PC Project HELL: My Experience With A 20-Year-Old PC

[@HardwareHaven]

UPDATE: I've received a ton of helpful comments, so thank you all so much! It might be a while before I get back to this project, but I've already ordered a new PSU with a 25A 5v rail and will try a lot of the other ideas presented. You guys are seriously the best.

[@jumpmaster5279]

Yo, jump here When i downloaded my xp copy totally legit i installed ethernet driver and then used legacy windows updater and it sorted out some of the problem Not sure what your problem is but it might worth some effort

[@lexluthermiester]

The problems you encountered are things many of us have been through. We remembered and feel your pain! You did very well actually!

[@emilypeters8888]

yeah these are fun, that said mobo's of that era when amd was supporting both ddr and sdram depending on chip and mobo, and some mobos even taking newer chips that would forced clocked down for compatibility as you ran into as you would have needed a board with a divider for ram and other slots to keep speeds correct, to run that 2400+ with a 266mhz bus. The jumper setting would have like been 133mhz, and then doubled in the bios for the cpu, with 2x divider set for the rest of board. Also 4x agp can be very tricky as there was a higher output volt version of agp 4x for agp 4x specific cards only that could fry anything but the specified compatible 4x cards. So best bet for systems of this era is the ddr compatible Athlon socket 462 boards with 8x agp, or a P3 socket socket 370 or even p4 socket 478, 533mhz bus, lga 775 also existed for p4, but p4 on lga was kind of pointless by then. Anyhow good luck I hope you eventual get victory with this system.

[@Cpt_Wolf]

Few tips for you here. Old AMD cpu's like Athlon XP, need to be set up manually in bios to report correct speed. Motherboard for safety reasons, will boot only with lowest available multiplayer, granted that FSB is set up correctly. You need minimum 25-30A on 5V rail to power these older Athlon XP's. Otherwise you will get a lot of instability and blue screens. They fixed that problem with nForce 2 chipsets which supported 12V 4 pin cpu power plugs. That's why nForce 2 motherboards are so sought after, simply because you can use it with modern power supplies, and you get dual channel for ram as a bonus.

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

Yeah, but those motherboards love to die.

[@cheeseisgreat24]

This is one of my favorite parts of trying to resurrect older systems, the whole learning process of things that aren’t obvious anymore and frankly weren’t even very well understood then unless you were well steeped in all of the IT garbage of the day. I have a bunch of old machines from the 80s and 90s that I’m trying to cobble together into at least one working system, and it’s harrowing at times, but when you figure it out it’s one heck of a dopamine rush 🤣

[@HardwareHaven]

Such a rush haha

[@michaelkane6797]

Sometimes that stuff is fun... but watching you struggle through this reminds me why I still have a box of these old parts, and at the same time why that box is taped up in the basement. Unopened since our last move. 13 years ago. You're a great story teller, regardless of the topic. Thanks!

[@HardwareHaven]

Man that means a ton, thanks!

[@BrianMaddox]

Yeah, this is the crap those of us who are a bit older had to constantly deal with back "in the day." I'm so happy that it's easier to build systems these days.

[@HardwareHaven]

Yeah, but sometimes I do feel like I missed out on a bit of a golden era. It was definitely frustrating though haha

[@BrianMaddox]

@@HardwareHaven My greatest stupid Windows trick was when I added a sound card to my Windows 95 box back then. Windows popped up an error dialog box, played a ding, and the error was "Sound card not detected." I was like "Then where did that sound come from?"

[@Stealth86651]

Agreed. It's such a simple and easy process nowadays. Even *if* something is a bit confusing, you've got about 30 different videos/blogs who tell you how to fix it. Just imagine if we were to switch back to not having such a vast communication and information repository that we do now, accessible at all time.

[@sneakycactus8815]

@@BrianMaddox LOL. thats a fun memory

[@DrDipsh1t]

​@@BrianMaddoxmy personal favorite was "keyboard not detected, press F1 to continue" with the old ps/2 keyboards that aren't hot swappable lol.

[@s8wc3]

Your CD drive just needs a new tray belt, and maybe the laser lens cleaned. Don't turf it until you've tried that

[@Alixedomn]

Yeah, most likely the belt is slipping due to aging. You can try to take it out of the pulleys and dunk it in near boiling water for 5~10 min. It will shrink a bit, making it grip again (measure diameter before reassembly). If this works try getting a new belt with the same diameter or slightly smaller. Fixed a bunch of CD/DVD drives with this problem over the last 10 years.

