AshleyAshes Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 You know the old story, someone sells/trashes something and 10/15 years later they wish they kept it for nostalgic reason? For me, that was my eMachines eMonster 500a, a Christmas present in 1999 on the eve of the Millennium Bug, it was my first desktop PC for video editing and it lead me into the career that I'm very happy with right now. ...Naturally, I trashed it, there was a time where a Pentium 3 at 500mhz seemed like just wasted space. Last month I got the idea in my head to rebuild it, to find all the components but put modern PC parts inside while that machine was December 1999 on the outside. The hunt began and it eventually lead me to a 9 month old Reddit post where someone was selling one but they didn't respond to my private message for two weeks. So I stalked them with Google, website, Skype, Steam, all that. Turns out he's a big furry. So I friended on Steam, he accepted over night and by morning I was messaging. ...He still has many of the parts want, most importantly the stupid face plate and formfitting optical drive with all the stupid stickers intact. Arrangements are being made to buy all he has and have it shipped to Canada. I'll still need to locate an actual CASE but I can canibalize one from another eMachine, having an eMonster 500a faceplate is the majority of the battle. (Photos of a similar machine, not of what I dug up) Never Obsolete... Especially if a put a modern FlexATX PSU and ITX motherboard inside. Once I'm done, it'll all work on the outside, a modern SATA optical deive behind the proprietary face plate (Not seen in this photo I found online). The proprietary front gameport and USB ports will be rewired to work again. I'm hoping to find a way to get a floppy drive fitting in the front and working in Windows 10. Maybe a Radeon RX480 to give it graphics, we'll have to see what GPUs actually fit inside a FlexATX case first. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conker Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 Congrats on the find! Only thing I got out of it is, "that's an old computer," but it's still pretty cool. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RocketUsagi Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 Congratulations on being able to find one! "600MHz Intel Pentium III processor" and "The World's BEST Gaming Machine!" being together made me crack up though. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted January 6, 2017 Author Share Posted January 6, 2017 16 hours ago, RocketUsagi said: Congratulations on being able to find one! "600MHz Intel Pentium III processor" and "The World's BEST Gaming Machine!" being together made me crack up though. In this case it's a 500mhz Pentium III, but that's the closest thing I could Google. I'm actually a sucker for those cheesy graphics on the case. Getting them intact was a priority. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Socketosis Posted January 7, 2017 Share Posted January 7, 2017 On 1/6/2017 at 3:25 AM, RocketUsagi said: Congratulations on being able to find one! "600MHz Intel Pentium III processor" and "The World's BEST Gaming Machine!" being together made me crack up though. Also 8MB video card. I didn't know that was sufficient for decent PC games even back then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted January 7, 2017 Author Share Posted January 7, 2017 1 hour ago, Socketosis said: Also 8MB video card. I didn't know that was sufficient for decent PC games even back then. The ATi Rage 128 powered GPU with 16MB in my eMachine eMonster 500a was one of the better gaming GPUs in that day. It got me through hours and hours and hours of Half-Life. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lopaw Posted January 7, 2017 Share Posted January 7, 2017 This reminds me of my ancient 400 MHz pentium 2 desktop, only it had a 3Dfx voodoo 3 graphics card in, back when there where way more companies making graphics cards. Loads of old games used the glide API 3Dfx invented back when hardware rendering was new, you had to connect the output of your everyday graphics card into a 3D accelerator one if you couldn't afford to get a actual 3D capable one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saxon Posted January 7, 2017 Share Posted January 7, 2017 I keep reading the thread title as 'finding furries in the sea', as if that is where one goes to naturally harvest furries. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerry Posted January 7, 2017 Share Posted January 7, 2017 I'd like to get my hands on an IBM PS/2 model 56 eventually. It was the workhorse I started on. A 386 running Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Feelwell Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 https://gyazo.com/59f6279cdf8288c9da3724b09999877f Really thought this was going to be something about sailing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted January 8, 2017 Author Share Posted January 8, 2017 How can I even afford a boat when I'm busy building computers!? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted January 14, 2017 Author Share Posted January 14, 2017 ...You know the guy is a furry when he's too poor to float the shipping costs himself until he can move the money from his PayPal. Instead I'm left waiting for him to get some kind of PayPal Mastercard in the mail (I'm not sure what this is, I assume it's some kind of PayPal tied debit card?) and THEN he'll ship it. ...He's also started calling me 'sexy' like 3-4 times. Inappropriate, I'm just trying to carry out a business transaction. >_< But yup! I gotta remain pleasant because I need this guy to ship me my rather hard to find thing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted January 15, 2017 Author Share Posted January 15, 2017 7 hours ago, Rhíulchabán said: Ewww... do you feel safe about him saying that? That's pretty weird when people do that, hopefully you can distance yourself from him once your business is concluded. There's not much I can do. I'm stupid lucky that what would have been the absolute hardest element to source was the first one I found and will hopefully work out. So while I don't, erm, 'respond' to his comments like that, I don't counter him either. The transaction is still a bit in limbo so that's where it stands. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted January 15, 2017 Author Share Posted January 15, 2017 Huh... I just did the math. I've so far spent $265 CAD ($202 USD) in pursuit of the case and I'm still down the HDD mounting bracket. This is a computer that sold for $1178 CAD ($899 USD) originally when released. I also need to find the DVD drive to re-shell a modern SATA drive. Get the floppy working. Make internal modifications for front gameport and USB. Not to mention all of the internal components. ...Sure glad I have a good job and under $8000 in student debt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toshabi Posted January 18, 2017 Share Posted January 18, 2017 gay. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted January 18, 2017 Author Share Posted January 18, 2017 It shiiiiiiped. I have tracking By buying the things from my youth, I'll be young forever. ^________^ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WALFTEAM Posted October 19, 2017 Share Posted October 19, 2017 A friend of mine snagged a PowerBook Duo (that worked) from a flea market. I think it was the 200 series, with a color screen and 040. Score, right? But it gets better: there was period-appropriate 90s vintage furry stuff on the hard drive. I didn't get much time with the machine so all I could recognize was stuff pertaining to Bernard Doove and his Chakat stories. We had a good laugh over that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conker Posted October 22, 2017 Share Posted October 22, 2017 On 1/18/2017 at 10:16 AM, AshleyAshes said: It shiiiiiiped. I have tracking By buying the things from my youth, I'll be young forever. ^________^ This mentality explains why every few months I have to buy a new Predator or Alien figure. I didn't get carded at a bar the other day, so I should probably grab me a Hudson or Ripley or something to compensate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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