder to find and fetching decent prices when they do pop up. This better be more of a system than some linux firewall sitting in a closet.

Oh it's gonna be A LOT more than that. How's a Windows 2000 + Windows XP x64 gaming build sound?

And BTW, any ideas for some games to try out when it finally comes together?

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Oh it's gonna be A LOT more than that. How's a Windows 2000 + Windows XP x64 gaming build sound?

And BTW, any ideas for some games to try out when it finally comes together?

On a GPU like that, Q3A is fantastic! There's also Unreal Tourney that was flagship for that GPU. Those are a couple of my favorites for that period of games.

For XP64, how much RAM is in this? If its 4gb or less I wouldn't bother unless there's a specific need for it...

[momaka]

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Nailed it! RE GPU: It ran basically 24/7 for 14 years on that GeForce4 Ti 4800SE, plus however long it was on in it's previous leases on life.

Nice!
14 years of 24/7?! That's actually quite amazing. Normally those GeForce 4 TI cards don't last this long, despite having wire-bonded cores.
Then again, the heatsink on yours looks a little better than the stock/reference ones, so that may be why too. Make sure to keep its fan running well, or the GPU will fail quickly.

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Oh it's gonna be A LOT more than that. How's a Windows 2000 + Windows XP x64 gaming build sound?

Interesting choice there.
Why XP x64, though? As TC mentioned, unless you have more than 4 GB of RAM (which won't be possible, since this is a DDR board, if I am not mistaken), XP x64 is not really needed.
Also Windows 2000 is pretty much the same thing as Windows XP... at least in terms of old games support.

I know TC will probably disagree here, but I suggest doing a Windows 98/SE + Windows XP dual boot. There are a few older late 90's and early 2000's games that tend to run a little "quirky" on 2k/XP (or anything NT, really.) A few Need For Speed games come to mind here off top of my head (I think there were a few more, though.) If it wasn't for that, I'd just go with XP for everything. The GeForce 4 TI4800SE (TI4600 really ) is only DX8.1-compliant... which will still run a great deal of games from the early 2000's, but becomes limited with games made past 2005 or so. Also, it's a nice AGP card for Windows 98, in that you should be able to find drivers for it easily.

Originally Posted by TechGeek

And BTW, any ideas for some games to try out when it finally comes together?

Oh, do you really want a full list?

I'll give you just a few of my favorites:
Mafia: City of Lost Heaven
Half-Life
Counter-Strike (1.5 or 1.6 with Bots is still fun! ... and even Source should run decently on your machine there. Or you can run these to learn how to make maps for the Source/Gold Source engine, which I always thought was pretty cool )
Counter-Strike Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes (fun single-player)
GTA: Vice City
Unreal Tournament
Delta Force Black Hawk Down
Battlefield: 1942
Tomb Rider (various - just see which one of the older ones will run on your system and which you think look interesting. I think TR:5 [Chronicles] was quite popular back around the turn of the Millenium)
Diablo II

And from the racing genre:
Need For Speed: various versions, see below
- Hot Pursuit & High Stakes (very fast paced and you can still find A TON of mods for these even today. These two, however, just run better on Windows 98. XP will also run them, but sometimes there are a few bugs, particularly with NTFS partitions.)
- Porsche Unleashed / Porsche 2000 (fun arcade but also kind of realistic in some ways - especially with a wheel & pedals.)
- Hot Pursuit 2 (fast cars, cool tracks, will look and run really well on that GeForce TI4600... need I say more? )
- Underground & Underground 2 (Fast & Furious clones, basically ... so many people don't like these two. But I like the first one for the fast pace. And Underground 2 is actually quite fun to play otherwise, in terms of driving physics and the open world... and a challenge if you want to finish the game without "ricing" a car. )

Collin McRae Rally: 2 / 3 / 04
Carmageddon (a f-in' classic! )

-----
There's probably a ton more to add to this list (especially if you dig back into the mid-90's DOS titles... which is why Windows 98 might be a good idea, again)... but I'll leave it at that.

Originally Posted by TechGeek

SATA hard drive reinstalled. This is a WD Velociraptor 10K 73GB drive. It's the drive that this system came with back in 2004 when it was built.
https://badcaps.net/forum/attachment...1&d=1641573654

Those are pretty neat for a retro built - lots of speed for the legacy stuff, especially XP.
BTW, why not move the HDD down a few slots. It is a Raptor after all - could use some cooling from the fan you just installed.

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Here's the "new" DVD burner installed in the system.
https://badcaps.net/forum/attachment...1&d=1641573654

If you were closer, we could do a trade: me give you a black DVD drive and you give me the beige one.
Don't know why, but I've never ran across that many DVD-RW drives in beige. CD-RW, though - no problems, I got plenty of those.