[@TheMadhatter2561]

That ECS board really can't handle the 2xxx series Athlon CPUs without the latest BIOS or a hacked BIOS. At this point I'd stick with 1xxx series Athlon XP CPUs. I also highly recommend you replace the capacitors along the VRM next to the CPU. These were notorious for leaking and failing causing random crashes or failures.

[@LionWithTheLamb]

Especially on a ECS board which is a "High End" PC Chips brand board.

[@t94xr]

ATI drivers were a f'ing nightmare, they never got better, AMD had to entirely redo the driver package with their new AMD graphics cards, but it was half the reason why NVIDIA got so large. back in the day.

[@NiHaoMike64]

I remember when Nvidia was the one with the buggy drivers. They sure managed to turn it around with the transition to 64 bit.

[@fliegevieh]

I'm working/messing around with servers as a hobby. I found your videos about a home linux server and I was so amazed to see what is possible to do. Now, (about 1 year after) I'm pretty good with linux, docker and so on also probably because of you. Thank you for inspiring me! Greetings from Germany.

[@HardwareHaven]

That’s so awesome to hear!

[@waynerowlinson6177]

Thank you for the "Part 2". It was fun to watch you overcoming your struggles. Fun to watch in a 13 minute video, probably not so much fun on your end. I see there have already been lots of pretty good suggestions listed. One thing I found useful with "new" IDE devices was using 80 wire cables vs standard 40 wire. I couldn't tell watching if that is what you had or not. Better signal, less of a chance of error. One thing I remember doing often "back in those days" was creating an image of the HDD as soon as I got everything up and running properly. I used a program called PQDI. I built a lot of systems for others and had 5 desktops in the house and kids that used and abused their systems. Was nice to pop in a CD and restore back to a good, working image without having to reinstall all of the drivers. There was a time in our house when all 5 of our desktops were Athlon XP's. I think the slowest was an 1800+ and the fastest was a 3200+. Slowest GPU I recall using in them was an NVidia MX-440 and the best was a Radeon 9800 XT. Still have the MX-440 and a 9800 Pro in the house. I have one in a Windows 98 P4 system and the other in my XP P4 system. Funny thing is I never ran anything Intel during this period, but have given away all my XP stuff and have to "suffer" with P4's 🙂 Thanks again for the video.

[@edlippjr]

god I loved Unreal tournament. Had a few of these nearly identical AMD boxes setup back in the day and did some LAN gaming w friends. The low gravity level was my favorite. Just jump around and fire rockets all over the place where people usually pop up and rack up the kills lol

[@DarkDragonEWA]

Videos like this make me glad I built my old hardware collection back when people were literally throwing stuff like this out.

[@maladamedialabs4214]

Those old junkers can be a lot of fun... if you like spending money and banging your head against the desk. I started messing with computers in the age of drive jumpers and CPU jumpers so I had a little chuckle about that. My advice is to always look for the Fine Manual so you know more about the beast you're about to operate on. Keep up the good work!

[@JonathanTalksHW]

Wow. I really don't understand the whole nostalgia stuff cuz I'm not born before these older software came out. But still learning the old computer stuff on your channel tho when you release those vids. Also nice video and keep up the great work.

[@fabricius2642]

I love this type of content. I was messing around with my family's pc for a while. It was an old Gateway with a Pentium III and I remember experiencing some of the pain you had with your project but also learning a lot. Always tried to find something useful to do with those old things so I installed antiX linux, so they had a modern operating system for whatever I wanted to do with them. Great video, as always

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

I didn't know the Everyday Astronaut was in computer restorations 🤣

[@26DR715]

I can not believe that you never have seen or played with old tech, these were around when I was in my teens and now I'm 60, I still use a couple of old systems for radio work and retro gaming

[@drakkon_sol]

SPACECADET! I make sure to have a copy on every windows PC I own, in every version of windonts. Ahhh this was like watching my late teens and early 20's all over again, but through someone elses eyes. 😅 This was a lot of the gear I started really messing around with, since I could finally afford to get my own, and I still have some of it. That first PC I ever bought is an XP system and it still works perfectly. While I don't really have a use for that PC other than nostalgia, I wonder what you would do with the system from this era, since I think they're too low-tier for NAS/HomeServer stuff. BTW, Great work with your channel. I love watching your videos.

