Retro PC

While cleaning up my cellar I hit on an old motherboard with an old cpu. I was wondering If I can make something out of it.

I decided to build a retro PC with some new parts. To be precise, I don't want to use a bulky power supply and only connect a cd drive if it is required.

I had to buy some missing parts to realise my project.

From AliExpress

• Pico PSU DC-ATX-160W 24Pin ( ~ 8 $ Free shipping to Germany)
  https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=pico+psu
• Converter Power Kabel 20P ATX to AT 2 Port 6 Pin ( ~3 $ Free shipping to Germany)
  https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=atx+to+at+converter

From Ebay

• Graphic card VGA S3 ViRGE/DX ( ~ 5 € + 2 € delivery)
  https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/S3_ViRGE

So I paid round about 17 € for this project.

List of all components:

• 64 MB 72 pin Ram
• S3 Virge/DX with 4 MB Ram and 72 MHz
• Pico PSU for power supply
• Gigabyte P/I-P55TP4N motherboard
• Pentium 1 with 166 mHz (codename: P55C) released 1997
• Floppy drive
• 120 Gbyte Hard Disk limited to 30 Gbyte by setting jumper

Installed operating systems:

• Suse Linux 7 - kernel version: 2.2.16
• MS Dos 6.22
• Windows 3.11
• Ubuntu 4 (Warty Warthog) - kernel version: 2.6.8

Problems:

• Bios does not support more then 30 Gbyte of hard disk
• Oneway CMOS battery which couldn't be replaced without soldering (DS12B887)
• Floppy drive is required for booting CD-Rom
• Graphic card is not powerful enough for Ubuntu and Suse Linux (No GUI)

How did I installed all operating system.

First I have installed MS-DOS via the floppy drive. MS-DOS will created a pretty small FAT-16 partition for this installation. To install the rest of the operating system, which are on a CD, I had to use a boot floppy. I used Michael Shierl bootdisk. Then I have created a EXT2 partition for Suse Linux and installed Suse Linux on it. Finally I have create an EXT3 partition for Ubuntu Linux and installed it. I decided to take this order to get the "Grub Boot Loader" which will be installed by Ubuntu. Later on I can select the operating system to boot from it. Installing Windows 3.11 is more like installing a program under MS-DOS. I just booted into MS-DOS and executed the setup.exe .


Resources:
http://schierlm.users.sourceforge.net/bootdisk/
https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-98/98-second-edition
https://winworldpc.com/download/166a4cc2-b6c3-9d45-11c3-a6c2bb2a5254
https://www.getmyos.com/ubuntu-4.10-warty-warthog
https://winworldpc.com/product/ms-dos/622
https://archive.org/details/suse-7.0_release_i386