I got a new toy!

I've been wanting to get an old PC for retro PC gaming. It's something that I've wanted to track down for a while now, and really, it's mostly just waiting around for the right one to show up. I had looked at eBay, and decided that $500 for an old PC was a little too much to stomach. Instead, I opted for watching Craigslist. And guess what? I finally found one!

It's an old Gateway GP7I-733SE. It's got a Pentium III clocked at 733MHz, 256MB of SDRAM (Not DDR RAM!), and a 160GB HDD in it. The only downside?

This.

Yeah, that's a disaster waiting to happen. Most Power Supplies are held together with at least two screws, usually three. This one has a single thumb screw holding this 100W power supply precariously in place. God, it's crazy to think about, how a 100W power supply can actually be usable on a PC! Those were the days...

In looking at this computer, though, I think I might be able to salvage this. I'm thinking I might just grab a case from the local Micro Center, transplant the innards, and call it good. The only hard part will be finding a wiring guide for the front panel IO, so I can use the power and reset buttons. Beyond that, everything else should be easy to transplant over. The motherboard uses a pretty standard configuration, so using a generic plate shouldn't be much of an issue.

But you know what's crazy? I'm looking at the inside of this thing and I have to say: It's remarkably clean for having sat in a basement for 10+ years, according to the seller. I'm actually kind of impressed...

The one thing that will be difficult about transplanting cases will be making sure the case can accommodate that power supply. It doesn't look like a standard fitting for modern cases. And that's a trifle worrisome to me. I don't want this power supply shorting, breaking the case it's in, or doing damage to the computer. Especially if I grab a graphics card and/or sound card for the PCI slots.

I tested it out on @itsapril's monitors, because my monitors don't have VGA or DVI inputs. It powers on just fine!

Device Manager shows all the good stuff that I want to see in here.

IT HAS SPACE CADET PINBALL!!!

I cannot wait to get this thing integrated into my setup. I know what you're thinking right now. "But @ddrfr33k, why would you want such an old computer?" That's a fantastic question! Retro Gaming is my shtick when I stream on Vimm. There are tons of games that I want to stream from my formative years, games that are simply unplayable on modern hardware. Games like MTV Music Generator, Enter The Matrix, or Myst, simply won't work on NT based operating systems. Sure, there's virtualization options out there like VirtualBox or VMWare, but those systems can only handle 2D DirectX instructions. They cannot handle old Direct3D. The moment you get out of a 9x system and into NT, VMs can handle Direct3D. But not on a 9x setup. For old 3D games, you NEED to use original hardware or pray to god that GOG has a workaround. That's not gonna happen with MTV Music Generator. I know it. So this seemed like the best solution! I plan to add it to my desk, then figure out a way to pass the video to a capture device on my main desktop to capture the stream. I'll work out the audio somewhere along the line, too. There's a lot that's going to go into this, believe me! But I'm looking forward to getting this thing up and going!