[@WaynePittenger]

The 3D Pinball at the end hit right in the nostalgia

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

I have some bad memories from my Windows 95/98 youth, when all we had to tune PCs were jumpers and fuckin Molex/IDE cables 😂

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

5:19 I can hear echoes of @philscomputerlab saying 'If there is a bios, we will flash it'

[@blankcanvasbrewery3264]

That is hilarious! I am lucky enough to have built 98 era Pc's so I remember having to set Master and slave jumpers for configuring machines to run properly and take it for granted. What a headache. Glad it turned out in the end

[@alphabusinesscommunicatiio3733]

Fun Video for me as I have been fixing systems since the 80s before windows. and your learning path was very similar to many of my experiences less the internet. when I started we were lucky if the manufacturer had a (modem) bulletin board.

[@Yuriel1981]

Your frustration is absolutely warranted. I remember having issues even back in the day with many drivers in win2000. Not to mention navigating those old BIOSes was a nightmare. Especially being a noob back then. Great work btw. Also I'm spamming Jeff Geerlings comments to get him in touch with you for that Kubernetes Ansible video..... lol.

[@samandsanvideos]

Great Work!!

[@HardwareHaven]

Thanks a lot!

[@JosephFrietze]

"At least I Learned Something.... I guess." should be a t-shirt.

[@JaikrishnaAdithya]

Actually I wasn't expecting a follow up video soon lol

[@Tech101yt]

For the first half of the video i was screaming "FRONT SIDE BUS!!!!" lol

[@HardwareHaven]

I know 😂😂😂

[@laurencejohnson4106]

A fun project and you are not the first person who forgot to set the jumpers correctly! It may be that graphics card which is causing the problems, I have a stack of old parts from the Windows 98 era through to the Windows XP era, but I live in the UK., and international postage is very expensive.

[@postnick]

I love watching you learn stuff. I feel like i'm not that much older than you but i remmeber the S/M and jumpers on IDE so much.

[@LionWithTheLamb]

While most of the Athlon XP 2600+ Were 333Mhz bus, there are also 2600+ that are 266Mhz bus. If you have a square CPU die it's a 266 based "Thoroughbred" die and is 2.133Ghz, while if your CPU die is a rectangular die then it's a 333 based "Barton" die and is 1.917Ghz. The Barton has more cache (512KB vs 256KB) and a faster front side bus (266Mhz vs 333Mhz) speed than the Thoroughbred dies. 2600+ Bartons run at 1.917Ghz, while 2600+ Thoroughbred run at 2.133Ghz. As for the exposed cpu die there were shims that were inexpensive that kept that from happening. I've seen quite a few systems that had cracked dies because people didn't know about the shims.

[@davidg5898]

Great job getting the system up and running. Despite all of the frustration, you obviously had some fun. I highly recommend avoiding WinFlash and instead using the DOS utility in the future. I've seen multiple systems bricked due to a WinFlash lockup and there's no dual-BIOS or BIOS Flashback to save you if that happens.

[@Rhysco80]

People building PC's today have it so easy compared to years ago!

[@patrikmckane4903]

On athlon XP you need to set the correct fsb and multiplier in bios according of the spec of the CPU. Granted not all motherboard supported the laser athlon XP 2600+ and up CPU. BTW the plus sign or the whole name was unoficialy this. Athlon XP 2600+ (running on 2.133ghz) shold perform same as a Pentium 4 clocking on 2,6 GHz.

[@LionWithTheLamb]

That board likely doesn't have BIOS settings for the CPU FSB. It's a ECS board and is likely a VIA-KT266 or KT266A Chipset. If he had a VIA KT-333/400/600 or Nvidia NForce 2 Board then yes.

[@NSHG]

​@@LionWithTheLambNot even 266. KT133A with SDRAM. ECS K7VZA rev 3.0 is the model.

[@pablosantiago5711]

apreciate the 100% honest stance regardless of what others might think

[@wagnonforcolorado]

I cut my teeth on these systems. The Athlon was the first AMD CPU to really bury the Intel chips in performance. Three thoughts from my foggy recollection: As mentioned in at least one other comment on this video - chipset drivers. Secondly, in the bios, check for AGP speed. It may be set wrong. It is possible that there is an AGP 33 vs 66mhz? Finally, look around for an old IDE drive. The IDE to SATA piece may be problematic. Good luck getting it going!

[@HardwareHaven]

I was thinking the IDE thing as well, but I was having similar issues in 2000 with the IDE drive

[@wagnonforcolorado]

@@HardwareHaven try using a different IDE cable, and use the 2nd IDE connector on the MoBo. If you have already tried these suggestion...you are one step ahead.

