It's Sunday and I'm thinking about my retro computer again. My project car. My teenage dream computer. It's got a lot of work to go, I'd say it's about halfway done now, but it's been functional for some time. It's not hooked up right now due to space concerns and lack of a VGA monitor, but here it is in its current (dirty?) state.
It doesn't look entirely how I want it yet but I'm not as concerned about the case or drives. It would be nice to get a period correct Lian Li case or something for it.
The good stuff: It's based around an Intel OR840 workstation motherboard. It's for serious business. I kept the box, because it's a nice box.
That's right, it says dual proccessors. But not just that -
Slot-1 baby. I've always had a soft spot for these, my first computer was Slot-1 and I loved it. I know it has performace drawbacks, but who cares, they look so much cooler.
It's also an RDRAM board. I used to think that was the future for high performance, so of course I wanted a motherboard that supported it. I've got a whole gigabyte in there, probably anachronistic but the price was right. It's also ECC registered because that's what I found on eBay, and it fits with the "high end workstation" goal for this PC.
Here's where I have issues with it though: the video card and the sound card. It's got a GeForce 2 GTS in there, which is what I first found that fit the period. It's a good card, just there were better GeForce cards released in 2000. So there's my first beige whale: I want a GeForce 2 Pro. It's got Pro in the name. It's faster. It's got S-Video out. The Ultra would be cool too I guess for the DVI out, but I've got a really nice CRT TV I could use.
The other problem is the sound. I picked up a random Sound Blaster thinking it was a good deal, but it turned out to be one of the rebranded Ensoniq cards Creative made for OEMs. It's a perfectly fine sound card, but it's far from professional. I wanted SoundFont support. Which brings me to the next beige whale, which is basically unobtainium.
It's the Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Platinum. This is basically the Audigy before the Audigy came out (in 2001). It comes with a 5.25" breakout box and a remote control.
Digital in/out. MIDI ports. Knobs. I want it so bad. Did I see one complete in box on eBay six months ago for $200? Yes. Did I buy it? No, I wanted to wait for a better deal. I'm still waiting.
So there you go, I'd be ecstatic if either of those appeared in my mailbox (especially the Sound Blaster) but I have a really hard time justifying them, given I have a perfectly functional computer there. I can keep refreshing eBay though.
