Pentium III Rebuild

thinkpadman

So I recently acquired a new beige ATX case circa 2002, going by the dates on the power supply. I built a PIII some time ago, though used a cheap and cheerful black case that was found in the kerbside rubbish.
This case will improve the look so it's more reflective of the era. It's that new even the original power cord and screws were all included all waiting to be used.





After putting the hardware back in. It's a PIII 800Mhz, ASUS CUSL2 Motherboard, 512MB RAM, 32MB RIVA TNT2, SB Live!, Realtek network card, DVD and floppy drives, and a 13GB Seagate HDD.



Popping the cover back on. I bought a couple of new floppy drives in black a while ago as I wasn't expecting to find a nice clean beige case again. The 15" Philips LCD was found from kerbside rubbish and includes speakers built-in.



Some DOS games (Doom 2 and Microprose's Grand Prix 2 shown) I had installed from a time when I didn't have a 486 for them. The Adelaide street circuit was actually where the Australian Grand Prix was from around 1985-1996 until it moved over to Melbourne which you'll see in the modern games. Anyway, looks more like a proper PIII machine now. I even have a new Intel PIII sticker somewhere in a box to put on for the finishing touches.

SomeGuy

That's a nice compact little ATX case. I wish there were still new beige stuff avaialble.

dosbox

I'm able to recognize the PCI slots, but idk know what those smaller expansion slots are. I've only ever had one P3 board and I've never seen those sort of slots.

thinkpadman

dosbox wrote:

I'm able to recognize the PCI slots, but idk know what those smaller expansion slots are. I've only ever had one P3 board and I've never seen those sort of slots.

Those are called a CNR slot - Communication and Networking Riser slot. Apparently it was some low-cost solution to add network, modem, and sound cards that relied mostly on software to do the processing.

Frankly you were not missing much. Back in the day of this era, I went for a new AMD Duron 800 given the good value at the time, and I didn't use CNR in that either.

This board only supports up to 512MB RAM and AGP 4x, so I suspect it was one of the earlier Socket 370 boards.

calvinb

I keep meaning to get a 1 GB of RDRAM in my Dimension, and possibly a 1.4 Tualatin with a slot adapter. Then I'll have the ultimate P4 killer on my hands.

Icon

thinkpadman wrote:

dosbox wrote:

I'm able to recognize the PCI slots, but idk know what those smaller expansion slots are. I've only ever had one P3 board and I've never seen those sort of slots.

Those are called a CNR slot - Communication and Networking Riser slot. Apparently it was some low-cost solution to add network, modem, and sound cards that relied mostly on software to do the processing.

Frankly you were not missing much. Back in the day of this era, I went for a new AMD Duron 800 given the good value at the time, and I didn't use CNR in that either.

This board only supports up to 512MB RAM and AGP 4x, so I suspect it was one of the earlier Socket 370 boards.

Waste of resources really. Just as was the AMR slot. The last time I saw one of those was a slot 1 PII board.

dosbox

thinkpadman wrote:

dosbox wrote:

I'm able to recognize the PCI slots, but idk know what those smaller expansion slots are. I've only ever had one P3 board and I've never seen those sort of slots.

Those are called a CNR slot - Communication and Networking Riser slot. Apparently it was some low-cost solution to add network, modem, and sound cards that relied mostly on software to do the processing.

Why did that part of the post make me think of those old Winmodems many people had.