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Retro Hardware Haven

[@HardwareHaven]

Not for long. This wore me out haha

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

@@HardwareHaven Lmao, you can ask questions. I dabble in retro myself. I also know retro youtubers that probably would be happy to collab too.

[@kanaest7126]

@@MarcoGPUtuber I like retrohardware too, i also have the knowledge, got that from fixing stuff like this. Would also like to collab someday, with somebody.

[@BenReese]

Dude.... I didn't feel old until I watched this video 🤣 I've still got a drawer full of IDE hard drives, DVD drives, and probably a floppy drive. My PS2 wireless keyboard and mouse are still in use along with my PS2/VGA KVM switch. Makes me wonder if my P3 800MHz hanging on my wall would still boot 🤔 Kudos on keeping on and not giving up!! Also, while you can't use SMB to share files, you might get FTP or Webdav to work in IE.

[@soldiersvejk2053]

Ah, it has been exactly 20 years today since I got my first PC. It was an Athlon XP. How time flies!

[@thyphon]

Oh, boy. Mine was a Pentium MMX DX 66MHz. I still have It, but it is quite dead due to CPU PIN oxidation.

[@DuneRunnerEnterprises]

Oh,joys,that awaits me,in my way!!! I've just got a socket 462 motherboard. So much things i've forgot.?....

[@edlippjr]

installing XP and dealing with all the drivers was a PITA. God bless Windows 7/8/10/11 and their ability to do so much of the driver installation lol

[@MarcosCodas]

"If you haven't seen the first video, check it out here" Yep, OK, I'll do that. Gimme 15min, I'll be right back.

[@HardwareHaven]

Whoops. I need to add in the card and link. My bad

[@MarcosCodas]

@@HardwareHaven I actually found it in the recommended section and just finished watching it. So I'm back here for P2!

[@HardwareHaven]

Nice!

[@ToniHiltunen1980]

That random crashing could be issues in RAM, you should run memtest with those memory sticks and also check the RAM speed is compatible with CPU FSB. I am a retro PC collector, i have many Athlon/AthlonXP systems and i have learned that nforce chipsets vs VIA...nforce is my opinion most stable chipset for ATi cards, there was some issues in the past with earlier VIA chipsets(133, 133A and 266/333 chipset) with AGP controlling with drivers etc, so i needed to use lower AGP speed(4x, not 8x) also disable fast write.

[@grimreaperplayz5774]

I'm the other way. Always AMD graphics. Superior stability when you tune it correctly. Just more work. This is why there is aftermarket driver utilities.

[@Le_Grand_Rigatoni]

You could have just re-lubricated the fan instead of buying a new one. There is usually an opening to the bearing under the label. 7:13 That's probably because of the belt inside that degraded and got loose over time, maybe cleaning it would help. Also, burned discs are harder to read than retail (pressed) discs, so if the lens was dirty, that could have caused the read errors. Last thing, updating the chipset drivers can be quite important on these old machines, especially for AGP. If you don't want to figure out what chipset you have/track down the proper driver, you can use a program called Snappy Driver Installer Origin, which basically does all the work for you.

[@HardwareHaven]

Thanks! Super helpful

[@John-jc3ty]

the USB disconection thing might be bad caps at the motherboard. the pentium 4 era had a ton of these issues with the USBs. i went over 3 motherboards with bad usbs

[@kaboommusicmixer8149]

The CD drive has the same issue as OG Xbox, you can pull out the rubber band and wipe it down, reinstall it then it’ll work.

[@HardwareHaven]

I was hesitant to try and do any cleaning/fixing since that was my only cd drive, but I might take a look later on

[@kaboommusicmixer8149]

@@HardwareHaven Sometimes the band inside of it can be access through the tray, should be near the front on the left.