Originally Posted by TechGeek

https://badcaps.net/forum/attachment...1&d=1641660284

My OCD tells me that floppy drive cable needs a wash.

Originally Posted by TechGeek

CD audio cable plugged in. It was rather tricky to get to due to all of the other cabling that was in the way.
https://badcaps.net/forum/attachment...1&d=1641660284

Analog audio cable for the optical drive?! I don't think I've ever used one in the last 15 years of PC building. And if a system came with one, I removed it, unless it was some ancient system that actually needed it. Correct me if I am wrong, but weren't those cables only needed way back in the day when audio hardware was just too... simplistic? IIRC, this was needed back in the day if an audio card didn't have proper decoding ability, so the optical send it analog audio directly. On a "modern" motherboard like this one, I don't think there are any benefits... but again, correct me if I am wrong. I have a good number of these cables and have always wondered if there's any use for them.

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Motherboard audio header populated.
https://badcaps.net/forum/attachment...1&d=1641660284

Dang! TC recapped even that small cap next to the audio controller with a tiny Rubycon (I'm guessing 5V regulated rail.)

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Floppy drive installed.
https://badcaps.net/forum/attachment...1&d=1641660284

Now black floppies is also something I don't have many of (1, I think?)
It's a nice card reader + floppy, though.

Originally Posted by TechGeek

https://badcaps.net/forum/attachment...1&d=1641660284
Yes, that is EXACTLY what you think that is. Floppy drive is sitting on top of a dead Seagate drive. It's kept from floating around with 2 blue zipties and a bullet casing to keep it from slipping back into the case.

Now that is EPIC!
It actually does scream early/mid 2000's PC now, as quite a lot of people back in those days did all kinds of mods to their PCs... you know, back when PCs weren't all black-everything and no wires to be seen anywhere in sight. The bullet, though:

Originally Posted by TechGeek

And this is probably why the onboard audio had never really worked right. These were connected across sense pins that told the audio controller that there were headphones connected.

LOL!
I've seen worse, though. Will post pictures of that build... some day (when my flaky mind feels like it )

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Hooked up...
https://badcaps.net/forum/attachment...1&d=1641660864

YES! A CRT!
I approve of this union. Retro PC, you may now kiss the CRT monitor!

Originally Posted by TechGeek

https://badcaps.net/forum/attachment...1&d=1641660864

Those LED fans give a nice glow!

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by momaka

Diablo II


Carmageddon (a f-in' classic! )

Diablo2, download the Glide wrapper for it, it will smoke on that GF4TI! D2 was written for glide, not D3D....and D3D sucks with it. When using Glide with the latest patch, the patch removed the glide option, but with the wrapper, you can run it with a startup switch "-3dfx" without the quotes.

Carmageddon....ohh my!! The first time I played that was at a big LANfest maybe around Y2K....we were drunk off our asses on jello shots and trying to play that game; big smash-up derby, corny cars, and can barely see straight.... Yes, f;ing classic! Great memory!!

[TechGeek]

Originally Posted by momaka

Nice!
14 years of 24/7?! That's actually quite amazing. Normally those GeForce 4 TI cards don't last this long, despite having wire-bonded cores.
Then again, the heatsink on yours looks a little better than the stock/reference ones, so that may be why too. Make sure to keep its fan running well, or the GPU will fail quickly.

The fan seems fine, and I gave everything a THOROUGH dusting back when I got the system in late-2018. Before, the GPU fan was a tad rumbly and the CPU heatsink was so packed with dust it couldn't breathe. How did that system survive!?

Originally Posted by momaka

Interesting choice there.
Why XP x64, though? As TC mentioned, unless you have more than 4 GB of RAM (which won't be possible, since this is a DDR board, if I am not mistaken), XP x64 is not really needed.
Also Windows 2000 is pretty much the same thing as Windows XP... at least in terms of old games support.

Might as well take advantage of the hardware that I have. Cost me nothing and I snagged the CD key in the comments section of the download. I've also got a bit of nostalgia for Win2K. Not sure why, but I just do.

Originally Posted by momaka

I know TC will probably disagree here, but I suggest doing a Windows 98/SE + Windows XP dual boot. There are a few older late 90's and early 2000's games that tend to run a little "quirky" on 2k/XP (or anything NT, really.) A few Need For Speed games come to mind here off top of my head (I think there were a few more, though.) If it wasn't for that, I'd just go with XP for everything. The GeForce 4 TI4800SE (TI4600 really ) is only DX8.1-compliant... which will still run a great deal of games from the early 2000's, but becomes limited with games made past 2005 or so. Also, it's a nice AGP card for Windows 98, in that you should be able to find drivers for it easily.

Considered. Might as well throw in a spare Maxtor I've got kicking around (yes it works and has perfect SMART stats) to make it even more period-correct and toss 98SE on there. MSI's website also has many of the drivers for it, too.