[@pinateszek6975]

Always makes my day watching a video of you. Keep up the great work

[@pieteryts]

an advice for going retro hardware is to have a lot of stock replacement parts. starting from processors, ram, mainboard, BIOS, VGA, IDE/SATA card, USB card, NIC (if need networks), ISO (using emulator), all the way to spare cables like SATA/IDE and jumpers (for the dreaded MA/SL/CS to multiplier/FSB selection on the mainboard). software wise also. that's why I used to keep installer when using my old PC. because not all the software can be found on the internet. well unless we go to very unlegit software sites and download from them. keep your soldering iron near also to replace bad caps or components. 20+ years of use and storage made them bad. cause multiple issue from random crash to unable to start. oh and also a huge amount of patience and research. lol. PS: try replacing the IDE cable using 80 pin one. secondly, look carefully on the mainboard for bad solder joint, or obvious damage on the PCB trace. if its bad, you can save troubleshooting time by replacing the bad board with another one. or fix it manually if you up for the challenge. lol

[@ThePuuFa]

I’d bet your problems are caused by either the new PSU or dried up capacitors on the motherboard. Some caps could be failing without showing any visual signs, especially Teapo and OST branded ones often do that. If I see these brand of caps on a motherboard or GPU I usually recap them just in case. For a PC this old I’d always use a period correct PSU of decent quality (and preferably recapped) because I’ve seen the newer ones cause really weird issues for no obvious reason, pretty much like what you’ve encountered here. Hope you’ll have fun with it! I sure did when I built my first PC back in 2001 and I still have it btw :) Oh, a word of advice; if you want the best performance out of your rig you should research what driver versions give you the best performance and stability. The latest drivers are definitely not the greatest. That goes for both the GPU and motherboard drivers. With the right (older) version you can sometimes get a noticeable performance boost with less issues. That’s because the technology back then was developing very fast and the later drivers were designed for the newer chips that were significantly different. You should also spend some time learning and tweaking the various BIOS settings because the defaults were never optimal. A huge performance boost can be gained here. This hobby can be a real rabbit hole but I think it’s much more fun and rewarding than the modern hardware today :)

[@ThePuuFa]

You could also fix the CD drive by changing the rubber belt that operates the open/close mechanism. They all stretch over time and it's an easy fix. Some lubrication might help too. I believe you can probably buy new belts from ebay but I myself scavenged a bunch of them from dead drives back in the day so I still have some spares. I wouldn't bother with the SATA converters because that's another potential source of weird issues. It's usually not worth the trouble IMHO and it's kinda nice to keep them period correct👍

[@explorer9049]

Those errors he got when trying to install unreal is similiar when i had faulty or unstable ram and eventually got the PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA BSOD stop code. It could be bad ram or faulty capacitors that affect the northbridge where the memory controller is hit by power ripple or spikes. Either ladder since this hardware is from the capcitor plague era.

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

AGP cards also love dying from bad capacitors, flip chip plague, or both.

[@Neptune730]

If I'd known you were making this video I could have given you most of that stuff you bought. I have a bunch of that old stuff still. I even still have a working 486 MB(or at least I think it is a 486) to run DOS on. It was used for an old piece of surveillance system I have.

[@0xC4aE1e5]

My PC actually has half the VRAM (at least, the GPU only). It has 64 but likely extends to more because it's shared. Also, BIOS can't properly detect CPU speed.

[@mOddEdLiKeHeLL]

Socket 462 is my favorite socket. Everything from the first few years of motherboard requiring strong 5v rails for the CPU, and the last years motherboards coming with a dedicated 12v cpu pinout, to the change from SDRAM to DDR in that same era. That era supported win9X, 2K, XP, VISTA/SEVEN even though it was running out of steam by SEVEN. 😂

[@mOddEdLiKeHeLL]

The first SATA controllers were so finicky. You needed drivers to be loaded up from a floppy during the beginning of the XP install or switching to "IDE mode" for SATA controller in the bios.

[@mOddEdLiKeHeLL]

FSB overclocking was the real deal stuff back then.

[@jurpo6]

When I built my first amd 2100+ system back in the early 2000's, I put way too much conductive thermal paste on the CPU and I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't work. All my friends made fun of me but some older pretentious kid fixed it and I always regret failing on my own.

[@JMassengill]

New systems are so much more forgiving. 486 systems had so many jumpers on the motherboard. I just installed win 2003 and found a usb drive to be a saving grace for getting drivers on the system. Back in the day I loved 2000 and hated XP.

[@_Hasboa_]

Btw i had a similar ECS board and it was a pain in the ass to find drivers for it Great video as always!

[@Cobaltios]

Ah yes, good ole' IDE jumpers...

[@2handsome398]

Watching you bang your head against a brick wall is exactly why ive never bothered to do a resurrection build. All the old obsolete IO, expensive parts, manual jumpers, jank ass drivers and picky OS installers give me a headache just thinking about it. Combine that with the fact that its only real purpose in a home setting is retro gaming and for me doing one of these just isnt worth it. I'll stick to VMs and emulators, at least that is just software.

[@leo_craft1]

Getting old windows to do anything other than throwing incorrect command line arguments is a pain in the (ehm)

[@gyulamasa6512]

Maybe, the instability issues are comming from the dried out electrolitic capacitors on the motherboard! This PC is coming from about that era when it was a huge problem... Try to replace the cap, it will cost you like less than 20 USD, even if you buy higher temp rated ones.

[@Davide0033]

oh, thanks for remembering me about my athlon xp computer. it has some old nvidia agp card (i think it's a geforce mx4000 whit 128mb of vram and a dvi slot) that i payed 7€ in 2021, an athlon xp 2600+ (which i wanted to upgrade to a 3800+, but it's not supported by the mobo, it can't even clock that cpu higher than 1.1Ghz) and 3gb of ddr memory (the maximum supported by the mobo) i still have the 3800+ and the radeon 7000 that was in the pc

[@vikingwithwings]

So A follow up video trying Linux instead? I love this "useless tinkering". Really fun to do and watch. Great job and love your honesty in your videos. Cheers.

[@themistoclesnelson2163]

You've made when your sponsored by Squarespace!

[@Max_Mustermann]

6:20 - you could maybe try to create a shared folder on the Windows 2000 machine and enable backwards compatibility for earlier versions of SMB on your Windows 10 PC. Then you could just transfer files into that share from Windows 10.

[@comedyflu]

Old PC building be hard...

[@HardwareHaven]

Facts

[@plainsabertooth7828]

You know they do sell usb to ps2 adapter.

[@AlejandroRodolfoMendez]

Seeing this I realized that I have the same pc. Probably also with the same fsb issue. Maybe the agp card is not the correct one because of the bus speed. Also try changing the ide cable, sometimes those make weird errors when are in the breaking point.

[@matthewhoare1614]

Get a psu with at least 25 amp, preferably 30 amp on the 5v rail. 20 amp is not enough for an athlon xp

[@sagejpc1175]

Fantastic video!

[@HardwareHaven]

Thanks!

[@robmorgan8392]

sometimes its fun to mess around with old computers.. im a ham guy and i do radio programming mainly for myself but others too, i was surprised how a 600mhz cpu and only 512mb of ram ran win 7 32bit.. it was slow to load up but when it did tell you what for me it was worth the pain.. as for drivers i have a 13gb iso driver pack that has helped me with alot of driver problems ive ran into.. i almost had 500hmz cpu run win 7 but it was a shity laptop that people did god knows what to it.. im still shocked how win 7 is stable on older computers that wasnt made for that.. i also installed win 11 on my older laptops and they run strong and as long as i dont do much too fast it runs pretty decently.. i sometimes get computers people ask me if i want them and i do take them and if you wanna have a decent challenge install win 7 32bit on these older computers..

[@dab42bridges80]

Next time, try istalling all your software via floppy disks :-)

[@indimopi]

Because of the randomness of the errors, i suspect the fault to be with the hard drive (you can test with CrystalDiskInfo) or the ram (you can test with MemTest86).

[@user-jg1gk5pt5z]

"2 decades AMD system" looks very unusual for someone born in the 2000s...

[@Nuka_Gaming]

The last couple of weeks has been me messing around with a Pentium 4 computer from 2001, finding the drivers was the worst part, but luckily I seem to have gotten it going. I found an original Baldurs Gate 1 copy and I've been playing it on that computer. About 2 weeks ago while at work I stumbled upon possibly one of the craziest finds I could have. A fully complete gateway 98 essential setup with everything included and on top of that it was barely used and just as clean as my main pc

[@Asgard-vdS]

windows 2000 should also be able to mount totally legal iso files

[@ljrretropcs]

Your PSU doesn't have enough amps on the 5V rail. This is the problem. You are welcome ;) Try to find one with 25A or more. AthlonXP systems are notorious in retro computing for being power hungry and they pre date having the extra 12v supply onto the motherboard.

[@HardwareHaven]

Interesting. I really would've assumed 100W on the rail was enough considering the 2600+ is listed as only like a 70W cpu. I guess if the 5v rail is being heavily utilized by the mobo or other devices that might make sense though... thanks!

[@ljrretropcs]

@@HardwareHaven the GPU is also pulling from the 5v and you might find the HDD and ofc usb are pulling from there too. Some HDD from back then used 12v only to spin up. There is a good video on the subject by philscomputerlab who did a lot of testing with different athlonXP CPUs and GPUs to test the draw on 5v.