Originally Posted by momaka

Oh, do you really want a full list?

I'll give you just a few of my favorites:
Mafia: City of Lost Heaven
Half-Life
Counter-Strike (1.5 or 1.6 with Bots is still fun! ... and even Source should run decently on your machine there. Or you can run these to learn how to make maps for the Source/Gold Source engine, which I always thought was pretty cool )
Counter-Strike Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes (fun single-player)
GTA: Vice City
Unreal Tournament
Delta Force Black Hawk Down
Battlefield: 1942
Tomb Rider (various - just see which one of the older ones will run on your system and which you think look interesting. I think TR:5 [Chronicles] was quite popular back around the turn of the Millenium)
Diablo II

And from the racing genre:
Need For Speed: various versions, see below
- Hot Pursuit & High Stakes (very fast paced and you can still find A TON of mods for these even today. These two, however, just run better on Windows 98. XP will also run them, but sometimes there are a few bugs, particularly with NTFS partitions.)
- Porsche Unleashed / Porsche 2000 (fun arcade but also kind of realistic in some ways - especially with a wheel & pedals.)
- Hot Pursuit 2 (fast cars, cool tracks, will look and run really well on that GeForce TI4600... need I say more? )
- Underground & Underground 2 (Fast & Furious clones, basically ... so many people don't like these two. But I like the first one for the fast pace. And Underground 2 is actually quite fun to play otherwise, in terms of driving physics and the open world... and a challenge if you want to finish the game without "ricing" a car. )

Collin McRae Rally: 2 / 3 / 04
Carmageddon (a f-in' classic! )

-----
There's probably a ton more to add to this list (especially if you dig back into the mid-90's DOS titles... which is why Windows 98 might be a good idea, again)... but I'll leave it at that.

Note to self: buy a 4th hard drive if I plan on installing all of these.

Originally Posted by momaka

Those are pretty neat for a retro built - lots of speed for the legacy stuff, especially XP.
BTW, why not move the HDD down a few slots. It is a Raptor after all - could use some cooling from the fan you just installed.

Noted.

Originally Posted by momaka

If you were closer, we could do a trade: me give you a black DVD drive and you give me the beige one.
Don't know why, but I've never ran across that many DVD-RW drives in beige. CD-RW, though - no problems, I got plenty of those.

I'm particularly fond of this drive. It's taken more than a bit of abuse and it still works fine.

Originally Posted by momaka

My OCD tells me that floppy drive cable needs a wash.

Noted. Pulled it from a Dell Optiplex GX100 with a non-working PS/2 controller that had seen outdoor storage and rough treatment.

Originally Posted by momaka

Analog audio cable for the optical drive?! I don't think I've ever used one in the last 15 years of PC building. And if a system came with one, I removed it, unless it was some ancient system that actually needed it. Correct me if I am wrong, but weren't those cables only needed way back in the day when audio hardware was just too... simplistic? IIRC, this was needed back in the day if an audio card didn't have proper decoding ability, so the optical send it analog audio directly. On a "modern" motherboard like this one, I don't think there are any benefits... but again, correct me if I am wrong. I have a good number of these cables and have always wondered if there's any use for them.

I do it so it eases load off of the ATAPI bus. It also annoys me quite a bit to hear the drive spinning up and down over and over when I'm playing a CD, instead of keeping at a steady 1x speed. Older computers with slower ATA busses could benefit greatly from this, too.

Originally Posted by momaka

Dang! TC recapped even that small cap next to the audio controller with a tiny Rubycon (I'm guessing 5V regulated rail.)

Noted.

Originally Posted by momaka

Now black floppies is also something I don't have many of (1, I think?)
It's a nice card reader + floppy, though.

Trade?

Originally Posted by momaka

Now that is EPIC!
It actually does scream early/mid 2000's PC now, as quite a lot of people back in those days did all kinds of mods to their PCs... you know, back when PCs weren't all black-everything and no wires to be seen anywhere in sight. The bullet, though:

Noted. I do love these old cases that just scream for cheezy lighted fans everywhere. Just not a fan of mounting rails for everything.

Originally Posted by momaka

LOL!
I've seen worse, though. Will post pictures of that build... some day (when my flaky mind feels like it )

I'd love to see that...

Originally Posted by momaka

YES! A CRT!
I approve of this union. Retro PC, you may now kiss the CRT monitor!

Gateway EV700B from October 2000. Fits things nicely.

Originally Posted by momaka

Those LED fans give a nice glow!

They sure do.

[Topcat]

I have gazillions of black floppy drives, but not with the card reader.

[eccerr0r]

I've never had a combo floppy-card reader, have a few black floppies and my card readers are black...

Down to two CRTs and hasn't budged any: one 19" shadowmask and one 21" trinitron.
LCDs seem to have been multiplying like rabbits however...

Started to collect some HDMI to VGA adapters...