[@HardwareHaven]

Any recommendations on available PSUs?

[@ljrretropcs]

@@HardwareHaven Many of us have good luck with corsair PSUs from not so long back. Almost all of them have 25A on the 5v rail and Phil tested them to be capable of going even higher than corsair specced them for.

[@GhostieXV]

Yes those Athlon XP's hating a lot of power supplies and were very picky back in the day. I had a Athlon XP 1800 and an Athlon XP 3200+ both required 25A to run smoothly and god help you if you overclocked.

[@Mini-z1994]

Worst case scenario is getting a motherboard with an eps 4pin for cpu power which later socket 462/socket A boards utilized instead for power, usually nforce chipset ones, which instead has a habit of dying similar too the early generations of the xbox 360 unfortunately. Otherwise I'd perhaps move too a set of later hardware for just the windows xp experience with less of a hassle with hardware even if compatibility might suffer a bit with earlier games. Like socket 775 with a core 2 duo, ddr2 ram with a pci-e slot motherboard opens up a lot of possibilities. Like a nvidia 8500 gt or similar for a gpu with under 1 gb vram or maybe as late as a ati hd 5770 1 gb which does have windows xp drivers still. Or socket am2, am2+ or AM3, AM3+ platforms should all have windows xp support. Some games ofc like Need For Speed Porsche 2000/Unleashed has issues with both too much vram. (With a modern patch too get around the too fast cpu issues which is past 2.1 ghz i believe it normally starts having issues.) Like some things rendered in are despite being changed in the settings forced too be at minimum settings at all times in game which can kind of ruin the look of the game having very low poly models but decent textures & a quite short view distance. I get graphical glitches on my gtx 1660 super here in porsche 2000/unleashed which has 6 gb vram, like things aren't simply rendered in at all anymore after a few races & turns sections of the tracks & cars blank white, i still need too sort that out here i just haven't really played it much but kept it installed anyway.) Btw the vogons forum has a thread called " List of Socket 462 motherboards with 12V 4pin power connector " If you want too keep at it with specifically this era of hardware still. Also once you have a clean windows install, clone the entire harddrive & make it a disc image you can just write over too the harddrive with some program that can write it too that drive again. I'd also get a soundblaser zs soundcard for that eax sound emulation, which is kind of emulated virtual surround & other effects like reverb in vents in half-life for example which was removed due too technical issues & lack of software emulation for it.

[@perolagamer3653]

Tip: leve a cd inside the cd drive and it will open every time

[@HardwareHaven]

Unfortunately that didn’t work, but thanks!

[@questionablecommands9423]

Radeon cards from this era are known for their terrible, buggy, crash-prone drivers. The AMD buyout fixed a lot of issues, but it took 5 years past the acquisition to see any meaningful improvement and even then things were still quite buggy when compared to nvidia. I Highly, highly, highly recommend you pick up an nvidia card.

[@Eterna1Link]

I have that exact gpu, and it led to a lot of issues on my end as well, i would definitely try a different gpu

[@grimreaperplayz5774]

This is like a comedy, loved it! Do yourself a BIG favour, get the following Daemon Tools HP usb tools You just have to use that specific tool to boot from usb. It formats the USB drive as a hdd with mbr. And force compatibility on hardware when you are using cards. Ps2 is for old slow cpus. It is a interrupt. Get Ps2 to usb adapters.

[@unperrier5998]

The RAM is probably too old. Try to reduce the FSB to 100 MHz (that will also reduce the CPU speed, sure). Or the AGP bus goes too fast for the card: try to lower the frequency in the BIOS. Either of those should make it more stable.

[@JaikrishnaAdithya]

Hey also when are you releasing your remaining soundtracks (like 'if you want to')? Because you are really good at music :)

[@HardwareHaven]

Sometime. Lol In all seriousness, I might try to get to that over the next few weeks or so

[@NOATHEBOA92]

Damn, it's been so long since I watched a Hardware Haven video. 89k subs 👀

[@HardwareHaven]

Welcome back! And yeah, it’s been wild 😳

[@NoNamenoonehere]

need to revisit this machine,BUT this time,,,do server stuff instead :D

[@acid3129]

Do what I did when I wanted to play my retro collection install windows 7 it is alot easier to deal with and I stall but its old enougth it had support for win 95 98 xp software and hardware it's a good middle ground abmore modern easy to use interface and user experience but the benefit of decent backwards compatability

[@LeoLijo]

Great video!

[@anothersiguy]

I also spent way too much time playing pinball in XP lol. My only thought is maybe that hardware is a little old for XP. If I recall correctly my first XP rigs were on Socket 478 and the AMD equivalents were on 754 or 939. Might still work but have better driver support on 95/98.

[@AliceC993]

Windows XP support for Socket A is about as good as one could ask for; drivers are almost always written for WinXP for this type of hardware and was typically kept updated longer than for earlier operating systems. Performance shouldn't be a concern on a system like this either as WinXP was meant for hardware of this caliber. Technically speaking, the Athlon XP predates WinXP by a few months, but it's more apt for the task than most Pentium III chips or original Athlons, and neither of those struggle with XP in my experience, no pun intended.

[@JaikrishnaAdithya]

Hardware Haven is now Retro Haven lol

[@HardwareHaven]

Nope.. definitely nope 😂

[@chrisbamford1979]

I had a 486 sx25 with 4 mb of ram in 1995 with a 200mb hdd you don't no nightmare imagine running windows 95 on that n when I wanted to play doom I had to shift key at the boot up so it would bare boot 😳🤣🤣

[@theanglerfish]

try newer motherboard and psu (not enough power 30 A 5V) + some set ups in bios it should work

[@jumpmaster5279]

Yo, jump here When i downloaded my xp copy totally legit i installed ethernet driver and then used legacy windows updater and it sorted out some of the problem Not sure what your problem is but it might worth some effort

[@firenado4295]

god it was painful to see you buy the old keyboard, mouse and gpu . you can get that crap for free if you look in the right places or at least maybe a couple bucks. I hate how people put that junk on ebay at 50 bucks and call it "vintage retro", no its junk found in the spare room unless its something iconic like the model m keyboard or a 3dfx vodoo gpu. also its kinda funny seeing you revive a system like this since my father has a Pentium 3 pc he's been using as a voip server for the last 20 years almost. its still on 24/7 and has been for most of its life and has the original hdd in it. Also the cpu fan is still good lol.

[@HardwareHaven]

It was for sure Junk, but I honestly struggled to find anything like that locally when I needed it. I feel like Hat I’ve been looking two weeks before they would’ve been 20 listings worth of mice and keyboard like that. Haha

[@firenado4295]

@@HardwareHaven yeah isn't it always the way nothing when you need it but before and after the fact you would have been swamped with stuff lol. also I just thought, you could have just gotten a usb to ps/2 adapter. those are like 2 bucks and I think even modern usb keyboards work with them. Oh well hindsight is always 2020.

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

6:33 The ASUSTOR has SMB1. Needs to be manually changed.

[@HardwareHaven]

I figured, I just stopped caring enough to worry about it haha

[@keepitshort4208]

What works on an old laptop with these specs ? System Type X86-based PC Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T6400 @ 2.00GHZ, 2000 Mhz, 2 Core(s) Would appreciate thr help 🙌🏼

[@clark85]

I miss setting the FSB

[@HardwareHaven]

It does feel more fun to move jumpers around haha

[@matthewday7565]

VIA chipset... did you try the appropriate Hyperion / 4 in 1 drivers? The "retro chipset" VIA 4 in 1 version 4.43 may be best... the final Hyperion 5.24A still supports the older chipsets, but is not optimized for them Also, memories of Master / Slave / CS - and in CS, a 40 wire CS cable has a cut CS between the two connectors, making the first one master and the second one slave, while an 80 wire reverses that order to avoid leaving a tail when only one drive is used. I remember as I had my system set up to use CS, so that I could swap a drive and just set it to CS whatever it was replacing

[@HardwareHaven]

Hmmm no, I may look into that if I ever come back to it haha

[@simonsonjh]

I admire your persistence for such a frustrating, and useless, project. I worked at Microsoft when such machines were common. I never had so much trouble as you, but have seen many of the same errors. I went to Linux not long after.

[@whitebeartigtig]

Just so you know, Windows 2000 supports NTFS.

[@HardwareHaven]

Yeah I figured that out after filming haha.. 🤦🏻‍♂️

[@Hadisabetghadam]

Do you have the link to WinFlash? My motherboard is p4vmm2 but the BIOS is old How do I update it? P4vmm2 Is AmiBios

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Is the Squarespace website compatible with Internet Explorer 6?